Minnie Mae's Still (A short story, in the woods of North Carolina)

Cradled with the Devil
Book Two of Three





(May, ‘69) Minnie Mae 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 Mae 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 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 Mae was close to seventy now and Amos was no 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 young Ritt, the owner, once owner of the National Ritt Bank, now owner of the small country outlet bank.
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 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 Minnie Mae, and Amos worked the whole day, from morning to mid afternoon with a the 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 any more?”
“Go on home, you got to work the fields after church tomorrow I hear Mr. Stanley say!”
And so he left, and Minnie Mae 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 Mae’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 Mae, 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 hand bag 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 Mae 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 some day, 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 here I come, I’m a coming to yaw 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 barrow of his pistol—a 38-Special. And old Minnie Mae, wobbled a bit, and fell sideways to the ground.
Several wild dogs heard the shot, came to take a look, eyes peering out of he 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, none stop, 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 Mae, 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.

The Brown Bear of Pikes Creek (A short Story out of Minnesota and Wisconson)

Cradled with the Devil
Book Two of Three

Retreat: At Pikes Creek
Sergeant Morgan Carter’s Brown Bear



(July, ‘69) Staff Sergeant Morgan Carter, was home on leave in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his girlfriend Delia Parker, rode up to the great lakes, to the one called Superior, to Pikes Creek, he stayed in an inn there just outside of Bayfield, Wisconsin, nor far from the Minnesota boarder, walked along its narrow stream, and its light brown sandy edges, within its confines of the woods, next to the inn. It was more of a getaway from the city, and a thirty-day leave before he went back to finish his forth tour of duty in Vietnam, the war was raging on, there.
He slept the first night away, and woke up about 8:00 AM, for breakfast the following morning; breakfast was either at 7:00 or 9:00 AM, he had missed the first one, and really wanted the breakfast sent to his room, but the owner said they didn’t do that, he’d have to join the rest of the guests, at either time. Morgan was not all that friendly on meeting anyone new, and trying to explain the war to them, it was all too controversial, and once they knew he was a soldier, that was what the conversation would be about, his war, not theirs. Therefore he avoided the first breakfast hoping the second would be less guest congested. And walked outside with his gal Delia Parker, twelve-years younger than he; matter-of-fact, as he walked through the downstairs hallway, he avoided eye contact with everyone, even the sole proprietor, a women in her late forties, or early fifties.
He had killed men, many and the war was not popular in the sense of it being accepted by the public, they called him ‘baby killer,’ among other things, and he really needed space and time to empty his brain vaults out, not to refill it with what is right and wrong according to this or that person.
And there he was, walking along the Pikes Creek, then he climbed the embankment, upward looked now towards the old mansion, where he was staying, the Inn, and to the right, was a luscious green woods, birds singing, and rays of sun’s light penetrating into the woods, it all looked so tranquil, the very thing he was looking for. Across the road, was Lake Superior, considered the largest lake in the world, the waves were hitting the bank hard, he could hear them.
“Let’s take a walk there, into woods,” he suggested to Delia, pointing to the right.
It looked safe enough, plus the house, the mansion, or inn was right here, what in heavens name could go wrong, they both thought; henceforward, they both found their feet on the narrow warn path into the woods.
“You sure there are no bears in here?” asked Delia.
“Well, in the 1800s, Minnesota had some bears, and in St. Louis County, there has been some bear violence, so they say, but up here, I don’t think there are any brown or black bears, or Grizzly’s left, that all was years ago. I saw them in Alaska, but I doubt out here you will find on, perhaps Yellowstone Park.”
And so they continued their walk into the thick of the backwoods, that is, the woods in back of the Inn, they were staying at.
Morgan had seen dear tracks down by the creek, and some odd looking tracks, larger tracks, but mud had distorted them, as if an animal, was trying to climb the embankment and fell backwards, and then got back up and tried again the embankment, and made it up.
“Just what was your idea coming here in the first place, not much around here,” said Delia.
“Quiet I think, war can be noisy,” said Morgan.
“We’ll leave and go on down to Bayfield after breakfast, if you don’t mine, take a ferry over to that three mile island they have, Madeline, is that what they call it?” asked Delia.
“Yaw, I think that’s right,” said Morgan.
Morgan noticed there were no sounds of birds, in war that means trouble, birds know when there’s chaos to be, and they fly away from it, and if they are in the middle of it, they do the same thing, far away, out of it, and return with it is all over, all said and done.
The leaves from the trees were moving, and there was no wind, he walked a little further into the mosquito infested woods, he could hear other movements in the very nearby bushes, behind a few trees, and then he saw it, camouflaged within the greenery, a large bear.
Delia looked at Morgan, as he was looking at the foliage to his right, thinking that was all he was doing, not knowing he was really sizing up the bear, it’s hair was not thick like a grizzly, but it was tall, lean and brown, then Delia caught sight of it, her mouth opened wide, she started to turn about to run, but Morgan stopped her, “Wait,” he said, “lay down, I’ll lay on top of you, face to the ground.”
The bear came out from behind the bushes and trees, sniffed by the two, from the glimpse Morgan got, he’d say later, the bear was as tall as a chimney.
The bear disappeared as fast as it had come to Morgan’s sight, as they got up from off of the ground, retreating quickly back into the house. The owner was there, said, “Breakfast was ready,” and they went to eat in the dinning room, there was two other couples. On the walls were pictures of hunters, from the 1880s, when this Mansion was first built, to the present, 1969? In one picture was the owner of the house, and her late husband, when they were young, perhaps from the 1940s. They stood behind a large brown bear, one they had killed, and Morgan said to the owner, “I think we just saw that bears sibling.”
“Oh, I don’t think so!” said the owner with an odd smile, “that picture was a long time ago, the bear would be twenty-four years old now.”
And so they finished breakfast, and headed on down to Bayfield, and over to Madeline Island.

Part Four
To “Cradled with the Devil”

Blood-glut I
(Kill of the Great Gray Wolf)


(December, 1967) Who could kill such a beast as the huge great gray wolf of Wallace Fields, the same fields that were haunted by the ghosts, the dead who walked aimlessly, until Death won its victory back, and took them from their helm, but someone was left behind, someone with an ugly spirit, that was when the wolves came back, as if the demonic world got vengeance over Death for wiping clean the fields, the plantation fields outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina, it was the Winter of 1967 and it went into the Spring of 1968, the year young Langdon Abernathy would join the Army. But already this Gray Wolf, had acquired a deadly reputation, he had killed Cindy Codden, while on the Sanely Plantation, and ran free across the fields of the old Wallace plantation, and into the woods, over the back hills that extended the length of all three plantations, the Abernathy’s, Stanley’s and Wallace’s. It ran none stop, across 1200- acres. Folks said that the wolf, was a giant gray demon, not only a wolf over two-hundred pounds, four feet to its shoulders; deadly eyes, of yellow rustic marble, he stood still and stared like a machine, as it readied to attack it prey, like a soldier, at attention, then battle ready it would attack mercilessly; fangs as thick as a man’s thumb and as long as his index finger, and as sharp as razor’s blade, pure evil incarnate. He had killed the German Deceive Hans Gunderson, a well trained hunter, and it had killed—at will, bums and tramps, and railroad track men, down by the tracks over the hill, where old man Pike, had his heart attach a while back, unproven—but who else could have tore to shreds human flesh in such a way.
Langdon Abernathy, still in his teens, and ready to go into the Army, taking his training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, not far from his Plantation, had a dream, he wasn’t sure if it was a gift, or a sentence, a gift to test his courage, or a death sentence. But he saw the beast, the huge gray wolf, he saw his domicile, it was in the woods, under a great tree, under the trees roots, the hole was as big as their stove, in it he slept, around him, human, rabbit, squirrel, every kind bone, one could find in a living and breathing, mammalian forest, everything of that nature was among his collection. He was a loner; no other beast dare keep him company. Langdon saw all this, wrote it in his diary, one he put under his mattress, for future reference (that is why this story can be told).

He Sat up, 2:00 AM, up on his bed, sat looking out his window, waited, an hour passed, he herd a noise that indicated he had company, he prayed, “Oh, Lord give me strength to rid the fields here if this killer beast comes,” Langdon was a man of faith, sometimes reckless faith, and I suppose his guardian angel had a enduring journey with him, and he then stopped praying, walked to the window, he heard footsteps, on the side by the house, then on the wooden porch, up its steps, back and forth on its porch, like it was for Cindy Codden, who fell to sleep on the Stanley porch one evening, and got torn to shreds by this lone beast. Now muddy and chilled, it was hungry; it needed flesh, protein, and blood. Langdon asked himself, if he was afraid, and he was, but wasn’t. Something a man never knows until the very moment of action; for he got up, walked silently towards the sounds that reverberated through the wood into the floor of the house, the wood, not Langdon, trembled. An animal knows when you fear him, and the wolf has its scent in it toes, he now could smell the flesh nearing him, he could actually hear Langdon’s heart beat, and Langdon could hear the beast’s difficulty in breathing, it was hungry, weakened from the cold and hunger, perhaps weakness took possession of him, though Langdon, but if it had, he would have to grab an opportunity, he noticed the beast through the window, it closed its eyes for a second, as if to refocus, perhaps perplexed in that his pry had turned into a hunter, he knew that now, and perhaps the beast was sincerely happy about this, unspeakably glad I might say, it had a thinking equal: one by my necessity and instinct, born with the killer in him, the other by, a notion he was a born soldier, for war, or at least so his brain told him, both having courage, and he too was born with thirst for blood.
Langdon picked up a lamp, heavy lamp, dropped it, the animal didn’t move, but he heard noise upstairs, in his father’s room, perhaps he was waking up. Thus, he had to kill the beast quick, or surprise would no longer be on his side, and the beast would fight out of necessity, not out of anger, and angry he was not at the moment, necessity was better, he was hungry needed flesh. Langdon started to think, a huge thought came to mind, “I don’t have a weapon, am I still somewhat in a sleeping mode!”
The father was upstairs, unable to think straight, he put on his slippers automatically to see what that noise was, half in a daze, asleep. His mother, Caroline, has pulled her husband by his pajamas, “Get back in bed,” she says, “Langdon’s taking care of it,” she didn’t know why she said that, nor did she know the half of it, had she known, she never would have said what she said, but it perhaps saved his life, for had he gone down those steps, the beast would have charged through that big bay window he was staring through, saw the helpless man, and window or not, he would have charged through wood and glass and over furniture, to get an arm or more.
Langdon drew his arm quickly back, felt the heavy metal stand up ashtray, iron with heavy glass in the middle of it, nine pounds of iron, with a dragon at the top end of it, extended out like a wolf’s face, long and slender, he put his fingers around it, tightened them, and was ready to do battle with the wolf, but he got surprised, the wolf sensed something, not fear not defeat, but something, perhaps some kind of unsolved danger that makes a man, or beast stop whatever his evil intentions might be, sometimes even God puts a giant in front of you so you do not do, what evil tells you to do, and the beast ran off, off into the woods, across the fields and into the wooded domain of his.
And although conscious effort was made to figure this out, Langdon dumfounded for an explanation, mumbled aloud: ‘I got to be more prepared next time, the creature will return, he has my scent, and knows the hunt better than all of us.’



It was a week later when Langdon had another dream, he was in the artic circle deep near Barrow, Alaska, it was a hundred years ago, maybe more, Eskimos were all about, living in the wild and he was with a group of nomads, and they killed wolfs, and seals for food, and polar bears, and he got thinking, and thinking, and woke up: ‘blood’ he said, ‘excessive blood’ he mumbled, ‘it is the blood that the wolf craves, like a man craves alcohol, or the fat man food, or the drug addict, dope, or the gambler, the compulsion to chase his loss, and the man-whore, women; therefore, it is the wolf who craves blood. And he remembered his dream, it was a blood dream.

He looked out his window, there was the lone wolf again, as huge as ever, he looked a the clock, it was 2.15 AM, he knew, or was compelled to think so, business with him would not be over until one, he or the wolf were dead. And so he devised his plan:
He went out that morning, 8:00 AM, and with his 22-caliber rifle, shot him a rabbit, it was a cold, cold day, for North Carolina, it was abnormally cold, it was 15 F, with two inches of snow. For Langdon, it was perfect weather for his plan. He went into the kitchen, got out a slim butcher’s knife, cut the rabbit open, drained his blood, put it in the freezer to chill it, poured blood over the blade of the knife, took the handle off, broke that part of the stainless steel knife, and let the blood freeze on the knife, then, in another hour, he dipped the razor sharp blade into blood again, and froze it, it froze in a matter of minutes now, and he dip it again and again, and again, until he had a popsicle stick, similar to a popsicle with a thin knife in its center, and the smell of blood reeked from the popsicle. There were perhaps fifty layers of blood over that knife, and it took all morning to freeze it, into the afternoon, but the blade was hidden well within the bloodsicle.
That night, Langdon hid the bloodsicle out near a tree under an inch of snow by the house. The wolf came that night, Langdon never went to sleep, he waited for the wolf, and he came at 2:10 AM, but his sense of smell took his mind away from Langdon, and found the bloodsicle, and licking it, he found it profoundly appealing, the taste of blood was more powerful than the taste for the game of the hunt; Langdon noticed he enjoyed every second, every lick of the bloodsicle, he couldn’t get enough, and the weather was numbing to his tongue, he couldn’t really feel his tongue after a while, because it was exposed for such a long time in the process of licking. The frozen bloodsicle was slow in belting on his tongue, and then the knife became exposed, but he kept licking, unknowing the sharpness that penetrated his numb tongue, and he started bleeding from his own tongue, and tasting his own warm blood upon the cold blood—all being blended into one, and it all was so enticing the brain did not decipher what was happening, he was getting an endorphin rush, better than morphine; consequently, it cut and cut and cut into his tongue, until blood flowed freely, yet the wolf did not move, thrilled he had found such a magical unending pleasure, natural sense of well being; now the knife was fully exposed, but it was too late, the beast collapsed on top of the knife. And there he would lay for all to see in the morning, and no one lost anymore sleep in the fields of the three plantations, and Langdon, went into the Army, to find his war, and that is another story.




Part Four
To “Cradled with the Devil”

Blood-glut II
(No Enemy to Kill)


(Spring, 1968) Roofless, clear and roofless the sky seemed, no heavy clouds weighted down with water, no heavy air, a faint mist in the far off horizon, a light whisper to the wind, and a silent morgue, for the infantry soldiers, at base camp.

Gunshots, a burst—as though the world was on fire, the south China Seas itself a hundred miles away, immune to gunfire.
Langdon was sentry learning against the wall, a private, sandbags all round him, outside the main encampment, along the outer perimeter, a rainforest within sight perhaps three hundred yards away. He was an infantryman in Vietnam War, a small hard faced soldier, he took off his steel helmet, and shot wildly into the jungle terrain, several bodies feel out. He had taken a chance there were VC (Vietcong) within the brush, and his calculations were right, but later on that day, when he made his report, the Colonel, asked,
“What if you would have been wrong, what if it was villagers coming or going to their villages, and perhaps an American soldier with one of his Vietnamese wives?”
It was a lot of ‘What ifs’ Langdon thought, for a soldier that was correct in shooting, but the Colonel didn’t see it that way.
“Do you like the infantry?” asked the Colonel.
“Very much so,” remarked Private Langdon Abernathy, “that is why I joined the Army, to kill the enemy, what else is a soldier suppose to do, you train him to kill, teach him jungle training and spend all the tax payers money, so people like me can kill the enemy.”
“There are about 3% of soldiers in any one man’s army,” said the Colonel, “that like to kill for the kill. That when they kill they feel nothing; it is just, as it is blood-glut, excessive blood they want; they don’t sense their own death, like wolf you might say, or a lion, they—likened to the wolf, like the smell of blood, victory, and war seems to ease their inners. Like you private. “
Well, the private didn’t know if the Colonel was right or wrong, he only knew what he always knew, he wanted to be a fighting soldier.
Even at that very minute when Private Abernathy was talking to the Colonel (and thinking what he was thinking) in his office, the Colonel noticed the private’s rifle was cocked and loaded and the safety was off. A true soldier, thought the Colonel, waiting for the enemy to come even in his excessively safe office.
“It worries me,” said the Colonel, “you have a spotless record, and come from good southern folk, but the sum of this is, the battalion is rally over its quota, over strength, with men, and the 611th Ordnance Company on Cam Ranh Bay, our support unit for ammo, needs a cook, and I have to send them several men, some for rest and recuperation from the bush, and a cook, and you private will be that cook, and I will—for your efforts, promote you to Private First Class.”
The Colonel knew that was overkill for the young soldier, but he was wanting to get that star, make Brigadier General before he left Vietnam, and with a wild loose cannon, like PFC Langdon Abernathy, it might just not happen, he might just get in the way.

I suppose if Private First Class Langdon Abernathy, those first months in the Army, and in Vietnam, had learned anything, he learned this: there are those folks who think up war, do it for a reason of course, in the process, they invent what they call a necessity, the enemy, the folks we have to fight, say it is in the needs of the nation. It is all for future reference though for after the war, they are the leaders of the nation, the presidents, and mayors, and senators, and policy makers. They create war, and yell peace, but peace is just a word, they want the public to believe in tomorrow, and tomorrow and still another tomorrow, let them ponder on it, they will and they do, but the war continues as planned (a good example would be in the Middle East, Israel and its neighbors). The gift of war, is to give the people hope for peace, a false hope of course; then they are told we must save the world, their world, others use martyrdom for their cause, it is all inflexible pride and underneath pride is destruction, and they yell, what a glorious war, the devil got his due, and so did the future leaders of a nations, and in between all this, blood and its scent, poured excessively over the thirsty.

The Demonic Gray Wolf of Wallace Fields (A short Story)


Part Three
To “Cradled with the Devil”


The Demonic Wolf
of Wallace Fields



Mr. and Mrs. Stanley hired Detective Hans Gunderson, a friend of Douglas Sexton, of Fayetteville, to uncover this mystery death of Cindy Codden, who had slept on their porch and was mulled by a pack of wolfs, or so it seemed, perhaps one great wolf could have done her in. Mrs. Stanley, couldn’t figure why the dogs or the horses, or any of the animals didn’t make noise that night when the wolf came and mauled Cindy to death, last summer, to her understanding the wolves had been long gone, so long she couldn’t remember. The gray wolf was known years ago to have lived in the woods nearby, by the railroad tracks, the timber wolves, but this one was possessed, so it would seemed, and the coroner, had said it would have been one great wolf, and Hans believed it to be so.

Hans was known in Fayetteville, and the surrounding plantations, as being of German decent, born in Munich, fought in the Korean War, which after he was then given American citizenship, and he was a deadly shot with a pistol and rifle, a bold man who understood the wilds of the country, he himself rough, a tall man, and broad, and so in haste to find the secrets behind the soul of this killer wolf, man eating would, he camped out in the fields, and woods beyond the fields, near the railroad tracks, where old man Henry Pike worked for so many years and died that summer of a heart attack.
It was now November of 1967, fall was cold, and a frost was everywhere. He was given a month to finish the job, and he started on November 15, he was paid $100 per day, and if he brought back the head of the so called gray wolf, the one that had been seen running through the woods, and fields, with the hounds, and other stray dogs, and animals, he’d be given a bonus of $500-dollars.

Hans knew what he was looking for, a gray wolf, perhaps with rabies, or a dead wolf that had rabies, and infected other wolves, a mad wolf in essence, a large wolf, perhaps three to four feet, the largest of them, he saw its foot print, it had six digits, not five, it was all of 180-pounds, with great stamina, for it ran the length woods like a bird, many folks had seen one, but no one saw it close up, not even the dead who died by its bone breaking teeth. Such wolves were ancient, their history dated back 300,000-years, with the scent glands on their toes, they could out maneuver its enemy at will, and they were highly adaptable, thrived in unbalanced weather.
If he was infected with rabies, then perhaps it went mad, and was the cause for its attack, and they were close to the dog family, thus to run with them was not uncommon, it would although transmit its disease to humans, and other live stock, or could, and that was perhaps half of Mrs. Stanley’s reasoning for Hans to capture or kill the beast. On the other hand, maybe he needed to find the dog pack and see if the wolf was among it. He deliberated on many options, and worked them all out.

Hans was exploring the woods by the railroad tracks, it was the second week of his drifting rapidly from one section to the next, and back to the Stanley Plantation. He had built a fire, mumbled a prayer, climbed in a circle he made, fires all around him, put his rifle on his lap. The evening came, and it all seemed so unholy.
Hans pulled out his note book and started writing a diary, with a despairing gesture, turning his eyes every which way as the night got darker. He was in a scattered fringe of the woods, in case he needed to run out of it, he wouldn’t get lost. It struck him that it was considerable colder than what he anticipated, and put a blanket around him, the one he was to use as a pillow, if indeed he dare sleep. In the morning he’d resume his journey, but it was looking like he was not going to get his $500-dollars.
The brightness of the moon was helpful, and he began to think, write more notes, in addition to this, he noticed, heard a far’ away rushing sound, it came in intervals, with a mysterious cry, yelping, one that come from none other than a wolf, and so he wrote this down into his notes also. He was somewhat shut in by the hills, more so than the woods, he’d have to run a ways, up a hill, down it, and be out of the woods and beyond the hills to be in the fields of the Stanley plantation again. A mile or so, that is all. He shifted his eyes about, checking out the trees and foliage beyond them, winding around them as much as he could; he was in the least dense part of the woods, all seemingly in clumps.
Frost began to fall on him, and the cold shiver in the air penetrated his bones, and it got darker, as shadows of clouds slowly crept across the moon, giving off a misty vagueness of light.
The trees and fires, three around him, kept him company, the crackling of the fires, was his only disturbance in the otherwise silence, by and by, the sound of the wolf passed in echo from, past his ears, as if in blasts, puffs, weird was the sound of the wolf.
“Perhaps I should go find some better shelter,” he wrote in his diary. “The shadows that are crossing the moon look like corpses,” he wrote in his diary, “There’s a sudden stillness now, I seem to be in the middle of a storm at sea, my heart is beating fast, now the moon’s light has broken through the gray clouds, and the fires around me give off a marble like tone, which seeps into the air, perhaps I am noticing too much, and that means I’m falling to sleep, yet I sure something is approaching me, I sense it, feel it, almost can taste it.
“I feel a little weird, faint almost, I think the devil is around, evil smells, it soaks the air with the scent of blood,” and then as he looked up he dropped his pen and paper, a perfect tempest leaped upon him, the ground shook, it was like a bolt of lightening, a roar of thunder, icy fangs over his head, he rolled over to get away from the beast, grabbed a stick of lit wood, almost pitilessly jumped into one of the three fires; he was being dominated, the wolf’s was all of 200-pounds,and four feet to his shoulders, and it had iron cold teeth, he rose as a dead man would, limp as a fish, bitter screaming in pain, the wolf leaped at him, mingling a dreadful sound, a giant-grip he hand on Hans, and dragged him around the fires, like a rag doll while he dropped him now and then, and beat on him with is giant paws, knocking the air out of him, there were several wolves in the nearby bushes, looking, vaguely looking, as phantoms might prepare for the dead. He was soaked from flesh to bone in pain, his body numb, yet in torment, he fought, but the wolf was too powerful, he took a hunk, pound of flesh out of his leg, at if to say, how delicious, by flesh and victory, it was heavy weight, and then his chest, a vast stillness came to the staring eyes of Hans, he could feel the warm breath of the wolf at his throat, the awful truth was, Hans was hoping to lose consciousness, and just die, the wolf dropped him then, licked his throat, his eyelashes, this gigantic wolf acted as if he was possessed with a demon, a regiment of demons, as if there were voices controlling this beast from beyond this world. The wolf then yelped, as loud as a bear, louder than a bear, and then disappeared, leaving the live corpse amongst the fires, and the wolves half hidden in the bushes, drew nearer, he knew he was powerless… and they drew nearer!...

To Ðie in Silence (a short story)


Most men lead, and live their lives behind walls of misunderstandings, ones they have built for themselves, perhaps it’s a man thing; whatever, most men die, alone, in silence, behind those walls, in pretence they never had 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, for the most part, I suppose you could say and never did understand life, wound in pretence.
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 different, 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 for their own self-interest, 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, or all those reasons, or anyone will do, 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, 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, Burgendy Washington (otherwise known as Alice Hart, and now married, and known as Alice Anderson) 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 own 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 for Langdon Abernathy—the Vietnam War, this is—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.

The graveyard still remained near the hill, and now that old 1950-Chevy of Frank and Wally’s sat by it, and old Minnie Mae’s shanty remained close by, they were all close together now in an empty field, in one corner of the back property, where the pig pen 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 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 the dead, or soon to be dead, when they are about to give up their last breath; brings them to wherever they are suppose to go. They still, he still rides a horse according to her, 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.
Thus, she drove up to Fayetteville, stopped at Mrs. Stanley’s Pantaloon 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 pig pen 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 corn cribs 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 corn field, just coming into tassel, all owned by Alice Hart. 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 had her work and Charlie work in the corn fields, throwing it into a wagon, or truck whatever was available, now it was just trucks they hauled it away to the cribs in. Mr. Stanley had told her last night, Alice, alias Burgendy, 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 is 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 by 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. 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 towns boys and girls, they were the Shepard’s of the corn fields 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 dram, 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. 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 brake man 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 want 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 cascade, 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 because 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, bout 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 throw 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…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 he 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.”

† 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, 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, ‘ok 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 life.
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 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, “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. 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.

Cradled with the Devil ((1966)(a short Macaabre Story))


Noyllopa the Demon





Subdivided (in parts)

A New Life
The New Mate
The Devil Returns
The Little Angel



(The New Life) Burgendy Washington was released from the mental hospital after three plus years in it care 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 thus, took it on the day she walked of the hospital 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 dray, you might almost think it was premeditated.

“There you see, you made it,” said her Lawyer Mr. Thompson, Henry Thompson of Fayetteville, “I told you, you would, just keep the bible under your arms and pray and get rid of that devil that seems haunt you—at least for a while.”
She of course followed his instructions, perhaps not to the ‘t’ but close, she was now in Fayetteville, North Caroline, where she started from, when she and Thompson first met, talked and endured a national trial. She was young back then twenty-years old, still young, in her mid twenties, and Thompson, in his mid 40s, an aristocrat now, with his hands into a little of everything it seemed, and he talked like a prince, like he knew what he was doing. Burgendy knew he had a little if not a lot of the devil in him also, it was just hidden better than hers, 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, and fellow men, did something—like it or not—to her, as much as she knew about the devil, she knew about God, Christ, it was impossible not to.
She was annoyed by the action and a flush of anger came to her cheeks, a side of her character that always got her into trouble, in essence, she was really a simple farmer, or farm hand, but shrewd, and Thompson knew that, indefinable 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 the Hold God, and the Lord of Lords, Christ, he 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 was won, near everyone in town wanted me to do their cases, and in the process of this I invested somewhat,” he told the visiting Haitian girl.
“I noticed,” said Burgendy, “things have changed in the town; I heard the Wallace Plantation had burnt down also, and Abby was killed by that big hog, the one they called Wally, got that there Blue Ribbon at the county fair for.”
“So why Burgendy 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 that new building being builds down the block,” 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 don’t know 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 only one floor, 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, it was darker. 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, 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?”
“Ok,” she said nervously, she wanted to ask, intended to ask for another $2000-dollars to help her with the 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 know what this man had in sore for her, his generalities she presupposed.
Burgendy 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 was 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.
She watched a couple get into a car, and some workers digging in the swirl of the massive activity of the morning, and some putting bricks into the street, unsophisticated working people, with high hopes and spirit, and tremendously alert to their surroundings that had no time to think of investments.
“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 worm 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 man, he is in his middle 50s, and is looking into marriage, he asked me to find him a fine wife, she 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.
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, puffing at her heels 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, “His name is Tony Chandler, I will tell him; I had you come all the way from the Midwest just to see him, that you quite 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 not ever go to the Ritt Bank, and your new name is Katie Sexton, and your plantation was in Haiti, since you know that area well. I can have a birth certificate mad up for you, and a license and other documentation indicating you lived in the Midwest for the past twenty-years, five in Haiti.”



(The New Mate) After standing a while, waiting to meet her new mate, she fell into an imaginary drama, daydream, as this an came up to meet her, how acquaintances can be so rewarding, even after three years of jail, hospital jail. It would seem her eyes ere laughing at this who situation, if not dancing at the moment, of reality, to see if it would pass to a second moment.
She was actually missing the old plantain, the Wallace Plantation; it was really her only home she ever enjoyed.
“I am glad to meet you,” said the husky 50ish, man, named Tony Chandler, heartily.
“Lord a’ mighty, you are a huge man, like 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 many, and don’t ask me to show you it.”
Both Henry and Burgendy 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 seems 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 sound real either.” He said.
“I changed it when I came to America, don’t everybody, it is easier to say.”
Henry Thompson was proud she had an answer.
“Do we find a judge or a priest?” she asked.
“You don’t waist any time do you,” Tony Chandler said.
“I don’t know 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 said, “I guess I wanted to, and I didn’t, and now I know I can’t,” responded.
Said Henry Thompson, “I guess you’ll get married pretty soon now,” looking at Tony, and Tony pulled out his check book wrote out a $10, 000-dollar check for Thompson, said “For your service, it’s all tax deductible, I hope.”
Katie Sexton just looked, “Your surely a marrying kind,” she said, “you don’t just think about things, you act, you do’em, we’ll be getting ourselves married soon then, 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, in the three plus years she was gone, where she attempted to get closer to God, to run out of her life with the black arts, and the devil, which she had slain her child over, things had also happened to the demonic forces that had came into, left behind in Fayetteville. In short space of time her and her husband became well acquainted, as did her and Thompson, and Dylan Anderson business associate of her husbands, 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 young than her husband, Tony, a tall slender, stoop-shoulder fellow, who seemed to have everything balanced in his life, even the hat he wore, and his hair cut, his eye brows. He said he was a farmer once, a long time ago, told Katie so, he bought all the items he needed from Ben May’s hardware story, they, he and Ben and Tony were all friends, and Katie was also among the chosen. But when you play or prey to the devil, as Katie once did, he doesn’t play fair, and he has your number, it was several months now into the new year of 1966, and Katie been married four of them. 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 unconvinced which way she wanted to go, she swung more towards the demonic cult when it was available, and to the Christian sect other times, she was out of sorts with what she wanted.
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 slain her son.
Money was no longer an issue with her, and she and 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 on. She was to her understanding in need of nothing.

She really had no time anymore to stop for an hour of gossip or simple conversations, but Noyllopa, appeared right in the back seat of her car, as her driver, woman driver, Alice Hart.
“I am the voice you hear when Satan wants to talk to you. You do understand he is the god of his 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 in hell, but on earth 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 see the lumber yard 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, that 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, although he was not Noyllopa.
Tony sat up in bed “For god’s sake, Katie, what is it?”
“Don’t you see 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 night.
“That settles it,” she said out loud, knowing Noyllopa was nearby somewhere.
“It’s simple enough you see, we can in a 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 car, and one to run her life from a new empire she was acquiring through, Henry Thompson, the lawyer.

(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, it carried ten-perscent of its cash, within its vaults, and the requirement was only seven percent, thus, 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 husband and her was worth, about sixty-million.
What she wanted was to ruin the Ritt Bank, and buy her land back, the Wallace Plantation back to its original status. That was her gift, her request, her desire, and when she asked for it, shut eyes and all, she had a light taste of revenge like she never had before.
But the devil never gives without taking 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 year-1968, was the worse year for the 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 fired all his family members, and ruled like a king. 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 to say he was not handling the bank in the best interest of his stockholders. He had owned 51-percent of the bank, and Katie talked her husband in to investing now there eighty-million dollars, every penny they had, into buying out all the 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 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 Burgendy Washington in the wee hours of the night, and lay with her, and said, “This is the priced you must 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 be in this situation?” she muttered aloud.
And he made love ardent love, to her, to where even smoke gathered around his balled head, his eyes lighted upon her life fire, his voiced 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 new 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, was unspeakable dirty, intending to cut Burgundy’s insides, to make sure his semen was securely inside her, he wanted a child.
“You do not know what you are doing,” said the angel, “the rumor is, you will be buried under a 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,” all his impulses told him so, and he was told from time to time, but his legend commander in hell, to lie, to do as he please 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, 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 waist of time, with a Child of God.
And the little angel 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.
Said the Child, “Call on Satan to help you, if indeed this is not one who has accepted the Lord, and 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, 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 had everlasting life.” And a note was written in the bible laid down, and it said, “If He is for you, who can be against you.” 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, to be buried under tons and tons of rock for violating on of God’s child, one who had accepted him, made peace with him—

The little boy said to his mother, “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, just like you.”

6-22-2008 Dedicated to ETS

Voices out of Saigon (and its complete seven linking stories)

A riveting story, and Novelette, of notable achievement






By Poet Laureate

Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.


Awarded the National Prize of Peru, “Antena Regional”: The best writer for 2006 for promoting culture (in Poetry & Prose)

Illustrations by the Author


Copyright © 2008
“Voices out of Saigon”
(…and other linking stories)
By Dennis L. Siluk Ed.D.


Recent Awards of:
Dennis L. Siluk


Awarded the Prize Excellence: The Poet & Writer of 2006 by
Corporacion de Prensa Autonoma (of the Mantaro Valley of Peru)

Awarded the National Prize of Peru, "Antena Regional": The best of 2006 for promoting culture

Poet Laureate of San Jeronimo de Tunan, Peru (2005); and the
Mantaro Valley (8-2007) (Awarded the (Gold) Grand Cross of the City (2006))

Lic. Dennis L. Siluk, awarded a medal of merit, and diploma from the Journalist College of Peru, in August of 2007, for his international attainment

On November 26, 2007, Lic. Dennis L. Siluk was nominated, Poet Laureate of Cerro de Pasco and received recognition as an Illustrious Visitor of the City of Cerro de Pasco, and Huayllay

“Union” Mathematic School (Huancayo, Peru), Honor to the Merit to: Lic. (Ed.D.) Dennis Lee Siluk, (Awarded) Poet and Writer Excellence 2007, for contributing to the culture and regional identity, Huancayo. December 1, 2007, Signed: Pedro Guillen, Director

The Sociologist School of Peru, Central Region granted to
Dr. Dennis Lee Siluk, Writer Laureate for his professional contribution in the social interaction of the towns and rescue of their identity. Huancayo December 6, 2007 —Lic. Juan Condori –Senior Member of the Sociologist School

The Association of Broadcaster of the Central Region, of Peru, nominated Dr. Dennis Lee Siluk Honorary Member for his works done on the Central Region of Peru; in addition, the Mayor of Huancayo, Freddy Arana Velarde, gave Dr. Siluk, ‘Reconocimiento de Honor,’ and ‘Personaje Ilustre…’ status (December, 2007).

El Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano Región Centro otorga el presente: “Diploma de Honor”, Al Dr. Dennis Lee Siluk por su valiosa contribución a la difusión de los valores culturales andinos. Huancayo – Peru, diciembre 28, of 2007Directora de Cultura Diana V. Casas R. and Alfonso Velit Núñez
Presidente del Consejo Directivo




Contents


Voices out of Saigon

There was a Lady

From the Hayloft

Early Morning Hounds

A Sad Boy

Louisiana Girl

Dr. Whitman
(In two parts, part two being:
‘Bishop’s Ploy’)



Note: in the back see “Other Books by the Author” and Index of, Names, Places, and Dates

See: Back Index for: Names, Dates and Locations


۩




Voices out of Saigon

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 nineteen, or 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 611. 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 of 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 Smile Judson, 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 611, 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 backed 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 some things 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 post card 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 a 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 peaceful, 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 her’s; 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 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 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 existence 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,
“Ok, 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.
“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—pupilless. 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, he 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 bend body, held his bony body secure.

I think I might have thought of suicide had I been him, and I think he did, but 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 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 back seat 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, she 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 some day, 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 her now 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 mothers’ 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.




There was a Lady
(Story two)


Old Josh Jefferson Jr.


Mrs. Caroline Abernathy paced slowly in her front yard, coming up from her back yard. In the hot afternoon the huge, square house, 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. They, like Cole had died in it, in turn they had expected their son, Langdon to die in it too, but he had been buried now, he had died in a taxi in Saigon, a year ago to this very month, October, 1972.
So very tranquil was the tranquil women of Abernathy’s family tree.
Caroline crossed the front yard towards the wooden fence, she now remembered how a year ago, this month about this time in the day, her son, in his early twenties died, and brought so much grief to his father his heart gave out. She remembered how Langdon and Cole would be throwing the football to one another, treading on the grass to catch it, even running on the front porch to catch it, how old Josh ((Josh Jefferson Jr., born 1890) (died 1972: 82-years old)) the negro stable man, would help him up on the horse, 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 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, thus, the house had seen a lot of Langdon Abernathy, and expected him to carry on the family saga, in that very house.
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, up in the family graveyard too, where the other family members were on their one-hundred acre plantation, on the outskirts of Fayetteville, North Caroline.
So all that was left in this big house was Caroline, her sister, Betty Presley ((former: Hightower )(younger sister by twelve-years to Caroline)) came up from New Orleans to stay with her, her younger sister by twelve years, but she never stayed long, her husband being in a wheelchair and all. She came up to the 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. Thus, she lived in an unmanned house, at this point sleeping on the sofa, in a six bedroom mansion, and Betty tended to her needs for the last three months.
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.”
She was a strong woman for her short height, she being all of five-foot four inches tall, only fifty-years old; 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 the psychologist so calls it, you know why, I don’t need to tell you, 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, but I know Caroline, she’s thinking, and it is about young Langdon’s girlfriend over in Vietnam, that Vang girl, and that three year old, or is two and half year old boy, Josue, of his, if it is really his, take care of her if I die please.”

Caroline said, “I’m going down to the creek,” to Betty; Betty thought nothing of it, she did that almost every day, it was quiet and near the graveyard, there one could contemplate or listen to the water to calm themselves, 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. He just thought it, and he knew she’d some day do it, Betty still unaware of what, her brain unprepared, without comment, and then Betty saw a letter on the table, dinning room table, 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 the early the October and November breeze though.” (Signed, ‘Your sister, Caroline.’)


Saigon

Well, Betty 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.

Mrs. Caroline had a picture of Vang and the boy, and she went from market to market 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.”
And they did find her, and they 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 kids, eating from rice from a bowl, rise with some greens, and to the side of her was a bowl of noodles—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, lying on the floor, reminders of her son, perhaps he gave them to her, so she thought.
Vang looked to the figures in her opened doorway, “What you do here,” she said, knowing who she was; she had seen pictures of her.
Now Yang stood inside the house by the opened window.
“I dont know’ya,” said Vang to Yang, as if to say: I don’t know Mrs. Abernathy, what do you want.
“My husband, he come back soon,” said Vang. Mrs. Abernathy grunted. The house was a low –ceiled house filled with an odd scent of spices. Sounds of the children, she didn’t understand. Outside the window was a busy street full of venders and people walking, and motor bikes 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—no whiter than the rice Vang was eating. Caroline looked at Vang motionless, getting a profile of her face, and produced an interrogative expression.
“You killed my boy you know,” she said.
“No,” 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, he is,” commented Caroline, then gave Vang a cold and quiet look.
“You stop look at me like that, Mrs. Abernathy,” said Vang.
“I haven’t said anything yet, you see the truth in my face though,” Caroline said.
“Then you keep it to yourself, I don’t want to hear it, and leave my house, now!” Vang said.
Yang was looking out the window; taking in all the sights, avoiding the confrontation, the one that looked as if one was developing.

The Door

She 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, 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, lean toward 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 the boy, 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 longer looking at the family behind her, “I reckon so,” and she and Yang walked promptly out of the house, and off the premises.



…From the Hayloft
(Story Three)


Caroline, a day after she arrived back home, got back home from Saigon went out to the barn, a barn now horseless, manless, Negroless, childless. An old 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—‘…ghosts perhaps,’ so she muttered; Josh taught him how to ride bareback—taught Langdon how to mount, ride bareback, without a saddle, he was but only nine-years old at the time.
She recalled the day Josh informed her about the night Langdon came into the barn at 2:00 AM, in the morning, 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, it was just Josh didn’t not want to let it all out at one time, he had his reasons.

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, no 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, it’s time I learn, I’ve been feeding him 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.”
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 waking up.
“I suppose I is got to teach ya now, ya done woke up the whole darn barn, what ya pa goin’ to say if I tells him?”
“But you won’t I know it.” Langdon said.
“Hows ya know dhat?” replied Josh.
“Cuss I do…!” answered Langdon.
“Well, you knows more dhen me dhen.” And they started laughing, and Josh got the horse out, and Josh helped him 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, and Dan starts to whine and stomp his hoofs, like a mad bull.
“Hes like dhe mule, and you Langdon, an’ hes not goin’ a go back to sleep, jes like you!”
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, 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, Josue, and marry his Vang, his indifferent and insensitive Vang, the one who deceived him, the Jezebel, the Delia that stepped into his life one day, and caused so many ripples within his family; never really wanting to see the family, 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 went back to his bed because when Josh woke up, he was gone, so Josh told, Caroline; hence, the boy was gone, and everyone, animal and him, Josh, had been sleeping, the last thing he could remember, before he fell to sleep, everything was noisy, and now daybreak had arrived.



Unhurried, Caroline stood up from sitting on the wooden stairway leading up into 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 farms yards, so they don’t have to have any more responsibility: an out of sight, out of mind thing.
She wanted to go back to day dreaming, she was having some good memories, happy ones, and she had not been happy for a long time, but she was calm now, very calm, unhurried, the yapping of the dogs 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, “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.”
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 bark, 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, 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, if a dog could smile, she detected it as 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—pity, but I will not be here and everyone else is gone. You don’t need my pity, you’ll do just fine on your own, like you already have, so ‘Sho!’” she told the dog and the dog got up and walked over to one of the horses stalls, Dan’s old stall.
She was now looking at the dog, and she 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 beam, 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 jerk and she said, whispered to herself, ‘no more time to hate,’ and her throat and nostrils made a sound, and she was dead.

Epitaph

When the dog awoke at daybreak, the neighbors could hear the yapping cries of the dog, she left the stall, guarded the entrance to the barn, waited until the neighbors came, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Unknowing the profound emergency of the matter, it was midday before they arrived.




Early Morning Hounds
(Story Four)



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 on 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 with her sister since they were kids, now Caroline was married, had her boy, Langdon, and Betty likewise.
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 others hand—hand to hand—now shoulder to shoulder, they jumped, just like that, jumped onto the edge of the fairy boat, 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 crew man tried to shove them off, and Caroline hit him as the boat pulled away, and a few folks standing nearby yelled at the crew man, and he hightailed it out of sight.
But open the door to the boat he would not, so she did, because they were on the other side of it, the crew member didn’t help, and if there were any watching this happening besides the one who hightailed it out of there, they were not exposing themselves to be questioned afterwards, on the rights and wrongs of this. For Betty it was the one last, and profound adventure her and her sister had, she hung on to it like a hungry cat would to a dead mouse.
Betty moved restless on the floor of the living room, covered with blankets, it felt as if she was flat on the earth, but for some reason the air was crisp fresh, 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, thus: the boat shot away across the waters to Nantucket, they were now inside the large waiting room of the boat, clinging onto the chairs as the boat tugged its way across the choppy waters, looking at the shadow of the boat out of the window, and onto the glazed water, 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 there and then in the dream, “You fool, you damned fool, you should have shot Vang, been done with this iron-gray dilemma she put you into,” 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, had she triumph in killing Vang, this might not have happened, she might not have hung herself, what stopped her, I mean, she committed suicide instead of getting the culprit. So she thought as she lay there thinking.
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 thought, 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. And there was nothing else to do this night but let the sounds penetrate her brain, let the haunting night emanates the sounds into her soul.
Betty Hightower, made no noise, just 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; perhaps 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 parities 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 clutter the brain; she told herself, belongs to culprit, he wants you drowned in them, so you don’t go after him or her. They say heaven will get the bad guys later, or girls and thus, they will get their just reward, their due 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 the attic 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 felt, amazed outrage inside her head, building up as the hounds chased the cats and cats chased the rats, and the sounds penetrated Betty’s brain.

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 out loud, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hounds, “You got to finish what you started, clean up another’s mess,” and she was thinking of the boat ride to Nantucket, “We’ll jump off the dock together, one more time,” she whispered to the wall. Then she heard a sound of a dog, it sounded like Tabasco, it sounded like rats were cornering him, and his barks, and their screeches, and she heard the noise outside the back screened-in door, and she ran with a gun she had found in the house, and she ran to the door, and opened it, and rats as big as fat cats stared at her as they tried to drag Tabasco away from the door—pulling ripping at his flesh. And she shot at the rats, five bullets, leaving one for Tabasco; he was viciously torn to shreds.
She then closed the door, said with a scent of vengeance, “I got them for you Tabasco! And now for Vang”

Saigon Bound

At daybreak, she went to the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, asked if she could borrow, or if she would loan out her help, Amos, the Negro who befriended Old Josh, all those years. He himself was 79-years old, but spry as a forty-year old. 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.
“Mrs. Stanley agreed with me, if it is ok with you, to loan you out to watch the Abernathy Farm while I’m away. You’ll get paid the same and if you do both the watching and the farm work for Mrs. Stanley, which is up to you, 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, and they led to a rundown shack of a house, not a house in the sense of a house she was used to, it was close to the U.S. Military Air Base. You could hear the jets, and helicopters, and propeller planes taking off. And there she stood, like a motionless pillar, a figure in stone, and she again took her notes from her purse and checked them out along with a picture of Vang, it was the house, so she confirmed and the door was slightly open, she approached looked around 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 motor bikes. She checked her purse out again, her knife, four-inch pocket knife was there, one Jason (her husband) used for fishing, cleaning fish. She dispersed the knife from her purse, held it in her hand, and entered the proprietress’ home, once in the house, all the outside sounds ceased, the horns of the cars and buses, the motor bikes tires on the pavement, the children, noisy children in bus’ and just voices in general, noise in general, city noise, the kind no one really pays attention to, it all seemed to have ceased. She entered the kitchen, it seemed to be the main room of the house, and then into a bed room, three beds, it was cold in there, an empty cold, it seeped into her veins, made her blood chilled, and she left just as abruptly as she entered it, 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 reply, and when it reappeared, with the little light 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 work out —she looked closer, it was waxy dead female. It was covered with bus 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 caught her breath, and ran out of the house, and up a deserved street, no cars no folks walking, just three young men, and she cried, not for Vang, but for herself, it was so ugly, she was frightened out of the house, ascending that hill, away from everybody, The three men grabbed her, let her skirts lifted from her trim ankles, they put her hands over 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, 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.


The Sad Boy
(Story Five)


Lifting the bruised body of the women the police would find out later to be Betty Hightower, from Fayetteville, North Caroline, 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 wrist watch, surprised it was still on 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 canvassed 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 Childs 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 was took off, 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 diamond 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 would help.
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 inescapable 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 round eyes, he was American looking, 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 there 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 shut down.
That evening the child remained where it was left, by its step-father, but a shadow a sad showdown 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 pelage 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 least. 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 back yard, 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 19-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, “No” of us saw it coming—but somehow, someway, Vang and her husband were invited into our house, perhaps by Langdon.”



Louisiana Girl
(Story Six)


Cassandra Hightower’s bedroom faced the 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 down stairs, 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, her 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 like 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, 20-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 Fayetteville, to a private location, parked the car, Linda in the back seat with her boyfriend.
“Give me a kiss,” Henry said, and with its tone, it sounded more like a demand.
“No,” was his 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 form 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, she was that just 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 wondering.
As far as she was concerned, she would never trust a man, she told her father, after his stated, statement, that perhaps Vang’s affair with Langdon was the cause, or more of the cause of Vang’s husband, Nguyen, because of her husband because her husband wanted what he wanted, and didn’t care what his wife had to do to get it and the consequence was, the long, 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 the tomorrow 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 PM.
“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, neither did she lean over to hear what he was mumbling, 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 paralyze it; 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 down stairs reading newspapers, so it wasn’t him, and she was not talking loud.
“I suppose we should go down stairs 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
(Story Seven)

Part One of Two Parts

(From the Journal notes of Dr. Whitman)

I will have to try to tell about why Cassandra Hightower (daughter to Betty Hightower), and daughter of Jason Hightower, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, 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 whom ever she has contact with, even her Senior Counselor I assigned to her, Don Hooker, I will use his words in much of he 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. He even had to have two guards by her, one inside her room, the other sitting outside her room 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 him, 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.
She 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 wither 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; I think at times also, he wanted to enter a plea of mental incompetence on my helper, the Senor 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 his mother had died, and all the trouble with the Abernathy family, she was escaping it all.
Ponder he did, and became emerged in his daughters 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 18-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 bases. 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 bit 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 in to take her out to the river and walk with her, we felt it was ok, and Mr. Hightower knew if he demanded her to be released, we might not do it, and thus, she and he and the Macaulay girl are back in North Carolina 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, he 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 recover seems undoable, and she might resort to harsh measures.


Bishops Ploy
(Part two, to 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 felt 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 Fayetteville, 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 belong 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 evil that it will creep into the mind, easy or not easy, and she 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 ok, and Linda reinforced it.
The on looker, 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 suffering, like somebody unconscious to the real facts, she was breathing, and sleeping, but they did the 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 up stairs 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 were showing, and gums, 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 ok, 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 peal 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 End to the Stories