The Vanquished Plantations (the complete unpblished novel)

“…you have been designated Godfather of the… of the National Newspaper of Peru (“The Voice of the People… is the Voice of God”)… in merit to your fine virtues and profession of service that you have shown throughout your exemplary life that everybody appreciates, admires, and exalts.

Director, Apolinario Mayta Inga & Manager Rivera Flores, October 7, 2009



The Vanquished Plantations

AND OTHER STORIES


(An Episodic Novel from the South,
Into the Midwest, and out of South East Asia)



By Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Andean Scholar, and Three Times Poet Laureate
The Vanquished Plantations
(And Other Stories)
Copyright © 2010 by Dennis L. Siluk



Back cover photo is of the Author and his wife Rosa
At the Diamond T. Ranch, in Minnesota


Front Cover Drawing of a Mansion—by Dennis L. Siluk




Drawings by the Author

The Settlement, 1650s-1770s
Soldiers of the Great War in Europe
Josh Jefferson III
Mrs. Stanley of the Stanley Plantation
Phnom Penh 1978-1987
From Saigon to Phnom Penh
The Grand Stupa of Phnom Penh
Old Josh, as Zam in the Congo
The Slave Ship 1813 “The Monk”
Confederate Soldiers in Alabama
Josh Jefferson III
Corporal Langdon Abernathy
Old Josh (Portrait)
Silas and Jordon
Old Black Soldier
The Fence
Natives Dancing
Cape Horn








Introductory Poem

The Downtrodden
(The Poem)


The winds of the South
now hidden in darkness
plied above them
is the mass!

The South winds rise
submerge their rage
scattering the dead
the faultless and maimed.

Along the Vanquished
Plantations—

The North wind, and
South!
to have the power over
cloud and storm (once)
rush out, and about
down-swooping, over
the land
(throughout the north
and south) yet
piled above them now
still remains the mass…

Along the Vanquished
Plantations—

And Death, oh death
He gawks
from all sides…!
Aloud He cries:
“The walls, the walls
that your fathers’
have built
(the brave of the south)
must come down, down
all the way down.”

Note: Written 10-25-2009
No: 2638 Dlsiluk

Contents


Book I
The Unvanquished Years 1650-1865

Book II
Old Josh, in: Poor Black 1789-1907

Book III
Father Josephus 1877-1967

Book IV
The Great War Years 1917-1929

Book V
The Last Plantations 1962-1966


Book VI
Mayhem in the Countryside 1961-1969


Book VII
Cradled with the Devil †1966- 1969


Book VIII
Voices out of Saigon 1972-2002


IX
The Vanquished Plantations
Cassandra’s Delicatessen 1983-1984





Book I


The Unvanquished Years 1650-1865





The Settlement, 1650s-1770s



Shep’s Story


Chapter One



The Tobacco Kings
(Myron Shep Charles Hightower, of Virginia, A.D.1650)

Part one of five parts



The first known Hightower, Myron Shep Charles Hightower, who came over to America in A.D., 1650, who built a brand-new plantation in Virginia, as settlements took over Indian lands, brought with him twenty-Englishmen, and bought forty-slaves along the way, to do one thing, and one thing only—some miles outside of Jamestown, and it was to create a private enterprise, backed up by rich and private financial backers, who were bankers in England—capitalists, and grow as much tobacco as possible, to sell back to the English people. After arriving, and unloading, and settling in, they started what history would not record, and hired the immigrants that came to America prior to A.D., 1640, from what was known as England’s marshes. Perhaps a hundred of them, along with the slaves and the men Myron brought with him, within three years he had an enterprise that was paying off.
Although, it was not uncommon for ten or so workers to die each year for so called medical reasons, one year, the third year burials outstripped the hiring. The main cause of death was malaria, along with whatever disease the colonists brought with them from Europe. Malaria didn’t kill their victims right away, just weakened them for months on end, and in many cases the body without its proper nutrition could not fight it off, and coupled with a weak immune system, and lack of nutrition, and no medications, the environmental elements produced a full-blown death; after several relapses.

So here we had an ongoing dilemma, sick people trying to get better, with more than enough mosquitoes, all waiting to hit the bull’s –eye— the worker. It was said, before the Marsh-Landers came to Virginia, from England (so the Indians claimed) there were no parasites, or malaria to be found—who’s to say, it didn’t matter in the long run, the disease migrated to the Carolinas where it crippled and drained large portions of Cornwallis Army.
To Myron Hightower (born 1620), it didn’t become much of an issue, he had his business, and people were replaceable. And he built a large home in upper New York, where he planned on retiring. And in time as years passed, late in life he married, and had a son he named: Eugene Shep Hightower (born: 1670, died 1767, whom would die at the ripe old age of 97-years old) Myron had this child at the age of 70-years old who took over the tobacco business in latter years, all seemingly immune to the malarial diseases and relapses.
In 1734, Eugene’s wife gave birth to Charles Shep Hightower, whom was simply called Shep. At which time Eugene retired in upper New York, in his brick built home and invested into a sawmill and hence, that ended the tobacco kings.


(Indian Warfare in Upper New York, 1757)



Chapter Two




Advance: There was a painting that shows Myron Hightower, kept high on the wall in Charles Terrence Hightower’s plantation, in Ozark, Alabama. He was the first Hightower that came to the America, in A.D. 1650, he was born 1620, and had a son Eugene Shep Hightower, his portrait is next to Myron’s, born 1670, died 1767. And alongside that is Charles Shep Hightower born 1734 died 1800. Charles Terrence Hightower, born 1789 would die in 1869, a few years after his son would die in the Civil War. Charles had fought in the War of 1812, his picture is also there on the wall. But the picture, or portrait, that is not that there, is that of Captain Pip Greg Hightower, a cousin to Eugene Shep Hightower, born 1673, and this is the story of an Indian raid—less than a battle, that took place in 1757, one that wounded Pip Hightower, and killed him two weeks later. But the essence of the story is not of the Captain, it is of an old soldier named Colonel Colin Martin—for the most part; and it takes place in Upper New York State.


The Story


The old man sat there alone, his face raw from the wind and pained from life, his eyes scared and worried from a skirmish that was now taking place. His pipe fell out of his hand, smoke came out of his nostrils, and a gulp of air filled his stomach, he had inhaled from his mouth.
The old man was seated on a tree stump, in a clearing by the woods, “Listen,” he went on mumbling in English, “I don’t know what I’m doing, wish I could be fighting, and be more useful!” If only someone could take him to the fight, the skirmish—he’d do just that, fight.
He looked at the forest, its edge, knew that there was a valley, more like gorge down its five-hundred foot slope, its progression. He started yelling so much, his voice carried an echo.
For a moment the birds and a fox nearby and a hound nearby gaped at him. He knew the men were scrambling throughout the woods everywhichway to find the party of Indians that raided a homestead nearby killing all. Captain Pip Greg Hightower and his Sergeant, Gil Brandt, along with forty-six militia men and two scouts, with muskets and blankets, had gone searching for them. “Kill them, Kill them!” were in all the hearts of the one-hundred eyes searching for the party of Indians.
As Captain Hightower’s men searched high and low, they noticed many abandoned fires, much more than the single party they were seeking after would have needed, or used.
For the old man, once a young soldier, and loving the taste of battle, the high, even the kill, born in 1673, was having his first nervous breakdown it would seem, not being able to fight. His heart was beating like a drummer’s partridge. He was too old for sough sounds, but he could hear them carried through the winds, coming from the soldiers and Indians, so there it was.
If only someone could understand the temptations of war a man carries with him who has seen much war—was the inner thoughts of the old man; if only his fellow soldiers could pick out the worry the old man had in his face for his fellow soldiers, he knew some were weak men, young men, men that had never been in conflict, in a battle, he prayed for them.

Now he could hear rapid fire coming from the gorge, down the slope, into the woods. There was a still heat in the woods, he knew such by heart, and he knew they’d be thirsty when they came out of it. He heard the shouts of the men, the stamping hoofs of horses, the treading of feet. If only he could get started, moving. But he couldn’t.
If he could make it to the edge of the hill, roll down it straight to ground level, end up at the edge of the woods, facing the gorge, he could nearly see everything, everywhichway, but the roll down the hill would be ridged and he could get stuck someplace in-between the solid top of the slope, and/or somewhere in the fluttered in-between. And it was fall with a ton of autumn leaves per square meter. And the sun and blue and squirrels would camouflage him, he’d never be found, and that was not the way he wanted to die; in battle, in a fight would be much better.
He saw a porcupine climbing up a tree; he could maybe do the same, halfway, see the fighting, but his arms were no longer as strong as they used to be.

Then it was twilight and he saw one line of marching men, rifles in one hand over their shoulders, their hats in the other hand, only sixty-eyes. When they got to the old man, they all were thirsty and fell out to drink the water he was guarding. The old man handed them cups, and he handed them rags to wipe their mouths, and sweat off their foreheads, “We got them all even two British,” said Captain Hightower to the old man who was looking up, “but I can’t figure out all those abandoned fires we saw.”
“What happened to the scouts?” question the old man.
“Killed in the undergrowth like wild boars,” said Hightower, adding, “the woods were dusty, branches slapping our hot faces, burns like an open wound with salt.”
Then Captain Hightower ordered two men to pick old man Colin Martin (retired Colonel) up and place him on a wooden platform, with poles—one man in front the other in back—and carry him back to the fortress. He had lost both his legs in battle.
The old man looked up, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, high overhead, nothing and in the woods nothing at all but leaves, uproariously, bursting leaves, covering everything. The woods ahead fell even deeper into a sleepy like mode, a quiet flow and a still heat, no birds, or squirrels, or wind now, instinct told the old man—looking at the heavily laden environment with leaves, noticing the leaves moving without the wind blowing, things were crawling in them, human things.
“What did you say?” asked Hightower.
“Leaves talk; leave me here with a musket, and tarry to the fortress, all those abandoned fires… they’re all around us.”
The captain knew not to question the old man, he had been around, and fought more battles than any man alive he knew of. His instincts were good; he trusted them, more than he trusted a man’s thinking, or rationalization. And he was seldom wrong.

The sixty-eyes ran, never looking back, but could hear the crackling of arrows, and rattle of leaves and the old man’s heart started drumming again, as he shot one enemy in the chest. His half-body swayed suddenly against the branches and leaves piled up against a tree and went slack, like it had felled off a cliff, and his mind went into galvanized senselessness, yelling like a wild dog at the Indians. It was the way he wished to die, in battle. His face gray and smiling and his lips moved, but his voice was lost.
An Indian stood before him (the militia now safe within the fortress). The Indian was oddly silent. He took the musket from the clutches of the old man, and could hear the old man discharge his last breath.



Chapter Three


Shep’s Valley
(Upper New York, 1775-1786)




In the old days, in upper New York, Charles Shep Hightower, lived in what was back then a rich and lumbering town. His family had come over to America in 1650—Shep was born 1734 (would die in Alabama in 1800). He, married Emily Hightower, grandmother to Emma, born 1755, died 1790, Charles’ mother, and Emma being Charles’ daughter. For a number of years there were plenty of logs to be cut, at which time Shep’s father owned the mill that cut the logs, and stacked them in the yard, sold them as needed, piles of lumber were carried away and many houses were built from his lumber. His son, Charles Terrence Hightower, would be born after all the Indian, and British and American conflicts were over, born 1789, a year or so after he would have moved to Alabama, from upper New York State.
He worked in the mill those prior years, with the great saws and wheels, belts and iron, operating the mill, and loading lumber. And he fought the Indians in-between. He had built himself a small cabin (one story), which got burnt down by the Indians. Then years later there was nothing of the mill left, again the Indians did their dirty work, broken white limestone for its foundations—all crumbled to nothingness. Oh he had his neighbors come and clear the debris, his land, trying to rebuild the cabin and mill, and he had hired help, but it all seemed so fruitless, and then Shep and his wife became the hired help. His father being killed by the Indians, and his house burnt down likewise, and his mother had died prior to most of this ongoing conflict of pneumonia.

“There it is,” he’d tell his wife in later years, the mill, the cabin; he couldn’t even remember how it was what it was suppose to be. “I just can’t remember,” Shep would say in those far-off years. Perhaps didn’t want to remember, they were trying years to say the least.
“No,” Emily would say if her kids asked too many questions about those years, “ask your father!” She was intent on supporting her husband no matter what, all the time they were sidekicks, so it would seem. She loved those younger days in upper New York State though. But Shep left the Valley, and they both moved down to Ozark, another member went on a little further, to New Orleans. Shep, he simply said one day to Emily, “It isn’t fun anymore here,” and he laughed, and Emily said, “I don’t know what to say,” and after that statement, she didn’t say a word, they just packed up and left; but there is an in-between to all this, prior to making it to Ozark, Alabama.



Chapter Four


Shep’s Journey
((Atlanta) (1787-‘89))




In 1787, Shep and his wife Emily Hightower were traveling by covered wagon, from upper New York, down to Alabama, carrying just the basic needs from what was left out of Shep’s father’s belongings, and his burnt out homestead, which the Indians shattered. He and his wife suffered much under the Indians of the region, and requested no aid from anyone. He was very hungry for starting over and knew his youth was on his side, he had time to do what he needed to do, and he was going to build the most magnificent plantation in all of Alabama; although he had only a little money.
He was delighted with upper New York. It was a beautiful country, he said, just a bit too hostile for his blood, as was the previous war years. On his way through the costal states, territories, such as: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, they had gone through many towns, walked much, and seen much. Georgia he did not like. Yet they had a good time together, up to a dividing point. It was early October, and the country was pleasant, but the Indians and the British had done some bad things. He talked about it a little in Atlanta, in spite of the war; he believed altogether in the Revolution, clearing the country of savages and the British completely. He asked in Georgia, “How is the movement going in Washington?” to a group of war veterans (which would turn out to be a mistake).
“Confusing,” a soldier of the Revolution commented, “But it will get better, this is just the beginning, we won the war, but there will be more battles with the Indians. Why not settle here?” he commented.
“Why should I?” questioned Shep.
“You have everything here. It is the main spot down south here, everyone is sure of. It will be the starting point of everything down south, not Alabama.”
He said quickly his good-byes to the few and the group of revolutionists he met, to head on down to Ozark, Alabama, his father knew the banker there, Mr. Ritt, and he would provide a loan for land, payable in ten-years. He couldn’t do any better than that. But before he got to go on his way, the revolutionists knowing—or figuring it out, Shep didn’t do any fighting in the war spoke to him about it.
“Why not?” asked one of the several revolutionists, “why didn’t you fight, it was a requirement!”
“No,” he said, very shyly, “I was never asked…” he did not like Georgia, and he didn’t want to offend anyone, lest a Revolutionist who fought in the war for his independence, so he said little more. He was very eager to get on his way, as was his wife likewise; he was sure he’d love Alabama now that it was autumn.
When Mr. Ritt, sent out inquires, seeking what might have happened to Mr. Shep Hightower, the last he heard was he was serving time in jail in Atlanta for draft dodging, for it was mandatory during those war years, to be in uniform, or hung, and there was no requirement that he had to be asked, it was his job to enlist voluntarily. His sentence was limited to three to six-months in jail—depending.




Chapter Five


Moonlight through the Pines ((1788) (Jail time in Atlanta))





You know how it is there early in the morning in Atlanta, with the bums in jail still asleep against the walls of the jail cell; before even the jailers are awake to eat their breakfast, before the wagons come by with goods, go across the square, and the beggars still be there just coming awake in the square, looking for their next drink, or getting a drink out of the nearby fountain. But if you are inside the jailhouse, in one of the side cells, you stand up, there waiting for you in the not so far distance, is the moonlight through the pines. The longer you look towards it, the more it seems to crawl over towards you.
“Well,” said Shep Hightower to his three other jail mates, “I sure can see it,” he told them. “But yesterday morning, I couldn’t, I wonder why?”
“It isn’t that you couldn’t” said Rum Bum Raphael “you couldn’t have seen it. That’s all that’s too it.”
The other two came over to the bared in windows in the cell and they stood there looking out into the far-off pines. “They’re nice looking trees but I can’t see the moon,” one of the two said. “I don’t mean to make you two feel bad… (referring to Shep and Raphael), he told them, “I tell you true I can’t see it!”
“Afterwards, when you’re feeling better, things will change, and then you’ll see it,” said Rum Bum Raphael.
“I know it,” he replied, “I’m all for it now. But later on I’ll be…” and he went silent.
“He makes his living with the boats,” said Raphael. Yes said Pig’s-eye Pet, from the upper Mississippi, “if I lose all this time here in jail, I’ll lose my living, I hope I can get out in ten-days, drunken and disorderly conduct, that’s why they put me in here, how about you?” he asked Shep.
“I think the fellows who put me in here,” said Shep, “needed me to argue with them so they could put me in here, because the one kept on…I can’t even pay my way out.”
“All this will not last, you know,” said Pigs-eye Pet, “maybe I’ll go back up towards Pig’s eye, that area on the Mississippi, by what they call Minnesota, and build a bar; I’m getting too old for this.”
“Listen,” said Shep. “I don’t give a hoot, who’s president of this country, or mayor of this city, I haven’t done anyone any harm, that can talk.”
“Well, you’re here for somthin’” said Pig’s-eye.
“Yes, I’m here because of someone with a long tongue,” said Shep, “I was accused of evading the draft, I wasn’t in the war!”
“Do you know what we do with them?” said Rum Bum Raphael.
“Don’t get tough with me,” Shep said. “You folks asked me. I didn’t offer it freely.”
“Shut up,” said Pig’s-eye Pet to Raphael, “your liquor is still talking in you.”
“So you wouldn’t,” said Raphael.
“It’s just like I told you,” answered Shep.
“But you didn’t tell us much; I don’t understand right off, I don’t mean to be nasty. I guess it’s a disappointment, too. You look like a fine man.”
Shep didn’t even answer him.
“Maybe he’s not so fine a man,” said the third man, with no name.
“What’s that? A threat?” said Shep.
“Listen,” said Pig’s-eye Pet, “Don’t everyone be so though so early in the morning. I’m sure Shep has done his share of fighting, he’s a broad man, he just didn’t fight in the war, and he’ll tell us why when the time comes.”
“So you’re sure I’ll do as you say,” said Shep.
“No,” said Pet, “and I don’t give a damn, but I may cut your throat when you’re sleeping for being a coward or draft dodger. I am angry now,” he said. “I’d like to kill you but you’re younger and tougher, so I’ll just wait!”
“Oh, hell,” I’ll tell you. “Don’t need to threaten so much.”
“Come on, Shep.” Raphael told him. The third unnamed inmate said, “I’m very sorry for what I said, I think we all are but we still got to know.”
The three of them stood in front of him, and watched and waited for him to speak. They were all older men, in their late forties or early fifties. They all wore bad clothes; none of them wore hates, and they looked like they had not a dime to their names. They talked plenty among themselves, knew each other, and they spoke the kind of English bums with no money spoke, drunks. Pet and Raphael looked like distant cousins. Pet being a little taller than Raphael, and the third inmate. All three slim, dirty thick hair. Shep figured none were as mean as they talked, but he was plenty nervous when Pet threatened him, and no one said a word.
Then they threw a Blackman into the cell with them. The one with no name cried out, “Get this nigger out of here, what the hell is the matter with you jailers,” and the two jailers were laughing fiercely, holding their stomachs. One of the three men stood behind the Blackman, the other two (not to include Shep), stood in front of him, blocking the sight of the jailers, then there was a smash, Pet had hit the Blackman in the face, while the other two started kicking him, and Pet plunged his head onto the wooden floor, nearly broke his neck. One of the jailers shot a bullet over their heads. “Nigger,” yelled the jailer, “get on over here,” and the jailer took him out of the cell immediately; said Shep, “Take me out of here also; I’ll bunk with the nigger! It’s safer!” And the three white men took offence to that.

“They calls me Isaiah, cuz I looks fur the hand of God in all I does,” the Blackman told Shep, while both sitting on the lower of the iron bunk beds, in the next cell, the Blackman trying to get his head and neck back up, it had been twisted and bruised pretty bad. “Here,” said the jailer, handing the Blackman a cut of rum, to settle his pain. And he stood up, walked over to the jail bars and grabbed the rum, and drank it, and Shep took a sip out of the same cup, right in front of the other three bums in the next cell, which infuriated those men more. The beating the three men gave the Blackman didn’t make them feel one iota bad about what they had done.
“You seem awfully brave about it all, over in that cell,” said Pet to Shep.
“I was watching how brave you were, one against three,” then the Blackman looked up, saw Pet, the Blackman was taller than all of them, pert near six-foot three. He looked in pretty bad shape.
“I’ll see you when you get out of jail,” said Pet.
“Don’t talk about it,” Shep said, “you don’t scare me, I’ve beaten better men than you, it makes me sick even thinking about what I’d do to you, should you want to find out what sort of day will it be, the day you face me.”
“Well,” said Pet, “we’ll see.”
“That’s up to you.”
“What sort of day do you think it will be?” asked Raphael.
“Just about like today, as you did to this nigger!” said Shep.
“All right, as soon as that day comes, we’ll both be looking for you.”
The man with no name simply said, “That’s fine, you folks just put it down against what you think you owe each other, I’m out of it.”
Said the jailer, “Have a bottle of beer, shut you guys up for a spell,” and he handed them a quart of beer through the jail bars.


When Shep Hightower served his time in jail, and was released—having told his wife, Emily about that situation, she was fearful they’d be after him.
“Don’t worry,” Shep said, “it was all big talk by drunks, rum business. Their lives are all drinking, no money, and big talkers; they have other business to attend to, just say your goodbyes to Atlanta, and don’t worry either about those boys.” And as they rode out of Atlanta that early Saturday morning, he showed his wife the moon’s glistening light through the pines, and noticed on the grass in the park area, Pet and Raphael, both sleeping off a previous night’s drunk.



The Ozark Ritt Bank

1788-1789



Shep Hightower went into the Ozark Bank (owned by the Ritt family) and sat down at a table. He and his wife Emily noticed the bank had new panes of glass in their windows, as if the war had at one time shot it up and was now fixed up. There were a few drunks on the wooden sidewalk outside, and a few drinking standing outside of the bar across the street, and some folks eating in a nearby restaurant.
An elder man was playing dominoes sitting at a table in the bank with a younger man; said the older man to Shep, “You must be Shep Hightower, I’m Albert Ritt and this is my son John, have you eaten yet I know you’ve been on a long journey, but I’ve been expecting you?”
We’ve had some boiled cabbage and beef stew, and black bean soup last night, even had a bottle of beer. My wife and I are both still plenty full. I’d like to get down to business. This is my wife Emily.”
And thus, Albert took a liking for them both immediately.
“How do you do,” said Emily.
“You will have some coffee?” he asked Emily.
“Thank you,” said Emily. “We are quite alone here?”
“Except for me and my son,” Mr. Ritt said. “You have land about seventeen miles outside of town, four-hundred acres of it.”
“Ah,” said Shep. “I had imagined it was something bigger.”
“It can be…!” said the elder Ritt, “we can triple that, when you pay for the first four-hundred!”
“On what terms?” asked Shep?
“I see,” said Albert, “would you mind leaving us?” he said to his son, although he looked as interested as ever and smiled at Shep and Emily as he left.
“He’s noisy,” said Albert. “He doesn’t understand much business yet, only nineteen.” He motioned for his lawyer and account to join them at the table.
“Oh, yes,” said Albert. “Now these are the circumstances that would—that have made me consider you for a non-collateral loan. I knew you father, and my father knew your father’s father, while in the tobacco business.”
“I’m broke,” said Shep.
“I see,” said Mr. Ritt. “But do you owe any money to anyone? Can you be libeled?”
“No,” said Shep.
“Quite so,” said Albert, “that in itself is something accommodating. I know that the good business folks in England trusted their fortune with your father and grandfather, and made well by doing so, I’ll trust you likewise. Your name is a good name, like gold.”
“I’d leave the next two years to you, land and all, plus $2000-dollars in cash.”
“Then what?” asked Shep.
“Of course you have to start paying back the loan, with interest and the cost of the land. Buy yourself some niggers to do the work, you can get them cheap now, fifty dollars a head, seventy-five next month, and ten-years from now they’ll be worth $800-dollars a head. You see it is quite simple, just don’t betray me. I expect you all paid up in five-years, land and all, plus twelve hundred dollars interest a year, and we’ll settle on a price for the land.”
“When would I get the money?” asked Shep.
“Five-hundred when you agree and sign this paper, and the other fifteen-hundred, when you start loading up your wagon with needed supplies, and buy those niggers I told you about. You can get them here, but they’ll cost you a little more or go on down to New Orleans, they got a market place for them. You don’t need the real fit ones; they cost you more, buy the weaker ones, and feed them.”

Shep and Emily went off with the five-hundred dollars, and they both smiled at Mr. Ritt. He hid his money in his sock, and in the morning, asked the store keeper,
“Where do you want us to start loading our supplies?”
“All right,” said the storekeeper, “Mr. Ritt, said to let you charge up to $1500-dollars.”
Said Emily, as they were loading the wagon, “Shep, I think I’m pregnant, it feels like a boy. If it is, I’ll name him Charles, I like that name.” Shep immediately said, “No more lifting for you.”


A Rebirth of Shep’s Love

1789



After a while, after they settled in, but their first log cabin up, bought three slaves, started to plant their first crop, he seemed to be in a circle of life, a perfect geometrical circle, with no beginning or end, with the child on its way; hence, there appeared even a to be a new and more softer love he had for his wife, as if he’d catch the early morning sun hitting a raindrop on their bedroom window, as if it had come all the way from heaven just to look upon her. And the sound of her voice appeared to change for him, as if it was Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. And he carried a letter in his pocket as he was doing the planting, as if it had kept the scent of a thousand roses on it, he’d look at it as if it was Emily herself. All in all, it was a kind of rebirth of his love for the woman he loved, and the child she carried inside of her for him.


Interlude Chapter


Windy August
((The South) (1840s: Ozark, Alabama))



Through the smelting hot and windy August forenoon hours, the aftermath of thirty-days, scorching days you could cook an egg on the Ozark city sidewalk quicker than you could cook one in the frying pan, and nobody, and I mean nobody wanted to listen to anybody especially if all they made was nonsense, and bickering, over an alleged negress’ rape.
The gossip was about Miss Ashley Walsh (fifteen-years old), something about her, the young Negress lived on the Smiley Plantation, worked in the kitchen, while her mother worked for the Hightower’s, the plantation next to the Smiley’s, as the cook, some twelve or so miles outside of town (Ozark, Alabama).
Some white boys attacked and insulted her, someone mentioned rapped her, and because she said she was rapped, but was unsure of whom it was, who assaulted her, attacked her—just unsure of who the rapists were in total, and there was more than one—alleged rapists.
No one claimed the rape, none of them Ozark boys anyhow, no one wanted to admit doing it to a nigger, so Tom Banister said; and Ashley was blacker than the ace of spades.
We all had gathered into the town’s main grocery store that Friday forenoon, the one where Jordon Jefferson worked, the nigger son of Josh Jefferson, who worked at the Hightower plantation outside of town, some fifteen- or less miles.
Tom Banister, the city’s Post Officer, supervisor, suggested we ponder on it, if indeed it was necessary or worth pondering on, and he really didn’t think it was necessary, but we all did.
It was a hot, hot Friday forenoon, the air was stale in that store but we didn’t want to talk about it out of doors, lest someone create more gossip, and there was enough of that.
“Could be one of those Ritt boys, could be…” said Too-drunk Henry, who had both Indian and white blood mixed.
“Sure could be,” replied Mr. Smiley, he was an elder gentleman, plantation owner (a tall thin man with mud-brown hair). “I doubt it is those Ritt boys though, they hate niggers as much as their paw and grandpa do,” he remarked.
“I know the Ritt boys,” said Tom Banister, “they don’t take a liking fer those blackies.”
“Just what do you know, or think you know about those boys?” said Mr. Smiley.
“Who they be…, they aint that kind of folk, ef-‘n youall know what I mean!” said Tom.
“Yessum, he’s right!” Hell, them there boys hate Niggers, aint no kind of nigger they like, female or male, no better than a mule to them there boys, I believe they done whooped her some, but not no rapin’.”
Said Arnold Wills (saloon keeper), adding, “what be all the fuss, she aint no belle anyhow!”
“I don’t believe any white man in town her’, or boy for that matter, would rape her anyhow,” said Mr. Smiley—“she be skinny as a bean and aint got much on her top, and naught on her behind! I knows her mama, she be Minnie Mae Walsh, and she’s mad as a hornet, stir up those blackies, so we best put this to rest, and maybe send a few boys out to quiet things a bit!”
“She ‘bout fifteen, aint she?” asked the proprietor.
“I reckon she is,” said Tom.
“I reckon she jus’ a nigger whore,” said Too-drunk Henry, “but she dont make anyone any trouble round here.”
“Why we all making such a fuss over a nigger anyhow…” said the Sheriff (Jordon Jefferson was peeking around the storage room door, listening, it was his brother Silas who used to go out with Ashley some).
“Wont youall take the white boy’s word over niggers, the Ritt boys said they insulted her, but that be it…!” said the Sheriff.
“I dont believe the Ritt boys did it,” said Tom Banister, “she’s not a bad nigger gal anyhow, who said the boy’s did it anyway?”
“Maybe you know who did it Tom?” asked Mr. Smiley, now gawking into the eyes of Tom, and Tom a little taken back; Smiley now a little suspicious, “maybe yous a Niggerlover after all! We-all got to make sure she don’ give us good folks down here a bad name!”
“I wash my hands of this mess!” said Tom, ready to walk out the door.
“You are a hell of a white man,” said Mr. Smiley, ef-‘n youall dont want to know who did and said what?”
“You folks just lookin’ fur a pound of flesh,” said Tom.
“Yessum,” said Henry “nigger flesh!”
The proprietor held a gun up towards the ceiling, half cocked, “Go on home all yous folks I had enough, we aint gettin’ anywhere but insulting one another now!”
And he shot the gun; put a hole in his ceiling, and everyone left.
And Tom Banister went home, and shot himself in the head.




Book II


Old Josh, in: Poor Black



The Civil War Years
…and Old Josh from Ozark Alabama

(Taken from the book: “Old Josh, in: Poor Black”)



Introductory Chapter to “Old Josh, From Ozark, Alabama





Chapter One

Introduction




The narration of:
Emma Hightower
(As told in 1789-1907)



Part 1 thru 3




When my father Charles Hightower (Charles Terrance Hightower born in 1789-1869) brought Old Josh, that is, Joshua Jefferson, onto the plantation, from New Orleans to Ozark, Alabama, back in 1813, my brother and me had not been born yet. When he, pa and the little nigger boy, walked through our fence gate, the boy being no older than nine or ten, mother (Ella Aurea Teresa Hightower, wife to Charles 1793-1890), had fears of never being able to care for the lad, or him care for himself, or one of the other workers care for him, she was already self-conscious about having to have servants help her with daily chores and all.
When enough years had gone by to look back on things, pa would sometimes discuss the events leading up to having had Josh around, pa was twenty-three at the time, about thirteen-years Josh’s senior, or a little more. He said it was the summer of 1813, and there was a rain storm, that turned into a flood down yonder in New Orleans, and a slave ship had come to port, and Josh’s mother and him got separated somehow, somewhere along the way in the city, and pa saw Josh—his real name back then being Zam—aimlessly walking around Bourbon Street, without direction just walking as if he was in a daydream; Zam I reckon is some Congo name, so pa said anyhow. But pa named him Josh, that’s how it was, and pa he done said, that he told Josh:

“I named you Jefferson after President Thomas Jefferson, since you were born in the year Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, back in 1803, from the French, which cost the Government of the United States of America a little over $23-million dollars, and added 828,000 square miles to its land mass about one third of the United States ((23% of the United States today)(which also included New Orleans, parts of Minnesota, and down along the rim between the Canadian boarder and Montana, and all the way down to New Mexico)); also, he, Jefferson, was sort of a philosopher.” Charles Hightower, my pa, he explained this to Joshua even further by adding and saying,
“…the name Joshua also has a biblical history: Joshua of the Bible was born in a land that was not his, in Egypt, under enslavement, and in your case, you were brought to a land that isn’t yours, America, but back to the biblical Joshua, who was a Jew, and when Moses died, he took over where he left off, so he was Moses’ right hand man, and the most militaristic of the twelve tribes of Israel, he was a warrior.”

And then pa went and paid for a birth certificate that read and gave his birth date, 1803, he could have been a few years younger or older, but that is how it turned out, and in time little Josh would learn English, and forget most of that there African native tongue he brought with him from that Congo area in Africa—if not all, and his roots, he’d forget those roots of his for the most part—a few fragments would lay dormant in those back chambers of his mind. Anyhow that’s what pa told us kids in the household.
Another thing I should mention, the year before pa found little Zam, I mean Josh, he, himself, fought with Andrew Jackson, in the War of 1812: as Frank would fight the last eighteen-months in the war between the states; so I guess pa had his share of war too.
Being Southerners and all, it was that pa had a source, he kind of knew his family background, his roots and all, and had recorded his ancestors in a book he kept in his writing room; I reckon they came from the other side of the ocean; he said Joshua had asked him once on the matter, what his name Charles meant, and he, explained,
“My family,” he started out to say, “came from England, came over to America around 1650 AD, or so, first settled in New England, and moved on down to the South, to Alabama and North Carolina, Georgia, and New Orleans and so forth. Charles is an old English name, perhaps extending to and beyond Charles, King of England in 1625 AD, not sure, my mother’s name being Emily Hightower, she was born in 1755, and she died a year after my birth, in 1790, it would seem her system weakened and; oh well, it’s all history now. So that’s me, Joshua,” pa said.

So ma, having not forgotten her teacher’s command of the terms of the English language, brought this slave boy into our plantation here in the outskirts of Ozark, Alabama, over ninety-years ago, and taught him the language, and he outlived my brother (Frank Terrance Hightower, 1830-1865; died in civil war; was a Confederate soldier); and father and mother, I’m the only one he hasn’t, along with his two boys, Silas and Jordon, he did not outlive. Josh lived to an impressive age and died a better man than when he came to America from Africa or at least that is how I see it. He died October 7, 1907; he was a hundred and four years old—I’m supposen, well, I think he was. That was of course a year ago from today, and I was of course born in 1849, which makes me old—I’ll be 60-years old soon, that is why I’m telling this story, for the records, for posterity’s sake.

(Emma Hightower died in 1911 and was born in 1849.)


Let me tell you about Old Josh now…



Part 2


Zam in the Congo



I suppose you could say I was in those days, kind of plain looking, even a little mousy, I guess that is how I felt I had to be in that household, now looking back.
When the war came, between the states, I was eleven-years old, and pa had only nine-more years to live, he died in 1869. Pa liked Ozark, he was born and bred in Ozark; he knew the people, and they knew him, and he knew them, and he knew the plantation life, the industry in the city, the Ritt’s that own the bank, he knew nearly every family in the town, and in Shantytown likewise, he gave them work; that is where the Negros lived, pa never called them niggers, never thought it proper, oh on a few occasions I reckon, but for the most part, he didn’t. He figured they were a different breed of human beings, but ones we had to live with, like it or not, or send them to an island of their own, but that kind of thinking was getting old. Ozark was a small town, and had some history, like Alabama itself. In the rainy weather, the streets of Shantytown turned mud, with colors of brown and red, likened to clay: the grass grew tall in the cemetery next to it. No sidewalks or courthouse like in Ozark, and on a hot summer’s day, if you were near Shantytown, you got a bushel of flies, and you had to find shade from the sweltering hot day, usually under the oak trees.
Throughout my formative years, this shy mouse even at that time had to face everything. In a rudimentary sense the neighbors bothered me some, concerning this, although I didn’t even care to have mother see me in the zinc tub we had in my bedroom. She’d heat water for me on Saturdays, so I’d be nice and clean for church on Sunday morning. As I was saying, ma heated the water on that old stove of ours, filled the barrel up in the middle of the floor in my bedroom with two fillings of water, it was 1861, I was twelve-years old then. Mother always bathed before noon, right after an afternoon nap, and we had sweetbread often before bedtime; that’s how it was back then, back in those far-off days.
When pa came in for his bath, my first reaction—if I was not decent was: panic, then outrage—the plain frenzy also got in there. Then pa got to sending ma into check.
Pa never knew how to handle us womenfolk in the privacy area, and raised no physical hand against us. And so like mom and my brother, I had my bath and my jobs around the house and the plantation. And in time that negative mouse-like girl inside of me, done faded to nothingness.
People were stimulated gradually back then, in comparisons to nowadays. I’d see them mossy in and out of stores, never in a rush, so it appeared summer days never ended it seemed, must have been fifteen-hours of light, and nowhere to go but working on the plantation, or into Ozark, or to the Shantytown for the horse races, or to the shindigs in Ozark’s dancehall, and picnics down at Goose Creek. It was although a time of fuzzy optimism for some folks about here, like the Ritt’s, and even at times Old Josh Jefferson himself, and even pa.

I suppose Old Josh helped me come out of my shyness, in particular when he told me his stories, and then he insisted I had to tell him some of my stories likewise, how I saw things growing up…


Chapter One


The Civil War Years
…and Old Josh from Ozark Alabama

(Taken from the book: “Old Josh, in: Poor Black”)


Introductory Chapter to “Old Josh, From Ozark, Alabama




Old Josh description


Old Josh Washington Jefferson ((the first)(from Ozark, Alabama, whom worked on the Hightower Plantation, with Charles T. Hightower)) was a thick boned man, a wide forehead, big hands, broad shoulders, six-foot two, perhaps 200-pounds or more; his eyes were a shade too small for his big head, and he always seemed to be in need of a shave, but wasn’t unkempt. He had big ears, and moved slow. He had a receding forehead, but enough hair to cover his whole head, not like his two sons, who had little hair to speak of in their thirties. Josh also had big feet, wide, and his cheekbones extended outward by the middle of his nose and up to his eye sockets, a square jawbone that seemed to lower itself a bit, and a thick chin, short thick neck, and strong as a bull.
Silas, the older boy of the two boys of Josh’s, now men of thirty or more, resembled their mother more than their father, in looks, both had round chins, thinned out hair, yet it covered their small foreheads, Silas had big thick lips, whereas, Jordon had thin lips. Jordon took after his father in the lip area, whereas Silas was the more serious of the two, and like his father had high cheekbones, but a longer nose, almost buckteeth, like his brother Jordon, who had really large buckteeth. Jordon played the Banjo, and was more mischievous—you might say. Silas and Josh never played any instruments. And they all liked to drink moonshine and dance about at night.
Continuing, Silas had large ears like his father and Jordon small ears like his mother. Silas had thick eyebrows like his father and Jordon thin like his mother. Jordon was the smaller one of the family the three some, perhaps five foot eight inches tall but robust in the chest, and a little hair on that chest; whereas, Silas, was perhaps five-foot nine inches tall, a little thicker in body weight and bones than his brother, a fuller face also, and a little hair on his chest likewise.



Chapter Two


Chatting in the Barn
(And the Slave Ship)
1862
Silas and Jordon Jefferson
Of Ozark, Alabama


“Wes at war!” said Josh “at war I says!”
But Silas paid little attention to his pa, it was as if he felt Josh was losing his mind this past year or two, talking just to talk, or perhaps talking to himself more than ever, for whatever reasons, perhaps attention, he would not even look at Silas half the time when he talked, he’d just talk to talk, and kept on talking no matter if Silas or Jordon or anyone was listening, it didn’t matter. It was as if something in his father’s mind got caught and needed to wiggle free, as if he had to get it out, and talking did it. Right or wrong, talking did it, perhaps past frustration, or hidden anger, who knows, but it got out because he spit it out one way or another, either straight out or sideways, but it got out, and sometimes dangerously.
The problem being, for Silas anyhow, Josh’s older boy, there was work to be done on the plantation, and not enough workers to do it anymore, and today there was work to be done in the barn, lots of work, and if he turned about every time his father said something, or had something to say, wanting someone to listen, and that someone was Silas, he would not have gotten anything done, and then Mr. Hightower, Charles T. Hightower that is, would whip him, well he didn’t whip him anymore, he did once or twice when he was a kid, the worse now was a slap behind his head or a kick where the sun didn’t shine. He never used anything other than his hands nowadays, or feet, not a whip or shaving strap like the old plantation owners did, but just knowing he could and he might, was good enough. And Jordon was down is Ozark half the time, at that darn Grocery Store working, which left more work for Silas, and supposedly Josh, but Jordon was kind of rented out, and that helped the plantation, they got a discount on their goods.
“Wes got to recover our freedom!” said Josh, with a patriotic arch in his back, and a somewhat grouchy voice, looking at Silas in the barn, then added to that, while Silas was still looking his way, “Yessum! I is talkin’ to you, Silas, who you think?”
“What youall wants of a white man’s war paw, jes’ let them do what they is goin’ to do? Once wes free, they aint goin’ to free us down south here anymore than whats we is today, its jes’ a piece of paper that goin’ say we is free, but the mind of the white man aint goin’ to change for a hundred years and we is goin’ to be dead by that time, and if you keeps talkin’ jes’ to talk, I is goin’ to be dead when Mr. Hightower sees the barn all full of this and that, gots to clean the manure before he steps in it,” says Silas with a sigh, then asked Silas, “Who say the war is ours?”
“I says—!“ said Josh, looking with a stern eye at Silas, looking and kicking a bit of hay about, pretending to work, and not really working, pacing between the wooden beams holding up the barn, pacing like the devil himself trying to think what he was going to say next, perhaps thinking about where he was going to take his afternoon nap.
“You is too much for me paw,” said Silas, adding, “paw, this here work is done, you go on to da shanty and sleep it off, I think you had too much moonshine last night!”
“You young ones think we is jes’ ole ignorant folk—we is sometimes cuz ef’n we known somthin’, we’d not be here today, but there goin’ to be a-day when poor ole niggers like us, we is goin’ to swat the white man off us like the horse does to da fly with his behind tail,” said Josh, picking up his cane, he had laying against a pole in the barn and pretended to swat flies, and laughed, and Silas laughed and shook his head saying,
“Some times paw; I think you is the funniest person I done ever known!”
“I reckon so,” said Josh, rubbing his eyes, “I is goin’ to take a nap and swat some more flies (‘…ha, ha, ha—’he laughed as he went out of the barn walking towards his shanty his little hut behind the barn where he and Silas and Jordon, ate, slept, and lived).”
Yes in deed, Josh was feeling his temper rising, and lowering like a yoyo this past year, feeling his age, and his oats you could say, while trying to help his son Silas understand his thinking, but Silas was easy going, like Josh used to be, and I suppose Silas felt it better his pa sleep a little more, subsequently he could get a lot more work done then, because Josh he just walked aimlessly sometimes in circles thinking just thinking and talking to himself those Civil War days out—one by one, and sometimes ahead of the one he was living in, and Hightower was starting to notice that, although he didn’t say a word, he stared enough though.

As time went on, Silas learned how to listen to his pa but not listen to him (something called disassociation), this way he got his work done, and his pa thought he heard him most of the time anyhow, and Josh got his attention, and everyone was happy—for the most part; if you know what I mean by being happy, perhaps content might be a better word, but the work got done).
Silas had been a slave all his life. I mean, he looked up to his pa, respectfully, but when Mr. Hightower came into the picture, he of course gave him his due respect likewise, not earned respect, but respect by rank, it was given to him because of who he was, not what he was, or what he had done, for he hadn’t done a thing for the Jefferson’s, or for anybody but himself and his family—although he was a fair man. And Josh knew this kind of respect, although with Josh, Hightower was more a father figure than a boss figure, whereas for Silas, he was more a boss figure than a father figure, because Silas had Josh for a father, and Josh couldn’t remember his father, for the most part, and what he did remember was just the beating of the drums, and folks dancing around a fire, and him being told to learn all he could about survival in the jungle, the big cats and so forth, and the large apes, to his remembrance, and it was a faded one at best, his father was killed by an ape, so he remembered his mother saying.


Cargo and Hatches
(Josh’s past recollections)

The Slave Ship 1813 “The Monk”

—What he really remembered, but never really told anyone, at this time, was the close to five-hundred or so slaves that were on the ship he was on, coming across the Atlantic, a slave ship, how the heat and the odor was horrid, that he and the other five-hundred were in a complete state of nudity, and although the Captain did not want them to go on deck for fresh air, nor even open up the hatches so they could get fresh air, but there was a slight protest and sympathy for them among the shipmates, and perhaps a few absolutists at heart, not strong but it was visible, and the captain allowed it. It was all so suffocating, people of all ages and sexes, children, women, men, old men and so forth, they all came onto deck like a storm of bees—when they opened up those doors to appease the absolutists, and he was with his mother, that is what he remembered, and he looked up to her, proud he had somebody, but how did they get into this mess, he couldn’t figure it out. How did she allow such a thing to happen, and now look, fifty-years later, he is still a slave.
He wanted to tell Silas all of this, and this was why he was so profound with his anger, it was frozen anger, that now had thawed, but he didn’t have the words to tell Silas, how could he explain the ship was suffocating from stern to stern, it was amazing what he saw on deck: how they all had been crammed into the ship’s bowels, in some places children were pushed or packed into remote areas to make room for adults, not caring of life or death, and when they got on deck many had to be carried, they could not stand: this was something he did remember, something he really never wanted to remember, something he’d had liked to have forgotten. Eight or nine had died of that suffocation, and they were thrown overboard, as exhausted slave cargo, Josh remembered, some of the older men and women were foaming from their mouths, hardly any room to breath. Out of the nearly twenty-days on that ship, some forty slaves had been thrown overboard; he remembered he was under a grated hatchway between decks, the space was so low that he had to—like everyone else had to—sit between each others legs. He remembered that he and his fellow men and women were called cargo. How could he tell his son this, whom looked upon him as his hero, he couldn’t, and he wouldn’t and he didn’t.


I suppose Josh wanted to be able to have that same respect, the kind that commands because of who you are, not earned because you standout above others, and others know you are who you are because of this, not because you are more powerful than they while you both live in the same world, pretty much in the same space, and although you all drink the same water, breath the same air, walk the same dirty paths on earth, he is given—Hightower—that unearned respect automatically, the rank thing.
Consequently, it was hard for Josh in those years to see Hightower get that respect from his son (s), and perhaps Hightower knew this.
Josh stood at the barn’s door, watched Mr. Charles Hightower, the owner of the plantation, as he got ready to go to town, to Ozark, his son was with him Dylan (now eighteen years old), and Emma (now thirteen years old) the daughter and the son, both with him, and they looked at him so proudly, as if he was king, that was the look he was looking for in the eyes of Silas and Jordon.
Josh could see Hightower’s buggy stop, as he talked to one of the Confederate Military Officer’s, Josh was thinking: ‘They want me to join their regiment I bet.’ Then giving it no more attention, or thought, he walked behind the barn and took a long nap in his shanty; he slept with his cloths off most of the time, just a blanket over him, he liked being naked, he always did, a thing perhaps from his dark past, the one he was taken from, the Congo. Even at night, sometimes he’d go behind the shanty, while everyone was sleeping, go nude and all, and dance, as if he was back in the Congo, he’d not relate this of course to his jungle past, it was just his need to feed his spirit, and his nakedness was more on the order of being free, untying his spirit.


Chapter Three

Fiddlesticks
1862
(The sun was rising over Ozark, Alabama, soldiers were here and there, bivouacked in pastures, plantation fields, alongside of roads, eating breakfast, marching, exercising, brushing down mares, etc. Some of the soldiers didn’t even have uniforms on, civilian cloths, they were Confederates.)

Josh was waving his hands wildly, with an old wooden stick, hollering at a Captain in a gray uniform, whom was shaving alongside the road, in his tent, as his wagon passed by his company of soldiers, on their way back from Ozark, to the Hightower Plantation, his son, Silas was doing the driving of the team of horses (two) he even yelled:
“Wes all goin’ to be free men soon!” he yelled it from the top of his lungs, and then he said, several times “Hooray…!”
Josh rode in the back of the wagon, holding onto two sacks of salt, that laid across his lap, along with potato sacks and coffee and other items they had purchased and picked up at the grocery store, were Silas’s brother Jordon worked which now surrounded Josh, food items the plantation was in need of, and now they were but ten-miles from the plantation, up the road.
“Paw you is goin’ to git us in a heap of trouble, jes’ you tote that there salt and stop name calling to those gray soldiers. You hear me paw?” said Silas angry.
“Ef’n you give me that there whip I show you who I is, and you too; git them, we is got to git them out of the south fur good. Hope da blue kills them all,” said Josh starting to get annoyed with Silas.
“Stop that there cussin’ paw, you is goin’ to git us in trouble I swear, talkin’ like that. You is the only one I hears takin’ thataway!” says Silas.
“Fiddlesticks, I is fixin’ to whip them there white grey folk you call friend, asks them to help yaw, see what youall git? You aint got a word to say now I guess cuz I is right. Where Mr. Hightower, hes sittin’ his behind in his home like nothin’ is happenin’ he is watchin’ me like I is his cow, or his horse or his shoe or his fence,” said Josh, talkative as often he is.
“Yessum,” said Silas, “we be back in an hour or so, if we dont gits hung by da gray!
“Yessum,” said Josh, “…you keep talkin’ thataway. Mr. Hightower he thinks the Lord done gave the white folk all the land in the world, only to them,” said Josh, “so they think!”
“I reckon so paw,” said Silas, exhausted from talking, and the heat of the day, then added to the dialogue, “yous’a-gitten to be an old man paw, before your time.”
Said Josh so he could seemingly have the last word, which he gloated in getting, and often did get:
“They owns your flesh boy, and they wants your soul…Yessum, blind as da bat you is, they wants your freedom, but you does nothin’ fer it!”

(—They, Silas and Josh, were now at the plantation, and they stopped the wagon and Josh hobbled into the back area behind the barn, where his shanty was, and were a few other huts and workers were; there was something like a row of shanties, although with his being separated from the rest. Now waving his stick in the air, shaking it, with spurts of mumbling which also came from him (not liking the Confederates, perhaps still displaced anger), but Silas was happy to get back to the plantation. Silas dismantled the wagon, and moved the two horses into the barn, and then joined his father for a few shots of good old mountain style whisky, and the day faded into oblivion.)




Chapter Four


Old Josh,
From Ozark, Alabama
1862


“I goin’ to let ya know ‘bout that when the time come,” said old Josh, to his neighbor peering through the broken down fence, at the Smiley Plantation, separating the two plantations from one another (the Hightower and the Smiley).
“Yessum” Toby said with a grimace, adding: “I aint doin’ nothin’ until youall let me know what you wants me to do, and why!”
“Hush up, Toby!” Josh remarked, as if he was in charge, then looked about, looked every-which-way, turned his head over to his left shoulder, as if to clear his right ear, as if he was listening to something, or was expecting to hear something.
“Youall gots to find that there box that is hidden…” says Josh with a serious tone to his voice, still listening, as if to hear footsteps come over his way, or behind him, as if this was classified information, and it was to him just that, and if it leaked out to anyone other than them two, he’d have to hightail it out of Alabama, right quick.
“Why we got to be so quiet Josh, there aint nobody for miles around, jes’ you and me…?” asked Toby.
“Yous got to break that there window in the kitchen, when Mr. Hightower goes on down to Ozark, he goes once a week, on Tuesdays I reckon, you jes’ take your time, and go on up to his bedroom and under that there bed of his is that there box I is talkin’ ‘bout, I needs that there box, so I can go on North, I is going soon,” said Josh with a smile.
“Ooo I sees now, you wants me, to brake the window for youall, so I can rob Mr. Hightower of his box, and money in that there box I bet, and gives it to you, so youall can take it to the North, and then they finds me, and hangs me from the tall tree, cuz I helps you, and you is in some place I aint never heard of, drinking moonshine, and laughing that Toby done took the box and gives it to you, so you can scoot on where you wants to. You goes take that there box, youall wants it, you gits it, cuz I aint goin’ to do a thing!” yelled Toby.


(Josh is leaning both his elbows now on the fence, taking in a deep breath, looking here and there to see who is watching and no one is. Toby now moves away from the fence, his son, also a servant slave on the Smiley plantation Todd Brown, is coming up their way, Todd wants to see his father, he is thirty-one years old, he just finished work in the stable getting Mr. Smiley’s horse ready to ride on into town. Jacob Smiley is fifty-two years old.)


“Paw,” says Todd, “ef’n you wants to eat, the Smiley’s are done and we-all can go-on down to the kitchen and gits what is left. The stable is clean paw, so dont worry ‘bout that. I think wes got biscuits for breakfast, I likes them, I see it being prepared when I goes to fetch you…!” said Todd, expecting his pa to follow, and perhaps Josh.
“Mr. Smiley, he done left, haw?” said Toby.
“Thats what I say…!” repeated Todd.
“What is Mrs. Smiley doin’?” asked Toby.
“She’s-a searching the house, and under da porch for rats and those critter snakes with a broom, Clara and Dennis they is helpin’ to clear the cobwebs off da house too,” said Todd.
Yelled Silas from a distance “Mr. Hightower hes a-lookin’ fer yaw paw!”
Toby looks at Josh, and Todd, he is looking at Toby hoping whatever they were talking about can be finished later, because he’s getting hungry.
“See yaw at church tomorrow,” said Todd, to Josh.
“Yaw, I guess I bes’ skedaddle before he tar and feather me, da white folk they likes to do that you know, jes’ gives them a reason, and the tar gits hot jes’ lookin’ at it,” and Josh and Toby laughed, as Josh hightailed it back across the fields to his son.
Silas asked his pa, as soon as he got to him,
“Whats youall talkin’ ‘bout up there at the fenced? I means, Hightower he be a lookin’ at yaw for a spell now.”
“Wes jes’ talkin’ …‘bout nothin’ I is nagging him, thats all, jes’ a nagging him, you is goin’ to church with me tomorrow, I hope, da good Lord he is a missin’ you lately cuz you aint been there for a month of Sunday!” said Josh, to change the subject.
“Church aint done nothin’ fur me paw,” said Silas, as they walked down a slope to the barnyard in the back of the Hightower Plantation, and House, Silas’ eyebrows up high on his forehead, thinking about telling his father he didn’t really want to go to church, but he knew Josh felt it important for him to go once and a while, and he didn’t really want to get into a fight with him over it, and so he simply said,
“I reckon it wont do me no harm once in awhile paw, but dont be expectin’ me to keep youall company every Sunday,” rattled Silas, and Josh gave him a big smile.
“Is your brother Jordon down in Ozark working at that there Grocery Store today?” asked Josh, he hadn’t seen him in awhile, and often he worked there, and sometimes he worked a week straight, slept in the back on a cot, Mr. Hightower allowed it when there wasn’t a lot of work on the Plantation to be done, a kind of trade off for 20% discount on any of the goods he bought there, and since the war was on, most of the slaves had run off.
“I reckon he be on his way back home here, this afternoon fur a few days, that is what I hears him say anyhow,” remarked Silas.


Chapter Five



The Funeral
(And Memories from Marcus on the Slave Ship)

1863



The Black Confederate Soldier
Jordan Macalister



Josh stood by the wooden cross, his eyes the color of dark stagnate water; in the graveyard Jordan Macalister, his cousin, who had fought with the Yankees, had come home—come home in a wooden box that is, Josh was at the funeral, with his two sons Silas and Jordon, they had journeyed from Ozark, Alabama to South Carolina, Richland County; Josh was there to give a sermon, Mr. Hightower, his owner, by authority and proxy heretofore, thorough the Southern states, allowed him to migrate for the funeral from Alabama to South Carolina, he had a paper that said so, notarized indicating this Negro belonged to Charles Hightower, and it was permitted for him and his two sons to attend the funeral, by his authority.
Along with this part of the country having its share of Civil War problems, it also had its share of superstitions, in particular tales of terror that came out of Africa, canebrakes and jungles; out of its yellow waters, dikes and slave trade, nonetheless, Josh and his boys were there: perhaps some of this superstition coming also from the new Negro genetic pool in that area of a hybrid form, black with white and Indian blood now mixed.


Memories from Marcus
On the Slave Ship


—Josh stood there, with the fifty other family members and all, black folks, negroes from families that remembered him as a boy, now in their 80s and 90s, remembered him on the slave ship, just like Jordan Macalister, who took the name his master gave him, he was on that ship, slave ship with Josh, he was a few years younger, Josh being somewhere around eight, nine or even ten at the time, and Jordan being a year younger or so. Marcus Macalister was there also, Jordan’s father, he was 86-years old this year. He came out on the same Slave Ship, in 1813, with Josh and his Mother. He stood there by Josh, his mouth was to a high extent stained at the corners with snuff, at eighty some he was still pursuing—thought Josh—pursuing his own scheming and hidden turns and interests, eyeing everyone up for what he could get from his dead son’s untarnished reputation for being a soldier: shiftless he was, and as far as he was concerned, rootless. Owing nothing to Africa, or America, the soil he worked on giving nothing and getting nothing, of any value, other than a dead son who fought in the right Army, but didn’t have sense enough to duck.

He, Marcus reminded Josh of Reverend Walsh that he was the one who got them to open up those air hatches for them on the slave ship coming over to America from the Congo, he had been working on the ship, and had it not been for him, he himself might have been foaming from the mouth, if not suffocated like so many others.
“I remember that big gun aboard the ship, on deck…” said Marcus to Josh, as Josh was getting ready to do his sermon. He reminded him also that there were some 560-people on board, not four-hundred or five- hundred as Josh remembered it; Silas overheard Marcus talking about the slave ship and all, it was all new, news to him. The old man also remembered a few of the crew, that they spoke Portuguese, and he had kept in mind the words, they cried out ‘Viva!’ Josh listened, and he knew Marcus had to get it out, and for some reason he could, but Josh had a hard time talking about it.
“I remember brother,” said Josh, “when they done opened those hatches, all the women reached up to kiss their hands, thinkin’ they done come to free us, even my mother did that, I suppose we ought to be grateful for the fresh air, cuz we never got the freedom! And I remember those drums beatin’ and folks dancing…’”

Dancing and drums of the Congo



“Youall sound a bit bitter Josh?” said Marcus.
“Yaw, I supposen I am, hard to bury that damn ship! Wes got to git on with the funeral Marcus stand aside so I can give the sermon!”
Silas was listening to all this, his eyes even got a little moist, he thought, or at least his face expressed it: I guess we really don’t know what is inside the other person the hardships they had to endure, thinking the hardships at hand are the hardest, when to Josh, life was now really pleasant in comparison, maybe—just maybe, they gone through much more than they are letting us see, thought Silas, and for good reasons, why ask for pity, when God let you find a way out of that black hole anyhow.

Josh’s Sermon: “Jes’ before this day close Lord, my ole friend, Jordan Macalister, he done come with me on that there ship I dont like talkin’ ‘bout, you knows which one Lord, he and me, comes together—Yessum! now that that same ship summons him home Lord, well I reckon, hes on his way I guess, that there ship come back jes’ for him I bet, sure-enough; he be with you soon enough, if a-tall, from this here ole world before this here day is done and gone, show him some pity Lord, and save some for me, cuz I is still angry at that there ship, and I knows it, the young folks cant see how it used to be, cuz it’s a-new time now, the old forgotten, and maybe best it stay that way, and thats all I gots to say.!



Chapter Six


Burning Fence
(1865)


The Fence at the Hightower Plantation,
during the Civil War days



The war was almost lost, Granny Mae Walsh kept to her kitchen work, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hightower, went on as usual with their lives, planting and harvesting the best they could, in a way, both the Smiley and Hightower plantations were glad the war was descending, coming to an end, a kind of quiet dust fell over the atmosphere, although the graveyards were being filled up with the dead, a lot of folks on their knees weekly in the churches—more so than in peace times, the sheriff in town and Mr. Ritt, the bank owner felt those negroes weren’t worth fighting for, not to the death anyhow, ‘…forbid it that our southern brothers have to die for it…’ they told one another in private. And Mr. Smiley said many of times, like Hightower did, “I reckon I won’t,” meaning, they’d not die for it, the same feelings Mr. Ritt had the owner of the Ozark Bank, but nobody ever heard him say that, they heard only Smiley and Hightower say that, forgetting Mr. Hightower was in his 70s, and had fought his war, in 1812. “Yes,” he told folks, “I was there, I saw it, and we were there. I’m not afraid to fight, I’m just tired of it,” he said. But there is always more to it I suppose, he had a wife and land, crops and live stock, a whole plantation to take care of and people to feed.
He, Hightower had built a new fence, a corral for his horses, made out of very dry wood, which would burn easily, especially if someone was to throw kerosene on it. And this was a concern at hand, if he didn’t take sides—and some folks had wanted him to take sides—he had gotten in the past some notes saying, and reminding him being neutral was not safe—the Civil War in particular made men more aggressive and less sensitive to death, for some it was a way of life, and the truth of the matter was, he didn’t take sides for the Gray or Blue, meaning the North or South, and that continued to irritate the Confederates, and… especially now that they were losing the war. Thus, the Ozark folks were not happy.

It was a cool night, Old Josh stood near the new fence, the one Mr. Hightower just had put in, matter-of-fact, Silas, and Josh and several other workers dug the holes, bought the dry timber from a far-off neighbor beyond the woods. And no sooner had they put it up, they saw smoke coming from the Smiley Plantation, Mr. and Mrs. Hightower watched it from their window, and Josh by the fence, and Hightower got a letter, it read, “You can’t remain neutral forever…” and it implied he was next on the list. Someone had burnt down the hog bin (more on the order of a wooden enclosure) at the Smiley’s; it housed some several big hogs, and a few small ones, and had a fence around it; Charles went over to see if he could help put out the fire, as Josh stood leaning over the fence, new fence, kind of admiring the carpentry work, and Silas by the front of the house, and Jordon by the barn, all anticipating.
As Josh looked out among the yellow fields, he saw nothing in particular, but nearby was a luring shadow, he saw it from the corner of his eye, he pretended not to notice it, thought about what he should do, and did nothing—meaning he could have, but nothing was better than something, if he didn’t want retaliation.
The smoke now had gotten down to his location from the Smiley plantation, he could taste it on his tongue, smell it, then Mrs. Hightower yelled, “Go around the house, check it out,” she was thinking that Silas could only see what he could see, and if there was someone with bad intentions, he needed only stay in front of Silas, far enough around one corner, and he’d never be seen—but Josh walking one way, in one direction as Silas walked in the other, you might catch the culprit. But in doing so, Josh left the fence unguarded.
By the time Josh had made his walk around the house, the fence was on fire, burning to kingdom come, no horses were in the corral, and as Josh got back, Mrs. Hightower with a shotgun in hand, was running towards the fence, Josh saw a shadow again, with a gray hat on, “Who you are?” said Josh this time, someone behind a drinking container for the horses.
Then the shadow was gone, and Josh just turned about, looking at Mrs. Hightower running, tears in her eyes.
“Did you see who it was Josh?” she asked in desperation.
“No maim, jes’ a shadow, and it gone like da birds!”

As Josh rushed to get some buckets of water and Silas, Jordon and Mrs. Hightower did the same; Silas overheard his father mumbling, as often he did:
‘Ef’n you git too much Lord, you gots to worry too much, the truth is, a man sell his soul fur them things, things he cant keep anyhow, jes’ things and the robber he done takes them away, so he can go git some more, when the honest man he buys more, and the devil he laugh cuz he keeping themall busy over things, that man dont rest, and ef’n he dont rest, he got no time fur his family, he jes’ got things, and more things to look at, and waits ‘til the robber comes and takes them away again! I is thankful I aint got things.’
Josh grabbed the bucked of water, looked at Silas, said, “Come on son, wes got to save the Hightower things!”



Interlude Chapter

To The High Lonesome
(Civil War, 1865)(Too-drunk Henry, 56-years old)




Confederate Soldiers in Alabama



Here there were dead men, their clothing dishonored amongst the mud, some buried under the mud, their cloths protruding, Too-drunk Henry, walked among the dead, the battle the day before was indecisive, smoke of the battle was still in the air, the smell of death reeked, the falling rain was washing all the blood stained bodies clean, medics were looking among the laying still bodies, to see if any of the infantry were alive, moving caps and overcoats and dragging one body after the other to see and feel his pulse for any king of life signs. Every inch of ground to Corporal Too-drunk Henry from Ozark Alabama, who had some Indian and white blood in him, was covered with repulsion. He was one of the oldest soldiers in his company, at fifty-six years old, thought he’d join and do something heroic before he crooked; the patriotic example of his countrymen. Like Charles Hightower of the Hightower Plantation did in the War of 1812.
He felt cowardly to-day though, not yesterday when the fighting was, but today.
“This war is cold,” he murmured walking about the dead.
“Well,” said his comrade in arms, “—yes, but its’ not suppose to be like that!”
Said Captain Ritt who had joined the Army only a few months before this battle, as he pointed to the dead bodies, laying now in little hay like bundles here and there, the war all of a sudden had no meaning to Too-drunk Henry; His mind unengaged.
“The war is just about over Captain, under these circumstances I do not wish to be shot!”

Nothing could be plainer, and a day before the battle a Lieutenant had gone over the hill, meaning, he deserted.
“Do understood sir,” said the corporal to the Ozark Captain, “I might head on to the high lonesome tomorrow, please don’t send any troops looking for me?”
There was really no more to say, if anything, he had said way too much already. The Captain looked at him; he had his superior officer as well, to whom he had to be accountable to. Thus he remained silent on the matter. When the corporal had joined his company, he knew there might be a favor asked in the future by Henry and this was it, but he remained silent for a long spell.
“You have twenty-four hours Henry,” said Captain Ritt. “And then if no one has notified the General of your AWOL, or missing in action, I will have to.”
He was discomforted by this, but he went along with it nonetheless. What he was really doing, and the Captain knew the corporal didn’t understand it fully, was, the Army, any Army has an underbelly, with character, a make-up, some have even called it a personality, but what it really is, is the unit, pieces (one for all and all for one kind of thing). If the unit is a squad, of which twelve-soldiers are attached to it, then the unit has twenty-four legs and twenty-four arms, and twelve-heads, and twenty-four ears, and twelve-noses. Anything other than that, it would be less than a unit. That is what makes the unit, with its character of brute force.
In the morning, the Corporal was gone. It felt—to the Captain—in the long run, it was better for the unit as a whole, they didn’t need a coward in the unit, although he was hopeful, he’d stay in the mountains, and never return to Ozark, if so, he’d have to stop being silent for a moment.



Book III



Father Josephus
1877-1967





Introductory Chapter


The Connections
Of the Hightower’s and Abernathy’s

Pamela Swiler


(Narrated by the Author :) Pamela Swiler: born 1827; was 20-years old when she met Charles Hightower, had two kids by him by 1860, one male and one female. She had lived in New Orleans. Charles saw her a few times a year (and had even brought her to Goose Creek, and bedded her at the local hotel in Ozark, and bought her whatever she wanted, was very kind to her—matter of fact so kind he left for her son, Josephus Terrence Hightower I, outside of the city of Fayetteville, North Carolina (outside the city limits) a handsome amount of acreage. If his affair was ever known by his wife, it was never expressed, or addressed publicly, or even privately inside his house to anyone’s knowledge, although Emma had found a few pictures left in the side of a sofa chair hidden between the side of the chair and the pillow one sits on, after he died of a heart attack in 1869, at which time, Pamela did some investigating. Josephus had married a family member from the Abernathy family, that had been living up in Ozark, Alabama, and at the time, and was visiting in New Orleans, and would move down to New Orleans in 1861, at which time Josephus was twenty-years old in 1847. He died in 1896, at 49-years old, leaving a son and a daughter, and grandchildren to his name, one male and one female, the grandson Jason, in time would married—Betty Hightower.
Josephus II, sold his half of the plantation to his sister Ruth, after his father died, to buy a house in New Orleans, and his sister married an Abernathy, who kept the plantation—but he would die soon after of some cardinal illness. Thus, the two families were not only connected to Ozark, but to one another—if not directly, indirectly—unknowingly or knowingly, through Ozark, Alabama, New Orleans and Fayetteville, North Carolina.


Chapter One
Introductory Chapter



Rise of the Redneck


It wasn’t the race per se that the south had to deal with—more so of the rise of the redneck, the tarnished south, those with no honor or shame—contrary to the lifestyle of the prior aristocracy, and it all started after the Civil War, and would worsen for the next hundred years.
Josephus Hightower I, born 1847, died 1896, mother: Pamela Swiler, her son and her grandson being Josephus Hightower II (1877-1967), and granddaughter Ruth, born 1890, died 1957 (at 67-years old) and Jason Hightower (1920…) took on this lowly beginning, its mannerisms, hence, both son and grandson were looked into the new typical south ‘The Near poor white trash,’ the offspring of Charles T. Hightower’s affair. To such raw manners, they blended in with the realism of his times and environment: Josephus II, with the money his father had left him, hung out in New Orleans with scalawags, gamblers, into the careless cobwebs, of the city—the rootless people; folks started calling him, Father Josephus, and it wasn’t because he acted like a priest, but the opposite.
The Hightower’s (outside of Ozark—even though at this point in time Charlie’s plantation was becoming unproductive), became plain people of the urban south. And the Abernathy’s were on the way to such an unsentimental view, likewise.


Chapter Two


Father Josephus
((1897-1967) (Part one of two))


He was a living example of the astonishing—and Plato’s demise, of man’s unrivaled nightmares; in this case the nightmare is anarchy—what can be without law, will be. He had become legend in New Orleans in his time, but he was symbolic of the opposite of a priest—due to the form of behavior he displayed, as symbolic of an age before the Great Flood, where rules didn’t seem to exist. A well-built man with a handsome face, a bowtie often, white shirt, and Panama hat too boot (born 1877, and would die at the ripe old age of ninety-years old, in 1967). He had a typical frame of mind as a carefree gigolo might have on any Sunday morning. With this difference: Church goers usually have something to contemplate about—their sins, Christ, and so forth, Josephus II, derived an amusement out of it all, he was no more alarmed over lust than the world was alarmed over a world war, in 1897, when he was twenty years old (a year after his father had died), and had received his portion of the fortune His grandfather left him, Charles T. Hightower, and his grandmother, Pamela Swiler (never married), and his father Josephus Hightower I (the son of Charles T.).
He lived high off the hog, and off his reputation of his grandfather from Ozark, Alabama, now a disturbing image to those who knew the Hightower’s, passing the time of day with scalawags, gamblers, —the rootless and toothless, and the scare-faced people of New Orleans.
Hence, this is how he comes into the picture; hence he goes out of it, quickly forgotten, sunless, and sightless, and ageless, unsurprised by his group of roustabouts. For most of his younger adult life, his illusion was not so much to be smugly, or self-righteously, or even play the prosperous person per se, but busy, carefree, never looking out upon the world, he lived in, to him it was an invented one of booze, and mood altering chemicals, and stirred not a finger to the wrong doers, as he was their cult priest pert near (although withdrawn often into his little adobe house near Bourbon Street), and disoriented often, and hyper at times if not disheartened, and this lifestyle became, was a ritual, of which he lived, and produced with the very blood in his veins.
It boasts—the city of New Orleans—that in the following ten-years, to the age of thirty, the city itself saw him everyday, except for Christmases. That was his sobriety day. He felt he was one of the chosen: that Abraham and Moses, and perhaps even King David spoke to him, and he argued with their God. In a way he became a lunatic philosopher of the streets. So often, too often, he’d say “Here I am…!” when someone greeted him, then spit his tobacco out, constantly having a steady flow of saliva mixed with it: like many folks in his day, and I suppose not many folks ever saw him close, his eyes never saw more than a few hours rest. This is the man.


This story starts where the night part of twilight, found him, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, down sleeping on the bench in Jackson Park, this now urban southerner was near broke; $116,000-dollars only lasts so long. He was so drunk in these days folks thought he was talking a strange language when they stopped to speak to him, thinking he was speaking German or Chinese, he had spent his who life being a Louisiana man, however, this was quite known.
His once broad acreage is all but gone, as is the splendor of his family name. Shiftless he sits on the rocky banks along the Mississippi River, finds twigs and branches, amid the parks trees, and uses them as one would use firewood. The flames go high; reflect onto the river, a tamed and dim, monument to himself against the times: he now has very little to do with man and his busy city. This man is gone, he had no dream, but he did have pride, and that is among the dust of the city, and in its place, he has even forgotten how to read and spell—for the most part, it is his tarnished age, his ways, his consumption (he is burning up); it comes to everyone who has no true value in anything. No reason to live, no reason to die, no reasoning period, just existing because you do, until you don’t.

Yes, he perhaps was from imperial blood, derived from the Hightower’s of Europe, and Ozark, Alabama, perhaps the dignity of a king. His father Josephus I, he was not only eminent on account of this, with a commendation on account of his righteousness, he carried a great reputation in New Orleans and the land his father had given him, in North Carolina (not completely considered a redneck, like his son), and as I have told you, he was acquainted with all the rubbish of the city, and in these following years, underwent great difficulties, but somehow went through them all, and he produced a son, Jason—out of wedlock of course—who contracted polio. It was at this point, his sister Ruth gave him fare to go to Rome—out of some homespun, or woman’s intuition, perhaps even providence—who’s to say, and he took the voyage, and this on the occasion, is which I shall now tell:
during these several months on small and trifling occasions he had talked to a number of nuns, priests and bishops, to plead cause before the Pope, and him plead to God for his deliverance, he was desirous, especially because he was informed he had dementia of some sort, a mental illness he could no longer endure (into modern terms, this might be called bipolar). They were not unmindful of pity, of him, and his afflictions (it was now, 1909); thus, Pope Pius the X held the pontiff office in the Vatican. It was at this time, in August of 1912, he became an appointed Deacon, and so he put a stop to his tumultuous years, and lifestyle. Ruth, raised Jason, and Josephus II, he received all the sacraments, and through good works and duty, his life become orderly, and became proficient in reading and understanding the Septuagint Version (in the Book of Esther), the first translation of the Hebrew Testament, made into Greek, and then translated by the Christians, and then into English. So he became a servant and minister, and was employed in this capacity.


Chapter Three


Father Josephus


Ruth Hightower
((And Jason and Betty) (Part Two of Two))



Ruth Hightower, the sister to Josephus II, had always been a great one for attending to her own business, so much so that it had been hard for her to have given that boat fare to her brother, and support him those two and half years while in Rome, and often wondered warmly if Josephus ever would wind back up a drunk in New Orleans, but once he became a Deacon, it was time to strike a balance and close the ledger, and forget the price tag, it was all worth it. His father would have been astonished, if not alarmed at his recovery and end position. Not reduced to dried-up debris, as once expected, but rather he had produced human conduct to a single workable and honorable belief, and if he could do it, anyone could do it. But it is so true, that all men are not more honest than the occasion requires.
Ruth was a quiet, unselfish and slightly a bowlegged woman, her eyes were all surface on her face pert near, which was a shinny white to rose color, and you never saw her eyelids close, or move, even briefly, if she had any affairs after the death of her short lived marriage (of less than a year), they were secret affairs, it would seem she was still perusing a quiet life at the age of twenty, to thirty and all the way to forty or so. Lending money and getting her due interest, buying and selling live stock, along with renting out portions of her land for crops. She was not shiftless as many tenant farmers were—a race that accommodates nobody and remains rootless, owing nothing to the soil, only taking out of it what they can—the redneck composition: work of art. Using the land as one uses a drunken friend.
These years were good to her, even though unrehearsed. And then Jason Married Betty though nobody had expected Jason to marry, and he had a daughter, or they did. And he inherited a house. Moved his leathered suitcase to their house and, chewing his tobacco like those Hightower’s before him, thrusting of his lower jaw, building up that saliva, he maintained tradition, perhaps only in that.

Ruth died at the age of 67-years old, in 1957, and left her estate…and left the total sum to her brother, Josephus II, now in Rome: the plantation house being valued at $200,000-dollars, and the 400-acres at an undisclosed sum. Jason doubtless agreed with her, for one day in early winter he was asked to sign a paper indicating such, he was given $20,000-dollars for that signature, this voluntarily released all claims to the land.




Chapter Four


The Troubled Summer

†

Light at Goose Creek

((Josephus Hightower II/1892) (Part one of Two))



Standing beside a pole alongside a corner grocery store, watching the folks walk down the street, Josephus Hightower II, thinks, ‘I have come from North Carolina: not too far off, of a place but pretty a far-off distance; all the way from twenty-miles outside of Fayetteville, —hitchhiking (he had runaway). Thinking, he had not been on the road but two days, and here I am, already in Georgia, farther from home than I have ever been previously, and only fifteen-years old.
He had never been to Goose Creek, but he had heard about it from his father, Josephus Hightower I, now in Rome, a Deacon, and his aunt Ruth, who had heard about it from their mother Pamela Swiler, who had been taken there by her secret lover, Charles T. Hightower—a number of times during their long term affair, how he’d take her in the buggy, in her white cotton dress, red laced around the neck, and kick off her shoes, and with her bare feet, soak them in the creek. She’d put her shoes on the edge of the bank, after she got undressed and would get down and into the water, and walk about instead of swimming. She’d try to act casual, so folks, who saw her and Charles together, might simply think she was visiting and a far-off relative.
When she was fifteen-years old (the same age he was now), her father and mother died in the same winter, in a hotel room in New Orleans, in a room unlit, by some drunk, next door who drunkenly shot holes in the wall for target practice killing them both in bed.
She was the only child of theirs. Her mother died screaming first, then her father slowly, both naked. She said, “If anything ever happens to us, take care of yourself the best way you can, find a rich man to comfort you…!”
Pamela did, just as she said. And later on, she had told her son, of those far-off days. “Someday get ready to go, cuz we’re going back to Goose Creek,” she told Josephus I, after Charles had passed on in ’69. Then she died.
And down the road Ruth came into the picture, and his father died.
The next morning, the third day on the road, he departed Atlanta forever, sitting in the backseat of a car that was stolen. The boy driving it, a sixteen-year old, told Josephus he had borrowed it for a joyride, but ended up taking Josephus all the way down to Alabama, even he got interested in this unknown creek, called Goose Creek as if it had some magic potion in it. The car pulled up to the creek, by nightfall, and the boy promised to return to pick him up in the morning, and take him back to Atlanta, but the next morning, he never showed up, he had went down to Ozark to find some booze he told Josephus, but never returned.
Josephus, noticed in the far distance the tall timber, a forest, the sound of a train, in the field he saw machinery, nothing moved, just sounds, and shadows, this all brought on an installment plan, it was 1902, he would stay there for a few days, swim, and see if the old Hightower plantation was still standing, and who owned it now. But for the moment he found some ragged weeds pulled them from their roots, made a kind of pillow out of them, no quality to it, he was mystified upon this scene though, peaceful, an unplowed creek bank, alongside the quiet sound of the creek water galloping by, his head a bit distorted, talking to himself a mile a minute, saddened by the thoughts of his roots.
He hardly remembered the complete story his father, told him each Christmas about his grandmother, who had told it to him, and he heard it for several years—half his lifetime; when he heard sirens in the morning, it was a police car, and two police men walking towards him, they had come to take him back home.



Chapter Five



The Troubled Summer


La Rió Malhumorado
((The River of Moods) (Part Two)) 1892

(Josephus Hightower II)


As the train neared Fayetteville, Josephus Hightower II, ceased talking to the deputy, who was escorting him back from Ozark, to the platform at the Fayetteville Train Station, his talking died away and he had now initiate a quieter and quieter persona. While during the initial voyage he and his so called accompanying companion, deputy, Epsom Dewy, eating away some watermelon, a cheese sandwich—and everything he could find to eatable, with the quality of a redneck, to the point of stuffing himself, and even having a beer or two, running to the little stores on the platforms, or café, when the train made it stops, assuming now, the boy was trustworthy not to run, near five miles left to go to Fayetteville— apparently, assuming the boy didn’t notice his state of ingestion, to the point of near intoxication, moved the deputy’s briefcase to the side of the floor, made out of some cheap imitation leather, slated over—pulled something from his pocket, and said he had to go quickly to the bathroom, descended the train, as it slowed down into the railroad yard, and then onto the station itself.
Josephus’ father was waiting, in the stations waiting room: said to his wife, “Well, what’re we going to do with the boy?” Ella said nothing.
On the train the boy had pushed and shoved his way to the last car, nudged his way to the caboose.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ella to her husband.
“Well, what’re we going to do?”
“I don’t know Josephus, but we’ve been here before, ain’t we?”
“I reckon we have,” replied Josephus I.
Epsom Dewy was watching the train coming to its normal slow and steady, and noisy stop, his big mouth like a saw-mill, trying to stuff that last of his foodstuff into it.
Some woman approached him said, “What’s the matter with you? All the time on the train you’ve been feeding that mouth of yours while that boy just sat there looking at you as if you were a fat clown, and figured out how to escape you’re obesity. I bet you ain’t ever had a boy of your own?” And then she looked out the window and said “See…!”
Something jolted inside the deputy, thrust him apart from the woman standing by his side; and he pushed and shoved the people around him to his side, he was a porky specimen of a man, clutching his briefcase as he jumped off the train running to catch the boy in flight, fought his way into the main part of the train station.
“I have to find him,” he exclaimed, talking to no one in particular, looking hopelessly and exhaustingly and glass-eyed about.
“What you in such a rush for?” asked a policeman standing at a wide pillar in the middle of the station, as if they both were holding it up.
“Looking for a blue-eyed, red haired runaway white boy!” said the deputy.
“Which way he goes?” asked the policeman? “You know they got more than one boy in this here station.”
Epsom’s eyes were all about, wishy-washy white, with red streaks to them, as they looked wineglassily about.
“Well,” said the policeman, looking at Epsom, “you best go to it, if you want to find him.”
He moved towards the exit, the policeman shouted, “Over there…!” and Epsom looked, but it wasn’t Josephus, it was a boy with a red cap on his head. On the street, the boy was nowhere to be found.


Mexico/the Rio Grande


“So this is Mexico?” Josephus said. “Which way is it to a hotel, now?” he was speaking to a young girl, perhaps his age, fifteen or so, a year younger or older, he was looking around and saw the river behind him—and Texas, and a bridge he had just walked over, calmly, as if he was a day visitor from Texas, Laredo; in front of him main street and shabby buildings, and a motley dirty humdrum of a city it appeared to him to be, in the act of turning away, the girl remained silent, then as the boy was about to walk down the street replied the dark-eyed beauty from Nuevo Laredo “Straight ahead there are many hotels—?”
“This is a hectic place, pretty busy,” said the boy.
“You haven’t been here before?” asked the girl.
“No,” said the boy.
“What are you going to do then?” asked Angelica.
“Just kind of look about, I run away from home, took a deputy sheriff’s pocket money, got fifty-dollars.”
They turned to each other, and then both looked up the street. It was three o’clock.
They went on walking down the street, looking around, Angelica pointing out the bars and hotels, and safe stores to go into if need be. Then they came to a dump of a hotel, it had potted plants everywhere.
“Here,” said the girl, “is a cheap place, my uncle Manual owns it, and I live with him and his wife, Sarah. They charge $2.’’-dollars a night, but I’ll tell them I know you, so you get it for $1.-dollar.” And she smiled proudly and happily; the boy looking in the glass of the outside window, seeing inside of it, an old Mexican sitting in a wooden rocker, with potted plants all about him.
“You can’t walk around all night? What are you going to do?” said the girl. The boy looked down the street.
“Why, this will be fine,” he said, “How old is your uncle?”
“I think he’s fifty-four,” said the girl.

It was a three storey hotel, with only nine rooms to it, and a small grassless backyard, but the boy figured he could live there for a month or so, then figure out what then he was going to do.
On the steps he sat that first evening with Angelica, watching two dogs fight across the street, the sound of wagons and horses moving about. She had paid her uncle $30-dollars, from the boys stash, although he didn’t care for the situation, he was too old to argue, and she might even run away with him, so he said, ‘Okay,’ reluctantly, and added to that, “Whoever heard of a fifteen year old white boy from across the river living in a dumpy hotel like this?” and went and sat down by his potted plants.

In the following days, they went around the city together. She introduced him to everyone she knew. They stood on top of the hotel many a night, on its edge looking across the city, daringly. I don’t believe the girl was any happier, or the boy.
“After a month, let’s go back to where I live and get married?” said the boy one week into the relationship.
“I can’t cross the bridge, they’ll tell me to go back,” said the girl.
“We can ask the guard, can’t we, I’ll give him…” and the boy looked in his pocket; he had fifteen-dollars left.
“He’ll want more,” said the girl.
“Let’s go see, try anyhow!” said the boy.
They left and returned. The uncle had fallen asleep in his chair as usual, and the guard had asked for $300-dollars, and laughed at fifteen.
“Let’s wait a while, another week or so, and think about this,” said the boy, it was almost ten o’clock.

She sat in a chair alongside the boy’s bed (it was at the end of his third week at the hotel); the hotel had no lights, other than candles, and kerosene laps for light. And she sat with a candle lit as she did every night, looking out the window, three floors down, and up, against the high serene Mexican sky. She could smell him, too. She watched people getting out of buggies, watched them go up the walk and into the bars. And she was worried, she wanted to marry this boy, she’d wait for him if necessary, if that was a possibility. He had told her, he’d never leave— willingly her side and I think he meant it. And she got to loving him very much.
Then there was a knock on the door. And she knew better not to answer it, and she didn’t, because if it was her uncle, he’d had said so, and it was always better not to answer, the visitor would think the proprietor kept it locked—and bums would not find their way into a sleeping room arrangement for the evening: anyhow, it was near midnight.
“All right,” said the boy, “who’s there?” and as soon as he said that, the door was busted open. It was two policemen.
“Who sent you here?” asked the boy.
“Your father,” responded one of the two policemen. “You’ll be returning home tonight, we’ll walk you across the bridge and turn you over to the American authorities.”
Angelica breathed callously. “What are you police officers doing, he’s going to be my husband!” And they both looked at her.
“Miss,” said one of the policemen, “he can’t stay here, and his father aims to take him home, he’s waiting for him in Laredo Texas, across the bridge in a hotel.”
Miss Angelica, looked at the boy, he had slept with his cloths on. “Where you from?” asked the policeman.
“None of your business,” he said calmingly. The police told them their names, “We got to take him back Miss…!”
“Why,” she said after a moment thought, and the boy pulled out $11-dollars, “Here, take it all, let me go.”
Both officers looked at them both, and one said, “It’s too late now.”
And one of the policemen said to the boy, “Look here you little whippier-snapper, if you cause me any trouble like you did to that fat police officer I heard about (and the boy started to laugh), you’ll end up under the river water looking up.” And the girl knew they meant what they said.
“Just a minute, please,” said the boy, now with a different, and defeated tone. And he kissed Angelica for the first time, and he told her he really loved her, and he’d be back. And she watched him go. And she felt, secretly, he’d never come back, or he’d never see him again, it was all too much, too exhausting, too frightening.

After about fifteen-minutes, the girl ran out of the hotel, towards the bridge, “Where you going?” asked the uncle.
As she ran her mind became imminent and remote from any logical reasoning, nor could see any threat, only promise if she could catch up with him, perhaps run to the edge of the bridge, see the father, and talk to him. A deep steady sound flooded her cerebellum, the flashing of lights wavered in front of her, she saw them at the edge of the bridge, talking to the American guard, ready to cross over, they were just coiling shapes but she knew the boys by heart. And when they began to move, she took a leap into the river, and the boy heard a splash, there was a strange nostalgic premise to it. And he thought, ‘…maybe by tomorrow I’ll find my way back here…!”
A crack of light came over the river, and the American guards saw a female in the water, spreading her arms out, yelling a name, and Josephus could hear a voice, a girl’s, then everyone started talking at the guard shack at once, and her voice blended in with theirs. And all of a sudden when the guard slammed the door, swift and hard, the voice stopped.

When they had found her, her face was a few inches under the water, she was floating on her back, looking up into the American sky, dead.
“She had a small family,” said her uncle to the American guards who gave him the body to return back to Mexico; Josephus and his father standing on the edge of the river, by the uncle, the boy’s voice already dull and in slumber.

The river appeared to be moody, filled with nothing now except people who had gathered on the bridge and banks to see what was taking place. Now Josephus could hear the running up and down of feet, and was conscious of ever sound, of female flesh, his ears strained to her the dead girl’s voice, once more. Her silk like hair, now wet and cold like her body, that seemed to be as much a part of him, as he was to himself, perhaps to her likewise, and would be forever and forever, as long as he breathed God’s air. And the father looked at the boy, said to himself inside his conscious mind: ‘What’s it going to cost this boy? Will he ever be able to have fun again, to love again?’
“Come on,” said the father to his boy.
“I’ll go dad,” Josephus said. “But don’t expect me to make any promises.”





Chapter Six


Old Man Shiloh
Of the Woods

(1893-1895)


It was a year and three days had passed since the death of Angelica, Josephus Jr., paused and looked behind him. Then around an adjacent corner, his father’s head appeared, like a long necked Billy goat. He looked straight at the house, he stepped into view of his father, he was now sixteen, looked up and down the street, then walked along the fence, and his father opened the gate for him, with a wary smile.
“Well, Josephus,” the father said, “boys will be boys, it looks like something’s on your mind?” He somehow assured the boy he was alert to his thoughts, glaring over his shoulder at the road. “Like I say, something’s on your mind—I’ve never did you no harm boy, and I know you got to get it out now and then—but what is it now?”
“Paw, what do you want of me?” asked the boy.
“Now, now, son—get that idea out of your head—hey, I want what you want, for you to grow up and be the best person you can be—even if that sounds corny.”
“You know as well as I do, its one year and three days after the death of Angelica.”
“Sure, sure I do,” his father said. “But sulking about it ain’t going to make your mind easy. I hate to see you mope about something you can’t do a thing about.” Josephus turned about, “Don’t runaway,” said the father. Then he hesitated, thought a moment, “I just can’t seem to help you.”
“Nome,” said the boy. The father tossed his head. He kept on asking what he could do.

So this day, it was about 7:00 p.m., in the evening, “I want a place to be alone for a few days paw?” said the boy.
At the back of the house, across the field, into the wooded area, a path had been trodden from the Civil War days, there was an old Negro who lived in a house deep in the woods, by the name of Shiloh (named for the place of the tabernacle in the days of the Judges), from a distance, you could see a dim light burned in a small corner of the house, they went to the backdoor. The old negro let them in, there was nothing of value, save a few old photographs on the wall, a hearth, barley burning, dirty bottles containing corn whisky, perhaps not even alcohol in it, although it looked it to the boy, he stood there, his kinky grayish hair, and when he spoke his voice cracked.
“You’ll be all right here,” said the father to his son. “You can always find your way back home from here, and old Shiloh, who fought in the Civil War, back in 1863 to 1865, he’ll keep you company. Help him cut some wood, and kill some rabbits to eat, and he’ll tell you wonderful stories.”
“How old are you, old man?” asked Josephus I.
“Yessum,” the old Negro said, “I was born in 1823, makin’ me seventy come August, next month.”
“Why paw, do you think I’d care to stay with this old coot?” asked Josephus I.
“You have to live someplace,” said the old man.
“I’ll be damned if I do!” said the boy. But the old man knew he was just talking to talk…he knew that the boy knew he knew it also, out of some unflagging pride.
“I guess you can find me if there’s any need to,” said the old man, and sat in his rocker. There was nothing else, anyone could do.
“By God,” the father said, “don’t you let life hogtie you son.” Not telling him a thing more, the boy sat down on a wooden chair, by a wooden table, and fell to sleep. So this night it’s about 2:00 a.m., in the morning, and he’s asleep, and the old man walks the boy to a backroom, and sits him down on his bed covers him with a light blanket, whispers to himself out loud “Youall jes’ dont know what to do boy… youall kind of lost I see…”
And like cat-feet, he goes back to his rocker, comes back an hour later, peeping through the keyhole, sees the boy is fast asleep—opens the door a crack, and again with cat like feet, walks back to his rocker, he sat quietly as the boy slept. On the wall hung an old photograph of Jack Johnson, the boxer, and another one of Him in his confederate uniform. “I’ve got to have a drink,” the old man whispered to a mouse racing across the wooden planked floor, grabbed the half empty dirty bottle, and took a good gulp.
He had just finished the drink when the boy entered the room, the blanket around him, he said, “This ain’t half bad, I’ll chop some wood tomorrow.” Then went back into the room and fell onto the bed—purposely.
The light that had fallen across the rocking chair, and the wooden table, blinked out, upon the old motionless body of the Negro.
The rocking chair did not move.

Allowing Josephus to make up his own mind, that was the only part of the whole evening experience which appeared to have left any impression on the boy at all, as he sat up in bed—in the wee hours of the morning, the covers about his shoulders, the boy liked this old ruined house, it had character, the door had been wedged open just a crack. It just happened, the boy didn’t even know how it all happened, but one day led into one week, and a week into a month and a month into a year, and then it was 1894. It just happened. And that mouse just raced across the wooden planked floor, that whole summer, fall and winter. And then one day, in spring, the mouse was in the corner, and he stomped on it, that was the day the boy had taken off, never to return. He could sense it coming, like one might sense the rain, or the winter snows—the boy was looking for a good place to stop, and he did, and he parked his body for a spell, and they had some good chatty dialogues, and then that was that, he was gone. He was now seventeen, and he was thinking of New Orleans.



Chapter Seven



The South Winds
Of Cape Horn

((Or, “The Man with the Black Raincoat”) (1896))

Part one of two



The Captain of the forty-food sailing yacht—a right snappy vessel, with a good size cabin, gaff rigged—was in one of those ongoing, non-stopping, monologues which men can carry on and on when they realize someone is listening, and they know more than that someone about something, of the center of the stage: suddenly, with in the Drake Passage, going east bound at 56 south latitude, the vessel absorbing the funneling effect of the Andes, going through one of the most hazardous ship routs in the world, a major challenge to anyone in any ship, strong winds, large waves—the wind giving rise to the strong waves—strong currents and icebergs, all lay in front of Captain Minor, and his wife Anna Mae Minor, of Columbus, Georgia, a yachtsman of the first kind, whose grandfather even once tried for—was involved with, back in the 1850s—with trying to win some Yachts Club Cup—was recounting the experience with actual pride, a sort of adolescent and remote vanity (his mind was not on what it should have been), it even sounded a bit like he was making half it up, thought Josephus Hightower I (on what one might call a vacation, with a business colleague), holding on the steel railing of the craft, looking at the small Island known as Cape Horn. The Captain took a quick darting to the sails, glancing at the large waves pushing the boat to and fro like a kite in the wind.
“I don’t see how anyone ever sleeps on such vessels,” said Josephus.
“No one ever gets used to it, that’s for sure…” said Anna Mae. She like Josephus, were breathing down, getting drunk on the shifting of the boat. And Josephus got to thinking, could he sink? That’s when the mountains of Cape Horn became larger and more visible, right to his side.
“What do you do, Anna Mae when you’re scared on such trips?” asked Josephus.
“I try to daydream, back when I was a young girl, and I was drowning and Herb (her husband), jumped in and saved me.” She exclaimed.
And it seemed like Josephus was thinking right hard on what she said, but he hadn’t been this scared before. And then he held his eyes tight and shut, the largest wave he had ever seen was coming, and he thought how much he had done for his son, Josephus II, and his daughter Ruth, and how would they ever do without him. And a voice in the back of his head said something as he was getting ready to look, and he counted inside his head: 1, 2, 3, 4—1, 2, 3, 4, over and over, and he opened his eyes and the biggest wave he had ever seen was upon him, and that voice had said, ‘They’ll be fine, they always are…” and there towards the stern (back part) of the boat was a man with a black raincoat onboard the ship (Josephus also notice the helm was wild, no one steering the boat, and the jack fell into the water, and the masts feel into the water, and the poop broke open), and his name was: Nick, or Death—and he wore an iron belt, and he had chains on the belt perhaps for his captives to be, as if it kept him steady on the vessel too, and Anna Mae saw him also, the only one that didn’t see him was Herb, the captain who was holding onto something at the bow (front) of the ship, perhaps the anchor. And the wave hit the ship, and the ship toss liked to and fro a broken legged seagull, and then upside down, and then onto its side, and there were icebergs that hit the ship (or the ship hit the iceberg) like sharp spikes and no one would know it until later and it jabbed into the ship—broke its spine, like a shark into a human body. And the guts of the vessel fell open and emptied out.
“Oh, yes,” said Josephus as he sunk to the bottom of the passage, “this is something else I didn’t plan on.” And Anna Mae, looked at him, as she sunk alongside him, and Josephus was thinking— ‘Will Herb save her this time?” And it all became dark; he could almost hear the darkness full of movement, feeling, approaching, and the blood in his veins freezing like a statue in a museum. And that was all that was left of him, forever and ever on plant earth.



Chapter Eight


Dying: off Cape Horn

Part two of two


So I thought I was dead, really dead, and Anna Mae, she was staring at me a few feet away, I’m not sure how many fathoms we sunk, but it was an awful lot, then I did an odd thing, I closed my eyes, and all I could see was myself in a coffin. I looked handsome though—you know, all dressed in white. And I was crying because I was dead, and unable to help my two grown children. “No,” the man with the black raincoat said, “there will be no coffin for you, or the lady, not where you are dead.” And all this time I could feel my nose and cheeks and toes and fingers going cold, and yet there was warmness still in my blood. And I looked at Anna Mae, and I said, ‘Don’t she look sweet,’ but I lied, she looked numb and waxy and cold and white. I think her lips said, “Touch me!” But I was a coward. And there we were, just waiting—I think for the man with the black raincoat. And we remained in place there, in the water, somehow balanced, not even jerking away from one another. And now when I looked at Anna Mae, it looked like she had iron gray hair, and she opened her eyes, looked around to see where Herb was, but he never came. Then I said to her—mentally—“He won’t!” Then I thought about being a human man again. And my ears or something made a kind of popping sound, like someone was blowing into a little rubber tube inside my ears, and head, it felt cold. And I told myself, I just want to go to sleep. And there was no longer any pain. And I read her, Anna Mae’s mind again, it said, “I wish Herb would get here, down here and not let me drown.” And I thought: if she’s not dead, she’ll be dead soon, and if she’s saved, she’ll be in an asylum for brain damage, and perhaps better off dead. I don’t think she was born for this kind of life; she simply had to put up with it because she loved a man who loved the sea. Better for her she were dead now, than endure a hundred more storms and then die alone, at least she has me, company. I think she was swearing now, unprintable words, surely not to be inscribed onto her gravestone. Perhaps this is the instant we come to realize, admit, that there is a logical pattern to everything, where we throw pretense to the side, she seen in my eyes what perhaps I saw in hers, the eyes of the dead tell stories to the dead (for at this time the shocked despair was fading):
I was drowning or had drowned, suffocated—I had been taking in water not oxygen, as I should have been. I must have been unconscious for awhile. I figured, Anna Mae, must have figured, she was a high candidate for such a death, for me, it never occurred I’d die this way. I kind of wished at this point I had been born a whale or seal.
I found some light; I wondered who turned it on. Anna Mae was now off in the distance, by the man in black, the man with the black raincoat, almost palpable enough to be seen. And she had a small face that appeared to collapse in the sight of the demonic creature with the blurring still chains in his hands, more than an invitation to the secret Dark Promised Land—which was my conclusion; he horridly grabbed her by the hair and dragged her off. And I was left there to wait. Then someone opened a door, fumbled in the darkness beyond the light, said, as he plunged forward, his head lifted slightly, “You know about the crucifix, do you not?”
“Oh yes, yes, of course I do…” I said, and beyond the door there was a terrific uproar, and then faces—many I had known who had died in the past.


Note Written between 1-10-2010/and 1-13-2010 (No: 566 thru 568) Dlsiluk © 2010




VI

The Great War Years
1917-1929

Soldiers of the Great War in Europe



Chapter One


The Ammo Humpers
126-Men over the Trench
((WWI, 1917-1918) (Corporal Austin C. Abernathy Story))


Part one of two


The three sergeants stood side by side in the trench in the dim shade of the privates, the Ammo Humpers that rushed artillery rounds across the field to the nearby trenches, and for the larger shells they used donkeys and even dogs when possible, they were part of a forty-four man platoon, and there were a few corporals in with the platoon that did some of the humping and when needed, acted as infantry.
The First Sergeant was a tall ugly heavy man, a Briton. And then there was the other sergeant, he was the Staff Sergeant of the Ammo Humpers’ platoon. And then there was the Buck Sergeant, he was a Frenchman; his rank was equal to an American Buck Sergeant’s. It would seem the Staff Sergeant was the thinker, and the Buck Sergeant was the action man, the fighter, and the First Sergeant, was the overseer, quiet, but very observant. They seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition, to include rounds for their rifles, and shells for their artillery, nearby in stock.
Orders came down, Battalion level, with its four companies, of 126-men each, lacking four-men in the four companies—that is, twelve per platoon, for the five-hundred plus men, minus four to crash over the trenches, and take on the Germans, straight forward, under the barbwire, in the mud, and onto destiny— hopefully gaining some ground.


Those three years of waiting was two-years too many for a certain general who wanted another star, “…and this is how we are going to get it: take the trenches in front of you, or make a good show of it so my superiors take note,” the general told his personal staff. Implying to take the ones that were nine hundred feet away (if possible), if not take the ones five-hundred feet away—take those trenches, the very ones everyone had been looking at for countless hours, days, weeks, months, and now years. Today was the day—and out of the bunkers, the mud brick, and wooden framed bunkers, where mostly privates lived, they came out, and the three sergeants, ordered them to lock and load their rifles and fix bayonets.
Then the order came down, take a battery of the Ammo Humpers out of the fight, have them supply the artillery, and the three companies that will clear a blazing path for the 126-men, meaning one company will crash over the trenches, stay low so the other 378-men can shoot over their heads to keep the Germans busy, so the 126-men can storm the trenches one-thousand yards away, or perhaps the trenches nine-hundred feet away, one German trench was as close as five-hundred feet away (which was the most dangerous), all three trenches were manned by fifteen-hundred Germans. The General must have wanted that star pretty bad because it was a suicide mission, and every soldier involved knew that.
For over three years they couldn’t take those trenches, what made the general think today was the day, so all the privates and the few sergeants, and a half dozen corporals gossiped amongst themselves on this very matter, this issue.
Everything was quiet, very quiet, just before the attack, and the Germans could feel something was in the makings, up to this point in time, they had enjoyed a stalemate, and intended, or at least wanted to keep it that way, although a bit worried when the Americans came—and the French now feeling, the war could be won without a battle—but that was not so; plus in this situation, the game had shifted to break that long enduring stalemate (even if sacrificing a hundred and some troops to do it), and the offensive was to take place in a matter of hours, the Buck Sergeant was to lead the troops like a pack of wild bees, storm troopers, and the Staff Sergeant was to keep the Ammo Humpers busy filling the rifles for the 378-shooters, shooting over the 126-heads that were attacking the three trenches with those 1500-Germans in them, and the First Sergeant, he was the overseer, as usual, and the General, he was safe behind, deep entrenched in his bunker, as usual, as most Generals are—waiting and watching, perchance wondering, and perhaps dreaming of that second star.
Corporal Justin C. Abernathy was in the attacking group, Langdon’s grandfather (Langdon Abernathy, who had not been born yet), and now the roar of the guns had started, and they speeded toward their targets, which was the German trenches.
There was perhaps a thousand shells that burst into the atmosphere, aimed at the German trenches, five-thousand rounds of bullets, whizzed through the air, towards the German dugouts and furrows, and the Germans did likewise, thus, the atmosphere was on fire, suffocating smoke, no shame from either side, people digging-in, and dodging flying scraps of metal, bullets, it was a sleepless, and agitating, nerve-racking, night.

The Ammo Humpers were racing back and froth, from the ammo dump to the front line, the trenches, and over the top went the 126-men, like phantoms, ghosts, and Corporal Abernathy, he stopped after shooting several rounds, turned over on his back, Corporal Abernathy, watched and listened to the blazing bullets whiz by him, he was taking a rest, an odd kind of rest; lit a cigarette, figuring if it was to be his last so be it, but it felt good to have one. Then he looked about, if he stood up he’d be either shot by his comrades, or the Germans, he was in an open field, but he needed to turn about to go forward and shoot some more bullets at those trenches that Germans who were jumping over like crazy and restless rates, like he and his comrades had did moments ago. He rolled over on his side, slightly turned upward, just an inch or two, no more, and a bullet hit the side of his temple, just grazed it, and his glasses flew off: he wasn’t blind, but he couldn’t aim correctly, he was shooting half-sightless now. And then retreat was sounded, and he wiggled his way back to his trenches, he and four others, all the rest, they all had been killed, all the rest—meaning, one-hundred and twenty-one others, as expedited, near all dead, every one but five out of 126-men, all slaughtered cut open by bullets and flying scraps of this and that, and bayonets.
The next day, the general that wanted that one more star order the corporal to come to his safe haven, behind a bunker, ten-feet on each side of pure adobe mud bricks, so nothing could penetrate it.
“Either you’re a hero or a coward,” said the General, “because you should be dead, by all rights, if 121-men are dead, out of 126, why are you and the other four not? Why are you alive?” asked the curious general, he saw that the right side of his head, close to his ear it was slightly cut, “I see there’s a scrape-wound near your temple? Your justification for being alive?” the general told the corporal, “the other four never even got a scratch, so I hear, and so I have to assume, they were hiding.”
“I’ll go back there sir,” said the Corporal, “too bad you can’t keep me company though, then you’ll get your second star for sure!” he added with a smirk.
“It says in the report, you lost your glasses and was firing wildly and blindly, and you may have shot two or three of the enemy in the process, but you can’t be sure,” said the General, with a little better attitude, “but the way I see it is, you shot what you were looking at, and so we’ll just modify the report a bit, I hope you don’t mind.” And the Corporal simple nodded his head, moving his shoulder up to the right, and waved his hands upward as if to say, “Whatever!”
“I didn’t have time to count the dead, nor did I have time to hide behind a bunker, I shot and was shot at, that is all I remember, and then retreat was sounded so I crawled backward to the trenches…” said the Corporal. And he then was dismissed. And the general knew they had gained five-hundred feet, took a German bunker in the process, and for that he was assured he’d get his second star, plus, he made sure he had a hero in his command, and awarded the corporal the ‘Distinguished Service Medal for service in World War I.



Chapter Two

The General’s Star
(WWI, 1917-18)



The General watched from his dugout, the battalion, was to charge over the top of the trenches, day two in his war with the Germans, after three years watching nothing happen, and wanting his second star, the general was desperate. He had put in Corporal Abernathy for the Distinguish Service Medal, and there was much talk about it, everyone now wanting a medal to bring home, and the General wanting the second star, and everyone’s blood was like hot vinegar, hoping to impress the general, and so he ordered another attack, he was reinforced with a new company, a new 172-troops, soldiers, untested under fire, and these new troops knew, the General had lost 125- soldiers a day before, and these new troops they had just arrived, to be told there was a second suicide mission, and they heard about what happened to that 121-soldiers, and they didn’t like what they heard, and they were causing trouble with the other three companies, over 600-soldiers.
Corporal Abernathy being the only one that survived the slaughter yesterday, some soldiers had made it to the first trenches, the ones five-hundred feet away, and took them, but the Germans that were 900-feet away from them, took it back an hour later, supported by those other Germans, 1500-Germans 3000-feet away, but the General figured if one company could reach the 500-level, six-hundred might make it to the 3000-level, and that was his new star, his second star.

Forenoon, the fields were quiet, empty, no firing of artillery or of any kind of ammo, the Germans just waiting as always eating their sour cabbage, and bratwursts, eating lunch, bored, and perhaps wanting the General to send some more troops their way so they could practice shooting them down like pigeons, as usual.
Corporal Abernathy figured it was hard to beat the Germans without air support, that is really what they needed, but he, the general didn’t want to wait, he wanted that star now, before he was sent back to Paris to discus the rest of the war with Pershing and the other generals, he didn’t want to be standing in the last line of generals.
When they called the six-hundred to get ready for the advance, the offensive, they sat around where the officers were, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, just like the officers.
“What’s the problem?” asked the General to Major Sharp.
Major Sharp, who had been, somewhat tongue-tied, now was spitting out the words, “The troops heard what happened yesterday, the new ones and they see the officers safe in their dugouts, and they see the sergeants not too willing to go over the top with them, and they want everyone to go, if they’re going die for a worthless cause, everyone should die with them, everyone….”
“So the soldiers are on strike, is what you are saying, and that is not possible, that is called treason, and I’ll have them shot.” Said the General, but ordered the Major to remain where he was while he thought this out clearer, then remarked:
“Well, Major, the only thing left is for everyone to go over the top, and you too!” said the General.
“Perhaps we can get some air support,” asked the Major.
“Major,” said the General, “if you do not go over that top with your troops, you’ll be a Second Lieutenant tomorrow; where is the devotion in this war, you are like a vegetable tree, fate has me in for a second star and you are in my way Major,” and he pulled out his silver plated revolver, ivory handle, and aimed it at Major Sharp’s forehead, as he dropped his baton at the same time, and when he went to pick it up, the Major jumped on him, and in the struggle, the General was shot in the heart—dead.

In the investigation, they could not find the weapon the German insurgent used to kill the General with, the Major being the only one to escape the fatal disarray that took place in the General’s shelter, and the only eyewitness being the Major of course. The German, the report read was hiding in the General’s closet, and when the Major came in he had the General’s gun in his hands, and escaped right past the Major, knocking him down. The inquiry asked how this could be possible; it all sounded so far fetched, kind of fishy, like a cover-up. The Major said it was as possible as sending 126-soldiers out to commit suicide, and only one returning, and there was no questions asked about that, that wasn’t fishy or abnormal, to Headquarters, matter-of-fact, a Distinguish Service Metal was handed out to the one and only survivor of the suicide mission, and after the fact, not a word from Headquarters was said, and no investigation for the 121-privates now dead as a door nail.”
Thus, the Major, received a Distinguish Service Metal—likewise, for his bravery, like Corporal Abernathy, and the war went on for another year as normal.


Chapter Three



The Wench is Dead
((1916-1919, WWI) (Earnest Stanley and Judson Small)) Part one of two



Earnest Stanley, called this war, his war, WWI, the wench, or strumpet, or wild girl, it was all the same to him, it was on a Bridal horizon you might say, the war took him away from his wife, new wife, a wench grabbed him, and he had to yield to her call to active duty in the United States Military, the Army, this youthful blue-eyed and handsome man had just married, and off to war, to WWI, for it had just started for America, once in Europe, he was among the many foreigners mixed together like goulash, it was 1917, only one year would he remain there, not even that, perhaps eight-months, but he had marred Ella in 1916, and she would wait, and it was hard for him to keep his mind on a war, when he had a new wife, a plantation, well kind of a plantation, he had put money down on it, it was rocky, it had to be cleared, it was not what it could be, would be, if he could take care of it, all the things a young man dreamed of, and here comes a war, he never wanted to fight another man’s battles, but I guess somehow he ended up doing just that, and he was part of the pack that elected that someone to office, so he could get drafted into the Army, and fight in another man’s country, because America didn’t need to fight.
It was a traumatic experience for him to see the dead, the maimed, to know about the Missing POW’s, the trenches filled with Germans shooting at him nine-hundred feet away; colonials, privates, the French, and the British among him, among the Americans, God’s human masses colliding together, collectively trying to eliminate an enemy, sometimes at lightening speed. Cigarettes lit one after the other, as men stood waiting for the next onslaught, trying to understand this war of mud and trenches, and death and diseases, while remaining in a repugnant stalemate.
He was one of the Ammo Humpers, who delivered Ammo to the trenches, he didn’t attack over the trenches, like his comrades did, like Corporal Justin C. Abernathy did, although they both were from the same location, here in combat, and back home: twenty-one miles outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina, they were neighbors, neighbors that had only met once, when he put money down on the land he purchased, but in this war, on the French front, they were combatants, soldiers of a different kind, Private Stanley was condemned, all to the dodging of bullets and incoming artillery, as he ran from trench to trench, over the fields to get to them, his comrades in arms, to supple ordnance to them men who would, and who did, go over the top, of the trenches, to bombard the Germans in their trenches, to kill, and perhaps to be killed, by other Germans leaving their trenches to reinforce the trenches their comrades were being killed in, so it was his replacement for a direct attach, which he was not subject to.

The only thing that didn’t settle well for Earnest was that the ammunition he delivered of course, in time would kill others, to kill a man you don’t know, by proxy, he didn’t do it face to face, but had a stand-in you might say, someone like Corporal Abernathy, to do it for him or Albert Ritt, who was about to start studying to be a doctor before he was called into this war, from Ozark, Alabama, that bothered him, but on the other hand, out of sight, out of mind, was a good way to live and survive in this mud licking war, I mean if you had to kill, it was a better way of killing.
The Americans had come, and that brought a new spark to the war, and he heard there might be an armistice in the making; General Pershing was in Paris, calling a meeting, he had become General of all the European Armies, under protest of course by the French, but it was a matter of: you fight your own war then, so the French gave in, as if they had a choice.
He, Earnest, like so many Americans came rushing across the Atlantic, before there was no more England or France to talk about, the Germans were no pushover, they had the war licked, won, but not now, France reminded America of there contribution to the war, that war long forgotten, the Revolutionary War, yes they went back a hundred and twenty-five years to make their point, and I guess according to Private Stanley, they must had made their point loud and clear, and dramatically, the said if we didn’t come to save the day, they’d never forget or forgive us; but we came, before they became homeless; in the process of course, the French had to swallow a lot of pride, something they never like doing, but it all worked in their favor. They knew the old saying, ‘Pride comes before destruction,’ and they were not that dump to play the pride game to the hilt; the new American troops would be the counterbalance in this war; and so the counterattacks with the Americans where in place, it was a bigger war now.

And then the war stopped, just like that, grim and grimaces, and smiles filled the trenches, and the soldiers went home to rebuild their exhausted countries, faded into its lingering society. And Earnest Stanley was about to go home also, first to St. Louis, picked up his wife, Ella, and then onto North Carolina, where he had put down that money on some land that would be called Stony Meadows in time, that that would take place in 1919. But before he left France, he explored Germany, just a few weeks, something like fourteen days, total (Albert Ritt did go back to Ozark, Alabama, and did become a doctor, a rich doctor because his father owned the bank there in Ozark).
At any rate, Earnest Stanley, while in a little town called Dieburg, they didn’t know there was a truce, or a few soldiers pretended not to know, and Corporal Judson Small a soldier from Huntsville, Alabama was with Private Stanley, it was forenoon.
There were three German soldiers less than a hundred yards away, one took his rifle—which was being carried, as if he had just come from the trenches, mud caked on him from heal to head, and even on his rifle, and he must had jumped off a truck, one was going the opposite way, and was about to go home or something, he positioned his rifle deep into his shoulder, aimed, and a shot it, the bullet passed through the air like a bee you could hear it coming, and it hit Small, tore the side of his face right off to where his teeth were showing, ripped it from the eye socket, to the lower jaw, from the ear to the nose, ripped it to shreds, meat, flesh hanging like spaghetti, he fell with a thump, flat on his back, and Private Stanley had no weapon, he stood waiting for the second bullet, looking at Small, not sure if he should run, hide, or remain where he was, but not moving, was also an option, and that was his decision, and that is what he did, and someone in the background yelled, “Ceasefire, there’s a treaty…!” it was a German woman. And the soldier ran, with the other two soldiers, and Private Stanley had a man with the side of his face blown off laying down by his feet, not knowing what to do, whom was ready to go home, tell his wife, the war he fought, was over, we won; the wench was dead, deceased. Now as Private Stanley looked down upon him, he wondered just what he’d tell his wife, they’d try to put that face back together, if they could, and he’d be ugly as hell. His wife would have to find a spot on the other side to kiss him good night. He didn’t show him in a mirror what he looked like, he just told him, it was bad, real bad. And Private Stanley sat cross-legged by him for the longest time, that is what the corporal wanted, and he died, just like that. It wasn’t from the wound; Private Stanley would tell folks later on, it was what he saw in the mud buddle next to him, the mirrored reflections of his face.


Chapter Four


The Peculiar Case of
Judson Small


((WWI, 1919, Part II) (Earnest Stanley and Judson Small))



One morning, Lilly Ann Small, moved her chair up to the living room window for a long peaceful morning, gloating, not at the empty yard, since her husband had died in WWI, a year or so ago, it was now 1919, but on her new suitor, James Jason, who worked at the Huntsville, Alabama, courthouse, he was an old boyfriend, one that didn’t make the grade she had felt, one that was now contriving to ease her grieving pain by asking her to marry him. She watched the chickens in the coop over by the large oak tree, and beyond that the orchard her and Judson were going to cultivate through the many years of marriage they had planned together, clutching the windowsill in front of her, she saw a man walking up the lane, she rushed to lock the door, out of some unknown panic, he didn’t look like James Jason, and she was several miles out of town, on her little farm of twenty acres. And strangers usually did not come so boldly up the lane at 9:00 a.m., in the morning. And then back at the window she looked again, drew back in her chair. Perhaps it was an Army friend of Judson’s, she thought, that one that wrote her about how Judson died, that Private Stanley from New Orleans, or was it, North Carolina, she forgot, but that was over a year ago. She noticed a neighbor was watching also, there was only one neighbor, across from her, in the Old Anderson Place, it was a plantation back before the Civil War days, a productive plantation, now just a high weeded spinster home, to Annabel Anderson and her sister Mary, and a small country church, resided a-ways down the road near the edge of her property, which was once Andersen property also, but Annabel gave it to the church, to build a church, that called themselves ‘nondenominational,’ which she could never understand but it sounded good. Other than that, the land was doted with small farms all the way into Huntsville itself (Alabama).
Lilly Ann looked over towards Judson’s old rifle, he kept it loaded, said for snakes and so forth, but you usually didn’t kill snakes with rifles, unless you beat them to death—cut their heads off, she used the end of a shovel usually for that, to beat and cut off their heads with, if she or her husband found them on the steps of his house or playing around in the yard scaring the chickens, the rifle was for mammal use, not the reptile. Anyhow, she looked and felt a little safer with it. The closer he got, this stranger, the more he looked like her husband, Judson Small. “Maybe,” she said out loud, “maybe he isn’t dead. People all the time make mistakes, a pure and innocent mistake.”
Now he was at the door, knocking, whereupon she realized that he was Judson Small indeed, and she opened the door gave a virulent germ grin, as if she wasn’t sure if she won bingo.
“Judson, Judson Small, is that really you?” she asked.
“I’m hungry,” he said, kissed her, and went to the kitchen table, “how about breakfast,” he asked.
There was something peculiar about him, but she Lilly Ann, simple took it slow, said, “I’ll make you some coffee and hot cakes,” and proceeded to do so, but unstopping, kept an eye on him, wanting to celebrate, but he was sedate in an odd way. Her second thought was: perhaps he’s just come out of an Army hospital; she didn’t know what to make of it, to the edge of being dumfounded.

A few days now had passed, and Judson Small was doing things around the house, and James Jason came over, and so did Samuel Clarence Lund, the preacher from the local church, he usually visited Saturdays anyway, and was curious on who the visitor was, for Annabel Anderson had mentioned Lilly had a male guest in her house, that of course was news, lots of gossip.
James Jason also came over to visit Lilly Ann that very Saturday, Samuel did also, a friend Judson knew from School, said James came out with, “I thought you were…” and before he could finish it, Lilly said, “Hush!” and he never finished the sentence.
After that, Lilly simply said, “You need to go!”
And he did, without a second’s hesitation, knowing Judson was there, and his peculiar kind of tranquilized looks were a tinge too much for him.
Samuel on the other hand pulled Lilly aside and asked, “Perhaps I was mistaken, but I understood your husband had died in the war, over a year ago?”
“Yes, Samuel, he did, and I been meaning to ask you, but you will not believe it, I think he doesn’t know he’s dead. Because he acts peculiar, and I checked with the authorities, and they sent me some money—insurance and they buried him for me, and here he is, and they will not agree he is alive, and I fear they may put me in an asylum if I insist he is alive but you see what I see.”
“I’m tired,” said Judson.
“I’ll take you to bed in a moment, let me just talk to Samuel a second, he’s the new preacher down at the county church, down yonder.”
And so Judson went to his normal bedroom alone, and sat on the edge of his bed as if, ready to stretch out, but was somehow, less tired than he made out to be, and remained sitting.
Samuel and Lilly looked at each other a moment, just wondered exactly what Judson could be up to, did he know he was dead, and pretending not to know, or was he dead and came back because his wife was confused on the intentions James had on her, she would never truly know, but Samuel, somewhat gave his support by saying, “I do believe in such happenings, he found some kind of a passage, and apparently he came to insure that you are okay, brief I think now it will be, James will never come back, I mean would you if you were him? (She shook her head no with a smirk on it). Incidentally I heard his side of the face was blown off, it looks just fine to me?”
“Oh, that never occurred to me, but you’re right, that is another point to reflect on I suppose,” said Lilly Ann, as she looked into the bedroom, and saw Judson, then he got up, came out to her, kissed her, and went back into the bedroom and laid down, she saw all this and made sure he was okay, then said goodbye to the preacher, walking him back out of the house all the way up to the narrow road, taking about five minutes, whereupon she came back in, full view of the bedroom from the door, she had left it open, she saw the impression of his body on the mattress, it was the first time she told herself, he ever kiss me so tenderly (in a more caring way than she had ever known).



Chapter Five



Murder near Stone Meadows

Elmer Abernathy’s Story

((1893, North Carolina) (Part one of two))

A Southern Account of Malice

The First house, the very first house, that really didn’t look like a house, ever to sit on the Abernathy plantation property, was a shack with two rooms, and one room had a stove you fed with wood, that was back in 1853, when Elmer Abernathy was born, built by Aston Cole Abernathy (born 1771, died 1855), he built that shack in 1803, he would be Langdon’s Great, Great Grandfather. Thereafter, Elmer, married a woman twice his age, and had a child by her, she named the child Alex, born in 1879, then she ran off, a drunk with a drunk, and he, Elmer, the Great Grandfather to Langdon Abernathy, got his divorce, and he married a good woman named Elsie, gave her, her new name, Abernathy, and in 1882, she gave him a son they named Justin C. Abernathy, the ‘C’ for Cole, Langdon’s Grandfather the one who fought in WWI, the Corporal, he died in 1947.
Elmer’s father, Aston, came over from Europe in the late 1790s, bought the land around 1803, and little by little, Aston Cole Abernathy cleared the rocky land, died in 1855 of a heart attack they say, at the ripe old age of eighty-four.
Elmer was born in that little shack, so Langdon’s father would tell him which is making it Langdon the only one not born in it. I mean Elmer, Justin and Cole were all born in it, but Langdon, he was born in the city hospital, of all places, down in Fayetteville, North Carolina, twenty-one miles outside the city, and brought to the plantation three days after his birth. Caroline, his mother, told Cole, her husband “This thing you call a traditional birth, that you call a right to those in your family to have it in this plantation house, that has become in itself your family roots, is for the birds, nowadays, they got hospitals for us humans, and plus, I’m having the baby not you.”
And thus, that put a stop to the tradition. Although Cole’s brother, Chris, didn’t like it, but he wasn’t married to Caroline: so Cole told him. As a result the insisting stopped pretty abruptly. Her recovery was quick for the most part, because Caroline was a strong woman, and needed very little recuperation time; she was home in a matter of days.

Getting back to Elmer Abernathy, Langdon’s Great Grandfather, his fate was to die ungracefully, if not pointlessly by an unknown nobody unfortunately. Elsie was twenty-two years old when they met, of good European stock. And he ended up being the one responsible for taking that little shack and building it into a full plantation house, with twelve-rooms, of which five were bedrooms. He seldom left his land, and plantation house, only to get what he needed for building more onto it, or mending or building fences and a barn, or seed for planting, he left the rest of the chores for his working men, and his wife, and their children: Alex (born 1879) and Justin C. Abernathy (born 1882); but Alex turned out to be rather the lazy one.
He, Elmer, never went to war, or church, yet he was a godly man in many ways, not too romantic, but he loved his wife in a flat emotional way, and ended up being a good provider.
It was in 1893, the railroad was laying track beyond the hill, that is over beyond his fields, of which he had 400- acres of land, and beyond the edge of the hill down its slope which was the boarder line of his land, and state property, and a wooded area, and a little ways beyond that was where they were laying the track, and where some twenty-men, in tents and all were doing the labor; some black folks, Chinese and Irish.
At night it seemed some of these workers went off into the wooded area, shooting wild game half drunk, bringing back to their camp: dogs, wolves, deer and a few rabbits. And those who were too drunk to carry them back left the carcasses where they lay after they had shot them. Elmer was aware of this, and so he would walk his lands edge at night before he headed on back to his house, and go to bed; he had to make sure nobody was hanging around his land, that didn’t belong there.

Justin, was eleven years old at the time, and Alex thirteen, in future time, Langdon’s Grandfather to be, he was well liked by his father, Elmer, and Alex, to the contrary, a mischievous, lazy good for nothing lad, a jealous kind of rat, snake in the grass, thin creature, an older brother that played rough with his younger brother. Alex’s eyes were bearable at times, but most of the times they were cat-eyes, searching, not sure what for, but nevertheless searching, and spying on his half-brother, stepmother and father.
Alex was crude, and witted, cursed with his drunken mother’s malice mind, he’d often remain silent, in a daze, wept like a madman, and felt he could, if given the chance make everything different, so much so that his defiance went to action, a plan came into his mind, and night after night he put it together like sewing a patch on a jacket. He would be in charge of the family, yes indeed; he was going to take the issue up with the very person who caused the problem, his father. Now it happened to be a silent protest at this juncture took place, but a few more steps in the right direction of thinking, it would be less than silent; the undisturbed plan would be explosive, if succeed.
He was a restless kind of kid, perhaps had too much time on his hands to think up such plans, but he did on July 2, 1893 come to the conclusion in the morning it would be implemented, his devious and dubious plan would be put into practice, and therefore, in the evening, he snuck out through his bedroom window, and up to where the railroad tracks were being laid, and talked to several men, and found two men that looked as if they were troublemakers, and he asked, “Do you carry a gun?”
The one called Clarence, the hairy one, said, “Now why would a boy your age care one way or another?”
“I want you to kill someone for me? I got $500-dollars, I will give you two hundred now, and the rest after you do the job.”
The men started laughing, and Alex pulled out his money—cash, paper currency, and then they stopped laughing, pulled the kid over behind a tree, “Who,” asked Clarence, “who do you want dead?”
“My father,” Alex replied.
“Your father, for heaven’s sake why?” asked Clarence’s friend, a puny little man of pale color, had looked like he drank himself into old age, perhaps no older than forty, and looking sixty.
“That’s my business,” remarked Alex, “are you for hire or not?”
“When do you want the job done, we’ll only be here a few more days?” announced Clarence.
“Tonight,” he said, it was near twilight.
“You mean, right now?” said the pale looking guy.
“My father checks out the edge of his property every night to make sure you folks don’t cross over into it, he’ll be over yonder there in a spell,” said Alex, anxious.
Clarence looked at his friend, they both nodded (both were half tramps hired for a week or two weeks work, drifters for the most part.


So the two men, and Alex hid behind some trees and bushes, waited for Elmer Abernathy just beyond the hill, on the edge of his property, and sure enough, at 10:30 p.m., sharp, he walked by. Clarence showed his face, and Elmer said, looking at the two men, said: “You’re on private property, did you know that?”
“Yup!” said Clarence, his friend in back of him, and Alex hiding behind a tree.
“Well you best be getting off it before I talk to your foreman on the railroad, I’m sure youall work for them!” said Elmer with a curious look, it seemed he did a doubletalk on a tree, the very one Alex was hiding behind, he saw movement. And Clarence noticed, that Elmer noticed there was a tinge of movement in that direction.
“Someone else with you folks?” asked Elmer.
Clarence was kind of playful, and said, “Yup,” and if you guess who, I’ll give you the two-hundred dollars he gave me—I mean us!”
Elmer was now confused, and Alex was sweating with embarrassment, if not down right shame, but he could live with it, he simply held his breath, and like any unashamed person of such malice, had no blood in his face.
“I aint got time for jokes or playing ‘round, you and your friends get on off my property,” said Elmer, in a tone that made it sound as if it was final.
Next, Clarence pulled out his gun, put it up to Elmer’s head, it was a revolver, six shots, said “Your boy is behind that tree Mister, he done paid us five-hundred dollars to kill you,” and then he yelled for the boy to come out, “come out here boy, and tell your old-man it’s time to leave this earth, to die!” But Alex remained hidden, sweating like a hog, he had let out his breath, what he was holding inside of him, and shaking like a rattlesnake ready to bite.
“You don’t believe me do yaw,” said Clarence; but somehow he, Elmer did believe him, because he knew how much money was in that candy jar, just five-hundred dollars, no more, and the killer knew the boy’s name, like he knew the exact amount in the candy jar, but all he could do was shake his head looking towards the tree—in disgust.
“Sorry,” Clarence told Elmer, “but a job is a job,” and he pulled the trigger, blew a hole in his head as big as a silver dollar, and Elmer wobbled a bit, and then fell like a tree just cut from it base onto the ground, and you could hear the thump when he landed.
Next, Alex came running out, “I’m not paying you three-hundred dollars just for having fun with me,” and he turned around to walk away, and Clarence shot him in the back of the head, it hit him so hard, he fell flat on his face. After that, the pale man, his friend said, “We gots to git out of town befur the law gits wise!” and rushed over to get the $300-dollars remaining in the boy’s trouser pocket, he saw the boy put it in there, and he, Clarence, shot his friend the same way he shot Alex, and he took the five-hundred dollars himself, for himself, thereafter, and took the first freight train out of town just after twilight.



Chapter Six


The Frenzied Murder near
Stone Meadows
((1929) (Part Two))


Clarence Carpenter was found dead with multiple wounds, stab wounds in his head, neck, back, the Fayetteville Police told the detective, matter-of-fact, there were 320-stab wounds in his whole body, he had been tied to a tree, in the woods in the back of Stone Meadows (in back of the Stanley Plantation, next to the Abernathy Plantation), twenty-one miles outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina, that is, 320-confirmed stab wounds. The detective shook his head; he had never seen or heard of such an atrocity, massacre to a human shape, body, and flesh. His job was to figure out why, and who did it. Clarence had once worked on the railroad in that area of the country, but that was years ago, many, many years ago, he was now in his 70s, the last time he was in this part of the country was back in 1893, it was now 1929, and he was a bum back then. Now married and semi retired: he was said to have been a victim of a frenzied, brutal, horrific attack by perhaps Satanists; or so the police reports had read.
Justin C. Abernathy, back in 1893 was eleven-years old, he was now forty-seven years old, been through WWI, got a metal for his bravery, and was kind of rich. His father had been killed by a transit, a person who worked for the railroad back then, and left town. His name was also Clarence. So now finding this person dead in the back of his farmland was odd indeed the police thought, and Tina Tate Carpenter, Clarence’s wife, whom was 59-years old, whom had hired the deceive, was living in New Orleans the past thirty some years, married twenty-five of them to Clarence.
Detective Bob Faulk, was a young sporty kind of man, thirty-years old, and more than willing to take risks. He lived in New Orleans, and was highly recommend, Tina Tate hired him, she had a next to new shop that sold used cloths and such things, her husband had set her up in business, as a way to get her away from him so he could live his quiet life. Clarence had been working on other enterprises, and would never tell his wife exactly what they were, but he brought home money, and at times lots of it, so she said little to nothing.
Tina offered the Detective $5000, to find the murderer of her husband, and if he couldn’t, she would simply pay him $200 for his efforts, and he had a month to do it.
The whole matter puzzled Bob Faulk, although the proposal was good, not all what he wanted, expected but he took the case, and was now in the morgue with the police looking at the body.
The third day, Bob was at the Abernathy plantation, talking to Justin C. Abernathy, the hero of Fayetteville, from WWI, and when they talked, outside of his plantation house, he seemed too much occupied with work to be personal or even helpful, that in itself irritated Bob, even gave him ideas he was the killer.
“I am new here,” said Bob, and you do not know me, and it has been said your father was killed by a stranger by the name of Clarence, and there was a man by such a name back then working for the Railroad, Clarence Buck, and perhaps the murderer mistook this stranger to be Clearance Carpenter?” said Bob.
“Are you asking a question, or making a statement, or trying to accuse me of a murder?” asked Justin—looking at Bob straight in his eyes.
The detective followed Justin into the barnyard, and helped Justin unhitch a horse to a buggy, Josh a Blackman, a hired hand for the plantation, used it quite often, not knowing how to drive, he’d use it to go to the country store a few miles up the dirty road, past all the plantations.
Nothing was said between Bob and Justin, only Josh had a moment’s conversation with Justin, and an introduction to the detective, other than that Justin was of an occupied mind, as was Bob Faulk; yet somehow he was convinced Justin got his revenge for his father’s death by killing Clarence, but how did he do it? I mean, who goes all the way to New Orleans, and brings back the suspect to his father’s exact spot where he was killed, and murders him just beyond his door, on public property, tied to a tree, and then goes crazy with a knife. It was all too bazaar.
He, Bob Faulk, knew he had to become more acquainted with Justin, so he asked, “Do you mind if I stay on at your place for a week or so, while I clear up this investigation? I’ll pay you $20-dollars a day room and board.”
He expected a flat no, but Justin looked at him, “Thank you for your offer of money, but it will be an inconvenience, yet we can talk about it over coffee, and if you offer $30-dollars a day, I might say yes.”
Bob knew he had to make that $5000-dollars, that $200 advance was just not going to make it, and now he was not certain if it was Justin, he kind of broke the resistance cord.
Justin knew in his mind, the New Orleans man, had a scheme, but it didn’t seem to bother him all that much, he was to be financed for a week, and that could help him make enough money needed rapidly for seed to plant, times were hard it was 1929, the country was in a depression; and at dinner that evening at his house, he asked for it in advance, $210-dollars for a week, and he got it, not with a smile, but a big sigh from Bob Faulk, the detective, he had to add money out of his own pocket to make the sum, that was his advance, down the drain.
Evening after evening the two men talked on the subject, and the more they talked, the more Bob was convinced it was not him, there were deep shadows in the back of his mind, shadows that told him, someone else was in back of this. He then thought about Josh, the negro helper, there was something sleek about him, something that suggested a well-bred mind, one like a cleaver hound.
As he spent the following two days talking to him, in pursuit of the information, he tried to make it fit into his scheme, but he only grew a long jaw trying to carefully wiggle parts that didn’t fit, into his puzzle.
The whole week was coming to an end, when he talked to Amos, from the Stanley plantation, and he said, he was sure, Amos was sure he saw a woman and a man in the backwoods there, and in some way suggested it might have been his lover on the side, but Bob couldn’t figure why they would be here and not in New Orleans.
As they, Bob and Justin sat on his porch the last day of the week, the day he was to return to New Orleans, they both sat in the darkness, the front porch only lit by the moon, the plantation house had no voices, just the two, and he, Justin pulls out a letter, “I got this today from the post office, it’s for you,” he said.
The detective opens the letter it read, “Dear Bob, the murderer was Tina Tate Carpenter, she did not fritter away any time in going to the insurance company to cash in on her $25,000-dollar insurance policy, evidently he talks in his sleep, and she discovered he had in fact killed a man called Elmer Abernathy from North Carolina, and had her husband taken here out to where he did the slaying back when he worked on the railroad back in 1893—simply saying she was curious, and threatened to expose him if he didn’t, he was somewhat drugged it seems, and was to a certain degree unconscious of the fact; she knew he murdered Mr. Abernathy, and she knew he was dating younger woman, and the inclination for her to put an end to all and make a handsome sum in the process, was too unbearable not to take. She now is in jail. It looks like you may not get your fee, since we found the murderer, or I should say the insurance company did. But that will be between you and her estate, if and when judgments come in for it to payout. So my best recommendation is for you to do just that—try and put a judgment against her estate, she will not be going home for a long spell.”

“It looks like you’re broke?” said Justin to the detective.
“Well,” he said, “it’s been an interesting summer, and it sure is a still night, a slight breeze blowing down over the hill from the railroad tracks, I could hear the rumbling the last few nights, it all was nice, I’m happy it is not you, or Josh, I like you both, and there is a possibility of a judgment against her estate, it was Tina Tate Carpenter who killed Clarence, her husband, and now that puts an end to this melodrama of sorts for you and me both.” And then they simply sat back in their chairs steadily breathing in the fresh cool air of the night, and both started laughing, not at each other or Mrs. Carpenter but perhaps at the liberated feeling they finally had, the case was finalized, although neither one could be friends openly, not inanimate friends anyhow, but distant laughing friends—they could be.


Book V



The Last Plantations
(1962)




Chapter One

Frank’s Interrogation



Frank didn’t care how Wally died, he just cared about who helped it along, he knew he and his brother had become old, old enough to die any day, anytime of the day, night or day. This was what he told Minnie Lue Walsh, and Minnie Lue told Burgundy.
Frank never did talk to Burgundy about her baby those first few months, two months after Wally died, it was too hard for him to look at her, too hard for him to talk without crying, but he did find the courage to interrogate her. Other than that, He just saw her, sitting in that chair by the window, the one she fell to sleep in when Wally got himself killed. He called her the ‘Queen Bee,’ now, because she had a white baby in her stomach, and it was going to come out near white, whiter than black anyhow, thus, the descendents of the new child would be, who knows what. She even took up smoking a pipe, like old Wally used to do; at first that aggravated Frank, and then he got thinking, maybe she really did like him. At best, he was confused, the worse being, he was obsessed with putting the puzzle together, if even he had to hammer the pieces into the puzzle to make them fit.
Frank had asked her time and again, what took place that evening Wally went out to the car, the Queen Bee said very little, actually she somehow got herself to believe, she couldn’t remember, some kind of psychosomatic symptoms, or at least that is what Doctor Wright (Psychologist) told Frank on his visit one afternoon to Fayetteville, it could be.
“I fell to sleep,” she said,” that’s all I remember.”
Frank said to Dr. Wright and Minnie Lue, “Either she’s the best actor in town, or she’s sincere, but I think it’s the actor part more than that sincerity part.”
He asked her several times more, to go over what took place that evening, and when she told her story each time it was a little different than it was the time before, he’d say, “Wrong!” You might say, he was quizzing her more than interrogating her, trying to make her divulge what she really knew, if indeed she did know more than what she was saying, it was all too obscure circumstances, you might say.
“All right!” she said on the last day of the second month of the anniversary of Wally’s death, “okay, I remember somethin’ not much but somethin’…” she said and Frank listened up, sat erect as if he was going to get the truth and nothing but the truth, the official confession, finality; “…have it your way, I was sleeping, woke up, saw him going to the car, fell to sleep again, didn’t really understand what I was seeing, or hearing, I thought I was dreaming—there is no more Frank no more than what I’m saying, telling you, unless you want me to make it up as I go along.”
Frank wasn’t sure what to make of it, she, Burgundy had been around some, he came to that conclusion anyhow.





Chapter Two

The Inheritance


Josh Jefferson III



(1962) Amos, and Josh Jefferson the III, (Josh, the grandson of old Silas from the Hightower Plantation, in Ozark Alabama, who had gotten Ashley Walsh pregnant, and died around 1909, his brother Jordon in about 1911) are sitting with Minnie Lue Walsh (also related to the Walsh’s from shantytown near Ozark, Alabama), are sitting out by her shanty, in back of the barn on the Wallace Plantation, Amos playing the banjo, and Josh drinking a large glass of something, it looks like beer, but he usually drinks beer with moonshine in it, so I’d bet that is what is in that large wooden cup of his. Burgundy, she is dancing wildly around the bonfire trying to catch the sparks as they drift off the burning wood and into the air, as if she’s possessed with a voodoo demon; her family does have an ounce or two of Haitian blood in them, and therefore, she has something on that order likewise in her blood, and so it has been said, but not on these three plantations, the Wallace’s, Stanley’s and Abernathy’s.

(Morning the next Day) Frank Wallace is sitting in a chair on the patio reading a letter he got in the morning mail from a lawyer. Burgundy Washington is in town taking care of some personal business, along with documenting her child’s official name. Henry Thompson is her lawyer’s name, Burgundy’s lawyer’s name (the child’s official name is: Otis Pity Wallace Washington).

The letter to Frank Wallace, reads: “To Whom It May Concern: one third of the Wallace Plantation, the portion that belongs to Wally Wallace, and all the bank accounts thereof, under the name of Wally Wallace should been given to my unborn son, to be distributed as needed through the Ritt Bank, and by way of Burgundy Washington, the mother of the unborn Wallace child. This is my will, Wally Wallace (singed Wally Wallace, and witnessed by Henry Thompson, and Albert Lee Ritt Sir., 1961).”

Frank’s lip quivered as he read the letter, his head bobbed back and forth: ‘What in the world has my brother done,’ he muttered aloud. Matter of fact, Frank was so upset he couldn’t talk near inclined to have a stroke, or choke to death over this letter. ‘What was he thinking with this witch, or she-devil?’ (The property was in the family since the 1820s, the land bought by Anthony Wallace II, and the plantation mansion completed finished in the 1870s by his father, Anthony Wallace the Third).
Frank’s eyes popped out, almost all the way out of its sockets, rereading, and rereading the letter, over and over, hoping I suppose he was reading it wrong, but he wasn’t, he was reading word for word, perfectly right.
Frank then got up, walked into the living room, and into the dinning room, paced a bit, then went to the long wooden cabinet, a mirror above it, an old mantel clock on it, a thin drawer near the clock, he opened the drawer, a pistol was there, he looked at it, where it lay, left the drawer open, and paced again, then shut the drawer hard.
“Hell with it, give it to her,” he muttered, “let her have it!”

That night Frank went to talk to Cole Abernathy, two plantations down the road, looking for someone to take his side, brought his checker set with him, some moonshine he bought from Amos, Mrs. Stanley’s plantation hand, Langdon, his boy was upstairs getting ready for bed, and Caroline Abernathy was tidying up a bit.
“I got to give away one third of my land to this nigger she-wolf,” he told Cole, in a bitter anger voice.
“That’s because your brother was—for once in his life, responsible for someone other than himself, for someone he created with God’s help, and then left behind, he should have kept his item where it belonged, zipped tightly in his pants.”
Frank took it as an insult, even though it reeked with truth, he figured this was his last communication with Cole, there was no sympathy in him, and he abruptly stood up, grabbed his checkerboard and stormed out of the Abernathy mansion.





Chapter Three

The Funeral


Mrs. Stanley of the Stanley Plantation


Frank, and Amos James Boston Tucker, along with Minnie Lue Walsh, and Josh (from the Abernathy Plantation, Josh Jefferson Jr., born 1890), attended the funeral, a plot of land set aside for the family cemetery behind the barn, and Minnie’s shanty. Burgundy was also present, and Mr. and Mrs. Stanley; the Abernathy’s were not invited and Abby was not there either, the sister to Wally, (she was born in 1905, the youngest of the three children), she was visiting a relative is Ozark, Alabama. There was no preacher present, and Frank and Amos lowered Wally into a grave next to his mother and father (Gertrude Wallace, wife to Anthony, born 1860) (and Anthony Wallace III (Husband to Gertrude, born 1855, he built the Wallace Mansion, or completed it).



Chapter Four

Frank’s Dying Request



(1962) Frank received a letter from a distinct cousin, called Whisky Charlie (born 1935, relative to Frank and Wally, lives in Ozark, Alabama), where Abby Wallace is living most of the time when she goes to Ozark, Alabama. Matter-of-fact, she spends more time at this location than at the plantation in North Carolina. Charlie is from Gertrude Wallace’s side of the family, her maiden name being Codden, a Jewish name, and Charlie’s mother was the sister to Gertrude, now dead, but Charlie and Cindy (Cindy, the sister of Charlie born 1932), the two, the brother and sister live together, and Abby gets along with them just fine, kind of likes Charlie. They have a place outside of Ozark, a little house, by an open cemetery, and a shanty town in back of the Cemetery, where the black folks live, and a few plantations thereabouts. They are not rich, and Abby pays for the food often, and at times a few other items. She has often said, “Here I get love and comfort, attention, and I am most happy, and I feel needed.”

“Who’re you praying to?” asked Frank, standing at the open door to Burgundy’s bedroom, with his pajamas on.
Frank has now been ill since Wally passed on, weakened bones, aging faster than normal, with a mental state of depression most days, and hard to get out of bed, and drinking like a fish; funny he thought, when it comes, it comes like a title wave, all at once. He locked himself in his room; Minnie Lue even had a hard time feeding him, bringing eggs and bread to him. The 1950-Chevy is now only an ugly reminder of what took place, of what tore his life apart, ripped his soul, and made a leak in it. It is the great green monster to him now. But he will not, cannot die before he finds out the truth, he has to make out how his brother died, in detail, he has to make Burgundy talk, what would make her talk, is what is going through his mind now, day and night, and today is the day.
“Who you praying to,” he asked the second time. She was on her knees praying to some invisible person, and then she turned her head around, almost as if it was disconnected from her neck, “The unrequited Ghost of this here mansion!” she said with a low purring growl, “remember old man, I’m the she-nigger devil, isn’t that what you called me?”
Then like a lizard, she stuck her tongue out, to mock the old man, stuck it out and it seemed to reach from the top of her nose, and when it dropped, it dropped past her chin, then she sucked it into the empty space in her mouth, surprisingly it fit.



Chapter Five

The Deal

Dr. Wright, the psychologist, had visited Frank this day, and behind closed doors told Minnie and Burgundy, his mind was melting away, and Dr. Ritt, the medical doctor, said physically he was alright, but extremely weak, and perhaps some of his body organs might stop their normal functions at any time, his immune system was breaking down quickly. In essence, he was slowly dying.
Frank asked for Burgundy, to come into his room, into the bedroom, alone, and she did, “I want to know the truth of what took place that night my brother died, the whole truth, what do you want for it?” He said in an on edged voice.
“Everything, I mean everything you own!”
“Okay,” he said, just like that, knowing his time was short on earth at best, “how shall we do it?”
She pulled out a paper from her purse, and told Frank he’d have to sign it in front of two witnesses, and at the moment, both doctors remained outside of his bedroom, two good and upright citizens, and after he signed it, behind closed doors she would tell him.”
Well, the paper was signed, and the witnesses left the room thereafter, and Burgundy pulled up a chair next to his bed, “Listen up old man,” she said “I will not repeat myself—first of all, I opened up the window of the 1950-Chevy, I knew it was going to rain, it was forecasted two days ahead of time. And I poured your brother several shots of whisky, as he liked it, but it was of course to the brim. And then I sat by the window, feeling the baby inside, he saw that, he actually loved me being pregnant, and if it was a boy, made me promise to name it Otis, well I did, but I gave him the name of Pity also, for his father died in a state of pity, in a state of misfortune, his misfortune, and it suited the boy. I told him then, the window was opened he saw that it was, and he was barefoot, and he ran baldheaded out to the car, I had taken his shoes off so the warm fire from the hearth would sink into his foot bones, he liked that, but in the mud and slush and frost, he slipped, and slipped again, and knocked himself out. Some of this he did on his own, most of it was props for the show, and when he was on his back, he yelled like a scared little boy, for help. He looked in the window, I had closed my eyes, and he thought I fell to sleep, and I did kind of, but I saw him nonetheless, right through my transparent eyelids. And he thought he might last until morning that was the false impression the whisky gave his body I would reckon, his brain, but he died nonetheless. And now it is your turn.”
And correct she was, he died within the hour.



Chapter Six


Trials and Tribulations of the Wallace Plantation 1962-‘63



The Pact
(or Deal) Abby Wallace


Abby Wallace would take two days to make the trip from Ozark, Alabama, drive down to New Orleans, and onto Fayetteville, to see her brother’s grave. She slept the night in New Orleans, at Betty Hightower’s home, a friend, and Thursday morning headed onto the plantation house, the Wallace Plantation.
There was only a hundred-acres left of land out of four-hundred they originally had, the four-hundred that Old Man Wallace had purchased way back in 1780, or thereabouts, they had sold, the two brothers had sold, her two brothers, the ones that were dead now, Wally and Frank, sold the three-hundred acres, giving her ten-percent, keeping the rest of the money for themselves, as they always did, she was never quite equal with them, but it was better to take ten-percent of something, better that is, than taking a zero percent of nothing, they’d sign her name one way or the other, and because of her refusal a war would start, and by the time the fighting stopped, her ten-percent would be nil, and their money would be gone anyhow.
This journey was really more for seeing Burgundy, than anything else, to see where everything stood between her and Burgundy, she told folks back in Ozark, it was to see her brother’s graves, and in passing mentioned Burgundy and the plantation, but said no more about it, save, she had to tell them something, and she didn’t want to look as a ogre towards the dead brothers, the ones who cared less about her, and more about that old 1950-Chevy they kept in their yard and worked on more than they drove it.

When Burgundy and Abby met, neither one turning and walking away, both dissolving the other for a moment, as if in a spell, as if ready each had to find a common moment to exhale the instant and find the right face to put on, thus, standing in a little square spot, each in a their own little cube as if it was marked, three feet from one another, both finding their comfort zone with each other, they looked into each other’s eyes, like a fox to a hound, or a wolf to an alligator—who was who you couldn’t tell.
“Come in,” said Burgundy, Abby at the door, she was but half dressed, as if she was in the finishing process of dressing, and they somehow both ended up cross-legged sitting down in the easy chairs in the living room.
“I was just in the middle of doing some of my voodoo dancing,” she told Abby with a smile; Abby in return, giving a flat “Oh,” to the statement. She had noticed, Abby had noticed, Burgundy had a lower body frame that give an impression of being short, a long torso, and pale thin arms, like a snake’s, an odd kind of body she deliberated. Then her eyes and neck seemed to bob about the house, just a minute or so her eyes took a tour, around the house, finding wooden masks, voodoo masks, and disarray, a messy house.
“I cleaned your room for you, since this will be our home, unless we can come up with a pack or deal, and I’d like to talk to you about that shortly,” remarked Burgundy, going on, “after Wally died, Frank took it pretty hard, It was physically and mentally costly for him, his heart, his whole being collapsed I do believe, and remained for a long time in a convalescent state. Minnie Lue and I have been keeping the plantation afloat, well, Minnie more than I, I suppose. But now you are here and we can all work together.” (This was really not what Burgundy wanted to do, but it was what she had to say, and wait to see what response would come back.)
“To be quite frank,” said Abby, “I am more interested in selling the place, than living in it, or listening to your proposition, that is why I came.”
“Yes,” remarked Burgundy, “I fully understand that, and knew from the very beginning you and I’d git along well, I jes’ knew that, and look, here we are now Seeing Eye to Eye.”
Amos came in, “Should I feed the hogs miss Burgundy?” he asked, and she nodded her head yes.
“Frank has some prize, country fair type hogs out yonder, as big as horses, one over 700-pounds, that one, the big one got a prize for eating more food in a meal, faster in one meal that is, than any other hog at the fair, and got a ribbon, blue ribbon for it, with its name on it, “Big Hog Wally,” Frank named it that, kids were riding her, so youall got to be careful, when she gets hungry back there in the pigpen, she can eat a whole lamb in a matter of minutes, and who knows what else.”
“Thanks for the warning, when I go by there I’ll keep my distance, or make sure they’re feed, especially feed, Big Hog Wally!” They both laughed.

“Okay, Miss Abby Wallace, here is the deal (she pulls out a check from her purse, for the sum of $500,000-dollars written to Abby Wallace, hands it over to Abby) take this check, cash it, I sold all but four acres of the one-hundred acres left to Mr. Ritt, the Ritt Fayetteville Bank, once you cash it, the deal is sealed, and the plantation house is mine, and everything on this four-acres will belong to me, and the money to you, it is more fair than your brothers would have been to you.”
It was a fair deal, and she was right, her brothers would not have given her much if even ten-percent on the last one hundred acres left, although the land was sold a little under its value, and should they have waited to sell, it would have increased in value, an investment that appeared not to please either party, Abby or Burgundy, for neither were of the plantation breed, neither one wanted to grow corn or cotton, and Abby knew this, plus, she had never had such a sum before, and this kind of a deal was more than she had expected from this cleaver fox, and therefore accepted the check with a big smile, saying, “Yes, perhaps we see eye to eye, my brother’s and I never did.”
It was but a few days later when Abby left to go back to Ozark, Alabama, she was happy, and Burgundy was happy, and as the saying goes: there were two winners.


Chapter Seven



The Sacrifice, the child: Otis Pity Wallace
1962



It has been said, and there is much truth to it I do believe, that what Christ has done on earth, Satan has tried to duplicate. Burgundy was around her plantation house doing her voodoo stuff with more of a dedication than she ever had, she put more vitality into it, perhaps because who could interfere now. The Child Otis Pity Wallace Washington was about eighteen-months old now.
The house was quiet, not many visitors came about anymore, since Frank and Wally were gone now, dead, and Abby in Ozark, Alabama, Old Josh III, and Amos came around now and then, but besides them, not many other folks. Minnie Lue was still working on the farm, and Burgundy had money in the bank, around $40,000-dollars, Frank and Wally leaving each half of that sum to her personally, in their personal accounts at the Ritt Bank.
She prayed to Satan, and was said to dance with the demons, this was not new, it was just become more noticeable, and actually a little old, it was on Halloween she got what she called a vision, an awakening, a messenger came to her in her bedroom, sat on her bed, told her the following (which she would repeat in court in times yet to come), “The Ten-Winged Master, wants you to make a sacrifice to him, your child, like Abram had done, so long ago for God, this will prove your loyalty, and there will be a resurrection, if you follow this example.” The messenger was a henchman from hell, so he claimed.
About this time, the Abernathy family, and the Stanley family, the two families who owned the other two plantations, along the same side of the road the Wallace Plantation was, now Burgundy’s plantation, was ostracized from their gatherings, their weekend get together (s), where once they’d played checkers with Wally and Frank, and even the Stanley’s came over. They could hear the yelping and screaming and voodoo drums at all hours of the night now. Burgundy was become an insane nuisance.
This sacrifice was all planned for October 31, 1962, midnight, she put the child on the living room table, Minnie was in the kitchen, closed her eyes, wanted to stop her but there was no way, she was scared, and so she ran out of the house—perhaps thinking: out of sight, out of mind, cried, slipped, hit her head on a rock, fell to sleep, more like knocked out. And so the sacrifice proceeded as scheduled, nobody noticed. No kids came for candy, none were allowed to go near the plantation, and rightfully so, and there really were only a few kids about in the countryside anyhow. With no haggling, she lifted up a heavy double edged ax, and when she lowered it, the child was split into two pieces, and she danced, and danced, and tore her cloths to shreds. And of course there was no resurrection, what she had to learn the hard way, and she never did learn it, Satan is a liar, as well as a deceiver. But if she got anything out of this, it was his blessings.



Chapter Eight


The Trial
Of Burgundy Washington
(1962-63)


There was a boiling trial, and we all thought, all us from the vicinity and country where the Wallace’s had lived, we all thought she, Burgundy Washington was either insane or possessed, and therefore sent to River Mount Hospital, in Prescott, Wisconsin, under the care of Dr. Whitman. Her lawyer was none other than the famous Henry Thompson, who did murder trials among others, he himself once was up for murder, but it was dismissed for the lack of information, he acted as his own lawyer in his own case, they had said he killed his wife and dropped her off in a junkyard, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Minnie Lue had left the Wallace Plantation, we all knew she would, it was just too, way too much for her to endure that night, it still haunts her folks say; when she awoke from her fall, the night Burgundy killed her son, she ran to the Stanley plantation, that was how the police was notified, and in the morning found the dead child, and her passed out on the floor, and she testified that she saw, what she saw, which was up to the prior moment of the slaying of the child, but did not see that actual happening, the murder itself, she had run out of the house. But Burgundy was not denying the killing anyhow, so she was guilty by her own mouth.
Us folks at the trial, none of us ever had to consider such a mishap, I mean, she was guilty, but there was insanity involved. We kind of thought, any kind of murder would be a form of insanity, but I guess not. So there were technicalities involved.

The Hospital was quite expensive, and Thompson suggested she stay there, and in three to four years, she’d be out, actually after her money run out, she’d be out, but she needed to sell the plantation to pay the hospital bills, and lawyer bills, the hospital was costly, and Abby was at each day of the trial, and made a deal with the lawyer, to have Burgundy sign the deed of the plantation over to her for $150,000-dollars, and thus, she’d have $190,000 with the money in the bank, enough for at least two to three years expenses, hopefully for the hospital and lawyer would not be more. A private hospital, and not a burden on the state, and in time, folks might forget her, and so, it was the way Thompson wanted her to go and she did just that.
Burgundy signed it without a peep, and grabbed the Bible, and did as Thompson told her, started reading it from page one to the end page of the whole New and Old Testaments, and would go to church on Sundays, to become UN- possessed, and if she couldn’t, at least pretend to be.

It was now 1963. Abby did leave $2000 extra dollars in her account personal account, to buy things she might need in the hospital, and signed the other money over to the lawyer to pay her bills.
And now the plantation returned back to its old and rightful owners, and Whisky Charlie moved in, moved out of Ozark, Alabama, and moved in with his family member, his cousin Abby, first cousin, once and for all.



Chapter Nine


Growing Pains of Langdon’s Abernathy


Langdon’s Folly
((Grandpa’s WWI Brief Notes) (1963))



Langdon Abernathy, now twelve-years old, soon to be all of thirteen, was rather a simple boy, youthful-looking, this is not a contrast to the other boys his age, in Fayetteville, North Caroline, but he was above most, and unblemished, he stood and walked soundly, erect. When looking at his eyes, you could see his whole body, they would devour you, snatch you from your roughness, and often women, girls constantly tried to get his attention, but what was foremost on his mind was wanting to be, dreamed of being, a soldier, a sergeant in the Army, he heard of the conflict building up in South East Asia, Vietnam, he was wondering if America would get involved, it was 1963, and he watched the news carefully, he realized it was a French war, and who was to say, if it was going to be an American war, there was loose talk about it—but he was hoping.
His grandfather had been in what was called the Great War, World War I, back in 1917-18, over in France, he was what you called a Second Lieutenant of a batter of Ammo Humpers, those men, soldiers with broad strong shoulders who carried ammunition to the frontlines, down through the trenches, and loaded and unloaded projectiles, heavy bombs, he always said: “…those folks never quite got the proper respect from the higher ups, the so called brass—officers, or for that matter, the Army in general.” His father, Cole Abernathy was too young for World War I, and somehow missed WWII, having been born 1910, he was thirty-years old, but it was said he had something like flat-feet, thus he never went to war.
Justin C. Abernathy (1885 to 1947), was in his thirties, when he went to war in France, and was too old for WWII, but he always said, he would have liked to have gone to the second big one, the second great war, WWII, so he told his son, Cole, and Cole told his grandson Langdon, and showed Langdon his decorations, unit citations.
Cole Abernathy was proud of his father, and perhaps too proud, because now Langdon wanted to be like his Corporal Grandfather, but one step up, he wanted to be a sergeant, which would be better, and perhaps somewhere along life’s short duration, folks would sit around a fire in the hearth and talk about him, the way they talked about old grandpa.
Sometimes at night, Cole would sit around the fire in the hearth, and talk about what his grandfather told him, such as, the morning bugle calls, that sounded to wake the barracks up, and in France, it would wake up the city folk also, and the soldiers would jump off their mattress and grab their weapons, and head on out of their mud huts to within the trenches. And there were constant replacements within his regiment, those getting sick, mentally ill, or killed or wounded; and the camaraderie with the men. These were French, British and Americans all fighting the German Army. Langdon would listen with an irresistible ear, simultaneously seeing himself in the army fighting, hanging onto the American flag, as the breeze kept it high into the air, as if he was in the cavalry himself. It is how Langdon saw it, how he visualized his future to be, not at Harvard studying for something he did not care about, didn’t know what he wanted in the first place, and therefore, repudiating such a voyage.
He told his mother, Caroline and his father about his dream, his wish to be, his desire to be a soldier, and she thought it was a faded dream at best, and he’d rethink it out in time, even telling her husband, how silly Langdon was, and perhaps he should stop glorifying his father, and war. That it was, or could be, and most often is, a heavy price to be paid for a man and his battle-soiled family to endure a soldier’s life, just to wear so he can have a symbol to have on, in this case, a symbolical ribbon, a badge of courage, strips on his arms, that his mother was the one who endured his physical anguish, she sacrificed for those candy-yellow strips he wore. Cole, didn’t show any discontent for her remarks— perhaps she was afraid he’d lose his gentleness, his almost consideration. Cole didn’t really take sides, he simply took it as if it was going to be so let it be, and breathed on.
For the most part he enjoyed those hours with his son, it gave him informal talks, everything didn’t have to be about him, and he’d even add a little to grandpa’s adventures, in the trenches of France, fake attacks, he called some, where soldiers would climb out of the trenches—but not many—it was to set up a front for shelling the enemy, and getting them a bit off guard, because they knew more shelling would come into the trenches, once theirs had started. Old Grandpa faced this enemy for eighteen-months, lived like a groundhog, a thousand meters away from an enemy who wanted to hang him, shoot him, kill him anywhichway he could, even gassing him would be fine.


Chapter Ten


Old Josh and the Civil War Days
((With Silas and Jordon, from Ozark, Alabama) (1960-66))



Old Josh Washington Jefferson II (Born 1853- 1903) worked for the Abernathy family for many years, and his son works for him now, Josh Jefferson III. ((Born 1890) (died 1972: 82-years old)) but the family dates back farther. His family dates back to 1803 (or there about), and beyond, and when I say beyond, it means Josh, the old Josh, the first Josh whom came from Africa, because, Charles Hightower, of the plantation in Ozark, Alabama found him in New Orleans during a flood, he and his mother got separated, she was supposed to have died in the flood. How long exactly he was here before 1813, I can’t rightfully tell you, but when Charles Hightower (the same Hightower family that lives in New Orleans, by the name of Jason Hightower, married to Betty Hightower, great grand child to Charles Hightower, they sold the plantation and moved to the city as most folks did in and around the time of the Civil War. In any case, Josh Washington Jefferson’s father was Silas Jefferson, whose brother; younger brother was Jordon, who worked at the Ozark’s main grocery store during those far-off days. When Charles Hightower was in New Orleans, back in 1813, he found little Josh, ten-years old then, wandering about, looking for his mother, and they could not find her, folks implied she was dead, among the many dead of the flood, and so Hightower took the boy to his plantation, back to Ozark, Alabama.
So Josh II, who worked for the Abernathy family was well acquainted with plantation work, although he left the plantation sometime in the 1920s, to wander about in New Orleans, and through the Hightower family there, he got work in North Carolina, as you can see, from the Abernathy family.

Langdon Abernathy often listened to his father talk about his grandfather Justin C. Abernathy, who was in WWI, died in 1947, a hero of sorts, but so was the old Josh, the one from the Civil War days, the first of the three old Josh’s and I suppose that helped him decided later on in life that he would be a soldier, and he would end up being a Corporal in the United States Army, in Vietnam, instead of going onto College, Harvard, as his mother Caroline wanted him to.
One night, while sitting out in the back area of the plantation, by Old Josh’s shanty, he told the following story, or stories, stories his father Silas told him, Langdon was sitting on Josh’s wooden steps leading up onto the wooden floorboard of an outside porch, Josh drinking some moonshine, a pipe in his mouth, Amos from the Stanley and Minnie Lue from the Wallace Plantation were there also, and Minnie has come to work for the Abernathy family on a permanent basis (there has been some drastic changes to the plantation and Wallace family):

“Son,” said Old Josh W.J., “my paw, Silas, he told me his paw, Old Josh the first, is what they called him, like you do for me, and he say, back in 1864, his paw, Old Josh W.J., had to work for the Army for six months, ole man Hightower, Charles Hightower done leant him out, he say he had no choice, and he up in went to Vicksburg of all the darn places the Army done takes you to. He say he was working as a mule driver, with the 32d Ohio folks, company E, for a spell, and my paw Silas say, when his paw come back he raised his voice so high, he made a new record fur profanity, he say it was normal for those folks, and habit forming, that he raise his voice so high he done scared the birds in the tree to flight. He said once he met a man who guarded prisoners, and he told them, ‘he’d kill the damned white-livered, red-headed, son of a b—‘ ‘and then later on hit the corporal for calling him the same back. It is a fever that comes to a man inside of him, paw say that took paw Josh a year to get his language back to normal. But that was the way it was back in those days, so my paw say to me, that his paw say to him. Ef-‘n that makes any sense to youall?
“Matter-of-fact, here’s another tale my paw Silas done told me: back in those days, men went to war, women stayed home, and nursed the wounded, and when they done come home, they did the romance thing, and it was between men and women, no other way, but there be a few exceptions, so paw say, one being, some women dressed up like men, put on da uniform, combatants, disguised like men: many passionate encounters paw say during da war, between men and other men too. So you sees there is this homosexual activity and paw say no one was disciplined fur it, because no one ever knew what to call it, the term, homosexual didn’t exist until after da war. So paw says, that old Josh say, what can you say? He jes’ close’ his eyes he tell me, and go onto sleep and pray no one of those kind of folk come to him, cuz then he goin’ to fight, and they goin’ to hang him.
“Paw say, he saw many of da high ranking officers with women in those there tents they lived in, dressed like men, so they could have what they want when they wanted it. Generals mostly; matter-of-fact, right here in North Carolina, by Monroe’s Cross Roads, General Kilpatrick escaped with only his pants on one day, during a battle, and his gal Alice, was said to have saved the flag. But it was really not true, a soldier named Miller held the flag paw say, he saw it wit’ his own eyes. So you see son, the birds and the bees, they git busy back then.
“Paw told me he saw so much prostitution, so much venereal disease and alcoholism, that he had nightmares he had to go to church and denounce the evils of the skin trade before he go-on wit’ the mules, and he say, when he went to church there were more prostitutes there than Methodists, and they came not to ask for forgiveness of sin but to lure the soldier out after he done went to church, and he say the soldier he gone to church not for church sake, but to get out of KP, or kitchen duty.
“Anyhow son, that there is the entire story for the night, I sure hope ef-in you a goin’ to be a soldier, and go onto war, you don’t forget what my paw tell me, and be a good soldier; now its time you git-on to bed, your paw goin’ to git his dander up if you don’t.”


Chapter Seven


Old Josh’s Civil War Folly Flock
((Or, the Birds and the Bees for Langdon Abernathy)
(Fall of 1966))



“It was in those far-off days,” said Cole Abernathy, to his son Langdon, one evening when he and Cole Abernathy sat outside on the Plantation House steps in the chilled air (it was in the fall of 1966, Langdon was fifteen years old now, talking about going into the Army as often he did, the Vietnam Conflict had started).
“It was, Josh’s Great Grandfather in the 1860s, Old Josh the first, when he went for those six months driving mules for the Army, with the military he ran into many things, and back then back one-hundred years ago or so—as it might not seem odd today, but did back then, a woman was to be celibate or have a dozen kids and die normally of childbirth, somewhere along the road, and many a soldier, or even family man, wore out his share of wives in a life time.
“Well,
Old Josh fell into a colony of women and men during the Civil War, that he said, prohibited both love and monogamy, but if a male wanted to have sex within the group, a female that is—because there was a little bit of the other kind going on—he simply asked her, or had someone else ask her for him, and they went into a private room, and made love, in particular he mentioned the Oneida Colony, and some of the young soldiers wanted to go AWOL, to join the Colony, along with other colonies of that time and day.”
“We have such Colony’s nowadays I’ve read about them pa,” said Langdon.
“But let me finish what Silas, told his son Josh, which the old Josh, told Silas, and I am now telling you, it was in the 1860s this took place, and all the way to about 1880; anyhow, if the couple agreed, they retired to a private groom, I think I said that already, and this helped the soldiers at times when they ran into these so called colonies, and it helped the young men of the times from ejaculation I suppose, you can discern what that is son, right? (Langdon nods his head yes) and the women no longer limited to one orgasm—suited them fine, which at times I suppose can be a real frustrating experience. So after the sex the couple returned—or couples, if it was couple sex—to their separate rooms, perhaps some pillow talk in-between, and between several couples of the colony and a few visiting soldiers, you had couple-bonding, especially if the soldiers had their future wives that belonged to the community.
“The complexity of marriage was abandoned for this commune sex, which was organized for the most part. Old Josh must have thought it the strangest thing, nowadays folks think it a new deranged obsession that is taking place among the young folk, when the subject of commune living becomes the subject of conversation, but it is old stuff simply being brought up again, I don’t say it is right, but it just is, especially in California. Who knows, maybe we even have some of those groups over here in North Carolina. Anyhow, the birth rate of such colonies was actually very low. The folks of the commune felt the sexual please of all this was simply a divine gift; opportunity was for both male and female or couples. Men often told their superiors when in the military surroundings, after their adventure—of their adventure—reported might be a better word, and so they reported the situation after an hour of coitus. The women even signed a manifesto, indicating they belonged to nobody, only themselves, but acknowledged belonging to God. And again, old Josh had the hardest of times to understanding that.
“Of course what you don’t hear about is the massive sexual related diseases that plagued the Army during those days, as it went from one location to another, and this was a fear within the communes also, for loose women in those days followed the soldiers wherever they went and sold themselves also, built tent cities a mile or so away from the soldiers. So what I’m really trying to tell you, to get at Langdon, in a nutshell, is if you go into the military, and as these years pass on, you seem to want to, play it safe if you have to play at all, you do understand what I am saying do you not?”
“I understand pa, I’ll be careful, you’re worried about me getting syphilis, right?” remarked Langdon.



VII


Mayhem in the Countryside
(1961-69)


Chapter One


Winter Had no Spring
((The Wallace Boy…) (Or: “Death from the Window)


((The Wallace Boy’s, 1961) (Part One of two))




(1961) The December frost come over Fayetteville, and even more so on its outskirts, where the three plantations dwelt, where the Abernathy, Stanley and Wallace Plantations resided, snow on its way; near twilight on the Wallace plantation it was pretty quiet, its owners resting, or preparing to go to bed. Wally was awake in the living room this evening, by the hearth, rubbing his hands together, feeling the warmth of the heat on his balding head, glowing and heating up the rugs his bare feet stood on, making his white milky skin a pinkish red, and there he stood, stood erect, silently stood listening to the sounds of the flickering flames, coming off the dry wood in the hearth; the old man, Wally Wallace, 81-years old, felt younger than he should have, perhaps his nineteen-year old lover, made him feel that way. She was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, feeling her stomach, looking out the side window; there you could see the front gate to the plantation, and Wally and Frank’s 1950-Chevy, green, spotless (usually).
Down the road a bit, Cole and Caroline Abernathy, owners of the Abernathy Plantation, were writing out a check for their son’s school, Langdon Abernathy who was attending a private prep school, prepping for college along the way through his normal studies to be a future professional. He was ten-years old.
Wally, looked out the window, the same one Burgundy Washington was looking out (his maid and lover),
“Black Beauty, what do you see with those big dark eyes?” he liked calling her that, the negress was more than a lover now to him, more than a maid also, she was carrying his kid, now six months pregnant, and she had only been working there seven months.
“Your car, I love your car, I think your brother left the window open though!” She commented.
He looked closer, put his nose against the glass, opened up his eyes-lids wider, the rain was coming down, it was hard for him to see, then he ran and got a flashlight, shinned it on the car, and lo and behold, she was right, Burgundy was correct, it was open, the window was wide open, and the rain was pouring in threw it.
He said in haste (in a mumble), “Got to roll it up, got to roll it up,” as he stood there, looked at Burgundy’s belly, “I’ll do it, I’ll roll it, you can’t, and Minnie Lue (Walsh a cousin to the Walsh’s in Ozark, Alabama)… she still up?” he asked, but it was apparent she was fast asleep in the back shanty by the barn. A rhetorical question, at best, “No, I’ll roll it up…!” he says again.
Burgundy was no longer sleeping in the maids room, next to the parlor, she was sleeping in one of the guests room upstairs on the second floor, next to Wally’s room, with a fireplace, and with a light lit fire every night.
Old Wally was going to have an heir, a successor, something that really never dawned on him before, and now it was special, and he was proud, Frank wasn’t, but for once, the fraternal twin brother didn’t care, it got too cold, way too in that old wooden walled plantation house that dated back to 1780, and no one had ever put in a furnace, no furnace, nor electric or gas heat, just a fireplace, a hearth, matter-of-fact, a few hearths one in the living room, and one in two of the bedrooms, and his unborn was priority, thus he, Wally made it clear, there would be wood in her heath ever night until the child was born.
Quicker than a jack-rabbit, Wally ran to the backdoor, out it and onto the side to the front yard to close the car window.
Betty Hightower, and her husband Jason, came for the holidays visiting her sister Caroline, at the Abernathy plantation. She did that almost every Christmas that is, those Christmas her sister did not go down to New Orleans to visit her. She brought her daughter Cassandra along (daughter to Betty Hightower, born 1954).

Old Wally ran faster than a jack-rabbit out that door, to his beloved car, the one he and his brother worked on from the day they bought it, talked things over while working on it, actually created work that didn’t need to be done on it, so they could work on it and be together, and talk.
There was now a cold wind about, Wally became warm inside though, almost not sensing the cold, he felt warm from the several shots of whisky he had in the past few hours, as he went to open the car door to roll up the window, he slipped into the mud, onto his back, hit his head, but he was alright, looked up as if he was trying to refocus, feeling like an upside down turtle, then grabbed onto the handle of the car to help him pull himself up, gripped it with his hands, but the wind and the rain, and the coolness in the air, penetrated his muscles and bones—a spasm occurred in his joints, his muscles, and he couldn’t pull his weight up, and his fingers opened up and he slipped back down onto his back again, back into the mud, the cold freezing mud and slush, yet he experienced warmth in those several shots of whisky he drank, a false warmth, a warmth that wasn’t really heat— heat fooling his body, because he was really cold, he just didn’t recognize it, his mind didn’t identify it, his body functions did, this time he didn’t get back up, but screamed, yelled, yelped like a dying dog for someone help him, that is when Burgundy closed her eyes, and fell to sleep.





Chapter One


“…jes’ an ole black cook.”
((The Wallace Boy’s) (Part two of two))



Doctor Ritt ((Albert John Sr. Ritt, born 1891- ) (who fought in WWI)) who owned the Ritt National Bank in Fayetteville plus the a bank in Ozark, Alabama, plus is a medical doctor, was called in the morning to the Wallace Plantation, he knew the Wallace boys at first hand; his older brother went to school with him, James J. Ritt, class of 1897, born the same year of the Wallace boy.
Minnie Lue had discovered Wally dead on his back, exposure to the elements, she presupposed, told Frank about it, woke Burgundy while she was asleep in an easy chair.
Doctor Ritt looked at the old man, an impressive face, a little bald, muddy nose and eyes, and muddy blue-jeans, some gold in his teeth showing, “The second fall did him in,” said the doctor. He must had tried pretty hard to get up out of that slush, hit his head hard the second time, see here, the bump, he was knocked out, froze to death the rest of him. He reeks with alcohol; perhaps he thought he was warm, nothing more to say Frank. Too bad someone left the window open.”
Frank turned to Burgundy, and gave her the evil-eye, didn’t say a word, just the evil-eye.
Captain Chamberlain from the Fayetteville police station, was on hand, and said in so many words: it doesn’t look like a crime and made some notes, and left it at that, as if nothing really unusual took place; a morning’s work for him, completed in fifteen-minutes at the plantation, and an hour’s ride out to the Wallace Plantation, and another hour’s ride back to Fayetteville, all summed up in one early morning.
“Where’s you sister,” asked Dr. Ritt.
“She’s visiting folks in Ozark, Alabama, she’s always down there, likes it there better than here—, I’ll let her know don’t worry,” commented Frank.
“You alright Frank?” asked Minnie Lue.
“I’ll never be alright again, what you talking about, alright; do you think I’m sick,” he said trying to catch his breath from this exhausting shock.
“I reckon I knows more ‘bout you than youall knows about yourself, cuss you is sick in the heart, and you need to rest before you have one of those heart attacks, folks talk about…” said Minnie Lue.
“What did you come down here for Doc, Wally or me?” asked Frank.
“For Wally of course,” replied the doctor.
“Then do what you-all needs to do, and leave me alone,” said Frank, walking up to his room, a tear in his eye.
“Aint that somethin’” said Minnie Lue.
“Yes,” said the doctor, they were together all those years, I wonder who left the window open? Maybe he feels guilty.”
“No, he dont feel no guilt, he knows.”
“Who then?” asked the doctor.
“You got to ask him, not me, I’m jes’ an ole black cook.”


Chapter Three

The Monster Hog
(…of the Wallace Plantation)
(August, 1964)


It was a bad summer in 1964, bad because the Wallace Plantation had buried, Charlie Codden, a relative of Abby Wallace, bad because she did not have the help she needed to take care of the place, Langdon Abernathy was told not to return to work for them anymore, it was all too much: first Burgundy, and the slaying of her child, and then the mysterious hanging of Old Whisky Charlie, and before that the deaths of Frank and Wally, although that was now a little over three years in the past since Wally had died. Even old Amos avoided the plantation as if it was plagued by God and Satan and/or both; Burgundy was still in the hospital in the Midwest, close to two years now. So, what next could happen, or go so wrong, no one knew, and no one wanted to be acquainted with it, whatever, and whenever it was going to be, and everyone knew it was going to be—just a matter of time, they avoided he plantation. The Ritt family, was making money off the land they bought, and although that did not worry Abby for the most part, she heard the ghosts—as she referred to them—talking at night how they hated Abby for selling the land to the Ritt Bank. Evidently, Wally and Frank hadn’t gotten over it yet, hadn’t gotten enough revenge, because he fought over who got to tie the hands of Whisky Charlie, and who got to swing the chandelier with Charlie hanging from it, that is what Abby told Amos anyhow.
But what was really on her mind, Abby’s mind, now was to sell the plantation, and so she had put it in the paper, put it up for sale, and Frank, the mean one, the suggestive one, angry and more hateful than a horde of rattle snakes, the more aggressive one of the two brothers, read the three line ad in the paper: “Lovely four acre plantation (or, hobby farm) outside of Fayetteville, for sale, any reasonable price.”
Frank and Wally knew there was no other plantations for sale, this was it, Abby was selling their souls now, so the brothers grim said.


It was a warm August evening, in the year 1964, the end of August, Abby heard the hogs squealing, fighting with one another, biting at their tails, at their feet and ankles, the big one, the one they called “Big Wally the Hog,” the seven-hundred pound hog, the one that won a Blue Ribbon at the County Fair, was becoming nasty to the smaller hogs, one very small one in particular, the only very small one in the enclosure, the pigpen, took a nibble out of its leg, it was a week since Amos came around to feed the hogs, and she was always scared to get too close to the wooden hog cage, although it was fenced in, with four by four poles, and two by four cross beams, to make a sturdy fence. Actually the several hogs, all over 400-pounds each, except that one little one that got a bite taken out of its leg, the very little one—along with the rest—were yelping to be fed. Abby at this point was quite frustrated, hearing those hogs yelling like wild dogs night and day, endlessly, and so she called up the Stanley house for Amos to come over and feed them, and Amos refusing to work for her, his mind unchanged, it was out of sympathy he had come the few times he did, but she was mumbling now to herself, mumbling about her brothers, and that all was too, way too much for Amos, he refused to come all the more.
Mr. Ritt, the owner of the bank who purchased the land from Abby, through Burgundy, and in earlier times bought land from Frank and Wally Wallace (when they were alive), stopped by to see Abby, just a kind gesture if anything, he knew she liked company; he figured he’d say hello, and she’d for sure, as she often did, offer him coffee and cake, as usual and he’d have a little break, and be on his way. But she didn’t answer the door when he came, and the hogs were going wild in the back area, where the pig enclosure was, the pigpen. And he went back to see what all the fuss was about.

The evening by itself was most pleasant with its starry space overhead, and gibbous moon overlooking Wallace Plantation­—had not the hogs been yelping, moreover giving it a uneasy kind of touch within its atmosphere, it all would have seemed, would have been a perfect end— to a long day.
As he, Mr. Ritt walked slowly back to the pigpen, it seemed as if everything was unattended, he even got a cramp in his stomach, a nervous cramp, as if something strange had taken place, or was taking place, often times one gets such feelings, emotions—triggered by something the mind itself is unaware of, but the body and its inners, its guts, nerves, a sensitivity wrapped up within those elements, and within the blood cells and genes, and you get such feelings when something is wrong, deadly wrong—death reeks, speaks to your fiber, and your body does something like a turnabout, a knotting up of muscles to protect you, to guard you from heart attacks and strokes and all those impending doom related occurrences that take a person by surprise, it signals the brain, beware…! And it was doing just that.
The hogs were fighting mad, squealing mad, jerking this and that, bumping everything, pulling with their teeth, bits and pieces of the wooden fence, gnawing on the thinner parts of the fence like rates, to free themselves: he got closer, they were limbs he was seeing, limbs his eyes scanned, indeed he confirmed ‘…they are limbs,’ red like roots, muscles, fleshly muscles hanging out like threads from those body parts; hair hanging out of their mouths, they had been chewing Abby Wallace up—alive, now chewing her up, dead, like pulp, as if she was in a wheat grinder, a sawmill, she evidently was trying to feed the hogs, fell in, or got pushed in, through the fence (because it would be pretty hard to fall through those two-foot openings between the two wooden flat pieces of timber, one above the other, crossovers, and foolish to have gone to the top of the fence of the pen it would not have been necessary) and before she could get up, she was pined down by the monster hog. Her head was balled, they had ripped the hair out from its roots, and her torso was the main thing now the hogs, the shark like hogs were fighting over….
Her shawl lay over one of the fence two-by-fours wooden cross beams, and many of her bones were splintered about, and the hogs were trying to lick the marrow out of them; everything was being caked with mud, as it surfaced here and there, as the pigs moved about, then sunk into the mud again, as if the hogs themselves were trying to hide the flesh from the other predators; Mr. Ritt had to turn about, looked deep into the sky, hold his stomach, catch his breath and grab his heart, as everything leaped forward at once.





Chapter Four



First Death
((for Langdon, Abernathy) (1959))


Revealing Years for Langdon



Occasionally, Jerome La Rue, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, had his friend from Elementary school over to his house, that being, Langdon Abernethy, to study for the next day’s tests, or if it was a weekend, for Monday’s tests.
Jerome had a brother, Henry La Rue, two years older than he and Jerome being of the same age as Langdon.
Jerome’s father and mother (mother’s name being Loretta) were split up, not divorced, just separated, on a long term bases—he was an alcoholic and womanizer for the most part.
The father was fifty-three years old, in 1959, and Langdon and Jerome were both eight, Loretta in her late forties.
It was near the second of July, when this happening took place.
Langdon and Jerome were both elbow to elbow on the floor of Jerome’s bedroom studying for tomorrow’s test, pointing out this and that, laughing at this and that when his mother, Loretta came in, to tell him some news, she had a face that showed a crisis was at hand, it showed love that never worked out, but love all the same, the love that once produced two kids, that old love lost love, that was now remembered on her face, a small face, someone was dead, “It’s you father, Jerome (Henry was nowhere around)…he was found in his car, dead a few hours ago, evidently he died yesterday, it was parked by a downtown theater, clearly he fell to sleep, drunk, and never woke up, I need to go down to identify him at the morgue, the police called, you both can come and wait in the car if you want,” she said this in the manner as, as if she had almost expected someday, sometime in the near future, something like this was going to happen, and for it to happen abruptly, and so she was prepared, and tried to ease it out to Jerome, and perhaps because Langdon was present, Jerome was at ease for the moment, if not a little in disbelief: and sometimes that’s the way the Lord works—thought Loretta, he puts a calm companion by your side for abrupt trials in ones life, to soften the blow.
Next, Loretta put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the kitchen table near the fish aquarium, fumbled with her keys to the car, as Jerome and Langdon put on their shoes and gathered out by the doorway, waiting for Loretta.
At the morgue, Jerome and Langdon went with Mrs. La Rue into a cold room, there a body covered by a sheet, a white linen sheet, lay over the body Loretta was to identify, a man pulled back the sheet—looked at Loretta, “Yes,” she said, it is Bob, Bob La Rue, my husband,” his face was purple and colored—more like distorted colors, almost burnt from laying in the way of the sun a whole day, the sun seeping through the front window of the car, baking, almost frying it up like toast, to a crisp, near dark purplish red, somewhat inflated.
Death didn’t look pretty, thought Langdon, it looked ugly as a new born infant, all covered with blood and whatever other substances the infant carries out of its mother’s womb, into the new world; it seemed like death left, the same way birth came.




Chapter Five

Josh’s Christmas Fable
(1962, at the Abernathy Plantation)


“Lawd save us,” Old Josh shouted, “here comes a bad wish, and everyone fell onto their backs and stomachs and everyone fell onto their knees, I swear they did, even onto one another, as the storm went through and picked them up, tossed them about, like cotton candy, they done rolled down hills, rolled up hills, tumbled like frogs off a lily pad into the water, picked them up like tornados do and done tossed them everywhichway I declare, that there wind did that, I swear it did… and all cuz someone had a bad wish,” Old Josh told Langdon and Cassandra on Christmas Day, in 1962.
“Come on now Josh tell us more, I hope its as good as the story you told us last year, around Christmas time, when I came up to visit cousin Langdon, with my ma and pa,” said eight year old Cassandra.
“Youall done got a year older, so I is got to git a year smarter to tells you a better story than last year I see,” said old Josh, “I bet you done come all that way from New Orleans jes’ to hear this story here in North Carolina, right?”
“Well, no, not really, but I thought about it a lot, and the closer I got to Fayetteville, and after ma and pa gassed up the car there, I got a-thinking more about it, so I am guess I was somewhat ready fer it Josh!” commented Cassandra.

Betty and Jason Hightower (Jason related to the Hightower’s in Ozark, Alabama), Cassandra’s parents were in the plantation house with Caroline and Cole Abernathy sitting around a table talking, having some Christmas cheer, a glass of wine, and some turkey, leftover from the afternoon, looking at their large Christmas Tree in the living room, with all it bulbs and tinsel on it, presents all about the living room in disorder, and the hearth was blazing, crackly loud, and full of colors, like the Christmas tree, and the warmth was strong throughout the room; as usual, Langdon and Cassandra were getting their Christmas gift from the old negro plantation hand, Josh: for Langdon it had become traditional, for Cassandra, it was her second encounter with Josh’s lively tales.
Old Josh, was sitting on a bench against a pole, near the hayloft in the barn, and Cassandra along with Langdon, sat shoulder to shoulder, cross-legged, both with two sets of pants on, it was cold, and they sat on the wooden planked floor, under some hay, to make it a bit more comfortable as Josh would tell his story and they usually lasted a while.
“Fine,” said Josh, as he saw both the kids eager to hear the story, ready to experience his extraordinary adventures, as they often ended up being, “as I waz about to say, the old timer, Otis, he in my story, not sure how he git there but he did, anyhow, Otis told this here little girl and boy, down in Ozark, Alabama, where Abby Wallace kin is from, back in 1873, he say—and he done told my paw and my paw done told me, standing as close to me as I is to you—and I is goin’ to tell youall, he say, ‘here this prayer book, dont youall go and read that there page called eleven, yous can read all the other pages, but not that there eleven (Old Josh had a prayer book laying down next to his thigh on the wooden bench he was now sitting on, he picks it up to demonstrate, says:)—and this here book, in this here hand, is the very same prayer book, Old Otis had, dont ask me hows I gits it, cuz I got it, and that is mi business. Anyhow, he tells this little girl and boy, yous cant read page eleven cuz it be magic, and the magic made the storm I done jes’ told you about. I know you is thinkin’ how does this all work. Well, Otis he tell da girl and that there boy, the little boy, whatever you think you do, and say, and wish for when you open that there page I jes’ mentioned—that storm dont happen. Oh I reckon it kinda hard to believe, but it be as true as Langdon’s dog’s tale is, and hes a looking at me now, and that there tail ant all that long.”
“Oh, I don’t believe I ever heard such a yarn like that Langdon, I think Josh has blown his top this time,” said Cassandra in disbelief.
“Well,” said Josh, “how you think the storm come, it was that little boy and girl, they done thought about a storm, and it came, after they done turned the page to page eleven.”
Then Cassandra picked up the prayer book that was sitting by old Josh’s thigh on the wooden bench. Turned it to page eleven, and sat down by Langdon again, she was all of eight-years old, and a good reader. She looked at the page, then looked at Josh, at the page then at Josh, then at Langdon, then at the dog Tobacco and his tail, and back at Josh, her head and eyes were spinning around like a top, she was getting tired, “Fine,” said Langdon, are you going to make a wish?”
It was midnight, and both the kids were tired, but they couldn’t miss the story, and now, like the years before, there was a heartbeat to the story, and as usual they’d dream and test the story inside their dreams, and most likely the storm would come about (sometime in the future), a test to the truth. But for now, the wishing was a little different.
Both kids got drowsy, as did Tobacco, and all of a sudden he fell to sleep right then and there.

“I’m so tired, maybe we can get the rest of the story tomorrow Langdon,” said Cassandra, adding, “I wish I was in bed,” and all of a sudden, she disappeared, instantly disappeared.
“What happened to her Josh?” asked Langdon.
“She done wished to be in bed, so I expect she is in her bed,” commented Josh.
Langdon started to read a passage on page eleven, and he wished in while in the process of reading a passage that he could find Cassandra, and—lo and behold—he vanished the second he finished his wish, and there they both stood, both Langdon and Cassandra, in her bedroom in the plantation house.
Then all of a sudden they were back in the barn.
“By gosh, what just took place, Langdon? I mean it was so fast I don’t know if it really happened,” said Cassandra.
“I done wished you both back in the barn,” said Josh with a smile.
“I think we took a little trip,” said Langdon.
Then Josh turned the page. They remembered last year that the story he told, Old Josh had told, it was about toboggans, and they both somehow ended up in Minnesota, now it was a trip back and forth from the house to the barn, airmail, kind of like.
“I want two tickets to the cinema for tomorrow,” said Cassandra, adding, “is that okay Josh to wish for?”
Josh had the prayer book closed, “Lordy, Lordy, that there prayer book has one powerful page, youall know that now (Mathew 7:7), I fear youall goin’ to get so tired you fall to sleep with the page open, and you dream up a storm, and you knows what happens then, its best you hightail into the house and go on to sleep, and next year youall will get a new tale to tell.”
(The kids had fallen to sleep, and Josh had turned the oil lantern down some, and talked softly, and took the kids on somewhat of a hypnotic trip…and then woke them up.)
“Oh shucks, Josh,” said Langdon, “I was getting just warmed up for more wishes.”
“Well, I wish you’d all go to sleep back in that there house of yours, and next year we come up with a new tale, that one there is all warn out now. And don’t go on asking me what is what, and what is not, cuz you knowin’ what is and you knowin’ what is not, you see, it all belongs to you, if you wants it to be, it be, if-‘n you dont, it aint.”

And so that was old Josh’s Christmas story and advice for the kinds back in 1962.




Chapter Six


Full of Beans
at Wallace Creek
((Adolescence) (1965))Langdon’s Story))




In the spring of 1965, Wallace Creek was full of mud and cold cool fresh water, from the meltdown of a cold winter, when summer came the creek was flowing almost like the river it was connected to, it was high; the sun likened to a fire from a winter’s plantation’s hearth, which made for a great summer getaway down by the creek. Bees were buzzing, birds chirping, and dogs barking, and there was a warm wind that whirled its way into, through and around the slim branches of the trees, loosening the leaves attached to those slender branches, and they wiggled free, and fell drunkenly onto the ground; Cassandra was eleven years old, looked thirteen if not older and developing fast in all the right places for womanhood; Langdon, was all of fourteen, and as handsome as any movie star in Hollywood.


Those summers prior to 1965, were happy summers for the most part, and this summer for Cassandra and Langdon, would be no less, with a few surprises, but the last. She came to visit as usual for three months on the Abernathy Plantation, sometimes she stayed the full three months, and a few times less, and a summer or two, Caroline and Langdon, stayed in the Hightower House, in New Orleans. They had quite the system, and it broke the boredom of life, although Caroline would only stay for a few weeks, and leave Langdon in Betty Hightower’s care, and likewise, Betty would leave Cassandra in the care of Caroline on their plantation, outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina after a few weeks and leave, and they would get a break from the kids, and the kids would get a break from their parents. And Langdon and Cassandra got to grow up together, harmoniously, with a family member almost their own age.
At eleven years old, she was quite developed, so Langdon would find out this year when they went skinny dipping in the creek. Her body was smooth and hard, with a flat stomach, and Langdon had an iron abdomen to match, and once they put on their swimming suites down at Wallace Creek, on Wallace property, it was show and tell time. Both swam together near the river that the creek connected to, it was deeper there, and Cassandra liked looking at Langdon when he floated on his back, she was not shy by no means and even asked him to show off a little bit his physique, and neither was Langdon shy, if anything they both were a little taken back at each others developing bodies. They snuck glance after glance of each other, checking out each other’s limbs, and movements, and the erect way Cassandra was now walking (just eighteen months prior Cassandra had asked her mother for a bra, but was told point blank, ‘not yet!’ not until she got something to put into it, and it was a sad day to say the least, but at twelve months later, she had her first bra, and a little something to put into it, and now there was much more to put into it, although her mother had for the interim, stopped taking notice, yet Cassandra didn’t, and Langdon, now eighteen-months down the road, could verify, she would be needing a new one soon).

This very summer, they both swam almost everyday, and they were no longer looking for the deep, deep water near the river, anyplace would do to get wet, and lay half naked, and sometimes a little more than half; they laid by each other and fell to sleep on a blanket. It was perhaps the best of their growing years, the best summer they would ever remember, the most tranquil for sure, untroubled without the slightest worry, matter-of-fact, had you asked them about growing up, I’m sure they didn’t want to let go of this summer, they liked it as it was, if only they could remain this youthful age forever. But the Wallace brothers saw them swimming, and sleeping by the creek, they were on Wallace land, and created some rumors, gossip that went from the Wallace Plantation, to the Stanley Plantation, and on to Cole and Caroline Abernathy’s ears, and even Betty Hightower’s ears in New Orleans. Other than exploration, nothing had really happened, that is to say, nothing took place, seriously took place between the two cousins. As close as one can become, to Adam and Eve, in pure innocence, before they ate the apple, Cassandra and Langdon, had—even uncalled for ‘peace of mind’ that very thing, all grownups seek and seldom find. But Cassandra’s childhood was over this summer, and she knew it, she was blossoming, and Langdon knew it I suppose—likewise.
Minnie Lue Walsh, Frank and Wally’s cook, met both Cassandra and Langdon by the creek one afternoon, told them that the two brother’s had aroused some suspicion among the plantations, and even called Cassandra’s mother in New Orleans told her that they were sleeping by each other half naked on a blanket by their creek; had it been a year ago, it would not have been anything to gossip about, or so called wary news, it would not have mattered, but this year it was different, it did matter, it had new substance. Thus, Betty Hightower told her daughter over the phone, “This is the last summer you will be spending on the Abernathy plantation, without us present,” and she was final on that subject.
Betty was wise enough not to blame anyone in particular, lest she start a family feud, and pointed no fingers in any direction, matter-of-fact, she said very little on the subject, although one thing she did say to Caroline was,
“I think the kids, are not kids anymore, they are adolescents, young people who are changing, and up to now their lives have been uninterrupted by corruption—but the seed of desire is planted in all of us, and for them young ones, with unknown factors and hormones going wild, I think I have to give Cassandra a little more personal attention, so if we visit, we’ll do it together, if you don’t mind.”
It promoted a perceptibly cooler relationship between the two families, and to be quite honest, it was the last summer they, Langdon and Cassandra, truly enjoyed that so called uninterrupted—peace of mind, that half naked innocence, Adam and Eve must had enjoyed—it was, that long glistening summer, the last of a season in their lives.




Chapter Seven

The Stanley House



The Stanley (house) Plantation


The Phantoms of the Wallace Plantation
Whisky Charley, (1964) Part one of two

hiskey Charlie had went to the Wallace Plantation to be and live with Abby Wallace for the summers, or at least that was the original plan, although I think deep down inside their mind, both Abby’s mind and Charlie’s, they had no intentions to limit it to summers, it was perhaps a smoke screen for the neighbors, and relatives in Ozark, Alabama were Charlie lived ((Whisky Charlie Codden) (a distinct cousin born 1935, relative to Frank, Wally, and Abby Wallace, of Ozark, Alabama; Charlie’s sister being sister Cindy Codden, born 1932; their mother was the sister to Gertrude Wallace.))

They now had only four acres of land, a plantation house on that remaining four acres, but a patch compared to what they had sold, which was 396-acres some time back, meaning her brothers, Frank and Wally, and thereafter, Burgundy, who owned the land for a short period, she now is in a mental facility, for the mentally deranged, in Prescott Wisconsin.
It is fair to say, Abby does not miss her two brothers who are now deceased, she hardly seen them when they were alive, and therefore the grieving process was next to nil. To be honest, I think the only one that grieved over Frank Wallace was Minnie Lue Walsh, the cook, now working for the Stanley’s, and as far as Wally goes, there is no human being left to grieve him, so they—the two brothers—parted this earth, with perhaps what they came with, nothing, although Wally got his brother Frank’s grieving, he had died a little before Frank.
Abby does like company nearby, it’s a thing with her—and Whiskey Charlie Codden, is good company (Langdon Abernathy is now thirteen-years old, growing like a weed, works for Abby, and he also is good company, along with Amos, who now and then, more then, than now, works for the Stanley’s, helps Abby).

A sudden phenomena looked as if to be entering Abby’s life, by and large, disrupting it, engaging her mind, taxing her sleep, paranoia coupled with anxiety, not sure if I’d call it a disorder, perhaps there is some logic to this, some realism also, for she is seeing ghosts, pure and simple, ghosts, she says to Charlie she sees Frank and Wally talking by that old 1950-Chevy, every morning, just talking, that is all they do, and she is wondering what they got to talk about. She really doesn’t even want to get out of bed until the afternoon. If she looks out the window, down onto the car, down onto that old green Chevy they simply look up at her, pay her little attention, and then go about their business, whatever they were originally talking about. Not much difference from when they were alive, but it frightens her, scares her a little. She doesn’t know if there is any substance to this or not.
In addition to these visual scenes into the invisible world, that Charlie Codden cannot see, Abby is hearing voices, those of Wally and Frank, sitting by the hearth and they just talk and talk and talk the night away. It is becoming all too much for her to endure. She, Abby, is not a mentally strong woman, in particular, no—never has been, and so this state of paranormal psychological occurrences, is becoming, or is beginning to become, takeover that is, more of her life, consuming you might say, more hours everyday, in the day, likened to a bad habit, an alcoholic, or drug habit, one that slowing possesses you and then it grips you by the gut, and you got to see, listen, and you get more and more involved, it controls you, your life, your very existence—a damn fixation develops, and this is what is happening to Abby.
Her family, and she knows her family tree pretty well, goes back to the tenth century, back into Scotland for the most part, where they were called, “Those Welish Folk,” meaning those who migrated from Wales, to Scotland, and through time and events, the name was combed out to Wallace. And if you went back to several Great grandmothers one married a Judith, and she was a woman who not only had second insight, but a light blend of Haitian blood, who folks said she saw things, things not of this physical world, and those same folks debated over if she had a gift from God, or perhaps it was from the devil, or was it simply a form of insanity—whose to say, those days are long gone now.
Be that as it may, Langdon Abernathy was working for Abby Wallace at the time which is only a hop-skip and a jump, from his family’s plantation (twenty-one miles outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina) and he would say when questioned, she and Charlie got along well, as well as any two folks could, and perhaps better, they respected one another, if not even a little more.
Well, here is what took place, the Ritt family (who owned the bank in Ozark, Alabama) had bought most of the plantation land up, around the Wallace’s, and now had corn and cotton growing on it, it was the month of July, Amos and Langdon had quite working for the day on the Wallace Plantation, fed the hogs, and mended some fences, among other chores, and Langdon went home, and Amos went back to his regular employer the Stanley family. Now Charlie and Abby are alone. It was during this time, Abby overheard Frank and Wally talking, the ghosts during one of those long evenings I was talking about, when they’d sit by the fireplace, as they often did when they were alive, and what she remembers the most was that Frank, the meaner one of the brothers, was angry at her for accepting the $500,000-dollars for the plantation land Burgundy sold, then turned about and repurchased the plantation home back, without even enough land to spit across. He was madder than a herd of hornets, and swore to get even. That was it, that was all she overheard, that was the top of the iceberg, I say top because what was underneath, only Frank and Wally knew, and Abby would never fully be allowed to know, be familiar with, for sure, but would blame them for, yet she’d not say it out loud, lest she be taken to the same place Burgundy was, the mental hospital; then they vanished, as usual, in this case the voices simply faded out.

In the morning, Langdon came over to see what work Miss Abby wanted him to do—had for him, he knew she would not come down those stairs until noon, she never did, but left a note on the dinning room table, under the chandelier, and when he came into see the note, to read it, he was shocked almost into a vomiting state. There was Charlie, Charlie Codden from Ozark, Alabama, hanging from the chandelier, old Charlie’s hands tied behind his back, hanging like a limp fish, tongue out like a dead bull. He woke Abby up, and she fainted once she got a glimpse of Charlie, scant was the glimpse, but more than enough.
No one expected Abby to have been able to have done such a job as lifting a man in midair that weighed somewhere around one-hundred and eighty pounds, and besides, tied his hands behind him, and a rope around his neck, that was absurd. And Abby would never admit to ghosts, although Langdon knew the story behind her visions and voices, and mentioned them to the Chief of Police, it came to a point of leaving it as a mystery, there was even a suggestion that two bums came from the train nearby, that normally slows down as it nears the city of Ozark, and jumped off that evening, and they might have done the dirty deed, but that was manufactured by the police department, there really was no train, nor bums, but they now had a motive, although nothing was taken, and in place of that, they said the bums were simply hungry, wanted to drink and got too drunk to rob the place, and so they hung Charlie as a stupid trick, and then the file was put into what they called “file thirteen,’ the dead file area, and left to grow mold.

Langdon of course was told never to go back to that haunted house by his parents, where one thing lead into another, and after the other, there was always another, and it just simply looked too much of a troubled spot. And for the most part, he came to be fine with that, he was in those early days, talking much about going into the Army, the Vietnam War I guess had started, and that really is what he was waiting for, a new war.


Chapter Eight


To Die in Silence
((The Wallace Brothers) (summer of 1967))



Most men lead, and live their lives behind walls of misunderstandings, ones they have built for themselves to their hearts desires, perhaps it’s a man thing; whatever, most men die, alone in silence, behind those walls of pretence, wishing at the last moment of breath, they had never built such walls in the first place.
In a like manner, Frank and Wally never did do anything useful, beautiful; it was all impersonal, cold or unfriendly, all out of self-interest, for the most part. I suppose you could say—they never did understand life in general, they lived in-between closed walls.
Whiskey Charles (Charlie Codden originally from Ozark, Alabama, who moved up to the cotton fields of North Carolina, near Fayetteville, to live with Abby Wallace, was a different kind of man, different than Frank and Wally anyway, not a whole lot of difference, but different. I suppose he was for the most part absorbed in doing some little task for the furtherance of his own comfort, whereas, Frank and Wally, lived inside their own self-centeredness, fully.
Cindy Codden, his sister, whom he left by herself in Ozark, and abruptly moved in with his cousin Abby, perhaps for security, money, love—whose to say, or all those reasons put together, or anyone will do separately, had no real intentions of bringing Cindy up to North Carolina, after Cindy and Whiskey Charlie had lived together for years upon years.
Cindy did not complain about the unfairness and equality of life, but yes, she did wonder about men in particular, and in particular, her brother Whiskey Charlie, who was drunk most of the time, and when he wasn’t he was sobering up, and when he was somewhere in-between he was in a fog. Perhaps that is how he got himself killed—she told herself, he just let whoever hung him, hang him without much fight.


It was the summer of 1967, Burgundy Washington (otherwise known as Katie Sexton, and now married, and known as Katie Chandler) was out in the open fields by where once the Wallace Plantation stood, it was burnt down, she was having some men build a fence around the old place, and was checking on the machines, those corn cutting machines in the field she owned, and the boys operating them, boys that had come down from Iowa, and Illinois, and Nebraska to cut for the summer, summer jobs, corn-growing jobs, they left their towns to work down south, to operate machines, and they did well, some of the boys had run away from home, others were dodging the draft, folks being drafted to go fight a lonesome war in some country no one had ever heard of before 1965, called Vietnam, a new invention of mankind, first it was a France war, now America’s new war against the evil of communism (it would be of course, an embarrassing invention in time).
It was Langdon Abernathy’s war—the Vietnam War, whom was a neighbor to the once Wallace Plantation, a striking and romantic adventure to be, he talked about it enough anyhow. He suggested he would go fight in it; to be a hero like his Grandfather, who fought in WWI, perhaps some fifty-years ago, and perhaps in another fifty, they would talk about him likewise, in the same manner.

The graveyard still remained near the hill, and now that old 1950-Chevy of Frank and Wally’s sat by it, and old Minnie Lue’s shanty remained close by, they were all close together now in an empty field, in one corner of the back property, where the pigpen was, use to be, on the Wallace Plantation, the one that Abby fell into and died, was murdered by the big pig, the Blue Ribbon hog, all of its 700-pounds, pure hog, who got his fill of Abby, ate her up like pork-straw.

Cindy Codden was getting nightmares, she saw death, I mean Death, death, Mr. Death, the man who rides the black horse, and comes to collect what is due him, or soon to be, which is a persons residue, when they are about to give up their last breath he appears; brings them to wherever they are suppose to go. Evidently he still rides a horse according to Cindy Codden, even in the time of engines and machines, the man in black, rides a black horse, or at least in her nightmares he did, still does.
Thus, she drove up to Fayetteville, stopped at Mrs. Stanley’s Plantation House, was giving a welcome, and was told she could stay there for a few days while she sorted out her nightmares, that had brought her back to North Carolina from Ozark, Alabama, and perhaps to see her brother’s grave during this time, it was back there in the Wallace graveyard, back by where the pigpen was, beyond that. She knew the neighbors, the Stanley’s and the Abernathy’s that is, her brother of course knew them better, and as she re-familiarized herself with her surrounds, she noticed many bushels of corn were brought out of the corncribs and the great mountain of corn was built on the ground at the edge of a field way beyond where the Wallace Plantation House used to stand, and behind this mountain of corn was another cornfield, just coming into tassel, all owned by Katie Chandler. But she wasn’t here for that, she was here to investigate her nightmare.

On her second day, the morning of the second day at the Stanley Plantation House, she walked up towards the Wallace graveyard, saw the workers in the field throwing the corn over their shoulders, as they did in the old days where her father worked and where he had her work and Charlie worked, all working in the cornfields, throwing corn into a wagon, or truck whatever was available, now it was just trucks they hauled it in, and away onto the corncribs. Mr. Stanley had told her last night, Katie, alias Burgundy, had told her, to make a new friend of them, they could put their cattle into the fields this fall, eat the remains, the stalks left in the ground, the dry corn blades and trample them at the same time. And they thought—let bygones be a bygone, that’s what good Christians do, and so they made a friend out of a murderer, once a murderer.

Cindy was now standing in the old graveyard, where the graves dated back to the 1820s. She looked over again at the harvesting of corn, remembering again the good old days, when her and her brother worked in the fields to bring home money; they were never rich like the Wallace’s though. There was a sense, a feeling you might say, of a poetic atmosphere, a rhythm to harvesting, when the corn was ripe, and they all went into the fields with heavy corn knives, they were but six and seven years old, and cut the stalks of corn close to the ground, they used their right hand, swinging the corn knife, and carried the corn on the left arm. They did it for years on end, until they were fifteen at least. That was back when they were still using horses, some farms were using horses, and the men walked along smoking their pipes and talking, yes there was poetry in it all, not like today, all business and no horses, and weariness on everyone’s face, and no play or horsing around as they say.
It was not only the black man doing the labor, it was the poor white, the children, the nearby town’s boys and girls, and they were the shepherds of the cornfields you could say.
She cleared her throat, saw her brother’s grave, something looked odd, a pipe stuck out of the ground by his grave, over his grave, then she looked up the hill, there was the man on his horse, like in the dream, the nightmare, watching the folks in the cornfields, the apparatus of which the men were on, other machines in the fields, he watched them as they worked, as she stared, and then slowly he turned towards her. She found his stare, less and less appealing, and more difficult to look back at. The noon hour was close at hand, and she wanted to hurry back to the Plantation House to eat, so she told herself.
Cindy stood there thinking, and the man on the horse rode down to her, evidently no one but her could see him, on that huge horse, looking down on her.

“Listen,” he said, “at night, heavily loaded coal trains rumble by, just over the hill, you’ll see the brakeman heave some coal over the fence, large chunks of coal, he does all the time, he don’t realize it will be his death soon, he works a ten-hour shift each day, seven days a week, and heaves that stolen coal for his house, everyday, for an hour or so, it will kill him the stress and strain, he’s fifty-two years old. If you go over there this evening you’ll see him do just what I said; also you’ll see, Charlie, your brother he goes there every night, down along the railroad tracks, he doesn’t know why he does what he does, he’s dead—well, kind of dead, he is suppose to be dead. He is actually in his grave, in a coma. When Frank and Wally died, Frank played a game of chess with me, won the game, and therefore bought himself some time here on this ghostly earth, where he passes by Charlie’s grave each day, rumbling and grumbling. He put a pipe in the ground, it goes down into the wooden casket, the one Charlie is buried in, who remains in that deadly coma, he should be dead, but he keeps him alive, feeds him spiders and worms and all kinds of insects, and keeps him fixed you could say because when he dies, when old Charlie who is suppose to be dead, dies, I will take him, and Frank and Wally, and Abby, all of them, who he has killed, in one way or another, all those who died at the Wallace house, I will put them in chains, and bring them to their destiny, their fate. But a deal is a deal, Charlie has to die a normal death, and he hasn’t, and his spirit is wondering about, like a stray cat. Pull the pipe out and it will end this melodrama!”

Sometimes, and this was one of those times, a piece, a chunk of something is knocked out of ones mind, left blank, as if a train had passed and hit you, and you’re still standing looking at the train passing, it was one of those times, as if daylight was and was no more, as if a window was shut. She looked at the man on the horse, then looked up toward the hillside, saw Charlie walking aimlessly, he was a ghost, a heavily pale ghost, difficulty arose in her, perhaps regard to her religious beliefs, and then she saw Frank, as if he was a streak of moonlight, stirring about, he was afraid to come too close to her because, and only because, the man on the horse sat there, if he left, then what. A chill crept over her body, her lips became dry, she moistened them with her tongue, and pulled the pipe up with all her strength, and consciously at that moment, her brother’s spirit, like dust soaking into the ground, it seeped back into its rightful place, and Frank, silent Frank muttered a few words before the chains of death, bound him tightly.
Like a passing moonbeam, all those bodies that were left behind in a ghostly state, were now bound by heavy chains.

That evening, Cindy went down to the railroad tracks, watched the man, the one Death talked about, watched him toss those large chunks of coal over the fence, his name was Henry Pike, she had learned this when she talked to Death, and then she approached Henry, said,
“Sir…Mr. Pike, yes, you (he approached her, his face weary, dark from the coal, his hands black from the coal, sleepy-eyed).”
“How did you know my name?” he asked.
“Death, told me it, he has been watching you for a long time, and he said you will die soon, because of the coal, your heart will give way, and you will die early, before your time.”
Henry held a big hunk of coal in his right hand, both he and she divided by a fence, a pile of coal lay by her, the coal Henry Pike had thrown over the fence to collect later on and bring home, she saw in his eyes, an overpowering hunger to throw that piece of coal, perhaps Death had told her this to warn him, a gift for a gift, you might say, and she walked away, as he still clung to that piece of coal, he then stiffened his arm, and straight it went backwards, and Cindy closed her eyes, stopped, heard the piece of coal hit the ground, and then a thud, a gruff voice broke the silence, then she saw Death on top of the hill, with a large chain. As he rode by, he said,
“You see, I tried to push the mud away, where now he lay, but he just wouldn’t have it, he’s like a fish to a hook with a worm on it, he just couldn’t resist it.” (It was like Death itself was tired of collecting bodies before it time, perhaps even Death had a sympathetic site to him.)


† And Death looked at Cindy Codden in the eyes, eye to eye, almost shoulder to shoulder, said with a most serious voice:
“Do not stay in the Stanley house—the smell of blood is strong on you, you reek with death, go home, make haste for your name is in my book.”
And when Cindy Codden was about to leave, her car wouldn’t start, she found Amos to look at it, check it out, and it was evening, and all the stores were closed, and Amos couldn’t get the parts he needed until morning, and Cindy resting on the porch, remained waiting.
And as she waited, now deep in her sleep, she fell even deeper into a deadly sleep, and she remembered what Death had told her, and she was ready to go—she told herself, just waiting for the car to be fixed, for Amos to wake her up and say, ‘okay Miss Codden, the car is fixed’, and then she was going to go, go as soon as Amos was finished with the car, but Amos had gone, and she remained in that deep sleep, as he could not fix the car until morning, and Mrs. Stanley had left her sleep, figuring she could go in the morning. But when you allow people to take charge of your life, that is what they do, and honest and fair, was Amos and Mrs. Stanley—that is to say, they had no bad intentions, but nonetheless she fell to sleep, on the porch, and there she stayed, and subject to the elements, and the fate of each person who allows the other to take charge of their lives.
She said to herself, “What a strange dream,” it was of a wolf’s tooth, too much for the mind to fully acknowledge, but the tooth showed up in the strangest way, “What a strange dream,” she said, and then a soldier showed up, it was an old WWI veteran Mr. Abernathy, she recognized his picture, Caroline Abernathy had showed her once his picture, he had died in 1947, and it was 1967, twenty-years had passed, and she (thought, what memory I have) then said to him, “You also are in this strange dream of mine!” Not expecting a response.
“Death was embarrassed to tell you—so Death sent me, to tell you, you are dead, this is not a dream.”
And then she thought of Mr. Pike, said aloud to her dead-self, “No, I simply fell to sleep, I am going to a hotel, as Death warned me.”
“No, you are dead, a wolf pack came while you were sleeping on the porch, and killed you,” said the old soldier, “just like that.”
She, Cindy, looked in a state of contemptuous unbelief: to die like this, how unnatural, she thought.
She felt it was completely criminal, miscast, condemned before her time, condemned for a simple failure to detour her schedule to a different destination—a hotel was on her mind. She felt as if she was a delayed rocket, and the fuse was relit, and the old soldier said, “We are, are we not, such puny creatures.”

First—in order—came disdain then derision, then alarm, then anger, rage, anxiety and last fury, fury because Death was inflexible (or was he?). And then her spirit, Cindy’s spirit and soul vanished, like the flash of an antelope crossing a midnight street when the car lights hit its tail.
She thought she could wrestle with the Angel of Death—like Jacob wrestled with the Angel of God, if not physically, mentally, and by such, found out his weaknesses, but in this case, with Cindy, the Angel of Death, found out Cindy’s weakness without wrestling and did not show up, he had given in, in advance that is, and there really was no more to be said, and she brought on her own punishment, and Death was tired.


Book VII




Cradled with the Devil †1966- 1969

Chapter One

Burgundy Washington



(The New Life; 1966) Burgundy Washington was released from the mental hospital after three plus years, ordered by the courts, it was 1966 now, she had never spent the $2000-dollars Abby Wallace had left her to use as need be while incarcerated, and as a result, took it on the day she walked out of the hospital, and off the grounds. Her $190,000-dollars she had by reselling the Wallace House with its four acres was completely gone, between the hospital and the lawyer, they had picked her dry, you might have even thought it was—and you might not have been too far from the truth, it was premeditated.

“There you see, you made it,” said her Lawyer Mr. Thompson, Henry Thompson of Fayetteville, “I told you, you would, and you did, you just kept the bible under your arms and prayed and got rid of that devil that seemed to haunt you— at least for a while.”
She of course followed his instructions, perhaps not to the crossing of each and every ‘t’ but close to that wobbly ‘t’, because now she was in Fayetteville, North Caroline, where she started from, when she and Thompson first met, talked and endured a national trial. She, Burgundy, back then was twenty-years old—although still young now, in her mid-twenties at the present, and he, Thompson, in his mid 40s, an aristocrat at this time, with his hands into a little of everything it seemed, and he talked like a prince, like he knew what he’d be doing, as if he had already done it. Burgundy knew he had a little if not a lot of the devil in him—old tricky Nick, Lucifer the sly—perhaps just hidden better than most Harvard Graduates, better than her demons that’s for sure, but now she had a little of God in her also—I mean all those years forced to read the bible to impress her doctors, also impressed her, and fellowship with such men, did something—like it or not—did something to her, as much as she knew about the devil, she knew about God also, she got to know Christ, through the chapel while incarcerated, it was impossible not to learn.
She was annoyed by the action and a flush of anger that came to her cheeks, a side of her character that always got her into trouble, in essence, she, Burgundy, in all reality, really was a simple farmer, or farmhand, but shrewd, and Thompson knew that, indefinably shrewd, they both, her and Thompson, carried an air about them, him a princely one, that led to his prosperity, and a devilish haunting one that had led her to her ill fate in the hospital. You might say, in the world of demons and devils and a Holy God, the Lord of Hosts, Christ, Himself, Thompson was lukewarm, and she was either hot or cold.
“You might as well know it, I’m the big man in this town now, after your case—the one I won, that is, after I won it, nearly everyone in town wanted me to do their cases, and in the process of this I invested somewhat,” he told the visiting Haitian girl, Burgundy.
“I noticed,” said Burgundy, “things have changed in the town; I heard the Wallace Plantation had burnt down also, and Abby who got killed by that big hog, the one they called Big Pig Wally, or Wally the Big Pig—something like that, the one that got that there Blue Ribbon at the county fair ate her up, like hot stew on a cold morning when you are as hungry as a bear.”
“So why Burgundy Washington are you visiting me?” asked Thompson.
“I want to borrow some capital,” she said, with a flat affect on her somewhat pleasant face.
“That means in essence, you want to invest, in what?” asked Henry Thompson.
“A bicycle factory, a small shop.” she said cordially.
He looked out the window, pointed to a building, “You see there,” he commented.
“Yes,” she said, looking at a red brick building.
“What do you see?” he asked diligently.
“A red brick building,” she responded, adding, “and those new buildings being built down the block some,” she pointed at it as she looked out the window.”
“What do you see really see, I mean be more intimate about it,” he asked again.
“A wall being built to a red brick building,” she remarked.
“So why not invest in a red brick factory, instead?” Henry suggested.
“Because I’m not familiar with a thing about bricks” she commented.
“The red bricks over there,” he pointed again, at a tall building that towered above the trees, she looked, saw it, and he added to his dialogue, “if you look down the street a bit, there is a bicycle shop, it is the only one, and it is on a first floor—no floors above it, perhaps three-hundred square feet to the whole place, compared to the building, which has several floors, and each floor 1600-square feet, that is a big, big difference.” He commented.
“You didn’t hear me before Mr. Thompson; I said I only have $2000- dollars, not $200,000!”
Now he talked like an aristocrat. At this point she noticed he had really changed himself, he even wore a diamond ring to show and tell, changed the color of his hair, to a darker brown that nearly looked black. He seemed to glisten in the sunlight, as it beamed through the window of his office, life had been good if not extremely profitable for him, if he had sold his soul for it, then he got a good price for it.
“Do you want to know who in town can help you, who can make some changes in your life?”
“Okay,” she said, nervously said, although she wanted to ask for more information, intended to ask for the original price she had in her mind, another $2000-dollars to add to her monies, to help her purchase that bicycle shop, but her presence found that the words she had intended to say would not come out of her mouth for the sake of wanting to be aware of what this man had in stored for her, his generalities she presupposed.
Burgundy put her nose against the window and imagined herself the owner of the bicycle shop, she forgot for the moment, Henry’s independent idea, at this point it became vague at best, and he had to be pulling her leg, definitely having fun with her at her expense, but she was used to it. And she had come to some kind of conclusion while in the hospital; it wasn’t worth the fight, the battle to get it, and lose it so easily, if anything, a more comfortable life, might mean a little less in it.
She watched a couple get into a car, and some workers digging in the swirl of the massive and active morning, and some laborers, putting bricks into the street, unsophisticated functioning people, with high hopes and spirits, and tremendously alert to their surroundings that had no time to think of investments or the devil, or even God, save Sunday mornings.
“Is everything all right?” asked Henry Thompson.
“Oh yes, yes fine,” she said.
Henry opened up the window, yelled down the three floors to a big burly man, his body moist with sweat, he looked up, smiled at Henry, a warm embrace of a smile, as if he had a personal interest in Thompson.
“It is my idea, you should go into business with that large hunk of a man, he is in his middle 50s, and is looking for a pretty and shrewd wife, he asked me to find him a fine woman for marriage, he owns that brick building, once married you can buy a hundred bicycle shops, and you can pay me double my wages for setting up this new investment of ours.” he said with the biggest smile he could produced, on his small face—ear to ear.
She lifted up her toes, taking her foot off her heels, bent over to get a better look at him.
“He has strong hands I see, perhaps farm hands at one time,” she remarked, pushing upward from her toes to remain up. “How do I get engaged?” she asked, anyone else but her would have blushed, but she just furiously stood and waited for the answer.
Dropping his cigarette into the ashtray, he said to Burgundy—with a serious business look, “His name is Tony Chandler; I will tell him I had you come all the way from the Midwest just to see him, that I had you give up your job, and that at one time you owned a plantation. Just so he doesn’t catch on that you’re the one who lived at the Wallace Plantation, and killed your child, god forbid, he’ll go crazy, and please do not ever go to the Ritt Bank anymore, and your new name is Katie Sexton, and your plantation was in Haiti, since you are familiar with that area as well. I can have a birth certificate made up for you, and a license and other documentation indicating you lived in the Midwest for the past twenty-years, five in Haiti.”
It all sounded fine, a bit too deceiving she thought, for her new life, but perhaps a new life meant a new identity also, and she was not doing the bidding here, and if it all crumbled to the ground, so be it, she still had one gift she got at the hospital, a bible, she had read it through and through, she was actually confused a bit on what side of the fence she wanted to be.


The New Mate


After standing a while, waiting to meet her new mate, she fell into an imaginary drama, daydream, as this man came up to meet her, how acquaintances can be so rewarding, even after three years of jail, hospital jail that is. It would have appeared to an onlooker, her eyes were laughing at this whole situation, if not dancing at the moment, of this unfolding reality, standing in a trance to see if it would pass to a second moment, the next stage, level, act, and it did.
She was actually missing the old plantation, the Wallace Plantation; it was really her only home she ever enjoyed, where she had folks, Wally at least, who loved her (and she never really had the proper time to grieve the plantation), and as a child she never got to know, God forbid, and hopefully He would forgive her deadly deed, she had slain her child for Satan, or at least that is what the voice told her, perhaps it was a demon who wished he was Satan, had his power—supernatural power, they are deceiving things she had learned, they lie as much as the fat man eats.
“I’m glad to meet you,” said the husky fifty-year old man, named Tony Chandler (heartily).
“Lord all mighty, you are a huge man, like a rock…!” she commented.
The old bricklayer took that as a compliment. He laughed, and shook his head, “No, I’m just me,” he said, “I work hard and make lots of money, and don’t ask me to show you it.”
Both Henry and Burgundy became silent, as if the gig was up. “The idea of marriage is great, I had asked Mr. Thompson, my adviser and lawyer to find me a cleaver and smart, and good looking young gal, and it looks like he has gone to great lengths to do that, you are a fine looking woman, but you don’t look all white, a bit on the dark side, with some African blood if not some French or Spanish,” he commented.
“How about the French and African, in my country we call that Haitian blood!” said Katie Sexton.
“Your name doesn’t seem to fit your looks, sounds a little odd.” He said.
“I changed it when I came to America, don’t everybody, it is easier to pronounce.”
Henry Thompson was proud she had an answer, and having a little black blood was okay with him, as long as it was mixed, and she didn’t look all that black.
“Do we find a judge or a priest?” she asked.
“You don’t waste any time do you,” Tony Chandler remarked.
“I’m not sure why we should, we are adults, and you want what you want, and you will not get it from me unless we are married.” She said
“I was afraid of that,” he whispered, “I guess I wanted to, and I didn’t, and now I know I can’t,” was his next response.
Said Henry Thompson, “I guess you’ll both get married pretty soon now,” looking at Tony, and Tony pulled out his check book wrote out a $10,000-dollar check for Mr. Thompson, said “For services rendered, it’s all tax deductible, I hope.”
Katie Sexton just looked, “You’re surely a marrying kind,” she said, “you don’t just think about things, you act, you do’em; well I guess we’ll be getting ourselves married sooner than later, Henry will you be our best man?” (He nodded his head yes.)


The Devil Returns


If many things had happened to Katie Sexton, while in the hospital in Prescott, Wisconsin (and there were surely many things that did happen), in the three plus years she was gone, she attempted to get closer to God, to try and weed out of her life the black arts, and the devil, which she had slain her child over; on the other hand, things had also happened to the demonic forces that had came into her life, left behind while she was in the hospital, but now she sensed they were returning to Fayetteville, as if chasing her, and right into her environment.

In a short space of time her and her husband became well acquainted with each other, as did her and Thompson, and Dylan Anderson business associate of her husband, almost every man and woman in town knew either her husband or Dylan, owning the biggest brick factory this side of the Mississippi.
Dylan was ten-years younger than her husband, Tony, a tall slender, stoop-shouldered fellow, who seemed to have everything balanced in his life, even the hat on his head that he wore, and his haircut, his eyebrows, all balanced as if on the head of a pin. He said he was a farmer once, a long time ago, told Katie so, and introduced him to Ben May, where he bought all the items he needed for building homes—that being, Ben May’s hardware store, they, he and Ben and Tony were all friends, and Katie was also among the chosen now.
But when you play or prey to the devil, as Katie once did, you learn he doesn’t play fair, and he has your number; in this case, it was several months now into the new year, the year being, 1966, Katie had been married four of those months. She was again getting those voices, hearing those demonic voices she did summers ago while at the Wallace Plantation. She had stopped her Voodoo for the most part, and continued to go to church, and read the bible, yet not convinced which way she wanted to go—evidently the devil knew that also—she was just going to go, thus, an spectator might have said, she swings more towards the demonic cult side of life, when it is available, and to the Christian sect when it is not, she was out of sorts with what she wanted, but she had learned much in the hospital, more than the devil himself knew, or at lest this voice, this alien being had a near equal.
The voice she was hearing was that of the henchman from hell, by the name of Noyllopa, he said he was sent to her at the request of Satan himself, that he had bequeathed upon her any one gift she desired, it was a promise made before she had went to the hospital, in which she had slain her son.
Money was no longer an issue with Katie plus now she had influence among many, and profit was an everyday thing, and the little gossip there was about her, was just that, little, no more. She even had a driver that drove her about the city, helped her with her shopping, and so forth and so on. She was to her understanding in need of nothing. And to her amazement, she had not asked for a thing, it just came.
She really had no time anymore to stop for an hour of gossip or for simple conversations, but Noyllopa, appeared right in the backseat of her car, as her driver, woman driver, Alice Hart drove her about town.
“I am the voice you hear when Satan wants to talk to you. You do understand he is the god of the airwaves here on earth. And don’t worry about Alice, she can see me and hear me just like you, I made sure you hired one of us, she’s a lovely creature while on earth, but in hell you’d never agree with me.” And she did look beautiful, and any substantial man of the town would have loved to take her out.
“If you need help you just call on her. Now you must take something from us, lest we feel we have to take away something from you!” said Noyllopa.
“I have too many houses to build, I can’t deal with this anymore, I got to go to the lumberyard for my husband, make sure we get new cut boards, and the bricks have to be ready by Tuesday.”
Noyllopa was silent, so was Alice as she drove, and then Noyllopa disappeared.
It was hard for Katie to sleep that night; she tumbled about the bed, convulsively. She was hoping the darkness would pass to day quickly; pondering on the life she thought dead was not quite dead. In the morning, she discovered a dreadful illness took possession of her husband. And when she walked out to get the doctor, he had the face of the demon on him as he walked into the bedroom, although he was not Noyllopa, he just looked like him a reminder he was around and had some weird powers to say the least.
Tony sat up in bed “For god’s sake, Katie, what is it?”
“Don’t you see it, it is Noyllopa, the demon!” she cried.
“What’s the matter doctor with her,” he asked, almost out of breath himself.
Said Katie quickly, “It’s a dream; I had a bad dream, that’s all…!”
She sat by her husband while he went to sleep, and she stayed awake the rest of the day and night—even prayed.
“That settles it,” she said out loud, knowing Noyllopa was nearby somewhere listening.
“It’s simple enough you see, we can in a single breath settle everything, what do you want?” asked Noyllopa.
She kind of knew it was a contest with the demon Noyllopa, he proved he run the show, he asserted himself, and she gave in; that is to say, he growled at her, and she reaped the damage before it got worse. She liked her life, and now she had a guardian demon in her existence, and one to run her life from a new empire she was acquiring through, Henry Thompson, the lawyer, and her husband, and if there was those in the invisible world helping, well she was unaware of it but it was developing fast.


The Gift


She knew there were to be no more days of triumph, the She-cat, as Noyllopa, called Alice Hart, watched every move she made, and Noyllopa, watched the business grow, and grow, and it became the most profitable business in the state, it owned stores, machine shops, bicycle shops, interest in banks, the Ritt Bank in particular, which it carried ten-percent of its assets, its capital, in cash, within its vaults, and the requirement was only seven-percent by law, the end result, a stable bank indeed. And the Ritt’s owned restaurants, and movie theaters, and fields and fields of land, that grew cotton and corn on them, the bank was worth $250,000,000 million dollars by the year 1968. Katie’s wealth which included her husband, both together were worth, about fifty-three million dollars, a tidy sum.
What she wanted was to ruin the Ritt Bank, and buy her land back, the Wallace Plantation back, and bring it back to its original status. That is, if she had to ask for a gift, and she really did not want to, that would be her gift so she told her atoning demon.
That was her gift, her request, her desire, and when she asked for it, shut eyes and all, and asked for it, because it was really against her new self, her will, the one she found in the hospital with the small bible she carried in her purse everyday, the one she pretended to adore, and actually got to like in the process of trying to impress, but now her nature, perhaps human nature and self-interest, came out, forced out of her again, she had a light taste of revenge she never had before.
But the devil never gives an inch, without taking a mile, and Noyllopa said “When the time comes, and it will, you will owe a gift to Satan, and I will be back to collect it,” the only thing that puzzled her was, Satan himself never showed up, just his workers, helpers, his demonic henchmen.

The year-1967 would be one of the worse years for the bank, the Ritt Bank; Mr. Ritt, was living like a king, took all his friends on: around the world trips, gambled daily, drank nightly, bought motels simply to drink and sit by the piano bar at night and get drunk. His father had died, and he was the full owner of the bank, he made sure of that, by firing all his family members, to make sure he got full control, no vetoes, and ruled like a king. It perhaps took little for the henchman to wet his appetite, it was already wet when he investigated his weakness, to use them against him, and slowly but surely his once ten-percent cash in the bank, dwindled to seven percent, and to five percent, and the government stepped in, and had something to say about that, about not handling the bank in the best interests of his stockholders, or for that matter, his customers, and let’s add the nation as a whole, because it was a National Bank. He had owned 51-percent of the bank, and Katie talked her husband into investing now their eighty-million dollars, every penny they had, into buying out as many stockholders it would take to become the second largest member holding stock in the bank, and they did, and Ritt, had one little tiny bank outside of Fayetteville, and that is what he was left with. The new bank was called “Sexton and Anderson First Federal Bank.”
The bank also owned now 2000-acres of land, cotton and corn growing land. Her husband applauded her for this new insight into business, and she became the president, and she formed a committee to oversee the bank, as required.


The Devil’s Tax


Noyllopa, came to Burgundy Washington in the wee hours of the night, and lay with her, and said, “This is the price you must now pay, you must carry my seed, give birth to my child, as it was in the days before the Great Flood.”
“How did I happen to get into, back into this situation?” she muttered aloud.
And he made love ardent love, to her, to where even smoke gathered around his odd shaped head, his eyes lighted up, upon and over her fleshly body, likened to fire, his voice roaring, and her husband paralyzed in a deep sleep, and if he was at all awake, he was afraid to say so. The demon was drunk with abuse.


The Little Angel


There appeared a child perhaps five-years old, a male child, it was all white, dressed in white that is, and the demon looked about, said, “Be a good fellow and leave, and I will not hurt your mother.”
The child was not subject to the demon, and the child knew so, and simply smiled, and the demonic being turned its head around again, roaring smoke coming from its gums, “Well,” he carried, “so you are going to make a night of it here?”
Noyllopa, became swearing to kingdom come, with unspeakable dirty minded words, intending to cut and bruise Burgundy’s insides at the same time, to make sure his semen was securely inside her, he wanted a child.
“You do not recognize what you are doing,” said the angel, “the rumor is, you will be buried under an unmovable rock, by Ura’el the archangel soon, for you have violated a child of God, “No,” said the demon, “she is the child of Satan, she was long before she held the bible in her hands…” all his impulses told him so, and he was told from time to time, by his Battalion commander in hell, to lie, to do as he pleased on earth, but not to insult or even find a need to mistake a child of God for anything but a child of God, and to avoid any harshness, as a result bringing doom to his doorsteps, but if indeed he could persuade one to work against his own kind, so be it but not to invest any effort into it beyond a word or two and to get out of there quickly, and that it was simply better off to leave well enough alone, it was a waste of time, with a Child of God.
And the little angel (a Power from Heaven) said, “Go seek your master, Satan, even he knows better,” and dramatic was this scene, he stopped the attack, and most prominent was it to be but it wasn’t.
In anticipation of such an event, he had not prepared himself for an attack by the enemy; an escape route was needed but his arrogance kept him in place arguing with the little angel, when the archangel was actually on his way… (a higher order of angelic being),
Said the Child, “Call on Satan to help you, if indeed this is not one, who has accepted the Lord, and see if he will be by your side, and I will leave.”
His heart had been set on an open attack, and he tried to get the words out, “Satan, come to my rescue…!” but what came out was a twist, a silence, an emptiness, and the bible she carried all the time at the hospital, that now sat on her desk beside her bed (taken out from her purse), was opened to the page and stanza that read: John 6:47, it read, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, He that believeth on me has everlasting life.” And a note was written in the bible laid down, and it read, “If He is for you, who can be against you. I hold you in the palm of my hand.” And the demonic force saw all this with a clap of an eye, and shivered.
“Did not Satan teach you well?” said the little angel boy, who was recognized by the demon himself.
He could dimly see the little angel now; he was being chained, and brought to a deserted area, to be buried under tons and tons of rock for violating one who belonged to God, one who had accepted him, made peace with him—believed in Him…!

The little angelic power, said to Burgundy, the archangel by his side, “Who but a crazy demon would try to do such a thing, he will now be in darkness, I suppose I out to leave I got to report—to you know who? And don’t worry about me; I got a good house, and one waiting for you.”





Chapter Two


Minnie Lue’s Still
(In the Woods of North Carolina)


(May, ‘69) Minnie Lue was now working for the Stanley Plantation as a cook, the same job she had when she worked for the Wallace’s before the place burnt down, the one Burgundy Washington worked at, her old friend, who was a maid back then, now rich and a landowner. Amos was still working at the Stanley plantation also, in ’69, mostly in corn placating now. Thus, Minnie Lue was a widow, once married to Louis Johnson, he died early on in life, some twenty-years ago or so, and he was in his fifties and Minnie in her forties. He had a still in the woods, it fell on him one day, along with forty gallons of whiskey in a keg, but the old still, still worked, instead of Louis and Minnie working it, it was Minnie and Amos, that is, when he had time. Minnie Lue was close to seventy now and Amos was not a spring chicken either. For the most part, she was established, had her regular clientele and then some, such as Earnest Smiley, and Cole Abernathy, and the Wallace brothers used to buy moonshine from her, but of course they are now dead, but the family that bought the most whiskey from her, was the Ritt’s, the owner, once owner of the National Ritt Bank, now owner of the small country outlet bank, who had two children of his own.
The distilling apparatus was hidden in the woods, disassembled and put back together its hiding place, when she wanted to make a batch of whiskey she simply brought it out, set it up. She was perhaps the only one the white revenuers, never thought of her making moonshine; she was never really under suspicion, they thought after the old negro died, her husband, so did his still, but how wrong they were.

It was Saturday, and Mae and Amos worked the whole day, from morning to mid afternoon with a kettle of whisky prepared they were making a second one, one with a mule’s kick, and Amos told Minnie, “I reckon you don’t need me anymore?”
“Go on home, you got to work the fields after church tomorrow I hear Mr. Stanley say!”
And so he left, and Minnie Lue bottled some of her new whiskey, her white lightening, her moonshine, as she called it. And disassembled the still, hid it in a cave, put bushes around it, as her husband used to do, camouflaging it, and got started, heading out of the woods, to the open fields, with several bottles of moonshine clanging against one another, and forty gallons inside the cave in a keg. She kept the seven bottles wrapped up in a cloth, and put the all on top of one another into that bag, one out of cloth she brought with her for just this occasion; she walked slow, her age, and her weight being against her.
Oliver and Percy Ampuero, two working, kind of workmen, for the railroad, they were on call, when someone was missing, or out on sick time, they’d call one of the brothers, or both to work a shift or two. They had the same mother, but different fathers, the last father they had was of Spanish origins. If they were not working, or drinking, they were out looking for something or someone to rob, to support their bad habits. They had been drinking down along the railroad tracks this evening, and heard the clanging of Minnie Lue’s whiskey bottles, they had seen her before, and heard tell she had a still in the woods, and so they crept up the hill and followed the noise of the whiskey bottles.
It was close to midnight and the two younger men stopped Minnie Lue, she had never seen them before, but she knew they were not revenue officers, one pulled out a dirty looking pistol, sniffing like a dog for the whisky she had in her bag, then grabbling the handbag Minnie was carrying, pulling it like a bulldog, Minnie tried to pull it back, and she knocked him on his butt, and the bottles fell on him, a few broke, seeped through the cloth bag onto his lap,
“Look now what you done, you black witch!” said Percy on the ground, “Grab her arms Oliver, we’ll make her tell us where that still is!”
And Oliver did as he was told, and Percy got back up onto his feet, “Better tell him old woman,” said Oliver, “he’s got a notion to pull the trigger of that pistol.”
But Minnie Lue knew he would anyhow, he was shaking mad, and he needed to prove a point, and she was not going to tell him a thing, not because she wanted to die, but because if she pleaded for her life now, they’d kill her for the sport of it, or at least Percy would, and if she told, she knew they’d think they had to kill her anyhow, because she’d report them out of revenge someday, when they were making whiskey, so it was best left alone, if she was going to survive through the night, it would be, because Oliver would persuade his brother to let her go, and to let it go at that.
“Better tell me nigger, or I’ll shoot a big hole right through yaw!” said Percy.
And out of the blue she started laughing, and singing, saying “Oh Lord d’ Lord, I is a comin’ to ya now...”
Said Oliver, “We best just let her go about her business, we goin’ to get in lots of trouble over this here nigger, isn’t worth it brother!”
“Never you mind, I’ve made my mind up,” and the next thing Oliver noticed was a flame coming out of the barrel of his pistol—a 38-Special. And old Minnie Lue, wobbled a bit, and fell sideways to the ground.
Several wild dogs heard the shot, came to take a look, eyes peering out of the woods, all lined up as if they were in attack mode.
Percy shot three shots, wildly at the dogs, and they scattered, and they simply showed up again, this time closer to them, and then Oliver ran, ran like the dickens, he could see the Stanley house with the moon’s light, it was a distance away, but he just followed the shadowed view of it, and ran towards it, nonstop, heart beating like wild voodoo drums.
Now the dogs were only a hundred feet from Percy, he shot his last two rounds, killed one of the seven, and ran in the same direction Oliver did.
In the morning, Amos found Minnie Lue, she was dead, and then called for the sheriff, and found Percy in the field, what was left of him, which was cracked bones, and torn flesh. Oliver was found dead from a heart attack on Mr. and Mrs. Stanley’s steps, front steps.




Voices out of Saigon

Introductory Chapter

Cam Ranh Bay Vietnam 1969

Corporal Langdon Abernathy




Langdon Abernathy came into our company in August of 1969. Where from, I heard it was Fayetteville, North Carolina, so he said, I couldn’t swear on it, wouldn’t swear to it, or bet on it. But he was young then a man of at least nineteen-years old when I met him, because I remember him saying when he left, three years after he came, three years after we met, and his tour of duty was up, he was twenty-one, and he had reenlisted to stay in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, two times, that’s right, two times he reenlisted to stay in this hole, in this godforsaken land, he extended his duty for her, and he must had spent a year in the states in the Army before being stationed here at the 611th . They were going to get married, those two, they even wrote each other, while thousands of miles apart.
He had fallen in love with a woman twice his age, or at least half his age, she was thirty-one years old, looked thirteen, small, and pretty as a jaybird. She caught my eye many a-times, she knew it, but she wouldn’t admit it, I’m sure, if I’d had said so, and mentioned it to Langdon, well it would have been a fight, so I left well enough alone. She lived—off and on—in his hutch with him, had it sectioned off, the mess-hall (Army kitchen) sergeant allowed it, no one said a word about it, bore him a son in it, and that was a year before he left, went back to North Carolina. No one—not even him—ever met Vang’s parents, or for that matter, any of her relatives. She’d always say, “Day in Saigon, no time to come, make money, got to eat…”something like that.
The only ones she talked to at the mess hall were the clean up girls, Zuxin and her friend Ming, I suppose they were the only ones she trusted with her secrets, Vang was half Vietnamese and Hmong, and Zuxin and Ming Chinese I think. Ming still works in the mess hall, it’s the same one, the same girl that was here when Vang was here.
I heard she owned some property in Saigon, a house, that is all I heard at the time, and couldn’t put two and two together, so I said nothing, but Smiley as we called, really Corporal Judson Small II (his grandfather being of the same name, who fought in WWI, and his grandmother then moved on from Huntsville, Alabama, to Ozark, Alabama) a friend from Alabama, he’s now out in the bush, he came in now and then for R & R (Rest and Recuperation), here at Cam Ranh Bay, stayed at those little houses over yonder, as he’d say, said he saw her in Saigon, with a family, heard her say, “You come to my house,” I didn’t say a word on this, didn’t know what it all entailed back then, and that was my secret from Langdon I suppose.
But before that event, I already knew something was up, fishy, and a few of us others here at the 611th , had already listened to Zuxin talking to Smiley; he was talking a trifle more than loudly one night drunk, with her, and he liked her, and he got a little cold and ruthless—he could get that way when drunk, I had to back him up a few times in a fight—anyhow, from a few tales told by Zuxin, who had told him during these bouts of drunkenness, Vang was no saint, and even and Ming agreed with that—both who had dealings with Vang, said something’s I do not want to admit, and out of courtesy and consideration, and respect for the deceased, I will simply say, she had a few more affairs than she admitted to having, especially when Langdon went home the first year for a thirty-day leave, and came back, reenlisted to be with her.
So when his son was born, he felt responsible, never checked if the child was his, but it looked like his, I believe it was his, and when the boy could walk he looked even more like him, so like I say, he came back, and we all kind of felt it was for good, not necessarily for the better, that he’d marry her and stay in Vietnam, we all of course got surprised.

After the second year, when he was going home again, he was sending some letters, if not fits of rage back to his mother, she wanted him not to marry her, and come home, talk about it. He asked me what he should do, I said, and perhaps I should not have said it, because it did something to him, especially with Vang, call it unpardonable outrage, because she didn’t seem to care one way or the other, yet she seemed to be committed to him nonetheless, I said, “Let your mind be your conscious,” and I think he was going to stay in Vietnam, and marry her, but that unpardonable outrage came when she said, “No,” she wouldn’t marry him, not yet, or then anyhow. She said she wanted his mother to be happy with the marriage, and that perhaps he should go home and talk to her. She was digging into the family, digging up more hate ridden motives to bring home to his mother, he had attempted to put this to rest by saying he’d marry her, and in the proper time to give the child a worthy name, his will was offered and denied.
We were not surprised to hear he was coming back, but as a civilian. I learned this from a postcard he sent me, here I’ll show you, I got it in my pocket, and I’ll read it:

“Serge, I struck one final blow fighting with my family, I am leaving them to be with Vang, she is with her family in Saigon, I hear, she is there because of her father’s death, Zuxin wrote from Saigon. My young one is doing fine, perhaps because he is my son, and strong as an ox. I will be leaving soon, father was acting as a mediator between me and mom, she has some kind of a premonition on this matter of me going back to Vietnam—it is not like I am running away from home, which I did when I was fifteen. When I return, come see me in Saigon, I will find a cheap hotel, your friend as always, Corporal Abernathy.”


The Return


When I got to Saigon, on a two week leave, Langdon was already there, he had his apartment, and I saw something unpleasant upon his naked body, his legs, groin area, naked chest. I guess he had been there going on six-months, before I arrived. It was just one big room, and square, furnished for the most part, with awkward looking furniture. The bed looked like he was sleeping alone a lot; it seemingly sagged too much in one place.
“We still haven’t got married Serge...” he told me.
“Have you seen much of your son?” I asked sitting down on a thin wobbly wooden chair.
The room looked as if it was peaceful, too ordinary, too serene, too lonely like, and so unlike Langdon.
“She’s working a lot, says she got to make money, I brought my savings, all $8,000-dollars of it.” He told me.
I just looked about, things cluttered.
“Make yourself at home,” he shouted, and he got out of bed, thin as a bean, and put a cloths line up, in a corner of the big room, and picked up a pillow, one of two from his bed, a blanket, and threw it at me, saying:
“This is home…Serge!”

Apparently she came and left when she wanted, and stayed only until she got what she wanted, he had paid the rent up for three more months at this point, three dollars a day or $75-dollars a month, or $300-dollars for three months. I suppose it was a deal, and he took it. He shouted out the window often that month, thinking this or that girl was Vang coming to see him, but the majority of times it wasn’t, it was a stranger, and he’d look at me odd, and say, “Woops,” and go back to having a beer or a shot of whisky, or some of that Japanese Sake, even a joint now and then.
There was a few times the first week, I saw him not moving, just paralyzed, said to me, I think it was to me, “Get these damn bugs off me!”
I never saw any bugs, but he did I guess, methodically building a case of insanity for himself.
Then one night, while drinking Vang keeping us company, she started flirting with me, she was different now, she didn’t care if he saw her flirt, and he flung the mattress on his bed out of the window, like an insane man. I hurried furiously to get it and bring it back before someone else got it, and when I returned, Vang was down the hall, walking into another room. At that point I realized she was only wearing an Army jacket of Langdon’s, and had told him she had to go to take a bath, in the hallway bathroom. I didn’t say anything, he had come too far to believe anything other than, elegance in her, and for me to say different, was only to bring in fretted rage.

I was real worried about Langdon; I mean I was scared for myself likewise, but I’d make sure when I got back to the 611, I’d get a blood test, and whatever else I needed to see if I had syphilis.
At least he, Langdon, didn’t have time to hide his sores from me. I looked at his hands and feet, they had a faint rash, the second week I was there, and his lips were getting sores on them little round sores, with the rash I just mentioned, reddish brown on the hands, palms, spots on his feet, he had a fever the whole month I was there—at first, I was dismayed, until I noticed swollen glands, a sore throat, headaches, weight loss—as I had seen all in the first week I was there: yes I told myself, he had the whole shebang of known symptoms to the disease, I hate to mention its name, and in perhaps the second or later stage it was for him, I got worried for myself, the pillow, the blankets he gave me, he slept on them, with those sores around his genitals, rectum, now even his mouth. I told him time and again to go get a blood test, but it was too late, his brain was damaged I swear it was, he had what they call developmentally delayed reactions, seizures at night and during the day, even in the mornings, and that ugly word dementia. But he said if he went for help, they would put him in the hospital and he would not see Vang, she’d run off to wherever she did at night—and he never knew where, and she never told him where—he never even knew she was married, and that her husband lived in Saigon (when possible, or allowable), with her and two other kids, besides his.
If Vang had Syphilis, it was in some kind of late stage recall period. I mean, she had it for sure, I would guess, and was unaware of it, but was now aware of Langdon’s situation, and therefore had to be aware of hers; and in time, perhaps years or months, it would show up on her, like it had on Langdon. How could she not be?
I’m no specialist in the disease analysis area, but it was becoming obvious, and the child, yes the poor little child, I wondered if Vang carried the child during her early stages of her disease, and during her pregnancy. If, the child would show some kind of signs, sores, I would have known, or had a good guess, but he didn’t and I saw that he didn’t but who knows.
I told Vang privately to bring her boy to get some penicillin, have a blood test, the same thing I told Langdon, and for her to do the same. She may have, I don’t know, she was a woman of reason, and Langdon, was turning out to be the opposite, a man no longer able to produce reason, he lived in a space in which he disseminated himself from the rest of us—as if he was a faint image a mile away, that last week I was there…!


Always Mother


His mother, Mrs. Caroline Abernathy, was always there for him, a good mother undeniably. But even she could only do so much. Say what you will, but he loved her, his mother, almost as much as he loved Vang, and now that I think of it, I wish I would not have said what I said, “Let your conscious be your guide,” for now it was his guide and he was not moving, he stayed in the apartment day and night waiting for Vang in case she came with that little one.
I made a call to his mother, went on the base to do it, told her all the unpleasant news I had to, how unintelligent her son was acting now, now that he had contracted her disease—or should I say virus—how he was mulling aimlessly over this Vietnamese girl, Vang. She was a little annoyed, and our voices faded back and forth, but she got the message, and I could hear her telling to her husband “This is an outrage, disgust …” and then her last fading words were, “I’ll be there within the week.” Hence, it did show in her voice, the dim light, questioning, contained rage, perhaps in the family tree, stubbornness and subtle effluvium for doing what is right, no matter how strained it my get you.
I had to do it, I had to go behind his back and call, although I was too late in the whole process, that is why I extended my leave a week, to wait for her, I was in high gear I suppose, and didn’t know how to slow down those last days. So I waited.
I wanted to tell him: listen Langdon, you don’t know her, and as you wait for her, she is at home with her husband who probably has taken all the money you sent, all the money you gave Vang when you were at the 611th Ordnance, and all the money you brought with you here, to Saigon. It is what I wanted to say, not what I said of course, I didn’t say anything of the kind, and just waited there for Mrs. Caroline to come.
He did say something to me, a day before his mother came, suddenly, and sharply, “Why you hanging around Serge?” And I said and I lied when I said it,
“I had an extra week, and thought you might like me to hang around.”
“Nonsense,” he told me point blank, “you got something up your sleeve!”
“Fine,” I said, “if you think so what do you think it is?”
“You’re waiting for me to die, so you can have Vang.”
At this juncture, Vang was long gone, and she was not coming back, she told me so, and she tried to tell Langdon. Although she did not tell him why, or about her husband—she was just leaving, and leaving for good, never would she see him again. She couldn’t watch him even vaguely fade into nothingness, into further insanity, it was becoming too much for her, his bones decaying inside his body, his infected sores with pus, his eyes red as dying roses, muscles aching, fatigue, the whole gamut of symptoms, —she couldn’t watch what she gave to him grow and bloom into a complete musing unbearable living corpse; it was too much a strain on her, and he was almost purely existing on air, insistent on air not food, for his continuation and rough breathing.
“What? What did you say Serge?” asked Langdon.
“Not a word,” I said. I sat in a chair by the window, looking out it for Mrs. Caroline. The astonishment of his disease was gone. I felt sad he would not see Josue, his little boy again. It seemed to have wiped the smile off my face, that Mrs. Caroline was coming, then sudden and deliberate she was there, down on the sidewalk looking for the address then turned her head upward, looking up at me, I now was eye to eye with her, and her face facing my face, and both of us three stories difference in space, and she waved for me to come down,
“Wait there,” I said, Langdon, mumbling in the background,
“Tell Vang to hurry up, I’m waiting.”
He was like a little boy who, always was in a crisis state, if his mother was not around, in this case Vang, or so he acted.
Now shoulder to shoulder, Mrs. Caroline and I stood, stillness on her face, quietly we looked at each other,
“Your boy is up there, he doesn’t know you were coming, I dare not had told him, lest he move out and no one would be able to find him before you came.”
“I suppose he is in bad shape, he must be going through hell, and the one who gave him this disease, where is she?”
I gave her a dim look, swiftly trying not to look at her.
“Oh, of course, as I thought, unbearable for her to endure her creation; I guess it is a mother’s burden to have to endure, to bear –with a scowl I suppose. The fate she laid upon my son, out of pure indifference, shows me it was only her interested curiosity in him and his support; her survival needs were met, like a primitive Neantherdal that is all he was to her, perhaps her fate is simply delayed, I dare not speak out loud, what I am thinking in secret, lest I be cursed with the same fate.”
She pulled out a slender cigarette, lit it, as if to soften the grave anxiety that lied ahead. She looked up, and then with a sigh said,
“Okay, Serge,” looking at me straight into my eyes, she added, “isn’t that what he always called you? Should we go?”
I nodded yes, and we walked through the lounge area of the one star hotel, if indeed it even had one.
“Incidentally, thank you ahead of time, it may get to be too much for me to thank you after,” said Mrs. Abernathy.

As she walked into the room, her face was now completely stunned, into complete immobility like a wooden mask, her mouth worn from over two decades of insuring her boy was healthy, and his nostrils red, as for his eyes—pupil-less. He seemed as if he was numb,
“My god, is this what it does,” she said with a lowered head, pale eyes flickering at his outwardly reduced jaw, that looked red and enmeshed with sores all over his lips, now collapsing onto a chair she tried to hold her tears, caught her breath, he looked like a toothless, motionless savage.
“Well,” Caroline said, looking at her son.
“Mom…is that really you?”
“Yes, Langdon, it is me,” now the mesmerism left her, yet dumfounded for the moment she remained. She wanted to touch his face, but I had to tell her no, it was idiotic to do so, why put yourself into harms way. Then Langdon made an ultimate and courageous effort, his voice lit up, and he sat up on his bed, contained for the moment; an explosion of strength.
We both looked at him,
“I knew Serge was up to something,” we, that is, I and his mother smiled, and so did Langdon, although his seemed a bit mismatched for the occasion. I sensed his mother was thinking: here is my innocent little boy, turned into a slumbering and glaring diseased savage, and inside of her was outrage.
But that of course was how I foresaw her seeing it, which depends on who is doing the seeing, and the history behind, for me here was a man that made himself, half made himself into a sweeping gestured of a savage, had not God given him a mother who understood women, and warned him. But he let his conscious be his guide, and I suppose the reason I stayed so long was my conscious was guiding me.
I went outside of the room for a moment, and I heard Caroline curse violently, as they discussed her taking him downstairs in a wheelchair, there I waited for him in the lobby, and a taxi waited for him outside, she paid the taxi well to wait, and he sat on his fender counting on his fingers how much money he was making, waiting. If ever a mother or parent wanted to divorce themselves of their children, this was a good moment to do it, or to say, ‘I told you so,’ but she didn’t, she threw his arm over her shoulder, and they walked down those three flights of stairs, to the wheelchair, walked down them slowly, and her old bent body, holding up his bony diseased body, firmly.
I think I might have thought of suicide had I been him, and I think he did, but he was too jealous to die with me around, thinking I would end up with Vang.
She stood behind him in the wheelchair, said,
“You want to take a whirl at getting into that taxi I have waiting for you?”
“You mean you have a taxi…go ahead,” he answered. She then pushed forward the wheelchair.
“We’ll escape everyone,” she said with a tear and a smile, and a pale gaze of apoplectic hidden rage.
Carefully she pushed the wheelchair out of the hotel onto the sidewalk, near the taxi, her teeth vanished from the open smile, and quietly she told the driver to help pick Langdon up, to set him in the backseat of the car, she wanted to be with him, realizing the front was easier.
“You want to take a whirl,” she said a second time, and he commented, “You already said that mom, I’m not quarreling.”
“Well, you can get plenty of rest when we get home,” she added.
Just as they were picking him up, I was in front of the car, Vang came walking down with her son Josue, and her husband and two other kids. They walked right by the car, my back to them, and she never even saw me, seemingly in a rush, never saw Langdon either, but he saw her, didn’t say a word to his mother. I noticed the little boy had a little round red spot on the palm of his hand, as he walked by.
“Ah, Serge,” said Mrs. Abernathy, now just inside the car, “Maybe you’ll visit us in Fayetteville someday, thank you for all you’ve done.”
I nodded my head yes, and I noticed Langdon’s last look at Vang, as she turned a corner.

I saw Mrs. Abernathy, with her elbows on her knees, she was praying, it was all she had left inside of her, she perhaps was telling the Lord: please accept this, I have nothing left. I think the Lord was saying—for I know for a fact he hears a mother’s prayers—: I have already given you him for a while longer; blindly you bear his wounds, and I believe it will be a short time before you two meet again.
For Langdon laid his head back, and with some kind of restoration of faith, a smile on his face appeared, and he died, just like that.




Chapter One


There Was a Lady

Part One of Four Parts


Mrs. Caroline Abernathy paced slowly as she reached her front yard, coming up alongside the mansion from her backyard. In the hot afternoon the huge, square house, and thereof, the premises seemed peaceful, tranquil, as it had for almost one-hundred and fifty years. The old mansion was part of her husband's family heritage, Cole Abernathy, whose grandfather came to North Carolina and built it, gave it to his son, whom gave it to Cole. Fathers and grandfathers had been raised there. They, like Cole had died in that very mansion, in turn they had expected their son, Langdon to die in it too, but that no longer was a preference, Langdon had been buried now, he had died in a taxi in Saigon, a year ago to this very month, October, 1972.
Caroline believed that Langdon had a duty, a responsibility, to make sure he would die there, that their lives were intertwined not only with the Abernathy name and for it to be carried onto eternity on earth, but the soil likewise was in the veins of the Abernathy family—yes, the soil, the dirt, it all came along for the ride, one for all and all for one. When he chose to go to war, the family felt as if he cut himself off from them. He had a strong sense of justice, yes, pride for his country, too much perhaps, as if it was a duty almost to lay his life down for the many, and one he needed to match with his family heritage. Caroline had thought that perhaps, once Langdon returned home from Vietnam, there would be a renewal, a rebirth on the Abernathy plantation. There was some unpardonable outrage when he left—but that could have been mended, save for, he now was dead and too late to mend fences; heretofore, full possession of the land, and the name, and the mansion remained—at this moment—in a dying household, this was the unconscious, turnabout, in her mind.
She was simply masquerading, that life had purpose, there was no purpose any longer, none at all, life was anything but purposeful, she just needed a bag for her bones, and that is what she was waiting for, as she received her aches and pains, from growing old and somnolent; she’d be in the family cemetery soon, and the way she was thinking, the sooner the better.
So very still was the tranquil woman of Abernathy's family tree.
Caroline crossed over into the front yard towards the wooden fence, that parallel the country road, she walked, she now remembered how a year ago, this month about this very time in the day, her son, Langdon, in his early twenties died, and brought so much grief to his father that his heart gave out; he had became crazed, a hate ridden old man, crazed about Langdon’s death, crazed then and now buried among the family graves. It had been learned, on the day he died, his grave was already dug in the family cemetery, he had been digging it for a week prior, and in the proper time his will gave out, without surprise to him, there was no substance left in it. And now from beyond the grave, Caroline had been struck with one final blow: she had to live life alone; deal with all there was to deal with alone. There was no remaining flesh and blood of her kind.
She remembered how Langdon and Cole would be throwing the football to one another, treading on the grass, each catching it and throwing it back, even running on the front porch to catch it falling over chairs and newspapers and lamps, and sodas, it would seem it wasn't much fun watching them, in that she wanted to join in, and felt she'd be out of place, and now she moaned: why should I have cared, hell with southern etiquette.
And now, now she had to stack one on top of the other, for her defense, and refusing to plead for her life with her minds eye, her second self, old Josh had died ((Josh Jefferson Jr., born 1890) (died 1972: 82-years old)) the negro stableman; he would help Langdon up onto his horse, tell him stories at Christmas time (like Josh's father Silas would do, and Silas' father, Old Josh, who came from the Congo, back around 1813, the African name being Zam, who was a slave down in Ozark, Alabama, all his life, minus his first ten-years of life, and after the Civil War he remained on the Hightower plantation) he was like a grandson to him, he worked for Cole's father, and his father as well back before the turn of the century, old Josh Washington Jefferson (Born 1853-1903), Josh's father worked for the Abernathy's for fifty-years, perhaps more. It's the way it was, family to family (often times from the cradle to the grave), thus, the house had seen a lot of Langdon Abernathy, and expected him to carry on the family saga, in that very house. And now, now to Caroline, it all was smoke, simply smoke, all clouded. She didn't know, or understand, what Langdon was thinking at the time he chose to go to war, and not college, he could have avoided it. But Cole, her husband seemed to understand more of what it was about, man to man, men could see what such things are about, but she couldn't.
“We didn't want to smother him,” she told Cole, “but one day he just broke out of his growing pains and said, ‘mom, it’s time,’ and I cried, because I knew what he meant, and I told him: you can have it all right here, and he told me, ‘I don’t want it all mom, only my share of life.’”
“Why couldn’t he take a little of it at a time,” that is what Caroline told Cole.
There was no answer, a rhetorical question, at best, but he was a man, a man that was about to come out and claim what he thought he wanted, what was best for him, instead of hanging around someplace he didn’t want to, someplace he had hung around for years, at that juncture of his life, it was a lifetime of years. He had packed up his belongings, heavy eyed, and left that day he went to the Armory, down in Fayetteville, and now she buried him, among the graves which he had violated in the sense of he was buried too soon. She was the funeral, in fact. Oh Betty from New Orleans and others were there, but she really was the dead one at the funeral, it was as if the funeral was for her that would have been her will, if indeed, God would have allowed it. And everyone at the funeral watched and listened, everyone wondering what Caroline would say. And she said next to nothing. I guess it was all finished for her, now all she had to do was wait or get revenge.
But he was dead now, and there were no more males to take on the legacy, and Mrs. Abernathy was past her prime, and her husband had died, and old Josh Jr. had died, all in one year—all the men were gone: Josh, Cole and Langdon, all up in the family graveyard, a plot of land carved out to make a cemetery, where all the other family members were buried—

So all that was left in this big house was Caroline, her sister, Betty Presley ((former: Hightower )(younger sister by twelve-years)) came up from New Orleans to stay with her, but she never stayed long, her husband being in a wheelchair and all. She came up to funerals three times in the past year, each time collecting cloths when she left, along with helping Caroline go through the hard times you might say. Consequently, she lived in an unmanned house, at this point sleeping on the sofa, in a six bedroom mansion, and Betty tended to some of her needs.
Betty had chosen to return and help Caroline during these trying and depressing days, insisting her daughter could help her husband move about the house, she so often did anyhow, while she helped Caroline for a three month period, sufficient decency and honor among sisters, you might say, good will and validating her concern, she stayed, over the objections of her husband.
Caroline thought that was alright for her younger sister Betty to come and help, but felt she could take care of herself, looking out her big bay window, murmuring to herself, “I really don’t need help,” and perhaps she didn’t, but it didn’t hurt, and so she helped and watched her older sister without impatience.
For weeks, each morning they would see each other in the kitchen, right around 7:00 a.m. Betty, she’d get up a little earlier, and play janitor, clean up the place before Caroline arrived. Actually they both were pretty much precision with this arriving for coffee and chitchat in the mornings.
She, Caroline was a strong woman, square shoulders, and full breasted, for her short height they stood out firmly as did her shape, peered and healthy, she being all of five-foot four inches tall, only fifty-years old, having. Her husband was sixty-one when he died, a year ago. He told Betty to take care of Caroline, Caroline heard him on the phone say that, she also heard him say, “You know what caused her to go into this semi state of silence, this frozen anger state—as the psychologist, calls it (near a state of disassociation). You know why, and I don’t need to tell you why, and who knows what she is thinking, and she will no longer go see Doctor Wright down in Fayetteville, says he’s a quack, along with this and that. She’s always busy nowadays, but I know Caroline, I know what she’s thinking, and it is about young Langdon’s girlfriend over in Vietnam, that Vang girl, and that three year old child, or is it two and half years old? The boy, Josue; the question arises ‘is it really his?’ take care of her if I die please.”

Caroline had told Betty, “I’m going down to the creek.”
Betty thought nothing of it, she did that almost everyday, it was quiet and near the graveyard, there one could contemplate or listen to the water to calm themselves, look for the fish—look at them, listen to the frogs, she even did that when Cole was alive, it was not like she had not done it before, in her mind she said: I love you Betty but I don’t need you, not really, I know how to do what I got to do, and where I got to go to do it, and how I will get there, I got there before, I can do it again. She was going to do, what Cole knew she might do, what she was warning Betty about, indirectly, she might do. Cole, on the other hand, he just thought it, and he knew she’d someday do it, Betty still unaware of what, her brain unprepared, without comment, and then Betty saw a letter on the table, the dinning room table her eyes opened up wide, it read:

“Don't follow me, I am going to disappear for a while, I do not need you, but if you wish you and your husband can stay on the plantation, I’ll return in a month or so, I need to take this sudden journey, and it will be a sudden return I expect. I will miss early October and the autumn leaves, the changing of the leaves, I so much enjoy, and the November breeze. It is my contention, or has been to set things right, I know I am acting like the Jury and the Judge, but life has become shapeless for me, disturbing, and for me slovenliness has crept in. Take care.”

(Signed: ‘Your sister, Caroline.’)
To: Saigon

Fine, Betty had read the letter Caroline left for her, and she said, perhaps what Caroline expected her sister to say: ‘It’s her business where she’s going, I’ll just head on back to New Orleans.’ That’s what she said, and that is what she did. Caroline went onto Saigon, Vietnam.
Caroline had a picture of Vang and the boy, and she went from one market place to another looking and talking to the locals, with her guide, Yang, it was all of a month before Yang said to Mrs. Abernathy, “We no can find this Vang girl, maybe back in Cam Ranh Bay!”
“I’m not leaving, I’m not going to leave this place now, I got here and I’m staying until I find her, that trash, city trash-she killed my son, she gave him syphilis, and he died, and now she has to.”
Yang watched her, she was the jury, with her dark rim eye sockets, identical to a woman in a state of starvation, aquiline face: she looked the role she was about to play, the slayer.
“I’m going to please you more than I have,” said Yang, after he heard Vang had given her son that venereal disease, and he searched high and low, all over the city, looking into unfathomable faces, intently looking in every nook and crack in the city.
And he did find her, she was in a little house (almost living in the big city like a hermit), and they, Caroline and Yang, went to the little house she had near the U.S. Military Air Base, where she worked part time, cleaning the restrooms for the soldiers. Today she, Vang wasn’t working though, she was sitting at her table with her three children, eating some rice out of a bowl, rice with some greens mixed throughout, and to the side of her was a bowl of noodle-soup and chopsticks, and it looked like pork in the soup, but she remembered what her son said, it most likely was dog meat, and gave it a grin. There were a few old grubby looking military magazines, English in-print magazines lying about on the floor, reminders for Caroline, of her son, perhaps he gave them to her, so she thought.
Vang looked towards the figures in her opened doorway, in the frame of her doorway, “What you do here?” she said, knowing who Caroline was; she had seen pictures of her.
Now Yang and Caroline stepped inside—out of the frame of the doorway, into the house, next to the opened window. And so there they were, two watching the other at a very short distance. Caroline standing in a shack of a house, six-thousand miles away from her plantation, because of a crazed thought that ran ramped through her brain, driven here to this moment, to deprive Vang of her life, for what she took away from her, now all she had to do was kill her, pull out the knife she had in her purse. Yang even turned his head, as if he was not going to watch, just let happen. She knew—or at least she felt she knew—if the tables were turned, this woman would not hesitate to do what she planned on doing, she did not feel one bit sorry for her irrevocable wrong, she even had the child carry the Abernathy name. She was robbing her of the best years, the last years, of her life, those years people wait for all their lives: the grandchild and the camaraderie with her son, the element Cole had with Langdon, the one she waited for.
“I dont know’ya,” said Vang to Yang, as if to say: I don’t know Mrs. Abernathy, “what you want?” and then she added, “My husband, he come back soon.”
Mrs. Abernathy grunted. The house was a low ceiling house filled with an odd scent of spices. Sounds of the children, words she didn’t understand. Outside the window was a busy street full of venders and people walking, nothing motionless, motorbikes whizzing by. Vang now sat erect wondering what to say. She stood up, and she stood to the shoulders of Mrs. Abernathy, who had a shawl of cashmere around her, as white as the rice Vang was eating. Caroline looked at Vang blankly, getting a profile of her face, and produced an interrogative expression.
“You killed my boy you know,” she said.
“No, I no kill yor son…” said Vang.
The aging woman looked stern at Vang, and the white boy beside her, “I don't understand this all,” and she walked over towards the chair where the boy was standing.
“A right smart looking boy,” commented Caroline, and then gave Vang a cold and quiet look.
“You stop look at me like dhat, Mess Abernathy,” said Vang.
“I haven’t said anything yet, you see the truth in my face though,” Caroline said.
“Then you keep it self, I dont want hear it, leave my house, right now!” Vang exclaimed.
Yang was looking out the window; taking in all the sights, avoiding the confrontation, the one that looked as if it might explode any minute, but had not yet. They stared at one another, coldly; they could have been both carved in stone...

The Door—

She, Caroline walked quietly into the children’s bedroom; it was a little dark, passing the three beds, not a word coming from the two adults in the kitchen.
Josue, and the other two children stood close to Vang, they were talking in Vietnamese to her, Caroline could not understand; she walked around the room without a sound: touching the beds, her eyeballs holding back tears—ready to flood her eyelids, she stopped by one bed, as if it had the scent of Josue on it, as if she knew it was his, or maybe it was her own son’s scent she smelled from the blankets. Suddenly her eyes lit up, the depression it once had, vanished for a moment, and she chanted something like a lullaby, not loud, and then moved about again. That faint little solitary glow, lingered on for the moment, fading though, like a dying candle. Then she turned, walked to the entrance of the bedroom door, swift and silent steps to the next door, the outside door that led into the street, she stood in its archway, she saw, as she turned about, Josue, her boy’s boy, leaning towards his mother, talking, whispering something. Caroline did not remark, just stood in the doorway, not touching the sides or the jamb on either side, she was silent, said not a word to anyone, not to the boy, nor the mother, or even Yang, just stood there, and Yang said “You better come with me now, Mrs. Abernathy unless you have to do something else here...!” and she said—“No!” No, longer looking at the family behind her, adding, “I reckon it’s time to go back home,” and she and Yang walked promptly out of the house, and off the premises.



Death from the Hayloft

Part Two of Four Parts


Caroline, a day after she arrived back home from Saigon went out to the barn, a barn now horseless, manless, Negroless, and now childless; an old kerosene lantern sat on the steps leading up to the hayloft, she picked it up, lit it, it was dusk, mid-November, 1972. For a moment she thought she saw old Josh Jr., and Langdon— (a mirage, what else could it have been, she told her second-self, that hidden voice that produced a image, coming out of that hidden chamber, in the mind?), and then she added to that,
‘...ghosts perhaps,’ so she muttered; now she was recalling those days when Josh taught Langdon how to ride bareback, taught Langdon how to mount, how to shine the leather on the saddles, he was about nine-years old at the time.
She also recalled the day Josh informed her about the night Langdon came into the barn at 2:00 a.m., Josh at the time thinking he was sleepwalking, but far from it. Josh Jefferson Jr., told her, told Caroline about that night, adding a few things each year to make it more interesting, so Caroline thought, but it was the truth, though it was just Josh didn't want to let it all out at one time, he had his reasons. Everybody had their reasons for whatever they did on that there plantation, and now she had come to the conclusion, so did she have hers.
She looked about, it was a high roofed barn a big barn, with a big hayloft, bigger than she could recall, and perhaps she had not taken notice of it for a spell. It was like a mausoleum, she wanted to put her hands on the men she loved, her boy, her husband, and old Josh. And all she could do was speak to herself, her second-self, her mind’s eye, and even that, even her second-self, had its own reasons, for what it did, saying what it said, showing what it would show, like all the others on that there plantation.
The more she tried to understand, the less she understood, where was the connection she felt was always there? It had gone.
“Here it is,” she said aloud to herself, then—“there it was, now gone!”
It was all so odd to her; no one expected it to happen that way.
The wind shut the large barn doors, no sound coming from the misty darkness in the barn, the darkness beyond the light’s glow. She was now, her mind was now, putting together, images, of that night, when Langdon came into the barn, asked Josh, “I want to ride Dan (the old horse), don’t need a saddle or anything; I want to ride him around the barn, bareback.”
Josh looked at him strangely, the boy then said, “Uncle Josh, teach me how to ride old Dan, I can’t sleep, it’s been on my mind for a while now, it’s time I learn, I’ve been feeding him ever since the day I was born I think, now it’s time to ride him, pa thinks I’m still too young, but I’m not. I’m nine years old.”
Josh looked about, all the animals were waking up, the cow out in the corral, the mules and other horses in the barn, in the stalls next to Dan, all big-eyed and sleepy-eyed beasts waking up.
“I reckon I is gots to teach youall now, cuz youall done woke me up, an’ this here whole darn barn, what ya paw goin' to say if-in I tells him, what you doin’?”
“But you won’t I know.” Langdon exclaimed.
“How yaw know dhat?” replied Josh.
“Because I suppose I just do...!” answered Langdon.
“Well, hum… youall knows more than I knows then.” And they both started laughing, and Josh got the horse out, and Josh helped him up, and onto Dan’s back, and Langdon rode the horse around the barn several times.
After the ride, Josh put old Dan back into his stall, Langdon standing by, as Dan initiated a whine and a stomp of his hoofs, like a mad bull.
“He and you is jes’ like the mule…he aint goin’ back to sleep, jes’ like you aint!” said Josh, annoyingly, yet with a happy smirk on his face as if to say he and Langdon had a special liking among one other, and an open understanding.

Caroline moved some, and began to stare at those dark shadows, beyond the light, thinking what Josh had said, told her: Langdon put hay in Dan’s stall, stood there an hour until he fell to sleep that night, thinking it was the thing to do, the proper thing to do, like it was the proper thing to do when he went back to Saigon to take care of his boy, his child after he got out of the Army, Josue, and marry his Vang, his indifferent and insensitive Vang, the one who deceived him, the Jezebel, the Delilah in one, that stepped into his life one day, and caused so many ripples within his family; she never really wanting to see the family (nor one iota interested in them), never really having intentions to marry him, never really wanting him to come look for her in Saigon.
After Dan had fallen to sleep, even old Josh had fallen to sleep, the boy must had then woke up and went back to his bed in the house, because when Josh woke up, he was gone. And shortly after that, Josh had fallen back to sleep a second time, and he told Caroline: the last thing he could remember, before he fell to sleep, was that everything was noisy, and now daybreak had arrived.

Unhurried, Caroline stood up from sitting on the wooden stairway and daydreaming, leading upward towards the loft. She heard the sound of a hound, she opened the barn door, and there was Tabasco, Langdon’s dog, caked with mud. She had forgotten all this time about her, she disappeared six-months ago, sometime around when Cole died, her husband. She brought the dog with her to the house, gave him some beef jerky, and they both went back to the barn, her to reminisce, the dog to sit beside her, and reaffirm he was really home.
She thought: gee the dog must have lived off the land all this time.
She could hear in the background, someplace out in the fields, a few other hounds yapping, under the moon’s light, stray dogs, those dogs folks let loose out of their cars to run wild in farmyards, so they don’t have to have anymore responsibility in caring for them, an out of sight, out of mind thing.
She wanted to go back to her daydreaming (catch up where she left off), she was having some good memories, happy ones, she was at peace, a very nice calm had swallowed her, and she had not been happy for a very long time, but she was happy now, very calm, unhurried, the yapping of the dogs—outside the barn—didn’t even bother her.
She lowered her head, it was nice to have a familiar face, she thought, even if it was a dog. Tabasco sat close to Caroline’s leg, perhaps feeling the warm blood, the scent of familiarity. Tabasco chewed away on that long thick piece of beef jerky, it was nice to be able to make her happy, Caroline thought, it was a long time since she made anyone happy.
She spoke to the dog, saying: “Do you remember old Josh, he died also, just like Cole, just like Langdon, we are the only ones left. Sold the cow and old Dan passed on also, and sold the other horses. No more anybody’s for us Tabasco.”
Tabasco yelping…
Caroline now got thinking of Old Josh’s bad habit of chewing tobacco and spitting it out. Then she gazed at the dog-blank like.
“Don't have kids Tabasco, you’ll just be hurt. What do you think about all this? Josh, and Dan, and Langdon and Cole; and then there is me and you, we survived them all.” (‘A rhetorical question of course,’ she told her second-self silently.)
The old dog said nothing, legs a bit weak; she was comfortable for the moment. Not even a bark. She, likened to Caroline just sat there, not one little woof or display of displeasure, just sat there chewing on that leather like piece of meat, happy to have it.
“Tabasco, that old man spat all that darn tobacco out, all over the place. Oh he’d do it carefully, as not to get it on the house rugs, so I’d not see it, but boy you go to the corral, and you step in it as sure as you would cow dung.”
Then she laughed, and the dog looked up, as if a dog could smile, she detected it as to one, because she patted her on the head, and said, “You understand, too well.”
“How silly them two were, Josh and Langdon, Cole never played with Langdon all that much, some football, he was always working, so it seemed.”
She stood up, stood without a word said, slowly as not to frighten the dog, without any change in inflection, “Oh,” she said to the shaggy dog, “you’ll have to find a new home—such a pity, a pity, but I will not be here and everyone else is gone. You don’t need my pity though, you’ll do just fine on your own, like you already have, so Shoo!” she told the dog and the dog got up and walked over to one of the horse stalls, Dan’s old stall, and laid down.
She was now looking at the dog, and the dog fell fast to sleep, “I wonder what she’s dreaming, Cole once told me dogs dream, and Josh confirmed it, something for survival reasons I think, a primitive thing.”
Now on top of the loft, she took a long piece of rope sturdy rope, tied it around a four by four fifer, and then put the noose around her neck, and jumped off the edge of the loft, hung herself—
Hanging there, her fingers made a last and heavy jerk, body going into spasms and then stopped abruptly, and she said, in just a whisper to her second-self (eyes cast down, noticing the dog was sleeping), ‘no more time to hate, it’s such an awful, awful sin…’ and her throat and nostrils made a sound, and she knew then, she had hung herself—dead.


The Dog

When the neighbors awoke at daybreak, they could hear the yapping moans, the cries of the dog— Tabasco; Caroline had left the stall gate open for the dog, to guard the entrance to the barn door which was closed so no other dogs would find their way in, and have a free meal at her expense. So with the barn door closed, the neighbors would come and see what was taking place, and she’d not stick up the barn or bits and pieces of her would not be scattered about by hungry dogs, and she could be laid to rest in the family plot. And Tabasco waited until the neighbors came, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Unknowing the profound emergency of the matter, it was midday before they arrived—and for some reason, for what they saw, they were not surprised, only saddened. And sad to say but true, Tabasco was homeless again, and had to rejoin the elements of the stray dogs—that were now forming packs, for winter had set in dearly.




Early Morning Hounds


Part Three of Four Parts


She was in a dream, sleeping on the floor of that big mansion, “Let’s go Betty, let’s try it, jump…!” Caroline said.
“Fine,” Betty said out loud, still in a state of incongruous oblivion, her hand held out to grab Caroline’s, as if ready to jump. It was the first time, she had spent time, real quality time that is, with her sister since they were kids, now Caroline was married, had her boy, Langdon, and Betty likewise, and a daughter.
The crew shouted for Caroline not to jump, and Caroline wouldn’t leave Betty, and Betty wouldn’t leave Caroline, they planned their trip together, two sisters holding each other’s hand—hand to hand—now shoulder to shoulder, they jumped, just like that, jumped onto the edge of the ferryboat, at the last minute, a crew man shouted, “You fools, you could have been killed,” the boat was a few feet off the dock area, ready to transport a hundred or so visitors over to Nantucket Island. But the dream was better than reality, because Betty got hurt in reality, not in the dream, skinned her left leg when she jumped those few feet, hung onto the railing of the boat, a dumb thing to do, but at the last minute they did it, and one crewmember tried to shove them off, and Caroline—once secure on the boat—kicked him in the balls (southern style, upwards, driving them nearly into his throat)—at which time the boat was pulling away from the dock, and a few folks standing nearby yelled at the crewmember, a few obscenities, and “You got what you deserve!” and he hightailed it out of their sight.
For Betty it was the last profound adventure her and her sister had done together, and she hung on to it like a hungry cat would to a dead mouse; they were Bonny and Clyde that day, the youthful southern bells, daring to glorify the good old south once more.

Restless, Betty stirred and moved on the living room floor covered with blankets; the floor was hard, it was as hard and unmovable as if it was part of the earth its self, hard, unlike her body, but her body felt somehow, closer to her sister than in a bed, or on a cot, or on a couch, and her residue was in the air, on the walls, everyplace, and the air was crisp and fresh—seeping in from under the doors and windowsills, and down the chimney, and she had fallen to sleep in her dress, and she wanted to dream more, finish the dream, even if she had to help it along, so: the boat shot away from the pier, chugalugged across the waters to Nantucket, they were now inside the large waiting room of the boat, clinging onto the chairs as the boat tugged through the rapid waters, across the chopping waters, looking at the shadow of the boat out of the window, and onto the glazed waters—the green waters around Nantucket, with blue tints, a few young men, looking at them, not men-of-war, but young college men, smiling in a floating quiet way, round young eyes, and then Cole jumped into the dream (Caroline’s dead husband), and Caroline said, “I lost my mate,” and Betty scolded her sister right then and there as if it wasn’t a dream, “You fool, you damn fool, you should have shot Vang, been done with this iron-gray dilemma she put you into (and the word ‘us’ flashed by her mind),” and then the quilt got tight over her body as she lay on that flat wooden floor—and woke up to an empty house of furniture, that she had sold the past few months (it was February, 1973).

The fire had gone out in the hearth, and it was complete darkness, she thought little to nothing on her husband in his wheelchair, at their home in New Orleans, only of her sister, that had she triumphed in killing Vang, this might not have happened, she might not have hung herself. What stopped her from killing Vang? I mean, let’s face it she committed suicide instead of getting the culprit. (So she thought as she lay there pondering over each stop, each inch of the past melodrama that had played out in her sister’s life.)

She had to sell the house, and the land. She’d sell the land by plots, but after that, then what? Christmas had passed, the New Year was gone. Then she heard the sounds of hounds running across the fields in back of the house: perhaps one is Tabasco, she contemplated, but she didn’t get up to check. The dogs were chasing the cats, whom where chasing the rats she conclude, trying to get back into her dream world, perhaps the rats were trying to corner one of them: all yelping at one another, screeching from the rats, and the hounds barked like wild deranged wolves, with rustic voices, and interwoven there was a faint voice of a dog, perhaps Tabasco—‘Who is to say,’ she told herself. And so she finalized, there was nothing else to be done, nothing to do this night but let the sounds penetrate her brain, let the haunting night stretch the sounds into her soul until her brain found a way to shut down, and her soul seeped into slumber.

Betty Hightower, she made no noise sleeping there on the floor for a long spell, and then her mind’s eye woke her slightly up, not completely, she was in a waking sleep mode, no longer a dead sleep, and she thought: how funny life was, it stunned her the way events in her sister’s life turned out. She deserved more out of life, perhaps revenge; perchance God would have looked around this one, overlooked it, had she killed Vang, knowing revenge was God’s preference, but he is forgiving. And she knew the old sayings: revenge destroys both parties the seeker and the victim. And the best revenge is success, and letting go and going forward in life is better than living with revenge which consumes you. But all these witty sayings just cluttered a person’s brain seeking justice; she told herself this, all of this, and when the brain is cluttered—she added—the culprit gains more time to do more evil to more people; she wants you to be drowned into Godly values, and pity for her, for Vang, so you don’t go after her, but she don’t have pity, or sacred value herself, they take too much time, they are too costly. They say heaven will get the bad guys later, or girls and as a result, they will get their just due, reward, their judgment, on judgment day, but we are on earth, and here we do things a little different, and if we wait for heaven, while on earth, we’ll have to fill up one side of the earth, like an attic full of rats, with these evil doers, feed them, pamper them, wash their cloths and all. That is what she mumbled, that is what she was thinking.
Here was life, at its rawest, she came to a point of being, amazed with outrage inside her head, building up as the hounds chased the cats and cats chased the rats, and the sounds penetrated Betty’s brain, more and more and more—disrupting her dream, her half dead thinking, until it was numb, her brain was numb—oh she was half asleep still, felt like she was a puppet, and someone was pulling her eyes with strings to open them and shut them at will.
Here was a girl called Vang, six-thousand miles away, who brought misery to a whole family, altered the course in their lives, something no one expected, lest Caroline, and Betty—Betty whom was still in amazed outrage over something like this was tolerable without revenge.
Said Betty, talking aloud, staring at the ceiling now, more awake than ever, listening to the hounds, the hounds the everlasting awakening sounds of the hounds, “You got to finish what you started, clean up another’s mess,” she said to the shadow on the ceiling as if it was Caroline looking down at her—it was first light, it had seeped in through the windows—she had been dreaming, and wanted to go back to her dreaming, of the boat ride to Nantucket again, “We’ll jump off the dock together, one more time,” she whispered. Then she heard a sound of a dog, it sounded like Tabasco, her whimpering barks, and whamming (zaps) mixed in with sounds likened to rats, perhaps cornering her, and her barks become more faded, as the other creature’s screeches became more louder, and she heard that the noise was coming from outside the back screened-in door area, and she ran with a shotgun she had found in the house—loaded with to shells, and she ran to the door, and opened it, and five rats as big as fat cats stared at her as they tugged at Tabasco, trying to drag Tabasco away from the door—pulling ripping at her bare hide, they had ripped her open, and her flesh was exposed. And she shot at the rats—two shotgun blasts, and it tore the rats to smithereens, leaving Tabasco, near dead; he had been viciously torn to shreds.
She then looked down at the dying dog, closed her eyes for a moment, the door to her back, said with a scent of vengeance, “I got them for you Tabasco! And now for Vang” and when she opened up her eyes, Tabasco had expired.


Saigon Bound

Part Four of Four Parts



A little after daybreak, Betty went to see the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, asked if she could borrow, or if not borrow, perhaps would she loan out her help, Amos, the Negro who befriended Old Josh, all those years. He himself was seventy-nine years old, but spry as a forty-year old jogger. Mrs. Stanley saw him out by the corral, called to him, as he approached, he was muddier than usual, and put out his forearm to have Mrs. Betty Hightower shake it, instead of his muddy hands, and she did. She knew him from before, but not well.
Said Betty, to Amos, “Mrs. Stanley agreed with me, if it is okay with you, to loan you out to watch the Abernathy Farm while I’m away: you’ll get paid the same, and if you end up servicing both plantations, you’ll make double.”

Well, the agreement was made, and Betty Hightower was on her plane to Saigon.
Morning in Saigon


Still carrying notes, she had made back in Fayetteville, on the location of Vang’s property in Saigon, notes she had gotten from Caroline, when they discussed her leaving for Saigon, she pulled them out of her purse, checked them out, followed the path they led to Vang’s property a rundown shack of a house, not a house in the sense of a house she was used to but more on the order of a shanty, it was close to a U.S. Military Air Base. You could hear the jets, and helicopters, and propeller planes taking off.
And there she stood, like a pillar, motionless, like a figure cut out of stone, and she again took her notes out from her purse and checked them along with a picture of Vang, it was the house, oh yes, she concluded, it was the house so she confirmed and the door was slightly opened, she approached looked from the doorway, around inside it, turned about to see if any faces where checking her out, no one was around, no one that is that mattered, they were all whizzing by in cars and carts and motorbikes. She checked her purse out again, her knife, a four-inch pocket knife was still there, one Jason (her husband) used for fishing, cleaning fish with. Then she dispersed the knife from her purse, held it in her right hand, and entered the proprietress’ home, once in the house, all the outside sounds ceased, the horns of the cars and buses, the motorbikes, all rubber tire sounds on the pavement ceased, children the noisy children in buses, hanging out of windows—ceased, and just voices in general, city noises in general all ceased, and the so called kind of noises no one really pays attention to—except when you are seeking silence to think—ceased, it all seemed to have died away.
She entered the kitchen, it seemed to be the main room of the house, and then into a bedroom, three beds, it was cold in there, an empty coldness, it seeped into her veins, made her blood icicle like, chilled to the bone, and she left just as abruptly as she had entered the shanty, and back she was in the Kitchen, and then onto the second bedroom.
She passed a shadow, a slumped shadow in a corner, but made no response, and when it reappeared, with the little light that seeping under the curtained window, she saw that it was a body, in a fetus position, a dead body, no motion, it had to be dead she quickly worked out —she looked closer, it was a waxy looking dead female. It was covered with pus and sores especially around her lips, legs, eyes “Vang,” she said, “it has to be her…!” and it was so terrifying, so sudden a shock, so awful, without concentration, or a plan, she lost her breath, and ran out of the house, and up a deserted street, no cars no folks walking, just three young men, and she cried out—loud for everyone to hear, take notice, not for Vang, but for herself—the shock of it all, it was so ugly, she was frightened out of the house, ascending that hill, away from everybody, then the three men, who had noticed her, and who noticed she was not one of their kind, grabbed her, dragged her like a dog by the hair, ripping her skirt, bruising her ankles, they put their hands her mouth to hush her up, and she knew to be true, she would not survive the ordeal, they had knifes, and her hands were empty, only her purse strap around her shoulder, and that was tore from her now, the knife once she held, must have dropped when she saw Vang, but she was not looking for it, she was quiet now—ready to believe.




Chapter Two


The Sad Boy
(1972-‘73)



Lifting the bruised body of the woman the police would find out later it was to be Betty Hightower, from New Orleans, Louisiana, they checked out her purse for identification, and her passport was missing, perhaps stolen and would be sold on the Black Market, and then they found her wristwatch, surprised it was still on her wrist, he took it off for safe keeping, and put it in his pocket.
Two young men, one with the watch in his pocket, picked her up, dropped her onto a wooden canvass stretcher, one used for soldiers in WWII, it looked. The other helper, asked him to be a little more gentile, respectful to the dead. But the other’s comments were simple and to the point, “Let the dead be dead, the living got to eat, and I am getting hungry for lunch.”
They dropped the body like a child’s toy would have been thrown into a bedroom with a mother whom was fed up with picking up toys, or trash. Then the emergency vehicle she took off in followed a curved road onto the morgue. It passed a sign that read: “U.S. Air Base this way→” and an arrow guided you in the direction.
The driver just drove, the one with the watch in his pocket, he was called Hai (Chien being the helper); hence, Hai was mussing with irrevocable astonishment a female would be wandering alone in this part of the city, especially an elder attractive female (she had several hundred dollars of travelers checks in her purse, and a gold ring on her finger, a medium size diamond in the center of it to boot). I suppose the driver was musing in the fact, didn’t anyone tell her the facts of life, was she so unseasoned to step into the abyss without looking. Whatever, it is exactly what she did. I suppose if she learned anything, revenge was perhaps not all it was made out to be. You have to have a plan A, B, and C, that would have helped.
The driver for the most part, was detached, just curious, as most people seemingly are, yet with some attention to the situation.
As they drove a little further, there was a child—perhaps three years old—a white boy, with unavoidable cold blue eyes, as if waiting for its mother or father or anyone to feed him, care for him, to return for him. You couldn’t have mistaken him for anything other than who he was, he was different, he had rounded eyes, he was American looking—a gringo, it had found—at such an early age—grief and despair; it was plagued looking, it had sores all over its body, its mouth, and hands and feet, its father must had left it there to die (not so uncommon, especially for a half-breed, especially when a father has to feed three, and it is cheaper to feed two); plus, it was to many, a reminder of the enemy, invading our country.
Kids were walking by the child, a few kicked dirt in its face, and those who stood by watching, took their turn after deliberation on: who would stop them, and discovered or came to the conclusion, no one, so let’s have fun. A few kids, older kids, took their cigarettes out of their mouths and burned the child’s legs, and when the child cried, they pressed harder on the cigarette, until its body gave in, and shutdown.
That evening the child remained where it was left, by its step-father, but a shadow a sad shadow was the child, in a dark empty world alone. Had Betty been alive perhaps she would have said: ‘…this is what you get for being indecent, it is God’s revenge on the innocent, that we become overwhelmed with our guilt.’

Vang’s husband, Nguyen had given the boy his death certificate when he left it out in the dreary night; night being the time of destruction, where animals search the streets and robbers look for whatever. This would have been speechless for the likes of Langdon, his real father, and by morning the saga would be over, there would be no more links to the Abernathy name, no male links anyhow. Perhaps the husband, Nguyen, had the last laugh, and got the least blame, if one was to give out portions of blame, he got the smallest amount. He got his revenge, also, what Caroline started out to want, couldn’t do, and what Betty would have done, but it was done for her. Thus, wearily now, Nguyen, was treading almost like an old woman about the house, buried Vang in the backyard, took a few of her bones, ribs, and placed some into a open wooden coffin, so the fiends, the ghosts would not come back and haunt him, then he went into her room and cleaned it, the children crying hopelessly for someone to undress them, feed them, then he heard a knock on the door, it was Zuxin, and he played the persecuted father, and grieving husband, she would remain there, become his new wife, he had a way of persuasion.

“Perhaps,” Mr. Jason Hightower said, in his wheelchair back in New Orleans, “just perhaps,” he said to his daughter, now nineteen-years old, “it was all started because of a man, not Vang completely, but a man who was feeling he had a pointless journey in life, an empty man, with an empty life.”
Cassandra Hightower said in response—with a glance towards her father—now smoking a cigarette in his wheelchair,
“I don’t know much about what’s been going on in the Abernathy family but now it has jumped over to ours!”
The father expelled smoke, “None of us saw it coming—but somehow, someway, Vang and her husband were invited into our house, perhaps by Langdon.”


Chapter Three


Louisiana Girl
1974



Cassandra Hightower’s bedroom faced an empty wall, on the second floor of the house, in the hallway, her father whom almost lived in a wheelchair (because contracting polio when he was a kid) lived downstairs, seldom came up to her bedroom, or the second floor in general, his bedroom was centered towards the library, where he could, if tired, go easily to the bedroom from the library, which he used quite often. She’d tell her father this evening, it had been bothering her for a while (it was July, 1974, and her mother had passed on some four to five months now):
“Every time I get ready for bed, I look for mother; so far it still haunts me, her being gone. It’s hard to deal with, this grieving process you talked about before…that I can either grow through it or simply go through it, you said something like that anyway, or was it, if you don’t grieve it will come out sideways anyhow. Whatever you said, I can’t do it, her death has put me into a depression, and I can’t help it, and I don’t want to feel it, and I don’t want to deal with it. I wish she was here, she was always so very strong.”
Jason Hightower, he looked up at her, hopelessly looked up at her pale face looking down, it was painted heavy with sorrow, “Why did she do it, go to Saigon, we’ll never know, sometimes we don’t know the other person as we think we do.”
“What was the matter with her? I mean, what she was thinking about while selling Aunt Caroline’s furniture, sleeping in that big old house, night after night!”

That evening Linda Macaulay (Girlfriend to Cassandra Hightower, twenty-years old, 1974), came over to visit her, and they waited for the evening to darken, and was picked up by Henry, Cassandra’s new boyfriend, and they drove outside of New Orleans, to a private location, parked the car, Linda in the backseat with her boyfriend.
“Give me a kiss,” Henry said, and with its tone, it sounded more like a demand.
“No,” was her answer, and Cassandra added, “there’s noting else to do but bring me back home, I’m tired, I want to go to bed.”
She of course was not really, really tired, just fatigued from the depression, trying to figure out things that had no answers, things that men do to others without a motive, plot, plan, things that happen suddenly because you are at the wrong place, at the wrong time, like her mother being rapped and killed in Saigon some months back.
With a deep sigh, Henry said, “Alright,” thinking, for the past four months, she’s been laying with every Tom, Dick and Harry, now why this?
Henry was eighteen, and Cassandra was two years older, and what he didn’t know, was that she was simply trying to keep herself busy, keep some sanity in her, she didn’t care for him, or any of the other boys—and perhaps they didn’t care about her, but she was not doing the speculating.
As far as she was concerned, she would never trust a man again, she told her father, after his statement, that: perhaps Vang’s affair with Langdon was the cause, or more of the cause of Vang’s husband’s, Nguyen; destructive demands and expectations and didn’t care what his wife had to do to get them met, its consequences now having a long, very long ripple effect, which was still in progress, all from Vang’s husband, not Vang in particular.
When Cassandra got out of Henry’s car she asked herself—as he pulled away—asked herself, out loud standing in front of her big house, “Why do I do this? What is the matter with me…and tomorrow what—and all the tomorrows after tomorrow, then what?”
She got to the top of the stairs in her house, her father was still awake, and it wasn’t all that late, 9:30 p.m.
“So you like the young new boy….?” He said.
“Like who pa?”
“Henry, that’s his name isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah, I guess so,” she glanced at her father over the railing.
“You’re lying!” He said (after expelling smoke from his cigarette) “…you’re inviting many people into your life; you know that, don’t you?”
“Come on now,” said Cassandra, walking back to the stairway—
“Are you afraid? What are you afraid of pa?”
Said Jason, “Tomorrow that is what I’m afraid of, yes, oh yes, tomorrow.”
This time she remained silent, although she did lean over to hear what he was mumbling about, but she heard it faintly anyhow, “I wonder what your mother would say if she knew about this new way of life, this lifestyle you are enmeshed in!”
Then she continued to walk to her hallway bedroom, she seemed to watch her feet as they entered the room, head deep down in emotions; she seemed plagued with ghosts, uncountable and unnamable ghosts, who were starting to possess her whole being.
In bed, the depressed Louisiana girl tossed lightly from side to side.
“At least I had my chance to sin,” she told herself, loud and clear, as if hoping her father might hear, even God. She had shame, but no regret, that she was no longer a virgin, her mother—rapped and stabbed—was engulfing her every conscious thought and subconscious like cancer cells racing across her body to eat it up; she felt it was medicine, therapy, and she counted the cost.
“I don’t really want a man,” she told someone in the room, although no one was in the room, “how can I, how can anyone.”
I don’t know who she was talking to, perhaps her dead mother, maybe Caroline, but her father was downstairs reading the newspaper, so it wasn’t him, and she was not talking loud.
“I suppose we should go downstairs and talk to Pa about selling the house, Abernathy’s house, it’s a big plantation, and perhaps I can go to Paris next summer if we can sell it. If I’m idle, idle too long I’ll go crazy. I only wish I was far away from all this, and not have to hear all those voices out of Saigon.”




Dr. Whitman
(From the Journal notes of Dr. Whitman)

1975



I will have to try to tell about why Cassandra Hightower (daughter to Betty Hightower), and daughter of Jason Hightower, of New Orleans, came to our Free-Standing Hospital, here in Prescott, Wisconsin, that Fall day in 1975. I mean, actually try to put it in this report, as clear as I can, and perhaps try to bridge the gap between the Hightower family and the Abernathy family, for both sisters are connected to Cassandra’s instability, her frozen anger that has put her into a state of disassociation with whomever she has contact with, even her Senior Counselor, who I assigned to her, Don Hooker, I will use his words in much of the report.
Her father, Jason Hightower, cannot make anything out of it, why Cassandra is in such a state, a catatonic state. Talk therapy didn’t work for three weeks, tools of the counselor. Hooker even had to place two guards by her, one inside her room, the other sitting outside her by the doorway of her room—having the door opened a few inches so he can make checks on her, in fear she’d take her life, like her mother’s sister did, Caroline Abernathy. It is—unfortunate, but true, that we find only in literature that the problems of the mind get solved easily over a paradoxical situation, as Cassandra’s mind navigated to. The human mind can be juxtapose only so long by or into the vortex of trauma then it shuts down, it is a survival technique.
This was the premise the Senior Counselor and I worked with: we needed to unthaw the mind, and give it reason, try to free it from its frozen anger; it was anger keeping it where it was. We had to make it wholesome again, tell it to let go, and go forward.
Mr. Hightower came in a wheelchair to the hospital, I think he should not have come at all. She could have been sent on alone, and he came with a young lady by the name of Linda Macaulay, Cassandra’s girlfriend, they both really wanted to see her, and she wheeled the wheelchair through the doors of the hospital. I still don’t believe he ever understood the real problem with his daughter, oh perhaps the situation, but that is always the surface, the face of it, not the wound, that is the real problem, and it is under the surface, under the flesh, deep in the mind, in this case.
He slept in that chair in her bedroom many of nights, the nights he didn’t he stayed in a local hotel, with that Macaulay girl. No one could keep him from affirming the fact, she was not as ill as she really was, thinking she was putting on an act at times, actually I think he was gambling with her prognoses; to a court and jury, he would have been guilty of intrusion, but we tried to accommodate him, and at times he seemed to be the patient more so than the visitor; I think at times also, he wanted to enter a plea of mental incompetence on my helper, the Senior Counselor.
It all started of course, after the killing of her mother, Mrs. Betty Hightower, when she was brought to the hospital, she could not even remember her mother’s name. She couldn’t name the victim, even after Hooker made many suggestions and prompting to the mother’s name, she didn’t look alive, but of course was alive, just staring at and into nothingness.
Mr. Hightower never denied she did not need help, it was his insistence, we were not helping her properly, he was eager to have her put back together, as she once was: sympathetic for her present condition, I don’t know, I could not make heads or tails out of his flat emotions, because he refused to listen most of the times to our so called hypothesize analysis, he figured she was using this opportunity to get away from him and his logic, I told him, she was at that, escaping, hitherto at the hospital, and between him and the living world outside of his house, where her mother had died, and all the trouble with the Abernathy family, she was escaping it all.
Ponder he did, and became emerged in his daughter’s treatment, it would seem to me, knowing all the facts of the family, all the way back to the death of Langdon Abernathy, and his mother Caroline, and her sister Betty, one by disease, the other two by suicide, and raping and stabbing, it would seem to me, this almost innocent mind, uncultivated in such violent actions, once impenetrable, became penetrated over an eighteen-month or so, period, perhaps it goes back three years, but the snake that infected her mind with the final bite, was her mother dying in Saigon, and her imagination playing the horror of it out on a daily basis. Call it a tale untold, for the very fact she only knew the results, not how her mother had to endure, and that, yes I believe that was the final bite of the snake, a fiercely solitary bite in the mind, loaded with venom.

But they were gone on the day we decided to give her electric shock to bring her out of her frozen state, that Linda girl, had come into take her out of the hospital, and down to the river and walk with her, we understood it as being all right, and Mr. Hightower knew if he demanded her to be released, we might not do it, and consequently, she and he and the Macaulay girl are back in New Orleans I suppose.
I have simple notified the authorities, and sent a telegram to the family that we would not be responsible for whatever occurs at this juncture with Cassandra Hightower. In my own feelings, which I hate to express, for I want to be open minded, and professional, but I feel this family, has outlasted so much corruption and injustice, and Cassandra is the last link, and is afraid, her father that is, afraid, she will vanish, completely false, but to his mind true: that she will inscrutable vanish if taken out of his sight for very long. In short, I told him in the message to watch her carefully, sometimes, the need for escape is so strong because the way through the door to recovery seems undoable, and she might resort to harsh measures.



Bishops Ploy
(Dr. Whitman)



So that was that, the good Doctor and Senior Counselor could do no more, nothing to help Cassandra, left it alone, feeling it was better that way, better for the hospital, for the father, not sure about Cassandra—if it was for the better, but it would have been a long court ordeal, and she was not the only one in need at the hospital, so the doctor would tell Mr. Hooker, and he was right when he sent the letter to Mr. Hightower, that he felt helpless in helping his daughter with his daily presence, and trying to have her brought back to the hospital. Hence, he sensed he had to let go, and he let go.

It was the Christmas season, the first of December, of 1976; Linda Macaulay took Mr. Hightower shopping in New Orleans, Linda had taken a liking for the old man, whom was really only fifty-six years old, and had the money from selling of the plantation that had belonged to the Abernathy family, he had sold it for a handsome price, and she, Linda now was twenty-one. They shared the same bedroom, and she bought what she wanted.
Linda was the optimist, always telling Jason his daughter would be fine now that she was home, even though this Christmas season she was left alone a lot. And the good doctor was right about the evil that plagues a sick mind. Right about the evil that tiptoes in the mind, easy or not easy, and she were thinking about the one thing Dr. Whitman warned them about. Jason Hightower did not plan ahead either, he just had unbounded faith that she would be all right, and Linda reinforced it.
The onlooker, unprofessional bystanders, perhaps might have said, and a few did say, the two: Linda and Jason simple left Cassandra, to suffer, and knew themselves little about such sufferings, like somebody unconscious to the real facts, she was breathing, and sleeping, but they did not see the grief, just grief for the sake of grief. This is what the neighbors were saying, not sure if it soaked into the ears of Linda and Jason, but they must had got some of that information into their heads, impossible not to.
Anyhow, they even stopped speaking to her, thinking Cassandra, she wanted to be alone, because she seldom moved, and then on Christmas Day they heard a shot…Jason and Linda—along with a few neighbors (who now were saying “I told you so”).
Jason and Linda were cooking the turkey in the kitchen when the shot was fired, he knew the sound of the gun, it was Caroline’s gun, Betty brought it home from the Abernathy plantation before she went to Saigon. It was a Smith and Wesson, 38-Special, he shot it himself in the backyard trying to scare the squirrels.
“The foolish girl,” said Jason to Linda, looking up at the ceiling, as if the bedroom was under the kitchen, and it wasn’t, and told Linda to hurry on upstairs to see what had happened, as he sat in his wheelchair in computation, working out what had just taken place; indeed, was she capable of such an act, this filled his mind, this scarcely could have matched his imagination.
Jason made his way into the small elevator to the top of the stairs, thinking if he could save her, he’d try, maybe she wasn’t dead.
When he looked the archway, into the bedroom his daughter was sitting up on the bed—erect the gun still in her hand, right hand, Linda standing by the doorway, Cassandra had put the four-inch barrow of the gun into her mouth, and pulled the hammer back, and then the trigger, it blew the side of her face off, her teeth and gums were showing, flesh hanging like threads all the way down from her lower eyelid on the right side of her face onto the bone of her jaw.
Linda thought: how painful and shameful all this was, too unpleasant, too blunt for her to endure, she got nausea, almost fainted, looked at Jason Hightower, his money looked good, but now what. Her hands gripped the wheelchair, motionless she stood by Jason, “Pretend,” said Jason, “that she looks okay, I fear she’ll kill herself if she looks in a mirror.”
“No thanks, Mr. Hightower, I’m leaving, I can’t take this from here-out, you’re on your own.” And she meant it. And she meant it, as Jason seemingly accepted it, or so it seemed as anticlimax, to a father who tried his best to protect his daughter.
“Go then,” said Jason, “Never mind me; I survived before too, didn’t I.”
Linda looked at him as she left, it was a rhetorical statement-question to her, she never answered it, she just stood a moment, stared at what, and whom she had slept with, grabbed and left, although she didn’t leave without taking her new watch, and pearl ring, and a thousand dollars worth of new cloths.
Jason mumbled to himself: ‘How do you know what to do, or should not do? I’m just a human being, left home in a wheelchair, dependent on people; how do you know, everyone is suppose to be here, but no one is, just me, tonight there will be nothing else to do…” and he looked over at Cassandra, and grabbed her sleeping pills, took them all, almost a bottle full, went to sleep, right there, right in his wheelchair and never woke up to hear the second shout of the gun go off.


The Letter
(“Dr. Whitman”)


Two days after the near death of Cassandra and the death of Jason Hightower a letter was sent to them from Saigon, from the Mayor’s office, it had an official stamp on it, and addressed to Mr. Jason Hightower, or Linda Macaulay; Jason had it arranged that way incase he needed her to read or pick up his mail at the post office, if they were not in town. The police officer had it in his hands when he questioned her on, and about the day both parties had tried to take their lives, one surviving the ordeal. When the questioning was over, she opened the letter, still sitting on the sofa at Jason’s house, detective Douglas Sexton, waited, curiously peering over at the letter as she scanned it,
“Mind if I take a look at it?” the detective said.
“I’ll read it to you, if you don’t mind (he nodded his head yes): To Whom It May Concern, and with all respects to the family of Mrs. Betty Hightower, we have found one of the three killers of your wife, and an eye witness. We are sorry we could not do anymore. But here are the results of the autopsy, and the case, which now is closed, upon you receiving this letter:

“A woman by the name of Kaojia—I have left her last name out of the report at her request—saw it all, but could not identify all the men from the photographs she reviewed, but one man by the name of Hyint, she did identify, who was an immigrant from Burma. We questioned him and he mostly grunted, but said all three, he and two others, stabbed and slashed Mrs. Hightower, and did this at random throughout her body, and the witness verified this to be true. There appears to not be a motive other than being at the wrong place, at the right time for the murder to have taken advantage of a weaker person, and murder was not on their minds per se, so Hyint said, not until they figured she could point them out of a lineup, if indeed one took place. The witness was horrified during this thirty-minute ordeal, the victim died of mutable injuries. I wish I did not have to be so explicit, but as you requested for your daughter, I should be, so she can stop visualizing, or imagining what might have taken place. I do hope she recovers from her trauma. Her body was found in an irrigation ditch, fouled by other human waste and a rotting cow carcass. I guess they felt she would not be found for a while if they threw her there. Be assured, we will give the murderer the ultimate punishment within our system of laws.”

The detective looked at Linda, said with a sigh, “Can I take you out for a heavy drink, and I need one.”
The detective was young and handsome, and Linda was medium height, blond hair, prettier than Cassandra, and more sedate, and said with a charming voice, “Why that sounds just great, let’s go.”




The Confession
Of Linda Macaulay (1977)



“Oh, he was for sure, a man of secrets, though they didn’t come to surface.”
“If he were standing here, would you tell it to him,” Detective Douglas Sexton asked Linda Macaulay.
“But he is dead, and so is the question.” She answered, staring at the Detective.
Unmoved by her answer, he, with a slight motion to his hand, placed his over her hand.
“Sounds like you’re counting his money again, and he is all dead…!” said Douglas.
“All right, for the sake of argument: if Cassandra, whom is back in that hospital in Wisconsin now, if she never shot herself, and he, Jason Hightower was back to normal—yes. You guys want us to love you from birth to the tomb, and I’ve only known you a while, since that day in December of last year, now it is March of 1977, so let’s say three months and a week, for that matter, you are still a stranger.”
“I was there Linda, I asked you out, if I recall right!”
“Yes, I remember that too,” answered Linda.
Detective Sexton was getting a bit bitter, and spitting out some sarcasm, “…perhaps it’s my bad luck to be a poor detective.”
“Oh yes, bad luck, not for you but for me, since I am dating you…” she said, hands clinched on her lap, as they sat in his apartment watching television, eating popcorn, watching ‘The Creature From the Black Lagoon,’ now she took his hand off hers.
“Maybe if you’d just act rich, it might help; you don’t act like you want to keep me, rather as if you own me.”
“It goes both ways, there is only sex between us anyhow, and I suppose Jason was worse than a father or uncle, he became worse when he got his wealth I heard, so the neighbors said, insurance, and the plantation, and the furniture, you looked kind of eagle-eyed for his money if I recall.
Linda, pauses for a few seconds, then gets up, walks over to the window, looks out it, it is a nice spring evening.
“He wouldn’t let me out of his sight, but bought me snazzy cloths, negligees and all that girl stuff. All to make me happy and you can’t buy me a stick of gum. Is it that child support you have to pay, or is it that you get a little when you visit your kids, from your ex-wife? I really was happy also you know; I just had to be there for him. He made an effort to make me happy, but there was an eccentric side to him, a placid side, a side that when he talked, was emotionally flat, he had many sides I suppose.”
Doug, stops speaking, reaches for a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lights it, with his lighter, watching Linda look out the window, puts it in an astray, and sits back, after a few puffs off the cigarette, puts it out, almost a whole cigarette, and wants to speak but stops himself, then says:
“How was Jason with his daughter, and you, I mean, did you see her much?”
“I drove him around town in his new Cadillac, he liked me to go fast around those corners, and into the alleyways, perhaps missed it as a kid, Cassandra never left her room, and we were gone quite a lot. He liked me taking him to the red-light district, if only his wife knew what was in his head, how he got there before I’ll never know, and he never told me, but he knew Jenny and Kathy and the whole lot of the whores there. I even waited outside of the car for him a few times, while both those gals took care of him. You just don’t know people, do we? You’d think his item wouldn’t work—because he’s in a wheelchair, it was really his legs that didn’t work, the item worked well, he even had flashy pants underneath those blue jeans of his.
But not me, not Linda Macaulay, I did not stop him, I worked for him those months twenty-four hours a day, doing his laundry, even Cassandra’s: yes I was in the middle of sin, and we didn’t see Cassandra all that much, her mind was too much for us, fathoms deep, so we left her alone, and I did what young girls my age do, shop, shop, make love with the rich, and drive the Cadillac around and showed off.”
“Ah,” said Doug quickly as if to hear more, but Linda seemed to have hushed up, “What about Betty, did he cheat on her?”
“Does a cat meow?” replied Linda, “of course he did, and he called it moderation, with little truth, something like that; although he was known in his own circles as the pillar of truth, and honesty, and fidelity, and the most faithful of the faithful. He was not a criminal of course, not in the sense of how we see them nowadays, not a thug, god forbid, but he’d go into a few nightclubs, they knew him at the few he had me take him to. He never talked Betty out of going to Saigon either, I think he wanted his time in the bars, he’d go to them when she visited her sister in North Carolina, visit Caroline that is, and he put the pistol in the house, the one she brought back from North Carolina, belonging to the Abernathy’s, even told me were it was, loudly, as if to let Cassandra know, although I cant’ say there is a connection here.”
“I see. This—Hightower guy—…” and Doug just shook his head without finishing his sentence, then added, “funny no one discovered his betrayal, he used to have servants—did you not? I mean, Jason Hightower?”
“That was long ago, I don’t know a thing about that, he was very efficient, even in his debasing moments; with a spark of dignity everyone saw him, servants, I don’t know. But I do know he was likened to a spider after the fly, when he wanted something, he even could produce a mindless outrage for what he wanted, and we around him were really amateurs compared to him.
“When Betty was in Saigon, he went unchecked, and his capacity for rage and revulsion, seeped out of him.”
“I see these are the parts his wife never knew!” said Doug.
“And what does that matter either? Whether he was or not? What can anyone do about it, he’s dead, and Cassandra will get all the money, all the $200,000 left for the furniture, and the land which sold for 1.8-million, and the house, yes the house that sold for a cool million. If the hospital doesn’t take it all away before she recovers, if she recovers.”
“No more, Linda.”
“So you had enough of the Hightower’s and Abernathy’s for an evening, and love also?”
“Thank you for that remark, I mean, love, we make love, but neither of us have fallen in love, have we? I thought I was ready to, but somehow I lost it. You said to everyone he was a good man, Jason Hightower, now this.”
“I said he was a good man, yes, after I left them, I simply just told my second self, I lied, you see, he’s dead, you know that, so what’s the difference.”
“Sure, yes, he’s dead, oh yes, he’s very dead, but seems to be alive tonight, I seem to be angry I can’t have vengeance on him, tell his wife, yes, I’d like to go tell his wife, but she’s dead too.”
Now they stared at one another, continued to stare at one another, as if this was an agonizing affirmation.
“You could have black mailed him,” said the detective.
“I got $10,000-dollars worth of materials, things, a place to live a while, a Cadillac car in my name, I suppose you can call it what you want, but I don’t call it blackmail, I produced a service, with another set of rules, it’s all fair in love and war, so they say, you just got to lay all your cards on the table, and I did, I never lied to him. And he never lied to me, we didn’t have to lie to each other, we didn’t want to reform each other either, we liked it how it was. Do you want me to tell you all?”

Said Mr. Sexton, “Not for anything, I heard enough, an old man died, and a young girl became a woman, just so you don’t have to climb down the drainpipe when you get married.”



Chapter Four



The Sergeant Carter and
Ming Story

((From Saigon to Phnom Penh 1978-1987) (in Six-parts))




Nguyen’s Repayment
((It’s all too late) (Saigon))


Part One


It is the summer of 1978, and the two children of Nguyen (both by birth Vang’s and one by Langdon Abernathy, Nguyen being the husband), are ten and eleven years old now. Vang has been dead for a few years, and Zuxin who worked with Vang in Cam Ranh Bay during the war years is Nguyen’s new wife. (That was how Vang got to know Langdon.)

(During the past couple of years Ming has visited them during the summers. Cam Ranh Bay is being used as a Market Place now, in particular the Air Base there. Things have changed. He worked for the underground in Saigon in those war years, a civilian sanitary engineer, an army-trained sniper no one knew he was, who was assigned to collect data for the underground fighting of the Americans, thus, he was also a spy, his wife never knowing much of what he was, Vang, although being a one time sniper she did know, thinking he was retired at the time she was with him.)


This summer Ming is staying at the house with Zuxin, it has been enlarged to six rooms, instead of three. They now have a sturdy roof and a dog on top of the roof to warn them of the 3:00 a.m., robbers, and there are quite a few. Zuxin’s husband, he now works in interrogation of the new order, that in which many of the citizens that worked for the Americans were sent there for relearning, to be reprogrammed for the New Life in Vietnam, the new city, his boss is Major Manh, he himself is a Sergeant, or its equivalent, he also works for him at his main civilian job, in the sanitary plant.
Ming had to attend reprogramming classes within the new order, as to have a new attitude, heart and mind for nationalism, being a friend of Nguyen, she was only limited to a few, she had met Major Manh once, but never talked to him, and thus, because of him and Zuxin’s husband, no harsh punishment was ever given her, and each summer she had told Nguyen she’d come to help Zuxin with the children and household cleaning, and so forth and so on, and of course, he had and has had, a continuous ongoing personal agenda with her, during the summers.
She is taller than Zuxin or Vang was, slender, and is younger than Vang, who would be thirty-nine this year had she lived, whereas, Nguyen is forty-nine-years old, and Zuxin, thirty-seven, and Ming twenty-eight, long silk like black hair, and deep dark eyes.
She is not really attracted to him, he is ugly, thin, and his face is sunken in like a squeezed sponge; he has bony hands, and is a very prideful man. But she cannot escape his grip on her, lest she run from him out of the country. She also has aunts and uncles in China.
Saigon, now from the ashes of the late war, has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City, is growing not only with new markets, and reprogramming clinics, but with many new cloths shops, Ming has taken a job in one, a part time job, as Zuxin has also—they work sometimes together, allowing the boys to run wild as boys often do anyhow, so they feel, and it brings money into the household.
Nguyen Khoa, is working with Yoon his friend, and the superintendent Mr. Manh, on a preliminary blueprint, which will enable Mr. Manh to finish his job on the septic tank system for a section of the city. Both Yoon and Manh have been over recently to Nguyen’s house, and have recognized Ming from the reprogramming, and recent years she has visited Nguyen and Zuxin; Ming being quite a pretty woman, who appears to be quite educated yet fanciful in an almost ill way—as if she is manic if not at times depressed, bored with life, and yet intelligent, and perhaps a little promiscuous, so she comes into view in the eyes of Manh, and so Nguyen had thought likewise, neither one sharing this opinion with one another.
Mr. Manh, sixty-two years old has told Nguyen he thinks she, Ming, if given a chance will take a liking for him, he feels she has given him the eye, flirting with him, and Yoon over some wine this morning, has said the same thing, but if you were to ask Ming, it would be a simple no, she was being kind the few times she was introduced to the two men, and so often, she has come to the realization, and conclusion making a man feel good, or smiling at him, or being kind to him, evidently gives him, or them the wrong message, a false impression, as if she would like to bestow her womanhood upon them, how wrong can a man be, but she is in a man’s world, and thus smiles and tries to get away like a cat chasing a mouse, or a bear scenting his honey—thinking it belongs to him, and she, trying to cover the scent up, before she gets eaten up because of her honey.
Manh, asks when Nguyen’s shift will end, as well as for Yoon also, his shift, and Nguyen says, at 4:00 p.m. He tells Nguyen to bring Ming to the outside truck, parked in the back where all the trucks are park when they arrive back from their trips throughout the city. There he will wait for her.
Nguyen, when he asks Ming to come to the plant, he doesn’t tell her exactly the truth, he says,
“It’s for showing you the place, Mr. Manh wants you to see it,” and she replies,
“I expected something like this, he’s always checking me out,” but she wasn’t thinking what Manh was really thinking, she had never been married, and was thinking along those lines, and perhaps that he’s interested.
She somewhat resists, even though Nguyen pleads, she knows there is something there she can’t escape and therefore, doesn’t want to go, call it intuition.
Zuxin is at work and the boys are running around in a gang.
Nguyen starts to think about Vang, shakes his head as if it wouldn’t happen again, couldn’t happen again, that was in wartime when she got her disease, this is different (he had gotten medication, but it was too late for her, and that child of hers, Langdon’s child).
On the other hand, he doesn’t want to upset Mr. Manh. For this reason, he calls Zuxin at work so she can let Vy Hoang know, Ming will not be to work, and that she is going with him to see the plant where he works.

Zuxin hesitates, says, “Oh, I see, tell her I love her.”

Funny response, thought Nguyen, I mean, ‘I love her,’ was that really necessary, simply going to the plant.

In his own way, he loved Vang, but it was all too late to save her from syphilis, and as soon as that thought came and left, so, he allowed Ming to go on with him to the plant, no more pauses.

As Mr. Manh waits he continues to examine into the phases of the new drainage system construction, he and Yoon and Nguyen were looking on, or at. Then they arrive, Ming and Nguyen, he sees Nguyen bringing her into the plant, and several other men see him do it, and Mr. Manh sees that all the men are watching, attracted to her, he then whispers something to Yoon, and greets Ming.
“I will take you on a tour of the back area of the plant,” Manh tells Ming, “and Nguyen, he can come with,” now Yoon is talking to the workmen that saw Ming come in.
“Miss Ming, in a plant like this one, as you can see we are many serious men, seriousness is in anyone of them, sometimes here we work twelve to fourteen hours to make sure the city has a sanitary drainage system in place, we all call it part of participating in nationalism, the new national government, where North and South now have been united as one, as you are one of us, as you remember your reprogramming.”

(Although he is concealing his real motives for showing her the plant, and brings her to the back parking lot; she smiles, nods her head as if she understands the word patriotism.)

Ming, for the most part is a good observer, and knows something is up, but feels helpless, and is hoping for the best, but she also knows the evil in men, those with power, and feels she will have to cooperate, and unable to confront anyone directly. And they, both Manh and Nguyen, and now Yoon are keeping her company, and will not tell her why.
It dawns on Nguyen, that Manh would do such a thing, plan such a thing, didn’t think he had it in him, and is quite bold on the situation, meaning, he did not think much about asking him to do what he was planning on doing, he didn’t know exactly what he was thinking, but it was one of those things, that strain you, until you can figure it out, and hopefully when you do it is not too late. He says to himself, aloud,
“My wife, I should call my wife let her know I’ll be late.”
“Didn’t Ming call her?” said Manh, “she knows you’ll be late.”
Then they arrived at the truck (among many trucks), Yoon opened it, there was a mattress in the back of it,
“You must be careful dear, you don’t want to fall. And if you do not go onto that mattress for me, I will have you sent back to the reprogramming… and this time harsh punishment will prevail,” and he said no more. And he took her by her hand and led her to the mattress, and he took her sexually, and Yoon took her, and several men from the plant came down and waited for their turns.
“Fine, Nguyen now you can go call your wife, tell her we are done today with Ming, for her to bring her back tomorrow,” said Manh.
“Why her?” asked Nguyen.
“Why not her,” replied Manh.
“Because she is my wife!” said Nguyen, with a troubled voice, holding his anger back.
“Because she knows her way down here, and I need you to finish the work we are working on, she’s been here before, you can’t tell…!” said Manh.
Then Nguyen looked at the several men going into see Ming, and Yoon, and they all laughed at him, smirked, and tears came down his cheeks, shame filled his face. These men you see, along with twenty others are willing to sacrifice you for your wife, they are what you call, stockholders in her,” and he laughed, and the men ganged up on Nguyen, and beat, and beat and beat him to pulp, and there he lay in a pool of his own blood, as the last man, carried Ming out said, “We’ll send his wife his checks, he will not be needing them,” Manh added to that little monologue, telling Ming “And tell Zuxin, I will be seeing you both tomorrow, be here at 4:15 pm., sharp.”



No Tears for the Damned
(The Revenge of Zuxin and Ming)

Ton Sun Nhut Air Base—1979

Part Two



Zuxin and Ming are now alone in the house, and have a plan; it must be implemented in one day and evening. They’ve already sold Zuxin’s house; the property has been sold to Mr. Jong, a week ago for $5000-dollars, and will become a boutique, the money being distributed, between the two girls. It will take place tomorrow, the 2nd of January, 1979, the second day of the New Year; people will be traveling back and forth across the boarder between Vietnam and Cambodia, soldiers as well as citizens of each country will be tired, excess work means less double checking identifications, for all the celebrations are over.
Mr. Jong, is a rich man that goes to the cloths shop where Zuxin works, and likes Zuxin, and he has offered to help her, and she has offered herself to him, if he takes them to Phnom Penh in his car, on the 2nd of January, and arranges passports, if he does, he will have a weekend with her at any hotel he wishes while in Phnom Penh.
Zuxin’s husband is now dead, and buried, yet she remains ambitious, as does Ming, they want to better themselves, and staying in Saigon, raising kids that are saying constantly: “You aren’t my mother, you can’t tell us what to do: only feed us, bed us, and be our slaves” and don’t appreciate their labors, she can do without that. Selfish they are, and so, they do not plan on trying to change them for the next ten-years. Ming, is always a charming and understanding companion, and does not drink like a lot of self pitied folks do, simply because of hardships, and she’d be a much better accompanying person to end up with.
They were both born to dream of a better life, not necessarily money, but a better background than this, what they were enduring, not really living: meaning, being a slave to disparity, to Mr. Manh, and his future whims and Yoon—assistant to Nguyen Khoa, at the sanitary plant in Saigon, who took advantage of Ming also, although never Zuxin, for some odd reason, perhaps afraid of reprisal, yet it was stunning to Zuxin that she would take advantage of a friend. Ming had already told Zuxin, how her husband forced her into an affair on the side, and was sorry to have to tell her. But under the circumstances that was forgiven instantly. She did not add Yoon into her new plans, figuring his day would come; he would take one chance to many
“They all think alike,” she told Ming, “they all feel they got one more chance before it catches up with them, and then when it does, and they can’t figure it out— what they did wrong on judgment day. And if they survive through it (so she continues to explain) they figure they will do it right next time, forgetting they were originally in the wrong, and they try it again, and get away with it, and then again, and that is that, they face death in the face, and plead, but death does not discriminate, they are left with only a reception afterwards and even then, the robber, the kidnapper, the thief, the killer, they all try to sneak through the back door into heaven. They no longer play the game, and say as a joke ‘I’d rather be in hell, than have to endure the rules of heaven (so they say)’ that is, until the day they have to face it.”

This is what she had told Ming as they sat in the house, figuring out the plan of escape, dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s.


Day of Emancipation


If you wait long enough, the day always comes. It is the day, and they talk in the morning, and separate themselves, getting the children ready to go visit their Aunt’s place, they have told her in advance that they were coming early in the morning to do some shopping, and they are standing at the door, Zuxin and Ming look at each other, at the two wild boys, the kids paying them no attention whatsoever, which is normal for them anyhow, just taking in a deep breath, as if to say, let’s get on with it. Alas, the show will change for their whole lives, hereafter.
Zuxin is now without the house, the kids, but has $5000-dollars in her purse, or half in hers and half in Ming’s.
“So far so good,” Zuxin says to Ming, you can hear the aunt in the kitchen as they walk away, moaning and complaining, “I hope your mother, or whoever you kids call her, comes early to pick you rug-rats up.”
Ly (short for lion), she has taken to drink, the old aunt, and loses patience easily, and you can see her through the window pouring a glass of sake (a glass of an alcoholic beverage made from rice; or simply rice wine). Her sister Qu i (turtle) is Vang’s husbands’ mother, and Ly and Qui are sisters, Qui has passed on; Ly being the older sister and in her 60s.
It is Zuxin and Ming standing at the corner now a block from Ly’s home, a bag in each hand, a big bag, as if it is a shopping day, they do not want to be suspicious, more incognita you might say, in case they bump into someone they know. She sees which way the taxis are set, they cross the street so they can catch one going in the direction they want, she must risk that Mr. Manh and his wife Si are sleeping, expecting them to be at home sleeping this morning, it is 6:30 a.m., and she has something nasty in store for them. The way she has it planned, they will not be able to escape, or even fight the forces off, or outrun them, a violent reaction from fear will be delivered, she wants to cleanse herself physically and mentally from this lonely part of her mind, the part her and Ming have been swimming in.
They meet, Thiea, Chiem, and Cham, called by Mr. Jong, Zuxin’s friend, as the ‘Brutes,’ or paid killers. They are large, ugly, broad and deadly looking, strong as bulls. She hands them fifty-dollars each, and says, “You’ll each get the other fifty when the job is done.”
Now they are standing outside of Mr. Manh and his wife Si’s home, the day has come, and now the time, hour, they go through the locked doors, Ming and Zuxin watch, one of the three brutes stands out by the street, incase there is an onlooker, he can subdue him or her. Another stands by the door blocking Thiea, the one with a crowbar, prying the door open, ripping the hinges on the other side of the door loose so he can push the rest of the way with his body weight, and muscular force through the door, and its side hinges that holds a cross board across the door, thus hindering some of the noise; it is all within three to four minutes time.
They all walk into the house, Ming looks at Zuxin, says “Graduation day has come…,” Zuxin has now taken her plan to the second level, she is efficient if anything, she can’t persuade Ming to wait outside the bedroom, Ming wants to be part of this ordeal, this oddity in the raw, this sin for the damned.
There is a chair in the bedroom; Ming sits at one end of it, and Zuxin on the other. The three men, stand to the side of the bed, she makes a face as she looks at Mr. Manh sleeping, and tells Ming “How can he sleep so sound, and be so dishonest, so without courage and character, no kindness in his bones, no shame, not blood in his face, she, his wife must be of the same mold, like two peas in a pod, or if not, then she has been blindly in love for a long time, and going to suffer for it.”
Perhaps she was trying to convince herself what was going to take place, and hoped it was authorized by God himself, or perhaps she was asking God to overlook it, and had a little part of Satan in her soul for the moment, whatever, her manner towards the two sleeping became unthinkable. She even declined to listen to the second self, hidden in that room somewhere deep in her mind. And then Mr. Manh woke up, seeing the three men standing, hovering over him, and was about to scream, next Thiea, told him not to, with a nine inch knife at his throat.
Then old man Manh looked at the two girls,
“I don’t know what you are up to, but you’ll pay for this!”
“We already have, now it’s your turn, and your wife’s,” then she woke up: I think she was pretending to be sleeping, thought Zuxin, because she was not as startled as she should have been. “What is going on,” she said looking at her husband dumbfounded.
“Be quiet,” says Thiea, his friends looking at both of them, Si, in her forties, her husband in his fifties. She has a fairly decent shape, and face looks as if it has had the Paris treatment, smooth silk like skin for an older woman, not under fed or pale, but rich with color, and her bones strong, not weak like so many from lack of proper nourishment.
“Chiem, cover their mouths with their own socks,” commanded Thiea, and he did what he was told, as they sat erect in bed, against the mahogany wooden back of the bed: “No veneration for you today Mr. Manh, and because of your moral and mental cruelness your wife will have to suffer the consequences, as you will soon find out.”
And Cham tied both he and Si to the bed, to make them unmovable.
Ming gets up, and Zuxin follows, tells him, “You look afraid, Mr. Manh,” although she would have liked to tell him more, time was of the essence and the brutes needed to get on with the show.
“He looks afraid,” said Ming to Zuxin, “Just wait a minute, and we shall see just how afraid he really is.”
Mr. Manh got a few words out under the sock tied around his mouth, Ming and Zuxin could hardly make it out, but they did, he said,
“You girls got warped brains, this is a scandal,” and Zuxin, countered this with, “Not yet, just wait a minute, and those words will come true.”
And then all three brutes left to go to the other side of the bed, Si was striped naked by them, “They are not going to kill you Si, just do what your husband has done to us…!” and her husband looked now terrified, the wife, simply looked at him, dismayed, as if he was removed from the marriage already.
“Si,” said Ming, “the case against your husband has already been tried, please believe me, he will suffer more than you, just fall to sleep if you can, and dream of what you’d like to do with him after this ordeal.”
Then the three brutes unclothed themselves, and for three hours raped Si, quietly, she remained through this hell, as if she had retired from life itself, as if she was going to be a well to do widow. At the end of it, she was untied, told not to leave, if she did—she was told—they ’d run after her with a knife.
Now the three brutes, got dressed, took the knife over to Mr. Manh (it was close to 10:00 a.m., and they had to meet Mr. Jong at 11:00 a.m., to hightail it out of the city, but as she would have said: first things first.
The wife looked brazen and boldfaced at her husband.
“You do not have to watch Si,” said Ming, it is our party, and we do not intend to kill your husband.”
“I think it might be better you do, if you do not intend to leave town, he is a bad one,” said Si. Then cringes and whines, and says,
“Kill him for me!”
“No,” said Zuxin, “that was never in our plans. And we must follow the plan.”
Swifter than a hawk grabbing its pry, Thiea took his knife, and castrated Si’s husband, laying the remains on the bed next to him.
“You look helpless Mr. Manh, and you should know the police will not save you, didn’t and will not, you are damned today.”
If anything, it was anger keeping the castrated quiet and possible revenge. And then all five of the assailants walked out of the bedroom Thiea giving the knife to Si, leaving Mr. Manh tied to the bed. And Mr. Jong was waiting across the street to take them to Cambodia: the last thing heard from Si’s bedroom was her husband saying “Please don’t kill me,” then a sigh, and nothing else was heard. And the three brutes got their second fifty-dollars, and Jong, got more than what he bargained for in Cambodia.

Iron Skirts–for Phnom Penh
((May, 1980 to July 1, 1980) (Along the Mekong; story eleven: for the Screen))


Part Three


The Grand Stupa of Phnom Penh



Mr. Morgan Carter, otherwise known as Staff Sergeant Carter, and still with the nickname Serge, was of Irish descendant, and lived along the Levee, in St. Paul, Minnesota, until they tore it down in 1960, and then he and his family moved towards what the city called, the North End, and he joined the Army, now in May of 1980, he was now retired and he’s been retired for only a few months now, and has taken a vacation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia of all places. He has seen most of the sights, in particular, the Grand Stupa in Phnom Penh, which he thought was impressive. And now he is walking along the banks of the Mekong River that runs alongside the city.
Zuxin’s Aunt (Tuyen Hoang, sister to Naomi Hoang, Zuxin’s unmarried mother lives in Phnom Penh, with her brother, Sun, where Ming still lives, as Zuxin has married none other than the rich man called, Mr. Jong, who once lived by the Tan Su Nut airbase in Saigon; and who had bought Zuxin’s home, and owns several boutiques himself, second husband to Zuxin).
In any case, Ming is out in the river with Tuyen and Sun, trying to catch fish, with a handsome looking wide and large net. Sun throws it out, and it sinks, and Tuyen lifts one side, Sun the other, and Ming is nearby ready to assist when called upon.
Morgan Carter the II, is walking down along the bank of the river, the Mekong, daydreaming, his hotel is nearby, he was at the Russian Market, and did some more sightseeing, it is his second day, yesterday he went to the Stupa, and this new day, he sees three people fishing, one looks a tinge tall, taller that is than the other two, and he remembers Ming being tall, the girl that worked in the mess hall back ten-years ago—slim, pretty, long black hair, an eye catcher, he remembers her from the 611th Ordinance Company, in Cam Ranh Bay, the same unit and place Langdon Abernathy was assigned to; they were both friends.
Sun points to Morgan who is walking towards them with a cowboy hat on, you can’t miss him, the only Irish American in town, the Midwestern boy is as white as rice, with light bluish-green eyes. He looks to Ming as a man in his late 30s. The city is not all that safe, Pol Pot is in the jungle with his terrorists, and has control of most everything in Cambodia, so she wonders: is this fellow lost, or crazy; she expresses that anyhow on her face.
Most of the young men in the city are to her considered criminals with a form of desecration, if not self destruction, and going no place in life. (Sun starts to pull in his net, it has sank to the bottom of the river, and he is bringing it up and out, he feels some weight to it, so he knows he’s got a few fish in it, he rushes over to his sister to close the net, so the fish do not escape, she has now let a few wiggle their way to freedom, and for the curious, one can see them fighting over the loss, in the background, for Ming is walking forward to see who the person is.)
Now Ming and Morgan see each other clearer, and know who one another are without guessing, and they walk faster, smiles tell each other they are aware; she remembers him, he was at the Ordnance Company in Cam Ranh, for a year, and returned there several times when he was on his way elsewhere, he never was a compete stranger between 1966 through 1971.
“Is it really you Serge?” cries Ming.
“Call me Morgan; I’m a retired sergeant now Ming, no longer a Staff Sergeant, just a plain tourist here.”
The wind from the Mekong is setting in, you can hear it.
“Come, we’ll go see Zuxin, she’s married now, married a rich man who lived down by Vang, down by Ton Sun Nhut Air Base, owns a few dress shops in Saigon, and they have a home here, and she owns a dress shop here in Phnom Penh also.”
For some odd reason they both start laughing, as if the stress of seeing each other had melted, and now they were at ease with one another, cordial, tranquil within a few minutes.
Says Morgan with upbeat, and excited to be seeing Ming, he always had an eye for her anyhow, “She can wait, and I’d rather visit with you. What the heck you been doing all these years? Kind of a rhetorical question, only need to know you’re okay, really okay.”
“Morgan, let’s—you and I just sit on the bank here, the sun will be going down in a half hour.”
And Morgan does. And they talk, sitting on that weedy and slightly wet bank, on a shroud, then she takes off her cloths, and goes swimming, gets into the water up to just past her breasts, “Come in Morgan,” she calls.
He joins her, makes no attempt to touch her. Her reaction from previous experiences seems to have faded into oblivion, as if the wrong she was done, was paid for in full, and all her soul wiped clean, to the point of it not even being able to remember what she had to endure in Saigon, as if it never happened. Innocence resides in her bones, her thighs, it is how she became, the knightly figure for the strong woman, the one who would inherit the new age, the age of Aquarius on earth: she is ahead of her times; or perhaps one of a kind. The past invalidated, squashed, packed in and stepped on like a tomato, that turned into ketchup. Hence, her mind is as if saying: give it to the next man waiting, let him seduce me, if that is what he needs to appease his desires, his cravings, to pacify his inners, I am a woman, and then let us go on with life, and fight the everyday fires, I am thirty years old, too old to be fighting man and the beast inside of him, and trying to survive in-between for food, and cloths, and all the necessities of life. Give me peace, I will pay the price, even if my skirts get heavy as iron (this is what she told her second self, the one in the back room of her mind, the one she talked to—now and then, the one, and only one she knew about, and kept her, her secret, the only other friend she ever really had besides God himself).
—Morgan is unsure of what to do, but his body functions aren’t, only his mind, and Ming can feel that. She has no friend to save her, like the last time (when she needed a friend and had none), but she knows, her friend in the back of her mind also knows, confirms, she is safe with Morgan, and he will protect her if need be, Morgan is a good ole soul; therefore, she will not refuse him, and she doesn’t. She faces him, while in the waters. He begins to smell her flesh, what he desires, what most men desire, asking nothing, but in his mind perhaps this freak chance is and can be, and was meant to be, a lasting romance, so he feels from his toes to his throat, and all those spaces in-between, this growing, and growing desire. She knows Morgan is a hard man; he has to be, for he endured five-tours of duty in war, while in Vietnam. She will be safe with him, she knows, he is really quite gentle, she knows this also.
“Will you come and live with me?” he asks.
She is moved by his consideration and offer, it wouldn’t matter, and she is not after pity, but she does tell him about her ambition before she says yes, “I want to own someday a little, just a small dress shop, I’ve saved up $2500-dollars, a deal I made in Saigon, selling Zuxin’s house (she tells him this, so he doesn’t think less of her ambition).”
For some odd reason, it is clear to him why she is telling him all this, all this unnecessary information, unless she had a deeper plan for him, perhaps them together, and he is close to forty, he is not all that young, but Ming knows he will be getting a military retirement, or is getting one, they, the soldiers, the so called lifer’s talked about it all the time at the 611th Ordnance Company in Cam Ranh Bay.
In all reality, she also tells herself: love is a decision, not just an emotion that needs to be fed like a cow. And it is obvious they have both accessed this. She also knows that at eighteen or twenty, such a decision if made by such a young mind would in most cases be immature, but at their ages, and their desires, it is not wise to wait if indeed it is made with an honest and mature mind, matter-of-fact, it is perhaps prudent, not to waste time.
“Well,” said Morgan, “I have $8,000-dollars saved, how about you and I getting that little dress shop together, and having a little apartment above it? We can endure this war, here in Cambodia, just like we did the last one, in Vietnam.”
No more words needed to be said on the subject, she shakes her head ‘yes,’ matter-of-fact she shakes it until he has to grab her head and stop her shaking it.
She thinks (now staring into those hard bluish-green eyes): life is not always so great, but if you can outwait the bad times, it comes in spurts, the good times will somehow reach you with an ounce of pure happiness. That the roads of life go up and down, and seldom are we in the valley of ecstasy, but there is a valley if you can make the journeys up and down the mountains, in search of it, most give-up somewhere in-between, and gripe about it up to the day of their funeral.
Ming would have seemed—to an onlooker—as an adult child; Morgan, at that very moment perhaps likewise: “Yes, yes,” says Morgan, “I seem to have been waiting for you all these years.”
That would have been considered the stupidest and most unclear statement he had ever made, had he not made it at that moment, at that specific time and location, and to Ming. He never made statements like that, it wasn’t him, and in consequence, it had to be as it was, a truthful statement, as truthful as one can make it, as truthful as one saying there must be a God, who else could have created all this, it just didn’t happen by chance.
Ming didn’t laugh, although Morgan after he said it, thought she might.
“I just had to get my act together, and then here you are, so simple, God makes things simple, somehow he does it, and it is beyond me, in all this earthly mess.”

(You, the reader, nor I the writer, could not tell them this was not a magical God sent moment, they would have told me not to write it, to leave it out of this story, and so they swore within their hearts it was destiny, their fate to have met twice in their lives, both from oceans and masses of land apart, both meeting ten-years later down the road, both meeting in a city ravished with war.)




Mirrors of Canal Ben
((Story Twelve) (Yoon’ Story, December 1981))


Part Four



Yoon Tran, who worked at the Sanitary plant in Saigon, friend to Zuxin’s first husband, lives near the Chinese Pagoda, on Dai 40 street, off the main street known as Hong Bang. He has lived his whole life in Saigon, with his mother Kaojia Tran, aging mother, now seventy-two years old, and remains unmarried. He is in his 40s, it is near the middle of December, 1981. He has heard the report Si Manh has made, last year concerning her husband’s death; he is dead, by the hands of three brutes, several stab marks were found on him by the police, right through the heart, Si has inherited all his properties and monies in the interim. The rape has not been mentioned, or told to the local police, and Yoon wonders if Si knows about his involvement. Of course, Yoon knows nothing about Si’s rape, but Si feels, Yoon has escaped the revenge of Zuxin and Ming, and taken it out on her and her husband. She even feels because of her husband, perhaps he had it coming, and her also for sticking around, she was somewhat aware of her husband’s whoring about, but that was it. Her alibi could not have been a plea of innocence, but rather neglect, for allowing it to go on for so long, and who knows how many other woman had to face his mirrors of destruction.
Yoon, he now the superintendent at the plant, and takes his daily walks along the Saigon Canal Ben, as he always has.
Yoon and Kaojia plan on visiting Phnom Penh. As Morgan Carter the II, would have told Yoon, had he asked, ‘What goes around, comes around—don-t expect anything different.’


The Canal


His voice had huskiness to it, more so now than in the past, dried up with alcohol, he had been drinking since the death of Mr. Manh, and mentally at work he was crippled. I mean, his boss was castrated and stabbed which was enough to scare an escaped ape back into his cage.
He had little agility left, and demanded his fellow works do his work for him, as well as theirs. His mind was dreary, too soft for deep thinking, as if half burnt-out, and reading those blueprints, just made him think more, and that tired him out more, and in the long run he did less, had to do less, because someone in such a state of burnout, cannot function at full capacity, as well as someone who is depressed, likewise cannot brave the element that a full day demands. He wanted to take a vacation to Cambodia, Phnom Penh but as usual it was delayed, he was stuck in Saigon until the project was finished, so he remained on Dai 40 streets, off of Hong Bang.
His eyes wild and his neck muscles tight, from the stress of the unknown: it was raining like cats and dogs, and he took his hot cup of tea, to keep the damp out of his bones,
“I was a good man in my day,” he tells himself out loud, walking to the Canal “I have pride in myself, in my appearance, I am no bum,” he adds, and because of the death of Mr. Manh, and the way he died, perhaps, who knows, he feels his time is coming. But when and where and how is the unknown question.
Fifteen minutes later he is walking alongside Canal Ben, as he usually does, sees Si. She appears to have a truly untrammeled spirit. It would seem she found life good, now that her husband was gone, but it could be a mistake to say so.
Therefore, when she approached, he simply said his hello, and she hers, and as they stood by the canal, she talked briefly about her husband.
“Did you know Yoon, my husband died for his sins, and you, you just walk around as if you conquered the whole world, the earth, and have none.” The moment, produced, or gave the impression the waters crawled up from the Canal; the sky was a flat grey, from the early morning rain, the sporadic rains of this early afternoon were starting to swell up within the atmosphere.
“Funny seeing you here, Mrs. Manh,” said Yoon.
“It’s all symbolical; I’ve been solidified like you and my husband. Hardened for life’s un-expectancies, such as this moment: have you been drinking again Yoon?”
“I got a drink on me yes, here in my pocket.” He said.
“Yes, I see but why?” she said. And Yoon didn’t reply.
Miraculously, he stood on one leg over looking into the Canal, she looked around for a policeman, none to be seen, and cunningly, she said with a push “Here is law and justice,” she had pushed him over the railing, quickly, fast, and looked in the strange light of the sun, as the dark clouds passed it, as if telling Zeus, the old Greek god, thank you for this murderous moment: with a shadow through the hopeless light. She knew Yoon could not swim, her husband told him so, and when he fell, you could hear his body tumble abruptly into the water hitting the side pavement of the canal, a dull clanging thump, and perhaps a little crack on the head,
“So long, superintendent, this was for me, Ming and Zuxin, justice now is served.”
She could see him, his reflection out of the water; he floated for a spell, under its surface, and she could see his face bobbing up close to the surface, and then under the water, it was as if looking at a mirror looking back at her, but not her reflection in it, his. And she knew, or guessed pretty good, whatever wrongs her husband did, he was part of it all—and he was the only one, who didn’t have to pay for his wrongs, now the blessing could be given.


In a Dead Voice
((March, 1971, Vietnam) (Morgan looks back, in real time it is:
March, 1986—Phnom Penh)

Part Five



Even to Sergeant Morgan Carter, he knew there were two sides to every man, and he knew he was no exception. One he could lay his life down for a county that did not appreciate his duty assignments, in a War that was not popular, as in his, that being, Vietnam, where he served five tours of duty, or five years, even got two Bronze Stars for Valor, almost a Medal of Honor, for saving a man’s life, in the middle of rocket fire, whereas most men are dead, when they receive such a gifts from the Army, or are even considered for such an award.
His uncle Frank, got one in WWII, but he had to die for it, and was buried in Florence, Italy, along with the Purple Heart.
Yes, he would die, give up his life for folks that called him ‘Baby Killer,’ everytime he went home on leave, and he never killed any babies, perhaps the bombings did, but he would have said, and he did say on a few occasions, “..tell me of a war that didn’t kill babies…?” he didn’t know of any, they all did, they just didn’t publish them, not like now, this was the first war ever put on the television screen for a Pulitzer Prize, but he didn’t bomb anyone, he shot them, or shot at them, and most of the time he didn’t know how many he killed, he didn’t keep count, nor did he go check on the ones he thought he shot, and they were not babies, they were also folks with guns, and knifes, and rifles, and so forth, like to like, he called it—and they were shooting back.
On the other hand, during the first tour of duty in Vietnam, in 1965, he fought a lot with his fellow comrades over simple things, and would have been called a drunk, and a good for nothing soldier at times, not all the time, but at times, and could have shot your foot off for the skimpiest of reasons. Why was this, he asked himself— (now 1986) the war now long gone, why does a man choose to do what he does when he does it, especially while in the act of war. A hero and a bum in the same body, just not at the same time, you can be, you can be all of that and hide it from the real world. We all looked the same, kind of. So he told himself. He had witnessed many soldiers hide, dig holes in the ground to cover themselves up from incoming rockets, gunfire, all wanting another hour of life, breath; privates, sergeants and officers, they were all alike during such a moment, and he saw many a man go crazy, shoot themselves in the foot to get out of Vietnam, the war, the day to day Army terror. It was he said, “The confused beast inside of each man.” And so it was.


Dead Black Smoke
((March, 1971, Vietnam) (Morgan looks back in a reoccurring nightmare,
In real time it is: March, 1986—Phnom Penh)

(Parts based on an eye witness)


The helicopter appeared over the airbase in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, March, 1971, almost before Carter knew it, it was there, he could hear it before he saw it, and when he saw it, and it was just a mild shadowy configuration, he went into a process of deliberation. What he heard was a whizzing, a fast whiz of its propelled horizontal rotors, which could have been two or more; Sergeant Carter guessed it to be an AH-1G Cobra, a gunship for the most part, he didn’t think it was a UH-1 Huey (officially the ‘Iriquois’), it was mostly used for transport. It was searching…for the VC, or Vietcong, going somewhat is a circle, a loop around the outer rim of the airbase, in the thick of some jungle brush, thereabouts. It was not a good circle, but rather like a ripple that the helicopter traveled in, even perchance a bit clumsy in its maneuvering.
The chopper was looking for where the VC was launching their rockets from, almost at random; the pilot was Warrant Officer Herald Lund…
The Vietcong had ungracefully tried to shoot rockets out of underground bunkers, out into the ammo dumps, three ammo dumps on Cam Ranh Bay, trying to hit their targets, and in the process trying to deal with a helicopter overhead, one trying to find them and put them out of business, on the other hand, the Vietcong was trying to eliminate the helicopter, as it went in a loop, at an angle as if to make a strike and then an immediate turn, then came a sudden sound of an explosion, and the Cobra disappeared from the air, it whirled towards the bay, and rammed into the waters of the South China Sea.
Captain Rosenboum sent out his company of 167-men to secure the ammo dump, he was Captain of the 611th Ordnance Company; the night stood motionless for a moment, Staff Sergeant Morgan Carter II, came to a stop, a standstill, as he drove his jeep along the white sandy beach road along the seashore of the bay, dead black smoke rising from out in the bay. He disembarked his jeep, walked a few feet closer to the water to get a better view; it was an American helicopter he concluded. At that very moment, a five-ton truck, with some thirty soldiers were on the back of it heading out to secure Alpha Ammo Dump, several miles away, rockets were still hitting the area.
It was night, more night than day, and the Staff Sergeant wanted to do something, and he now had to deliberate quickly if he was to get on out to the Ammo Dump, or evaluate this situation, and then what—? He had been ordered to go to the dump and secure it, and to wait for the troops they would be there shortly after his arrival. The helicopter was some three-hundred yards out into the water, pouring out Black Death. There was no one in sight, but then there was not much sight to be seen. He went back to his jeep, turned on its lights, drove down to the edge of the water; there now he could see the illusion of a Cobra in the distant water.
He knew Chief Warrant Officer Lund, he had met him, and he was in that helicopter, the Cobra, although Morgan didn’t know it at this point. Lund’s head was bobbing up and down in the water, smashed between his seat, and the front dash of the chopper, someone else was already in the water, thrown out of the chopper when it hit, which the force blew the door open.
Sergeant Carter could see the nose of the helicopter was sinking, and he also noticed movement in the pilot’s seat perhaps the person was struggling and couldn’t free himself, was his mental conclusion, everything observable came by glances, a flash, nothing clear.
CW Lund, was a heavy man, and there was a Specialist Five Atwood whom was onboard of the helicopter at the time it crashed also, he had freed himself and was now swimming away from the site, evidently he did not go back to try and save the Warrant Officer, or perhaps he couldn’t, possibly all the strength left in him was to swim to safety, nonetheless, when he saw the headlights of the jeep, and a figure standing on the white sands of Cam Ranh Bay, he yelled, “Lund, still in the chopper—help him!” If there were others Sergeant Carter didn’t notice them or remember them, nor would he put it in his report.
Sergeant Carter made his decision now, and jumped into the waters of the bay, and in a matter of minutes was swimming past Atwood, and down and into the helicopter itself, and sure enough there was an acquaintance, CW4 Lund, a half smile came on Lund’s face, “I’ve had it,” said Lund, “not sure if you can get me free, and if so, I’m not sure if I got the energy to swim out of this mess!”
The Sergeant pushed back the seat of the Cobra, and freed the Warrant Officer of his safety belt, and the six-foot, 280-pound man grabbed the five-foot eight inch, one-hundred and forty pound Sergeant, and down they both went, but it wasn’t to freedom it was the helicopter had moved, and sunk deeper, and the Chief Warrant Officer was panicking, and the Sergeant was being overwhelmed with his panic height and weight in that little space, and he pushed the CW off him, whom was becoming likened to a wild dog, freed himself, and with his feet pushed himself out of the helicopter, thinking Lund would do the same, but he didn’t he evidently couldn’t swim, or if he could, he couldn’t think to swim, or hold his breath long enough to free himself from the wreckage, to swim to freedom.
Atwood was now on the white sandy beach, headlights on him, he was exhausted, and lay there resting.
Next the Sergeant was on the beach, got to his knees, took several deep breaths, “Where’s Lund?” asked the Specialist.
“Where you left him, read the report…!” said Carter, and the sergeant simply walked away, got into his jeep, and went out to where the incoming rockets were hitting, which was: Ammo Dump Alpha.

†


“Wake up Morgan,” said his wife, Ming: “You’re having a nightmare again,” she told him, “…did you get to the end this nightmare this time…?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so,” he said “I left him behind in the helicopter, like Atwater did, I mean Atwood…I’ll explain it all another day, how about breakfast?”
“Yes, I’ll make it, I’m just finishing up on your coffee, the way you like it; are we going to the Russian Market today?” she asked, and Morgan nodded his head yes—he loved the Phnom Penh open Market, looked towards the window, the sun was shinning through it, birds were chirping, and then it completely dawned on him, he completely realized it was 1986, not 1971, and he was not in Vietnam, he was in his home, in Cambodia, and his wife was asking simple things, little daily things, things we overlook, in the mass of things that we’ve already stored for who knows when, like old pictures thrown in a box, to be explored another day, or thrown out.



Keys to the Jeep
(Events of October, 1970)

(Story told by Morgan to his wife. In real time it is: April, 1987))


Part Six




“Corporal Gills, give me your jeep keys, I need to get to the back area, where the Ammo dump is, Alpha dump is, and fast!” said Staff Sergeant Morgan Carter; then added, so there would be no resistance, “that is a direct order Corporal, from a Staff Sergeant!” (Knowing he out ranked him.)

“I work for a Major, and he wants the jeep cleaned for tonight, and he wants me to get it cleaned at the airstrip,” answered Corporal Gills, “plus I am not sure exactly what a direct order is.”
“First of all, I don’t see the Major, second I don’t need the jeep tonight, third, this is an emergency, if you need to contact him, and then do so, and to educate you, there is no such thing as a direct order, other than, the order is being given to you face to face, and that this order you do not seem to want to follow is coming from an authority, me, and you are a subordinate and let me add one more thing to this dialogue, or two…you are really being given a lawful order, because there are no such things as unlawful ones, and you are in a war zone which means if you refuse me, you can be put to death.” said the Staff Sergeant.
“I haven’t a phone as you can see, now how can I do that?” said the corporal, a little stubborn and witty.
“Bad luck for you corporal, my emergency outweighs his car wash, unless you get a lawful order (perhaps a written one) by him not to follow my directions, or my orders, which he can supersede, if he were reachable, and which you will be accountable for not following a non commission officer’s request.”
The corporal now looked confused; he had never come under such a silly attack, especially when he worked as a Major’s driver.
“But how do I know you are a real staff sergeant, you are in civilian cloths?” said the Corporal, feeling unarmored and frustrated.
“You do not know this, but if you want to go check out my locker, at the 611th Ordnance Company, you will see my strips. Also in there is my id card, read at your leisure.”
“Sergeant, I really need to get to the air strip…!” said the corporal, as if the Sergeant was fooling with him.
The sergeant was taking down his jeep number, and his name, and the time of day, and the corporal was looking at him as he was doing this, and at the bottom of the paper it read, “Corporal Gills’ refused this Staff Sergeant a direct, and lawful order… .”
“Where you from Corporal,” asked the sergeant.
“Well, I used to live in Vancouver…” replied the Corporal.
“Canada right?” confirmed the sergeant.
“Corporal Vancouver, give me the keys or take off those stripes.”
“I can’t, I just take orders from a Major,” said the Corporal.
“No, you are now taking orders from me, who out ranks you, and the Major is not here to protect you. And to be honest, the jeep looks clean and there are no ballrooms here to be cleaning jeeps for folks who are just going to get them dirty in an hour after they are cleaned anyhow! Listen up, you give me a lift to the Ammo Dump, and go to the motor pool and tell them I sent you, and they will wash the jeep for you.”
“Fine,” the corporal said and drove the Sergeant to Alpha Dump, and he walked into a shack, a few minutes later, the Sergeant came out with a rounded package, something heavy, somewhat heavy in a bag, got back into the jeep, and told him to drive back along the coast of the bay, and onto his unit, and he could drop him off and go get his jeep cleaned.
“What’s in the bag Sergeant, if you do not mind me asking?” asked the corporal.
“No, I don’t mind you asking, but what do you think is in it, I mean what would you think a sergeant who would have you bring him out to an ammo dump, put into a bag that looks heavy and round?”
The corporal thought on this for a few minutes, looking at the road, the bag, the bay, the sergeant and back to the road. “You sure have a way with a conversation Sergeant, I mean a simple question needs a simple answer, and you make it out to be an act of congress, as if we got to debate everything out.”

(Ming was sitting in the living room, with Morgan Carter, her husband, he was telling her about his times at the 611th Ordnance Company back in 1970…. They had eaten lunch, and the afternoon was warm, and it was simply a nice day do to nothing, and perhaps out of boredom, he was telling her this story, Corporal Gills just popped into his mind you like that. “Well,” said his wife, “what was in the bag?” she asked. “What do you think was in the bag?” He asked his wife. “I suppose a shell casing of a bomb.” She replied. “Why that?” asked Morgan. “Because you wouldn’t be allowed to carry a live bomb in a jeep over a rough road on your lap, would you? She answered and asked at the same time.)


Well, when we got down along the beach area, the corporal said, “A bomb, or its shell or its parts, it must be a defect your company commander wants to look at.”
Fine, I thought and then said, “Boy, are you right on corporal,” and he smiled at me like he had just received the Army Commendation Medal, for miraculous service. Next he dropped me off at the 611, and I went into my hutch, and opened up the bag, sat on my bunk bed, and ate my watermelon.



A Scorned Mother
(Sergeant Carter and the Corporal)

Part Seven



Ming asked Morgan, “Did you ever see the corporal again?”

“Funny you ask that,” said Morgan, “No, I never did, but I heard what happened to him, as I look back, I kind of liked him, he was kind of a simple laid back lad, trying to make everything seem right.”
“Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll tell you it in a nutshell. We don’t really know people, we simply—in most cases that is—bump into them, and go on our merry ole way, especially in the Army, but they all have a history, and baggage, they often do not share, and we think because of this, we get to know them pretty well, but so often we kid ourselves, I shall tell you what I heard: his mother, she utterly condemned her husband, the three boys’ father, for whatever reasons, after he left, and the three kids were raised by a scorned mother. He remarried, and had three more kids, two boys and one daughter.
“When the old man died all the kids went to the funeral, all six of them, one side loved him the other side hated him because of the scorn they heard from their mother all those years. The boys from the scorned mother’s side of the family, never got the side of the father, what took place, he let the hot sun beat on the kids head, just like the mother let the scorn burn out their hearts. The mother used hate to control the kids I’d say, and it was a way to get even with the father, teach him a lesson, have his kids hate him, you know what I mean, if I can’t have you, I’ll turn the kids away from you, so, her revenge settled into a cold molded cloud.
“And what you plant in kids is what comes out of them usually, what you harvest, is what you’ve planted, I mean, and so a perfect love was for the father on one side, by his new family, and a perfect hate on the other, from the old family.
“Corporal Gills went home to Iowa, with an energetic spirit, and found the two families fighting over vaporous old wounds, the ones the father set by not saying anything all those years, and the one the mother knitted into their fabric, their flesh all those years, and he was no longer around to put out the little fires, that would or could grow into a forest fire—
“Corporal Gills tried to put out the fire between the kids of both families, but it ended up quarrelsome, and one of the boys from the new family of the Gills, Charles Riley Gills, killed one of the boys, Corporal Gills younger brother. Thereafter feelings crept in the little sleepy eyed town in Iowa, and Corporal Gills, killed Charles Riley Gills, by beating him over the head with a pipe, but no one saw it, so he was only under suspicion, not yet convicted of the crime. The daughter took a shotgun and killed the other brother of Corporal Gills, and she ended up in jail.
“Well, fine, they seemed to have gotten even (two for one although), but at the local bar, inside the bar, the remaining brother of the new Gills family, met Corporal Gills in there playing pool, awaiting trial, and started a fight, and he killed the boy, they called it manslaughter.
“Well, Corporal Gills got twenty years, and so did Peggy Gills.
“Hate is a form of control I believe, anger that eats at the soul. I suppose Corporal Gills is still serving his twenty-years in prison, and will be getting out in another three. Sometimes hate is a recurring nightmare, it controls you, you got to put it to sleep, you got to forgive the other person, not for their sake, but for yours, so it has no more control over you, so you can be set free, and go forward. You know what I mean about nightmares, because I get them as you already know Ming, old war nightmares, they call nowadays, stress related—or PTS.
“It is funny now that I think of it Ming, ugliness sometimes shines brighter, and echoes louder than love. And family can be the most burdensome.”
Ming took in a deep gulp of air, she was not expecting that from an American family, she thought it was just poor old families in Saigon, or a third world country’s dilemma that struggled with such emotions, and feelings of vengeance, she said,
“I guess we are all connected somehow, to one another, us human beings and we all get hurt along life’s road, and we get that inclination to hurt back, and we just never take into consideration, the ripples that come out of all of it. I wonder if I will have to pay for my sins here or in heaven, or in the waiting place before one goes to heaven (?)”



Poor Folk along the Levee
((Spring of 1988) (As told by Morgan Carter))



(Author narrates) Everyone has some skeletons in their closets and so did Sergeant Morgan Carter II. He and his mother lived in a sort of shantytown, a hole of an area of St. Paul, Minnesota, on the levee, along the Mississippi River down by its cliffs, they tore it down in 1960, that was when he went into the Army, he was seventeen years old then. The judge gave him a choice, the Army or Jail: with no exceptions in-between. It was the way the Army got many of its recruits back then. Now for Mr. Carter’s statement, he made in 1988:


“The levee was a narrow strip of land, between two bridges along the Mississippi, between the High Bridge, which headed West, and the Robert Street Bridge, a half mile east of it. Many of the folks on the levee were poor folks. It was a sandy, worthless piece of land, that slowed the river down a bit, stony underneath it, and it often flooded every spring, especially if there was a harsh winter, and most winters in Minnesota were harsh, and most had ninety plus inches of snow a per season.
“The merchants that had the bars, and small grocery stores, and restaurants, which were poorly made, ramshackle affairs for the most part, lived in them as well as used them as their place of business.
“The folks of the levee were really invaders, folks who came into town for one thing or another, had no place else in the country, had a mountain of bad luck, so they would build a shack, and in time made it into a house. It all started long before my mother ((Teresa Carter) (maiden name being Wright)) moved onto the levee with me her son, my father had left long before I was even born, no sense in giving you his name.
“Back then, back in the mid ‘50’s, on the levee, folks didn’t have credit per se, like stores would provide in the future, with credit cards and so forth, although they did have a credit system in place. Whatever they handed out over the counter, they wrote on a tab, piece of paper: even the carpenters, and shoemakers and other tradesmen did this, especially the two saloons on the levee, and you’d pay on payday the total sum, or whenever the piece of paper told you, you had to pay, with your signature on it of course (a brief pause)…
“As I was saying, Ming, or about to say: we got credit back then with a handshake, and a written note, an IOU note, even the farmers did it that way, in 1953, I was ten-years old—you were a year old—then. And no matter what, one could find cash to get drunk, and every Irish Man on the levee and Italian drank from the age of eight to eighty, blind, crippled or crazy. If you didn’t they’d think you were a sissy.
“I cleaned cisterns, swept floors for every establishment in shantytown, and sold papers for the Pioneer Press, a nickel then. When I got older I drank even more, and for days slept it off, caught fish, and took the few cents I sold them for and drank more, I was a drunk at sixteen years old. You don’t know at sixteen or seventeen, it is going to last a life time if you don’t stop your drinking now. Your body is healthy, and your spirit is strong, and you recover, recoil, and rebound quickly. And then age creeps up, and it has its toll on you. It’s the way it is.
“In between these years of drinking you become more like an animal than a mature adult, you produce for yourself a hard youth.

(Ming began to get sleepy-eyed, wiped her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she had sat down at a table with a man, and enjoyed listening; his life along the river was not perfect, she told her mind’s eye, the person that was locked up in the back of her mind, the one she kept detached most of the time, unless she wanted definite things. And now she had learned to store patience for the man she married, and got up washed her face, and said, “You were saying”:)


“I wasn’t so smart back then, I had a sharp-tongue, as they say: no hair on it, and I had fast fists, and hated this levee town, and then mother took me out of there and we moved to the north end of the city, as they still call it.
“Most of my friends got jobs from the railroad, or went onto trades, I was kind of door-jammed, not knowing what to do, and watched them move on, one by one. I had several misdemeanors for drinking underage, a few accidents, and I wrote a few bad checks out, like thirty of them, and was driving at the time, and had twenty-one parking tickets. I got into a few fights, and put a few people in the hospital.
“Well, to make a long story shorter, all this annoyed the judge, and he said, “Son, indolence is found in you,” he devoted all of fifteen minutes lecturing me and when he could think of no more to say, I thought here I go, mister bum to the big house, the jail, the workhouse. But he didn’t say that, he said this:
“Boy, learn to keep things natural, not cloudy, or sleepy minded, get a plan, and work it, fix it in-between, if you wait for a perfect plan, you will end up straight back here, and not even know the purpose for being here, you will join the Army, or I will slam all I can on you and you will not see freedom for two years.”
“Well, I thought on that a few second: two years in the Army or two years in jail. I had to pick one. And as you know Ming, I spent a large part of my life in the Army, and I sobered up. And so this impulse to tell you my background was just an impulse, no more.”

(Ming had some water in her eyes; understanding came to her, and her arms ached to hug her husband, he had come on a long journey, and he made it, he had beaten all the odds—jumped all the hurdles set in front of him, the world would treat him always with respect now, for he demanded it, and worked hard to get it, he had tamed the beast in him—somewhat, and was no longer a burden on anyone. What more, she asked herself, could I ask for, in a man, I mean I have it all, love, devotion, some hard times, a character background that shaped him, and she got up from the sofa, and laboriously started sweeping the floor, as Morgan went back to reading, “All My Pretty Ones,” a book he had sent for. )



Chapter Five


Walking Men of Saigon
((February, 1989-2002))





Two Brothers
Part One of Two



Danh, the elder of the boys (born 1964), was named by his father, and it meant fame, and An, was named by his mother (Vang, the birth mother to Langdon Abernathy’s child), and it meant peace, perhaps they knew something before hand, a premonition, because their personalities seemed to shape, or mold that way; Vang, shrewd as she was, was only half as shrewd and mean as her husband, Nguyen Khoa.
The boys were dropped off in 1979, at their Aunt Ly’s home, in Saigon, ten-years have now passed, and Danh is twenty-five years old. And An, a year younger; Ly, is in her 70s, and handicapped, she walks now with a limp, she had put on a second floor to her house, several years ago at the request of Danh, who had said at the time: if she didn’t, he’d cut her ankles off, and she believed he would have. He has turned out to be lazy good northing gigolo, growing up these past years, not in the gentle manner of his brother either, An. Oh, I almost forgot, Ly got that broken ankle, and busted up toes by Danh one night, he done it without Ly saying anything, just woke up from a drunk, and suggested she give him her savings, wherever she hid it in the house, or suffer the consequences. She didn’t think he had it in him, and he did, and he took a seventy pound rock and used it as a hammer, a huge rock he brought home from Canal Ben, and so he was ready for such an occasion, walked into her bedroom, her eyes closed, lying silently on her bed, and bang, crash, smash, he threw it on her right ankle, foot and toes, it fell on her like an eight-inch projectile. In a like manner, He tried to bully An, but he never could.

An, he worked for the Canal Ban city project, just sweeping the canal area clean, a peasants job, but it was peaceful and tranquil, and he often used the phrase: ‘…it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion.’ Whereas for the other boy, his philosophy was just the opposite, what belong to him was his, and what belong to others was his if he was shrewd enough to get it away from the other person, in essence, he couldn’t or wouldn’t give up greed to save his soul, matter-of-fact, he’d vomit it out first, if indeed, he needed to. Perhaps it would have been best for him never to have been born, but he was, and man would suffer all the more for it.
An, he wanted to be a clergy, a monk or Christian priest. He was having what you might call, a mental conflict over Buddhism and Christianity, especially with Ly and her sister Oni. Danh thought it all silly, if not plain dirty hogwash.
“You’ll have to learn things and I suppose I’ll have to be your teacher,” said, Trang, the brother to Ly and Qui, born 1922 (named for honor, and was a man of wisdom, a learned man of theology, and was once a professor at a college in Saigon, before the war).
And so it was that An did his work, and his studies in theology, and his menial tasks at home to help Ly as much as he could. Along with his working everyday at the Canal, and walked over to Tang’s house after work, and home to Ly’s house thereafter, and Danh did his share of walking, but it wasn’t in the same directions, he’d walk over to his neighbor’s house, and make love to his neighbor’s wife, while the husband was gone, and gamble in the afternoons, with the local men at the parks, and walked down to see his brother and fight with him over trivialities of life, while he was working at the canal, trying to convince him to join him in his lifestyle of awkwardness, to rob and do what needs to be done to the tourists coming into Saigon for fame and fortune, as if he was Robin Hood, but was not going to give to the poor, he was the poor in his eyes no matter how much he had. They could start a mafia type gang he suggested, and the local merchants pay them tribute, in American dollars, but An, just laughed at the suggestion, and kept sweeping, and told him to go find his treasures without him.
As the old saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will come. And it was so, his learning from Trang had come to an end, he was asked to send a letter by Trang to the Bishop of Saigon, who had been release from prison after many years, and who proclaimed he was needed in the prison system during his imprisonment (from the communist takeover of Saigon in 1975), and thus, made no qualms, even laughed at the ungainly, if not adopted new home environment the government gave him. The Bishop was to be ordained a cardinal, and was newly assigned to the Vatican.
Danh, got hold of this information, went down to the Canal, his brother sweeping it as usual. He had told him how he annoyed and irritated him, flesh and blood, whatever, however could he be his brother and so simple minded, it was what he mumbled on the way walking down to the canal: that he did not like the people he hung around with, associated with. And as quiet and peaceful as the boy was he said nothing when Danh arrived knowing his nonsense, just kept sweeping as if he was already in paradise, and he wasn’t there. This in itself irritated Danh more, the turning of his back on him, as if he was no more than a huge stump in a forest, or a stupid huge rock in the rice field.
“Look at me,” he said, “when I talk to you.”
The water in the canal was deep and rich, and if you felt it, it was cool, clear for the morning, Danh was breathing in the freshness of it all, then he turned around said with the kindest voice, and smile, “Do you not have something better to do with your unproductive life?”
It was not the best choice of words, for the climate and mood his brother was in. He, Danh looked into his brother’s eyes; they were filled with a rich deep soil, and one that was full of promise. His brother turned about again, even whistled this time, which brought more discouragement to the face of the elder brother.
For the most part, it was hard for Danh to make ends meet, in his life, and most folks spoke of the hard conditions in Saigon as temporary. But in many minds, the future held did hold promise, but for some odd reason, Danh never saw that part of life, he was angry, perhaps because Zuxin, his step mother thought of him as unworthy to care for, left him behind, and his father gave to his real mother a disease that killed her, and his father, the bad seed, died in a bad way. It all was a reflection of him, it all was to him steadily fixed in his mind, the world had to pay off this mortgage, this debt in life he was burdened with, for they owed it to him for those hardships.
He also saw his community, his surroundings as hopeless, beaten men before they were beaten, defeated women, all walking along the Canal daily, begging and sleeping wherever they could. He was to be the undefeated, the unbeatable, and find a better position in life; a millionaire maybe.
“You do everything well,” said Danh to his brother.
“Isn’t that the way things are done?” he commented back.
If there are two self’s in a man, he lost one, and it was the higher self he lost, and became subjected to the lower, perhaps jealousy in that life was starting to favor his brother, in retribution for his brother’s satisfied life and position in it, he took out a nine-inch knife from his boot, and with an exalted motion, plunged the knife into his brother, ripped him upwards, from his stomach area to his heart (likened to Cain to Abel).
Neatly and clearly and perfectly the task was done in a matter of seconds. He stood there a moment, several people saw his face, he actually stood there admiring his work, his brother now an ugly picture on the dockside of the canal, and then he ran.
Word had gotten to Trang, what Danh had done, and he was in his own right, a man of means and friends, and he told his friends whoever saw Danh, to let him know, that he should go, leave Saigon, and do it before twilight, lest he end up like his brother; to go to Phan Rang, or Phan Thiet, or Dang Nai, it didn’t matter where he went as long as it was out of Saigon, and never to return to Saigon in his lifetime, for he was a dead man should he try, and he had but hours to leave the city before he would condemn him publicly—to death, if found in the city thereafter, and he ran, and he ran, and not a soul knew where to.


“Sure…”
((April 16, 1998) (Story Nineteen)

Part Two of Two



Sometimes we make history by those we know, and hang around with, not by what we do, or who we are, and Danh Khoa, was determined to do so. He fled to Thailand from Saigon, it was 1989, and he stayed there until the opening months of 1990. He found where Pol Pot was living, living since 1984, on a plantation villa, near Twat, under the protection of guards, and the unit 838. We all have a hero of some kind, and Pol Pot was Danh’s new hero, even though he killed 26% of the population in Cambodia, between the years of 1976 and 1979. And history would record, and did record him to be amongst the top elite of evil men that have thus far walked the earth since man was first seen upon it.
There he met Pol Pot, through his persistence, and there he became a soldier under his right hand man, or one of them, for he took orders from Son Cham, who took them indirectly through Son Seu by way of Pol Pot.
In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia, and between that period and into 1990 Pol Pot organized himself to make his comeback, his return to Cambodia, he would not accept any peace deals with anyone. Of course the legacy of the Khmer Rouge was over for the most part, the so called Red Khmer Tribe, and the massive starvation of the people thrown out of their cities, and brought into the countryside to farm for the new kingdom, the 1.7 million people that died under his three year war regime, now he was back in the jungles building his forces. Although in 1996, they would desert, but not Danh Khoa.
Danh Khoa, had found a cause to live for (as often men do in religion, or a cult, or don’t do, and hide in alcohol, or drugs), a reason that is, one to even die for if necessary, for he would have given his life up for Pol Pot, as easy as his step mother, Zuxin, gave him up to his Aunt Ly, so many years ago.
He thought a few times of his brother An, that how fragile and brittle he was—likened to a stock of corn, he would have never survived in today’s world, with its roads sunken without truth, coal poured over his kindness by evil doers, the grass as bristly as stout chives, he would never have survived all this, therefore he did him a favor, if God takes martyrs, he got one as a gift by him.
But what he didn’t realize was when you play with the devil; expect to bleed a little, and perhaps a lot.
It was April, 1998, and Pol Pot had a stroke, his left side was paralyzed. Before he died he ordered the execution of Son Seu. And Pol Pot died on April 15. On April 16, Son Cham brought in a recording, it was the voice of Danh Khoa, and he had agreed along with Son Seu, that the ongoing negations for peace within the rebel group were a good course to take. This is of course what drove the nail into Son Seu’s grave, an act according to Pol Pot, as treason.
In consequence, Son Cham asked Danh Khoa, why he made such a statement, and basically it was a simple reply, as truthful and simple as Danh Khoa could ever be, but to Son Cham, it was too silly to be truthful, for Danh Khoa said the following:
“I had never really talked to Son Seu as you well know, and this was a great thing to me, to have been in his presence, as I have been in Pol Pot’s presence, yet I had never talked to either one directly, and that day I was sitting, guarding the door and he looked at me and he asked me if I went along with his beliefs, I never said, yes or no, I nodded my head ‘yes,’ and said ‘sure…’ so I suppose I was trying to impress him, but believe me, that was it.”
“The Americans call this one man, a little man in a fairy tale Rumpelstilskin, do you know why?”
“No,” said Danh Khoa.
“It is because he could, and did spin Gold out of straw; can you?” he added.
“No,” said Danh.
“Then you need to stop lying.”
Then he started to remember his brother, An, all his pious talk, he told him time and again, and tired he became of it. How he refused to listen to his brother, and now how Son Cham refuses to listen to him. When you lie, they listen, when you tell the truth they laugh, he told himself, as Son looked at him with cobra eyes.
“You have put your foot into the grave, Danh, what are your last words?”
Thin lipped he was, and he knew, Son was looking for a scapegoat, and he had nothing to offer him, not a ragbag or a silver coin, nothing to bring but the cloths on his body to the grave.
“The dead are bored you know,” said Son, then he ordered three men to take him to the graveyard, lie him down face down into the mud, and bury him alive.”
Said Son Cham, walking out of the office likened to a pious king, “Get busy being dead, just like your brother.” (He knew the story behind his brother, and if you could kill your own brother, what wouldn’t you do? Not even the Devil could answer that question.)
And he was executed within the hour.




Finality to: “Voices out of Saigon


Beneath a Gibbous Moon
(Cockfight in Lima, Peru)



“We come to see,” said Morgan Carter II, with his wife Ming Ho Carter, “a cockfight, I hope they are using knifes attached to their ankles, it makes for a quicker and bloodier death. So make up your own mind if you want to come in and see the fight,” Morgan told Zuxin.
“To what purpose?” she asked.
“To kill any lingering reminders that we are still savages reviewing, suspiciously reviewing the taste of a kill the blood of the wounded; the thrill of the truth, that we refuse to lay down and die like dogs we want to go out like a lions.”
The trip to Lima, Peru, was paid for by a man named Kha’n Koea, it was his way of doing things before he killed his prey, give them something, a tribute, and Zuxin Ho was with Morgan Carter, as well as Ming on this trip, and so three tickets were sent. His intentions were to murder Zuxin when she got back to Cambodia, Phnom Penh, for abandoning his Great Grand Children, as simple as that.
Zuxin, she was having a hard time walking through those doors to the cockfight. But all three made it, and they sat right behind two couples, seemingly two happy couples, a man with a white beard, and a white mustache—who looked quite feminine, called Dr. somebody they didn’t mention any names.
Ming had been to bullfights with her husband, but never a cockfight, there was a gibbous moon out tonight she noticed, and she felt it, as if there was a marvelous ritual dance of death to be performed.
The crowed slowly gathered around this small arena, likened to a bullring, miniature size. The animation of it all was not much different than an American Football game, or baseball game.
Behind her two owners of cocks were standing, holding their animals, ready to bring them out into the glorified arena for battle, colorful they were, with long wide wings, and stern eyes, stiff necks, there was little mercy in their looks, they were battle ready; there was no music like at the bullfights, with the brass horns, but the arena had no space to offer one more body anyhow, or horn or cock, a 1000-people, in a room that fit 700. Some of the cocks had dreadful reputations, first-class ones.
The following fights would be breathless for Zuxin, starting with the skimpiest of protests with her murmurs of please stop the fight, to the uncountable others: a few women in front of her were screaming at the cocks to fight on, fight and kill the opponent, heavy voices, along with old timers sitting in front seats, pert near blocking the eyes of the women, all gathered to talk to watch, to pat each other on the shoulder as friends do who’ve know each other for years, some with expensive suits on, others badly worn servants of Lima, all screaming to undo the opponent. Chusco vs. Aji Negro, were now fighting.
The second fight Peladito vs. Aji Seco, it was a tie; and the third fight, the cocks ran around the arena, one chasing the other for ten-minutes, until the time limit was over. Both Zuxin and Ming seemed to be happy for the cock; if anything, they put on a good show, and gave the folks a minute or two, for the heart to calm down.

(It was strange how they got these tickets, thought Morgan. They had gotten three tickets, Zuxin’s husband could not go, business in Saigon, with his several boutique shops. They simple got three tickets in the mail, saying you won a random contest out of Saigon, that her late husband’s name was registered, and since she and his kids had passed on, they were in search of her, and …
through a kind lady known as Si Minh, found they were in Cambodia, and this led to Phnom Penh. And of course, Zuxin and to give them her address was necessary, to send the tickets forward, and even though it took the post office three months to find the correct address of Zuxin Ho (Jong), they were relentless in giving the tickets to the rightful owner (of course this was a ply of Toai Le; Le, on behalf of his boss Kha’n Koea.
Morgan thought it quite suspicious, but did not put Zuxin’s last name, previous last name of her husband’s into its proper perspective, for there were many Koea’s in Saigon, but only one syndicate family, and that was mostly hushed up.)

It was 2001, Morgan had heard from a friend, Corporal Gills was being released this year or next, he was going in front of the parole board, and his name was given to the board to write a statement on his behalf, that he was a good soldier in the Army. The problem was, he had only met Corporal Gills once, and played a trick on him at that, perhaps he owned him something for that watermelon trick—nonetheless he wrote the board back, and told them, he found the young corporal to be a strict soldier, that under such circumstances, perhaps many other soldiers would have done the same thing. Right or wrong, when it comes to family affairs, we do not remain tourists and standby and watch them get hurt. And this was what he thought of the situation.


—As the cockfight continued, these thoughts were going though his mind. When you watch a battle in front of you, many things come back to mind, death and killing, even his old nightmares of a downed helicopter in the bay of Cam Ranh, our mind seems often to pick at random, what it identifies with, what it never forgets, it just places experiences, bits and pieces of substance, within our lifetime, into different vaults of the mind, some deeper than others.
“Are you all right?” asked Ming.
“I’m fine; I just started thinking about so many things when we have these ten-minute intermissions.”
Ming now looks at the two couples in front of them, they are eating a pork sandwich, drinking some juices, one sticks her tongue out at her brother-in-law, a protest, Ming gathers, a friendly and cordial protest, that such battles are not her forte, but if they were, that would be a nice way of settling it.
The fight started again, the two owners each brought their cocks into the arena, pushing their faces into each other’s face, to get their scent, to punish and push, one cock into the other, the one that was soft perhaps, to make hard, no gentleness to it, the average spectator could not detect the long pointed, white nail like knife attached to their ankles wrapped with a tie of sorts, not a knife like the steal ones that would be used tomorrow, to slash and kill one another in a matter of minutes, but just one sticking out enough to aggravate its opponent.
They were bred for speed, and the first cock, the one with a white back, used its wings to lay heavy on its opponent’s back, while he pecked with his beak, into the neck and eyes of him. They are like little horns, stabbing horns that sink through the feathers and into the flesh of the other, once through the feathers of the foe—it is easy to draw blood.
Backwards the cock fell, and couldn’t regain its balance, like a turtle turned on its back, it was now helpless, and the attacker gained the moment, and came back several times to inflict more pain into the abdomen of the cock. It was wounded. Incapacity was the name of the game, fear was also an attribute, inflict it, and you gain the unrelenting festivity’s glory.
“So,” said Ming, “this is how it is?”
Morgan made no response, it was as it was, a combat sport, cold with fever, soaked sometimes in blood, but today there was no real atrociousness, the knifes would be tomorrow night, the long three inch sharp knifes that would be tied around the legs, the ankles of the cocks, as they slowly, bright eyed, fast as a mouse, feed to its audience, a dazing fight to the finish.


The Henchman from Saigon
(Sept 1—2001 /Final Story to “Voices out of Saigon)



Toai Le was now in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The trip they had made to Lima, Peru for the cockfight, was still puzzling Morgan Carter, and he told his wife, Ming Ho Carter, not to visit, or see, only talk, to Zuxin, her best girlfriend. He had put two and two together, and explained to Ming; Zuxin’s husband was related to the Koea boss, the syndicate bosses of Saigon. She thought this a little farfetched, since it was never brought up by Nguyen, Zuxin’s husband. Nonetheless, he wanted Ming to promise him, she would not see her again, unless they all decided to go to the United States. Things just didn’t fit into place.
“Listen up,” he said, “Zuxin got a belated wedding gift, the bosses felt guilty, that perhaps they could not kill her for her leaving the sons, their grandsons, to an old witch, and thus, got killed because of her negligence.”
“Okay,” said Ming, “But I think you are taking this to a level beyond reason.”
Morgan had done a little investigating to come up to his conclusion, that if they stayed out of the way, there was no reason, for the family to go after them. And nobody gets a free holiday from some unknown source; when something is too good to be true, it is just that, something that will bite you later. If you smell smoke, you can bet there is a fire somewhere, someplace nearby.
Morgan went down to the Mekong to fish, he often did, with Zuxin’s relatives, and Ming were to go to the Russian Market to buy some vegetables. When at 1:15 p.m., Zuxin calls her up, says, “Come over I want to show you my lipstick…”
“I can’t I promised Morgan I’d stay away from you, he thinks you’re hot, meaning, Nguyen’s family, the syndicate bosses will send someone to kill you.”
“I never thought Nguyen was part of that group, or at least he never mentioned it. I think it must be some far-off, un-connecting relative, not directly related to him. You’re safe here.”
“Well, just for a minute, I don’t want Morgan to get mad, incase he comes home, and calls you looking for me. He’s gentile, but when it comes to direct defying, he’s back in the Army I think, and I have to stand at attention until he is done.” (Both the girls start laughing.)


1:45 p.m.


Ming had now arrived at Zuxin’s second floor condo, which was as big as a house, if not two, 1600-square feet, with beautiful carpeting, and drapes, and new everything in it, and she went inside to visit Zuxin. At 1:50 p.m., the doorbell rang, it was a woman selling lipstick: what a coincidence thought Ming, and opened the door unthinkingly, opened the door, that is, automatically (unknowing the house was bugged, and Le knowing every move Zuxin made).
No sooner had she opened the door, looked at the lady—who looked similar to the person at the cockfight, with the white mustache, called doctor—, Le being to the side of the woman, had his machete pulled out, and beheaded her like a chicken, the woman caught the head, and Le put the body down in the hallway, not a sound was made, and the lady put a shroud over her, as not to frighten anyone who might come by, it covered most everything fleshly visible. The head was laid on her lap. And then Le paid her the woman a handsome $5000-dollars, and told her to go, to leave and never to mention what had just took place.
Zuxin was in the bedroom, she saw Le now, sat firmly in her chair, her skin turned pale, her fair beauty, once deep, now it turned limp in a matter of seconds, wrinkles that she thought were long gone with cosmetics, showed up—instantly, she looked like a dead fish, arms long and unmoving, slim pale face, legs twitching, pink lips, “I am Toai Le, and with a switch of the machete, she was decapitated also.



Sergeant Morgan Carter II
(October 7, 2001)

On October 7, 2001, Morgan Carter returned to the United States of America, and bought a home on Albemarle Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and goes to the local bookstore nowadays, and just writes.

Mr. Jong


On January 1, 2002, Mr. Jong married a young girl from Saigon, and on January 15, of 2002, he had a heart attack in bed, from you know what. But he died happy I understand, with a smile on his face.

Henry, Linda and Gills


Well, this is strange, but this is the way it happened. Corporal Phillip Gills, got out of prison, went to New Orleans, and during one of those celebrations they have, on Bourbon Street, met none other than Linda Macaulay, this was in December of 2002, they married.

Henry Small III, Cassandra’s old boyfriend, went on to law school, didn’t like it, and started playing in a band, he likes ‘The Doors,’ he says, and who knows maybe we will be hearing from him in the near future. 2002

Mrs. and Mr. Stanley


Although Amos is gone, things on the plantation are still getting done, up to the last time I heard, which was in 2002. Her kids have taken over the farm I hear, and they are in a little house they had built in the back of the plantation.


Allen Pitmen

He is wandering around the country last I heard of him, a Sky Marshal, I understand. 2002


IX

The Vanquished Plantations
(or, Cassandra’s Delicatessen) 1983-1984


Chapter One


Cassandra’s Delicatessen
(Prescott, Wisconsin, 1983)



Cassandra Hightower walked right through the hallway to Dr. Whitman’s room, stopping in front of his door. The secretary said, just inside the door, “He’s in conference now, Cassandra, I’ll tell him you wish to talk to him when he is finished.”
She, Cassandra could see through the crack of the door, him talking to Counselor Thymou, whom was assigned to her, this past year or so. Dr. Whitman must have heard his secretary talking to Cassandra, he looked through the crack of the door, even smiled at Cassandra.
“How much notice do you want from me, write me off and out, I’m going home, I spent over $400,000-dollars here these past few years. I’m as good as I’m going to get.”
“Write you out and off…such a term,” said the secretary.
“Yes, you’re fired, and I’m quitting,” she remarked, “will one day or one hour be noticed enough?”
She looked at Cassandra frog-eyed. “It sounds like you don’t like our care here…?”
“I had over three million dollars, it cost me $400,000 here, five-hundred a day, more or less. I have 2.6 million left, and interest of perhaps $250,000. You folks of course know all this, and want to spend it before I leave.”
“You’ve been with us a long while, Ms Hightower, and I think perhaps not long enough, but that is between you and Dr. Whitman, and Senior Counselor Thymou.”
“Well it happens to be, Mr. Thymou, feels the way I feel, enough is enough,” remarks Cassandra.
“The trouble is, I have never learned to deal with your kind properly, you take command and try to hogtie your clients. If I was broke, I’d be out of her in the next five minutes, probably out that window. So if you do not release me, I’ll give the money away to the first bum I see.”

Dr. Whitman came out, said, “Counselor Thymou, has indicated there is really not much more he can do with you, but I sense losing you having you go back to your home in New Orleans, is not the right thing to do, but Thymou insists it is, and if you are like your father was, then I do not want to be battling with you everyday, but assure me, Ms Hightower, if you have a relapse, you will call us, and come back?”
“What is the big concern,” asked Cassandra, “other than my right side of my face, and that has healed as best it can, with multiple stitches, in and outside my face and the plastic surgery, and I’m still ugly as can be on that side of the face, but I suppose I could be uglier.”
Said Dr. Whitman with a drifting for the right words, “All your recent blood pressure tests have come up 50% higher than they should be, and all the medications we’ve given you seems not to do the trick of leveling it off at a safe count. Let me explain Cassandra, Hypertension, commonly is referred to as High blood pressure, when it is elevated, it can cause a stroke or heart attacks, sometimes we cannot pin point it to the kidney’s or perhaps even a tumor in the brain, we are lost in the cause of it, medications help, and this is your situation, but let me go further.
I cannot find, or your system does not indicate any specific medical cause for your high blood pressure, or hypertension, I fear if there is a bubble in the making of a blood vessel, let’s say in the heart, a balloon like bubble, I fear it will bust, and if it does, let’s say an artery, let’s also say the aortic, an aneurysm, it will lead to death. And yes, you are in an expensive freestanding hospital, private, and it is expensive, but we take care of our clients, and we do our jobs well.
“We are not going to keep you here, but I will have you sign a release form, that I have talked to you about not leaving, and the possible consequences. If not with the possible aneurysm, then with the unresolved emotional setbacks you’ve had, the suicide you tried is still not completely dealt with, and neither is your anger. Although you have come a long way in a short time, which seems like a long time to you. The finances, I know little about, and that how I like to keep it, it can fog the mind of the helper if indeed one gets too involved with finances, when he is trained in abnormal behavior.”
“No more medications and I’ll be ready in an hour to leave this place.” That was Cassandra’s last words to the Doctor.



The Next Day


The next day she was back in New Orleans, in her house, counting her interest of $250,000 dollars, and her 2.6 million dollars. Her mind was still drifting around—Linda, her friend came to mind, the one that was trying to rob her father of his money, the one who took his time, so she’d have to sit those long days in isolation in her room. She knew she wasn’t all there, but she, Linda McCauley didn’t have to steal him away. And that was how she thought of the old friendship. What a rotten friend she said.
She went down to the nearby delicatessen for a sandwich, a cheese and tomato sandwich, and coke. There she sat and watched the people walk by, without apologizing for her ugly side of her face, which was smoothed out, but discolored, and pretty dull looking yet.
“Too bad I didn’t do a better job in trying to kill myself, instead of shooting the side of my faced off…” she whispered to some character inside her head, or was it inside her chest, wherever he or it seemed to move inside her body back and forth.
What she was thinking, was not what she felt she was going to enjoy, just something she had to do. Perhaps, she told herself, it is because I am a Hightower, like my father, and mother, and we are this kind of person. To the few folks that waked by, she looked like a poor innocent girl, who had some kind of tragedy, who came down to get a bite to eat. But she wanted to kill Linda, or harm her, or somehow maker her pay for her evilness.
She didn’t see anyone she knew, evidently time had changed things, she felt as if she was a visitor, yet she had been in this delicatessen many times years ago. She noticed new owners behind the counter, a new waitress, two young men, strangers, in their early twenties.

For the next two weeks she was in there eating ham and cheese sandwiches every day.

“One minute will be enough,” she told herself in the delicatessen, sitting at the same table she always sat at. She wanted to harm, if not kill Linda, and the pressure grew and grew inside of her.
“She was a good friend, a good kid—was, but isn’t anymore.” She said out loud.
The owners, a man and woman, watched her from the side of their eyes, thinking she was either mentally disturbed, or simply blowing off some steam, she had heard worse from other customers, so they did not give it all that much attention.
“I just can’t seem to shut the voices up,” said Cassandra, then she heard another voice, it said, “Don’t bother,” and a blood vessel bust inside her head, sending her face flat onto her plate, her sandwich, she had just finished.



Henry Small’s Secret
(Summer of 1984)





Henry Small III, ceased dancing, looked at his wife Linda Macaulay, they had been married two years now, then said,
“I’m really too old for this, I’m thirty, and so are you.”
She watched him, then responded,
“Yes,” she said, “yes—but what?”
“I drove by the old delicatessen yesterday, got thinking about Cassandra, we should visit her up in Wisconsin. Tell her we got married. Or perhaps I should, and say that for you,” said Henry.
“I know she used to be your girlfriend, I suppose I have to say that for you (her hand buttoning the top button of her blouse, they had stopped dancing, moved off the dance floor to their table almost unknowingly) but if you need, I can take the strain off of you, if you go, if you leave, don’t come back here.”
He drew out his wallet, leather wallet, and a picture of her, it was roughly creased and soiled, from what it looked like, it endured much usage, or so it would seem, handed it to her, clumsily
“No allowances I suppose?”
“I was there a week ago, nothing looks the same since the new owner last year bought the place, the Pitmen’s, they have a cute son, he’s only fourteen but going to be a honey when he grows up, they are from Minnesota, someplace by the Canadian Boarder,” said Linda.
“You like to show your control over me by getting me jealous, don’t you?”
“Funny you say that, because it works too.”
“I assure you my dear; it never looks the same after you have it.”
“My dear husband, it all depends what side you’re looking at.”
“Oh,” Henry said, “you have allowances. Yes, yes, I suppose you would.”
Out of his wallet he pulled a whitish piece of paper, he was going to say something, she looked, then he put it back, he already knew what it read, he had not told Linda about it though, not yet, and wasn’t sure if he was going to, it read “Prominent New Orleans, woman, Cassandra Hightower dies from aneurysm… she was 29-years old.”
“I want to see that paper,” said Linda, after having torn up Cassandra’s picture.
Henry pulled it out again, showed it to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, “what is an aneurysm?”
“I’m not all that sure of the term, but I think it means, she had some kind of blood-filled enlarged blood vessel, they often times get weak, the walls of the vessel, and dilate, and push, and this is what happened to her I guess. I did call the doctors, and they said they found a three-mm cerebral aneurysm, something undetected, had the doctors known about it, they could have saved her life…so they say. My school teacher had one, undetected, she died in two-weeks, after headaches, and so forth, to my understanding, one needs to detect these things early on before the rupture occurred, or at least this is the best of the best results for saving the person, other than that, the doctors have treatments for such cases, but you are now in a crisis mode. You need to reduce pressure, restore deteriorating respiration; they have their ways of doing this, like clipping the ruptured aneurysm to stop bleeding or reduce it, and so forth and so on.
“I went to the ‘Pitman’s Delicatessen,’ a year ago or so, and heard from the boy, Allen Pitman, a girl died at the table closest to the window, that she was looking out the window, and just died, an aneurysm they say, and much like the one I just described. Allen said she had an ugly side to her face, and looked depressed, and just stared out the window, and asked for you by name.”
“How did she get out of the hospital, I thought she was mentally ill?” asked Linda.
“How does a bull get out of the fence gates at the bullring, she charged out, head first I heard, and now the question comes up, why they let here out too soon. Although she didn’t die from suicide or anything because of her so called maladaptive behavior, and they say she was mentally competent to take care of herself and that she was no risk to anyone. And they warned her of a potential aneurysm; all in vain of course”
“I bet,” said Linda, “you don’t know the other side of that innocent looking girl; she was a lion in disguise with a lot of hate and revenge in her.”
“Revenge for what?” asked Henry.
“Don’t be so silly, you know; I took you away from her, that’s what.”
He was watching her face, while he thought, “Yes, I might have married her if she had not done what she done and you might have not talked me into marrying you.”
“Henry Small, are you trying to provoke me!” yelled Linda, to the point several folks at nearby tables turned to see who was yelling.
“She never knew we got married you know,” said Henry.
“I suppose not, but how would you know?” asked Linda.
“I’m just presupposing,” answered Henry, adding, “when I was a boy, on my paper route I took subscriptions, sold them for the paper, and I got a premium; that is how I met her, her father bought a year’s subscription of the paper from me, and she told her papa to do it, she always loved me, she just didn’t date me until I got older, and her mother Betty and father Jason got comfortable with me hanging around the house after awhile.”
“Here, take the picture, all the little pieces, put them back into your wallet, and keep your memories to yourself,” said Linda.
“Oh yes, I see, you wanted her father’s money, that is why you went after him. And now you take second best, her old boyfriend, the paper route guy, who now went onto college and is a reporter for the local newspaper. You’ve come down in your pickings,” said Henry.
“Oh shut up, you were available, I never loved you, I just got used to you,” said Linda, “…like Betty and Jason did to one another—like most people do!”
“I guess folks tell what believe when they are really angry, or fed up with living a lie,” said Henry.
Linda got up from the table, walked out, and shouted on her way, “You’ll be getting a letter from my lawyer, for inhuman cruelty—that’s called a divorce in simple terms.”

It didn’t take long, but the term ‘inhuman crudity,’ was changed to ‘irresolvable differences,’ and the divorce was granted. And Linda visited that delicatessen almost daily, even worked part-time there, and started up a side affair with Allen. And that was all for her.

And for Henry Small, he vanish after a few months, leaving no trace, in case Linda would follow him, after he inherited 2.75 million dollars, his inheritance left from Cassandra, with the stipulation, he needed to be legally single at the time he accepted the money, and he was. Last time I heard he was living high off the hog, in Jamaica, and had his own delicatessen, several of them along the beach, and they were all named: “Cassandra’s Delicatessens.”


Chapter Two


Linda’s Black Magic
(Part One of Three)




Allen Pitman was now fifteen-years old, and Linda, thirty-one, and she bought him a year’s membership at the gym, the one she went to, in New Orleans. Allen showed it to his mother and father (Rose and Paul Pitmen, the owners of the ‘Pitmen Delicatessen,’ each 32-years old, having Allen, their son born when Rose Pitman was just seventeen-years old; yes, she was only one year older than Linda Marie Macaulay).
Both Allen and Linda were seeing each other on the sly, when the parents were gone, she’d pull him to the floor, behind the counter, and there, right there, make love, as she ate a few items from the counter and he, Allen learned his way about a woman’s body.
“Are you done Allen?” she’d ask. And he’d always say yes, and then a minute latter say, “wait, I thought I was…!” And this went on for several months. Now he had a passport to her gym, and this was exciting. Etiquette was not her best virtue, but Allen couldn’t tell the difference, it was as it was, an affair, one he bragged about at school, but at the present, only to a few close friends, and for the most part it was kept quiet. And Linda, had very few friends at this point, most of her school friends were long gone, married, or in the Army, or finishing up Graduate School, and going onto bigger things. Linda never went to collage, her looks were still pretty good, and she maintained a good shape. Allen didn’t know love from lust, but he did know he desired her, and perhaps took her more times a week than there were days in a week, not that anyone was counting, if he could, and made love until he was sore. Somehow this impressed Linda, youth at it finest, if not most potent: she even called it, “Black Magic.” (As if she had a touch of Black Magic.)
She heard about Henry’s fortune, and that he left the country, not sure where he went, but perhaps somewhere along life’s short and lone line, when the world got smaller for him, she’d bump into him she figured, she really wasn’t all that concerned at the moment. She still had the Cadillac automobile, Jason Hightower bought for her, and the same cloths he bought for her, and the watch, she never did buy anything beyond those items for herself, her ex husband, Henry, never bought her anything, so she claimed.

It came to the point, Allen and Linda went to the gym together—often. She wanted to show him off, he looked eighteen years old if not older, which his gym card surprisingly indicated, which his mother Rose and Paul, never paid any attention to.

A Touch of Black Magic
(Part two of three: Allen Pitman)




Allen’s face was peaceful, quiet and at night uncovered, and he dreamt of Linda, preoccupied with his puberty endowments, growing up and what not, and what next, what adventure could he expect out of life now, was the question on his mind. Life was a coconut for him, you just had to crack it open, and it all would be white and blissful inside; actually he felt funny some of the times when he was at the club with Linda Macaulay, he wasn’t sure that he suited her. He was a bit alarmed on some of the things she‘d do at the club.
He told her he wanted to move in with her, into her apartment with her, but she insisted he stay at home for at least until he was sixteen, another year, and that was a whole year off for him.
“No,” she said, with toxin eyes, “It is way too early for us to be talking like that…moving in and all that kind of stuff.”
“Oh, I guess I see,” he replied, a tinge taken back, quietly taken back, with a deep ingestion of air.
“Living together isn’t what you think, I mean, it’s not all that great as it is made out to be, especially at the High School level, it has its tensions, its uncompromising moments; kids always think it’s party time all the time, once you get an apartment, with a girlfriend in it, but the bills still come, and they got to be paid. And neighbors complain, and so forth and so on.”
He jerked his head to the right, out of her eyesight, he was pouting, and he was angry and a little embarrassed. She was telling him—in a motherly tone and way—you’re still a kid, good enough to frolic around with, to make love to, but don’t forget, you’re a kid with a hard leaded panicle, that is all.
“I’m sorry Allen,” Linda said as soon as she put two and two together, that her comment and gesture turned his composure into a show of displeasure, a sulk.
Although you could see in the a blink of her eye, she enjoyed the power she found she had over him, for good or evil, she had the treasure men seek, and lured over, fought over, and even kill over, like a spider to a fly, and he was seemingly caught in her web. This part she liked, the smile on her face said so, not quite a smile, more a grin, almost but not quite a smirk. It said so, it said: I can, and she did for the most part, control, if not out of looks and made up anger, out of lustful movements, and tender touches. She liked being a woman; a woman with a touch of Black Magic, especially over him.
Allen said with a sigh, “I can get money for the rent, I have a…a savings for college, and it belongs to me, I can use it.”
“How is that?” asked Linda.
“I can take it out, it is not like stealing, I mean it is mine, I mean I can take it out little by little, so no one notices it,” said Allen with a high smile, as if he was cleaver.
“But there comes a point where there is nothing left, then what?” asked Linda.
“I’ll be old enough to marry you then!” replied Allen.
“I hate to say it again, but again you’re silly—money is too easy to earn than having to go to such lengths to get it…,” said Linda—but this time playing the big sister role.
Linda and Allen looked at each other a moment, then she said with sincerity in her voice and facial expressions to accommodate that sincerity, and even her arms were laid softly on his shoulders as if to express friendship, not playing the lover, “If ever anything beyond this period of time, beyond this moment, this season you might call it, if ever we come together become more serious than this ongoing romantic stage we are presently in, you will need a college degree to support me, and if not me, whomever you choose, today it is me for you, and you for me, I can’t seem to go beyond this point, and you at your young age shouldn’t.”
It was actually hard for her to overlook that money, perhaps a kind act, but should he take it out, she’d be blamed for it, and that in itself was illegal, and she didn’t want a court action on this case, and making love to a minor was bad enough, yet she felt she had enough control to where she could blackmail him if it came to that, meaning, she could yell rape, and that would stop any ongoing legal action. But it had not come to nearly that at all.
“Okay,” said Allen Pitmen, “when I’m sixteen, we’ll take up this discussion again, alright?” he asked.
“Okay, when you’re sixteen, and not until, it gets a little trying on the nerves,” said Linda, with a sigh of relief that it all turned out well for the short-term.
Allen looked at Linda, “I’m not afraid to work, or wait,” he expressed with a jolly tone, and a bold looking extended chest, and then jerked his head to the right side, and gave the world an empty look, as if he gained his pride back, saying, “We got to finish up Linda, I mean clean up the delicatessen, it’s almost eleven o’clock, and mom expects me home a quarter after, no later.”



The Gym
(Part Three of Three)


Linda was in the sauna with Allen and a few other folks, club members of the gym, in New Orleans, her having bought Allen a years membership, along with renewing hers. The Assistant General Manager Tony Garcia, came in asked Linda to go and see the General Manager, Marcella Marco and that Allen could go along with them, it would seem he was part of the conversation, or would be, “And take your pizza off the hot rocks, this is no place for trying to use it as a grill, as you so often do,” said Tony with an arrogant tone, as if he had had enough of her style of improper etiquette in the gym, the others looked at the three and didn’t say a word. Linda grabbed the sandwich looking pizza, “Why not,” she said, “I’ll eat it on the way—I’m hungry.”
In the General Manager’s office, a wind beat against the window, kind of making enough noise as if to drawn-out any unwanted tension she looked from the top of the window down, as if to pretend she was distracted, but she was just placing things in order, preparing for the confrontation. She knew she had done some unethical things at the gym, she had to, no one else was doing them but her, and if she didn’t know she wasn’t as shrewd as people gave her credit for.
Linda had now focused her eyes on Marcella, “What is your complaint now on?” Said Linda, as if she was in charge because she had paid for two one year subscriptions for making use of the gym, and Marcella was simply the caretaker, no more than a hired janitor. Matter-of-fact, she walked up to her desk; put her hands on the desk top waiting for her complaint.
Marcella, said with a curious look, “You sure Allen, you’re eighteen?”
Linda intervened quickly, “Is this all about, his age?”
Said Marcela, lowering her head, “No, not really, not at the moment anyhow. It’s about you, and your etiquette, which means manners and gym protocol.”
“I know what it means,” replied Linda.
“Well, that’s one up on me, it would seem you either didn’t know, or you don’t care to know, or you simply don’t know but we’ve told you so many times you got to know, because you’ve violated our rules here at the gym for the past two years, this is not a new subject, it is as old as your first day arrival here. Do you see anyone else cooking sandwiches in the sauna?” asked Marcella, adding, “no you don’t, and you’ve continued to take off your sweaty shoes and leave a hair dryer in them, while you take a shower, the Assistant Manager has told you time after time not to do that, again I ask, do you see anyone else doing that? I’ll answer that for you—no! You don’t. And then you go out of the locker room butt naked and weigh yourself on the scale, in the hallway, and you of course get your attention from the guys, and so forth and so on. I won’t ask if you see anyone else do that, the boy looks like he’s embarrassed enough, and you, you are so unembarrassed, it makes me ashamed that I allowed this to continue so long…and still this is not the number one violation, you go take your yoga lessons, and do not wear any pants, I mean underpants, and all the guys are now paying $20 ahead to sit close to you, people are fighting in the hallway to get into the yoga class to get a view of you.”
Linda almost wanted to laugh, but held back, Allen was in shock.
“Well Linda, what do you have to say for yourself, and here is your check back, if the boy wants to rejoin, he can, but you, you are not welcome here, ever, god forbid.”
Said Linda with her head held high, “Twenty dollars, ha! That’s a bargain for the view.”
Then grabbing the check, and Allen’s shoulder, she turned around walked straight out the door, and never looked back.

Chapter three


The Vanquished Plantations


The Mutt and
The Dark Stranger

Soon the old bull-legged dog, Tobacco IV, great granddaughter, to Tobacco I, climbed up to the hillside overlooking what used to be the Abernathy plantation left out in the raw by Caroline Abernathy, the day she hung herself, let the dog run loose in the barn, and then once the dog got her freedom ran loose throughout the fields thereof, and Betty Hightower, kind of did the same thing, but Tabasco produced a litter, before her death, before the rats skinned her alive, and before Better put a bullet in her head to stop the suffering, and killed a half-dozen rats in the process—and from that litter came Tobacco IV, a stray dog for the most part. Behind Tobacco IV, the hillside gradually became nothing; it no longer had a shadow at all.
The Abernathy’s, outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina, were gone now, as well as Old Josh the hired hand, the plantation sold off and for the most part and left in dilapidated shape, and the Stanley plantation was in ruins, likewise (as was the Hightower’s and Smiley’s and the two Wallace brothers’ plantation, up in Ozark, Alabama). Betty was dead, and so was her husband and daughter down in New Orleans, and her sister Caroline, and Langdon, and Langdon’s father, and Amos (the helping hand on the Stanley plantation), and Morgan Carter was back in his hometown in Minnesota, from his years in the Army, and tours of duty in Vietnam and living in Cambodia, and his wife Ming, was killed, as well as her girlfriend, Zuxin.
The heavy shapeless land, to the dog was nothing new—in the dimming twilight; dust was like a benediction upon her, upon the day, behind her. She didn’t recall any of this of course, nor did the falling of her slain great grandmother, yawning, as the last lit part of day, got swallow up by night.
There was a shadow of a man sitting by Tobacco’s side, he just showed up all of a sudden, just like a that, faster than a blink of an eye, he called himself Nick, he told the dog—briefly and sharply, “Soon it will all start all over again, perhaps on the opposite side of this hill.” And the dark figure, knew he’d, or they’d cross his path fatefully—just like everyone does sooner other, that is, everyone who dies in his territory.
“Here was a place,” the old dark figure mumbled “where once there were strong and sturdy walls with houses, and barns with burly beams, and fences tall and wide, and branches of trees, and autumn leaves, and green, green grass and sunlight for the harvest, and bees chasing kids,” and Tobacco, he just closed his eyes and listened to the wind and the old man’s soft hum of a voice, as if he didn’t like his job. “And some of hearts and minds of those folks that lived here, and even those who lived all the way down in New Orleans, and up in Ozark, Alabama, and over in Asia, they all have shadows reaching back here, trickling back here, like inverted shoes, without legs.” And the Dog yawned again. He was very old, perhaps seventeen, in dog years, that is older than near eighty-five.
For a clear moment, the mutt seemed to understand, he climbed closer to the dark figure, “You got to be prepared to die, just like the living got to be prepared to live,” said the old man, before his dark cathedral of a night, both sitting for a while, empty as a dried-up well. “That is the way it is Mutt, you know that, as well as I do. Man he tries to change the world, make it his kind, and Jesus he don’t even try that. And they all get old before their time. And then I come along, like now. I’m like gravity, but I work in the opposite direction,” and then the old man mumbled to the dog, in an even softer voice:
“The best thing they all learn, that they learned in their life, that they’re ever going to learn, was what they learned at the age of ten-years old, or by that age, since then, they just kept on learning it over and over and over, I firmly believe that, they keep a-learning, it over, and over the same ole thing, until they get it right. And I learned myself every one down here is looking for something they haven’t got, because what they got didn’t make them happy for very long, but what they ain’t got, is what they want to be happy for, and that makes them unhappy until they get it, and when they get it they want more of what they ain’t got again, its kind of a circle. I don’t rightly know if dogs feel the same way, or if they use that instinct for the same purpose of seducing life and everything around them.”

The dog—he was yellowish red in colored patches, something likened to a Golden Retriever, but was a mixture of breeds, nothing pure, more on the mutt order, but a handsome looking mutt. If dogs understand, if they can sense things beyond food and danger—and he knew they could dream because he watched them dream more than once (so he claimed), then he could understand who the stranger was, and his purpose, if indeed, there was any kind of understanding or reasoning for a dog in that area.
Consequently, the stranger put his hand on the dog, said, “You fool, ya ole fool of a dog, you can’t climb this hill anymore, your legs are too thin, and they wobble, we got to stay here tonight and die together I reckon. Except, I don’t die, until the last soul on earth dies.”
In the middle of the night the stranger saw that the dog was dead asleep on his knee, I mean, really dead, and had fallen to sleep on his knee, and said to the corpse, “Okay, now the plantations are vanquished, completely…of it’s old roots.” knowing he was the last of the line of the his decedents, as were the Abernathy’s and Hightower’s.


End

Notes about the Episodic Saga


Note 1: “Cradled by the Devil,” and the short collection of linking stories called, “Mayhem, in the Countryside” once put all together, has helped form this saga “The Vanquished Plantations, along with five sketches from the manuscript “Old Josh, in: Poor Black” (out of 85-original sketches, the five pertaining to the Civil War years). The Whole manuscript of “Voices out of Saigon,” was pert near used, all interconnecting, although written at different periods of time, and with different styles of writing. Dating from April of 2005, to January 2010, pert near five years in the making (where the author has molded with four or five interludes and added on light sketches, to create a smooth transition from one book to the next, or from chapter to chapter. Several sketches are taken from live experiences, or inspired by them, that the author lived through. Only a few chapters were used out of the manuscript “Cradled by the Devil.” All the locations in the book the author has either been to, or lived. The oldest part of the book is “Old Josh, in: Poor Black,” (written in part, 4-2005, and of the 85-sketches they were written sporadically throughout the years; the ones in this book are mostly from 2005, of which 11-were written); whereas the newest parts might be considered “The Tobacco Kings” (11-2009); or “Father Josephus,” written 1-10-2010. The other sections were written in 2008 and 2009. And thus, came the name of the book “Father Josephus”

An This is an episodic novel made up of twenty-three chapters, and eight unpublished books or manuscripts, a number of the stories have been rewritten, and previously published as short stories, to include: "There was Lady” (in four parts), "The Tobacco Kings" (in four parts), "The Stanley House" (‘To Die in Silence’); and some of the characters are from the book (MS) such as: “Old Josh, in: Poor Black,” “A Leaf and a Rose…” were used, in creating this yarn; and several chapters were left out, from the original manuscripts, other manuscripts.


Note 2: It is fair to say the beginning of these connecting stories, were short stories, although meant to be connecting chapters in different books in the future, all put now together in a history of sorts (making an episodic saga). What you see here is a boiled down pot, perhaps a bit loosely linked of twenty some chapters. Since I have broken off these series, in order to finish other works, I seemed to have forgotten these books of stories at times only to end up restarting them at different periods again and using some for short narrations in other books. Some of these stories have been revised, and even rewrote, as I have already mentioned. Expanding and elaborating and doing much to weld the separate stories into a single crisscrossing saga. If this has not been accomplished for the reader, then it is best to read them as single independent short stories, as if in a series, as they were originally meant to be.











































Books by the Author

Books Out of Print

The Other Door (Poems- Volume I, 1981)
Willie the Humpback Whale (poetic tale)
(1982; 1983, 2008, four printings (forth in Spanish & English)
The Tale of Freddy the Foolish Frog (1982)
The Tale of Teddy and His Magical Plant (1983)
The Tale of the Little Rose’s Smile (1983)
The Tale of Alex’s Mysterious Pot (1984)
Two Modern Short Stories of Immigrant life [1984]
The Safe Child/the Unsafe Child [1985] (for teachers, of Minnesota Schools)


Presently In Print

The Last Trumpet and the Woodbridge Demon (2002) Visions
Angelic Renegades & Raphaim Giants (2002) Visions


Tales of the Tiamat [trilogy]

Tiamat, Mother of Demon I (2002)
Gwyllion, Daughter of the Tiamat II (2002)
Revenge of the Tiamat III (2002)


Unusual Books (no category)

Every day’s Adventure (2002) Pot Luck
Islam, In Search of Satan’s Rib (2002) Opinion


The Addiction Books of D.L. Siluk:

A Path to Sobriety I (2002)
A Path to Relapse Prevention II (2003)
Aftercare: Chemical Dependency Recovery III (2004)


Autobiographical

A Romance in Augsburg I “2003)
Romancing San Francisco II (2003)
Where the Birds Don’t Sing III (2003)
Stay Down, Old Abram IV (2004)

Chasing the Sun [Travels of D.L Siluk] (2002)


Romance and/or Tragedy:

The Rape of Angelina of Glastonbury 1199 AD (2002) Novelette
Perhaps it’s Love (Minnesota to Seattle) 2004 Novel
Cold Kindness (Dieburg, Germany) 2005 Novelette
A Leaf and a Rose (2009) Novelette


The Suspense short stories, Novels and Novelettes:

Death on Demand [Seven Suspenseful Short Stories] 2003 Vol: I
Dracula’s Ghost [And other Peculiar stories] 2003 Vol: II
The Jumping Serpents of Bosnia (suspenseful short stories) 2008 Vol: III

The Mumbler [psychological] 2003 (Novel)
After Eve [a prehistoric adventure] (2004) Novel
Mantic ore: Day of the Beast ((2002) (Novelette)) supernatural


The Poetry of D.L. Siluk

General Poetry

The Other Door (Poems- Volume I, 1981)
Willie the Humpback Whale (poetic tale)
(1982; 1983, 2008, four printings (forth in Spanish & English)
Sirens [Poems-Volume II, 2003]
The Macabre Poems [Poems-Volume III, 2004]

Understanding Poetry (an introduction to its meaning) 2010

Minnesota Poetry

Last Autumn and Winter [Minnesota poems, 2006]


Peruvian Poetry

Spell of the Andes [2005]
Peruvian Poems [2005]
Poetic Images out of Peru [And other poems, 2006]
The Magic of the Avelinos (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, book One; 2006)
The Road to Unishcoto (Poems on the Mantaro Valley, Book Two, 2007)
The Poetry of Stone Forest (Cerro de Pasco, 2007)
The Windmills (Poetry of Jan Parra del Riego) 2009



The Natural Writings of D.L. Siluk
(To include the Shannon O’Day In four Volumes Trilogy) In English and Spanish

Cornfield Laughter (and the unpublished collected stories…) 2009 (Vol. 1)
Men with Torrent Women (Two Short Novelettes and Sixteen Short stories) 2009 (Vol.II)
A Leaf and a Rose (a comprehensive library of new writings…) 2009, (Vol. III)
A Midwinter Soldier (a comprehensive library of new writings…) 2011, (Vol. IV)

The First Episodic Novel (and Saga)

The Vanquished Plantations (2010)








Back of Book





The author uses the distortion of time to tell his historical story, in various forms, that takes the reader to several locations, besides the south, where the author lived, as well as in Asia, the Midwest and visiting upper New York. Each story contributes to the next in this novel (and saga). The theme in part is of the crumbling plantation life in the south. His inner monologue brings distortion of time. The author also uses stream of consciousness (expressing the characters thoughts, in at times his loose monologue), and at times uses southern gothic, the heroic knight, as in Morgan Carter, or the want to be: Langdon Abernathy, even perhaps Charles T. Hightower of Ozark, Alabama or his slave, Old Josh. In addition, the author brings out torrent women: the strong, stubborn, shrewd, devilish, and cleaver female. He is both light and heavy with his touch of madness, in his narrations. The indifference, self-interest, human passions released by violence is all interwoven into this indispensable novel, and the nature of the characters within is riveting. It is a look at injustice put right. The places, times, situations and problems within the settings echo the essential world, its humanity, its people who look vaguely at their continued existence.


This is the author’s 44th book, and most versatile, resourceful in character and construction, and his first episodic sage as a novel. He lives in Minnesota and Peru with his wife Rosa. Back picture of the author with his sidekick, and wife Rosa, in Colonia, Uruguay, South America