Category: Fiction

The Horn Man: The October Killer (conclusion)

This is a work of fiction

Warning: adult themes, graphic detail, smoking, alcohol use, substance abuse, violence

Time and location unknown

Date unknown

For a week, at least, Frank had been in and out of consciousness. It was always dark, but not the kind of dark he had been suspended in. He was on his back, blankets piled on him. He was sweating, but cozy and comfortable.

Somewhere near his feet, off to the left, a red glass lamp glowed, an antique almost exclusive to the south.

His body gradually began to filter pain in, a little bit at a time, always promising more to come. He was also sore in what felt like every muscle group.

Then he felt the urgency of a full bladder and the need to relieve it.

Slowly he sat up, groaning as his back creaked with resolute resistance.

Slowly and with ridiculous weakness, he turned to his right, lifting heavy quilts and blankets away until his feet touched a cold floor. This wasn’t a hospital; the floor was concrete.

But the urethral catheter…how did he have one of those if he wasn’t in the hospital?

“Hey,” a voice said in the dim light, “Take it easy, you’re going to get dizzy and fall!” The exclamation was delivered in a whisper but still carried the warning quite clearly. “You’ve been out for a long time.” A rush in the dark, strong hands supported him under his armpits. “Let me get that catheter out first, then you can go. The IV is already out. I’ll help you to the bathroom.”

Once the catheter was out, a steady stream of urine came immediately gushing behind it and Frank couldn’t control it. “It’s okay, Frank. Don’t worry about it.” But his guide still kept him moving to a small room with a white light.

The nurse, or whatever she was, helped him wash at the sink; a bed bath standing up.

He was hurting so badly that a woman washing his pits and penis didn’t bother him.

Protectors of the Earth

When he was led back out, still nude, he saw her. He stopped, his mouth open with horror. Randi Ghas was making his bed, changing the linens. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” she smiled. “You had me worried.”

As he was helped into a fresh gown, Frank was given a situation report. He was in a large basement, and outside, through a window the size of one in an oven, he saw the light of a sunset. He never understood why, but he could always tell the difference between the glow from a sunset and a sunrise. They were very different.

He looked back at Randi, more beautiful than he remembered, and sensed only a gentleness from her. Was this really what attacked him, or just a woman?

As if she had heard his thoughts, Randi said softly, “it wasn’t me. I was hurt that you thought that, but I understood it. Dealing with the supernatural isn’t easy.”

When he was settled into bed again and a man in scrubs mopped the floor, Randi, clothed in black robes, a rosary chain and beads around her neck, explained, “I tried to tell you it was a shapeshifter. It isn’t a striga, though. We know your doctor. We know lots of doctors. This is the first time one has ever resorted to calling us in. He really thinks a striga was after you but he’s wrong. It is much worse than that.

“Frank, we did have dinner together that night, but you drove me home and dropped me off. We didn’t sleep together. Our enemy took over your mind. That’s what almost killed you. At any time afterwards, or when you were in your doctor’s office, did you notice any kind of insect?”

“It’s almost dark. Tonight is Halloween, the last night we can catch it and kill it. I hoped you would be able to come with us, but you’re too weak.”

And he did; he was sweating, his eyes were in and out of focus, and doing scary things to her image.

Outside the window, as if from a fair distance, a truck’s air horn sounded: a bugle signaling the beginning of a battle.

Randi said, “your horn man is calling us out.” She sounded frightened.

“Of course I’m coming with you. Just give me some clothes and my gun and lead the way.”

“Frank, it’s Halloween. Don’t you know how long you’ve been out? And before that you were in a coma. You almost died.“

Frank said, “I don’t care if I have to crawl, I’m coming.”

She turned to a woman who had been sitting quietly in a dark corner of the room and asked, “Mother Superior?”

Frank had a rush of confidence and the feeling of strength. The nun was powerful in her faith. “Go ahead. He’s old and he’s very weak right now, but it will work just the same.”

Randi sat back down on the edge of the bed. From the stand beside it, she picked up gloves, donned them, then quickly swabbed his upper right arm with an alcohol pad and just as quickly jabbed a syringe into the muscle. He felt like a lump of fire had been deposited there; he winced while the nurse and Randi stripped him of his gown and put his feet into a pair of blue jeans and drew them up. As they continued to dress him, his body began to jerk uncontrollably, the fire spreading throughout his bloodstream. He groaned in pain and begged for water. They were lacing up trekking boots then they sat him up. A T-shirt and pullover sweatshirt followed, and he was lifted up again. A cowboy-style gun belt and holster was tightened to his waist. The long handgun required a long holster which had a leather thong that had to be tied to his leg. He pulled the pistol and marveled at it. 1896 Colt, very rare, a .45 with a ten-inch barrel, a subdued black model that, if it had ever been fired, had not been so used very many times. He spun the cylinder and it was loaded, six huge bullets of death.

“Shouldn’t I get a Stetson, too,” he joked. He was handed a black watch cap. The joke was ignored.

He thought hard because her tone told him it was important. “Anything at all, Frank. Maybe you heard a sound?”

He had heard something!

“Like a dragonfly I couldn’t see. Funny sound.”

Randi looked at the elderly nun. A knowing exchange.

“Franklin,”the nun asked, “What do you think of faeries?”

Frank let out a snort of laughter.

“Don’t laugh,” Randi warned darkly, her voice low.

“I don’t know. I thought they were a myth.” His mouth was as dry as the desert. He asked again for water and the nurse poured him a glass full.

“On the contrary. For eons, people have reported bizarre creatures they encountered in the wood and forest regions from Ireland to the Baltic, and usually the stories told end badly. Reports of missing time, being trapped, harmed, or witnessing the death of a traveling companion at the hands of various species of the Fae. Some can change appearance, even to human form. Anything they wish. Others are limited to animal forms, and the benign fairies cannot or refuse to change. Those avoid contact with humans at all costs, including hiding while their land is disturbed and exploited by men. They die because their dwelling places take generations, that is to say, centuries, to build. Their babies die without shelter. Yet, none have ever been rumored to seek revenge.

It’s said that the last survivor of a camp can, if she wishes, pray to become human, and if permission is granted by God, they emerge as beautiful human1 women, ready to marry and have children. Her descendants can, if they wish, return to the fae. But it takes decades. Do you believe this?”

“I do, Mother. Now that I’m purely terrified, would you mind telling me what you shot me up with? I feel…weird.”

“I will never tell you. Suffice it to say that you will be highly resistant to their mental attacks and therefore can expose yourself to fight them as you wish. You–we–must be quick, however; the serum is secret, so I’ve never allowed a half-life analysis.”

“And you know all this because you’re one of them.”

Randi gasped. “How did you figure out so quickly?”

“I meant to say you’re all, all three of you, fae. As you put it. You left them to become human and now it’s too late for you to change back.”

“Perceptive, Franklin,” the mother said, “but not exactly correct. Our court left the fae behind centuries before the Romans invaded England. We are the protectors of the Earth. We have always worked, even fought, to keep a balance of nature, mankind and the creatures of legend, to prevent the destruction of any one of them. Humans for the most part mistreat the planet, while fairies mistreat humans, and the few humans who knew, killed every eldrich being they encountered. The work never ends. If humans ever had proof of all creatures around them, they would kill with abandon, while fairies rarely go rogue and kill. They are punished, but you know as well as I that this would not be justice in the mind of any human. They would wipe my kind out. During the bombings of Britain and Europe in World War Two, so many of us were killed that entire bloodlines died out. Yet we did not retaliate because it was understood to be a war that unintentionally harmed our kind. We have a code of ethics that prevents us from taking revenge for accidental deaths.”

“Enough. Just tell me where we’re going and what to do.” Frank had a sick headache.

“We’re not going anywhere. They’re coming. And in a few minutes the serum will finish changing your DNA, and whatever gifts you receive, you’ll know how to use them, so let us go outside and stand our ground.”

He had a moment with Randi as they waited and the air horn grew louder.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” she said. When you came to me for advice, I took all of one hour to realize I was falling in love with you. I thought I could protect you. I’m sorry I didn’t. If you really love me, then forgive me and we will get through this because nothing is more strong than love.”

“Oh, you already know that I love you. I know you do. And we’re gonna kick ass. I feel like I can take on an army.”

Ahead, there was a two lane steel arch bridge, but Frank had never been here or seen it before. Beyond it, there was darkness; no streetlights pierced the void, yet he could see something. Something was moving and the horn grew ever more loud.

“Get ready,” said the mother, returning from scouting the area. “It’s all clear,” she said, but was instantly proven wrong when a giant owl with a fifteen foot wingspan swept down and closed its giant talons around her head, tearing her neck. She died just like that, her eyes rolling back into her fractured skull.

The nurse threw something at the owl, whose eyes glowed angry red, and blue light hit its breast. Frank drew the Colt, pulled the hammer back and fired. The recoil was too much and the gun flew back, the hammer hitting his forehead. He felt blood running down his face, but the owl wasn’t dead. It was hit, a hole in its breast, and the nurse’s blue light had dazed it. He fired again, ready for the recoil, and the head shot dropped the bird, which fell to the gravel lot they were on, its wings spread wide, the body face down with the head mostly gone.T

He air horn stopped. A tractor without a trailer had pulled to a stop ten yards away. Air brakes hissed, the door opened, and a man stepped down. Still  shrouded in darkness, he said, “We meet again, Kallia,” using her fae name. He dripped with hatred. He projected it so strongly that she was off balance. “You remember me. I’m the one cast out of our court by your deciding vote. Banished, made homeless and powerless, having to kill men for survival, for sustenance. And you three have killed my mate. She only attacked your mother superior because she wanted to protect me. Must this go on? I was living in filth and yet people had to disturb our solitude, our peace.”

Frank looked down at the owl. A woman’s body lay there instead, its head nearly gone, surrounded by blood. “They’ll come for you now,” Randi said. They know you’re killing humans now. They’ll condemn you. And you ask why it continues.” She shook her head. The nurse held out her hands. A sizzling, electric green bolt of lightning shot at him, striking him down, but in a minute, he was back on his feet. He shot her with some type of weapon Frank couldn’t see, and she was torn by double-aught buckshot, blood flying in every direction. She dropped heavily, dead before she hit the gravel.

“You cursed demon!” She whispered to Frank, “Ready?’

He nodded, and as the mother superior had said he would, he knew exactly what to do. They both ignored the five county police cars skidding to a stop right beside them and at once they both concentrated on the horn man and he simply blew apart, exploding with a loud concussion, leaving only pieces that made splattering plops when they hit the ground.

Drained, Frank fell to his knees and Timothy Cobb ran up, asking if he was okay. Randi began to tell the officers what had happened when suddenly Frank began to shrink!

Frank felt it happening and knew what it meant. That damned injection. It was never temporary. In agony, pain everywhere in his body, his back was torn open. Wetness ran down the crack between his glutes and then his legs, and his wings emerged. Still shrinking, he begged Cobb, “Shoot me!”

All of the officers were now staring, horrified and unable to move. But Cobb could move. He didn’t have to think. He didn’t have time to ask questions. He drew his Glock and fired twice into the child-size torso, and the shrinking process stopped. Frank lay still, blood pooling around him, his dragonfly wings also unmoving but sickening to behold.

The woman who looked goth laughed at him. Cobb turned quickly, lined up the target and fired three quick shots. She vanished, leaving behind laughter that echoed as it rose above them, the sound of insect wings going with her.

When Cobb looked back down at his friend’s body, it had been returned to normal size, without the wings.

He was dead.

The Horn Man: The October Killer (Part Two)

This is a work of fiction.

Warning: adult themes, graphic detail, smoking, alcohol use, substance abuse, violence

Monday

20 October

Frank had spent a fruitless week interrogating the survivors of the abandoned truck stop murder, and he knew that they were innocent of the death, but he regarded them as chickenshits of the highest order. He told them so. Their wide eyes hardly ever blinked. He asked the doctor to let the boys get psychiatric treatment, finally realizing that they were traumatized beyond anything he could have understood at first. What the hell had they seen? he kept asking himself.

When pressured to describe the killer, they had one response: they had tears roll down their cheeks and slowly shook their heads, a two thousand yard stare fixed in their eyes.

On Thursday, he had consulted with a local folklorist named Randi Ghas who worked out of Atlanta but knew the state very well. She, being a goth, had dyed black hair hanging to her waist, lots of ink and black eye shadow. She was younger, hot, and exotic, and fuel for an old man’s fantasies.

Randi Ghas, on the other hand, found Frank Sanders a real man, confident and focused and exciting. His looks were fine to her biased eyes, and she had encouraged him to take her card, pointing out her personal number that she wrote on the back.

The front the card bore her name and the name “Georgia Historical Society” and Frank knew that name well. He had gone to them numerous times for research.

But when presented with a description of the body, which he cautioned her had not been released to the press yet, swearing her to silence, Randi became visibly ill. After some time in her office bathroom, she emerged, pale and shaky.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Ghas, I shouldn’t have been so graphic,” Frank said, getting up to help her sit. She thought, all this, and manners, too? Where’s this guy been all my life?

She reached into a file drawer in her desk, lifted a hefty, aged manilla folder and plopped it on the desk top and opened it. Halfway through the stack of paper, she pulled out several pages stapled together. “I thought this one was over before I was out of elementary school. I remember my dad working the story, and he worked hard, but he couldn’t print anything. He was threatened. The sheriff had a crony judge do it. Daddy was a good man and he wanted the truth known but he followed the gag order anyway. He was writing a book about it when he died, but he told me once that if I ever could, I should make sure it was printed.

“This case terrorized all of southern Georgia and especially in the west, where the mountain folks get superstitious over acorns falling too early. They’re really good people, and I’m treated like a celebrity by them because they know I respect their integrity and believe their stories. They see and hear and know things nobody else does. Well that’s where your story begins.” She paused. “This is against my instinct, but if anyone can be trusted, it’s you. I just don’t want you to get hurt.” She looked at him with affection in her green eyes, and handed him the papers. “I’m probably the only one in the county with a staple remover, so if you need it, let me know. It’s around here somewhere.”

Frank was horrified. These were copies of police and sheriff reports on unsolved murders going back to 1939.

All of them had one thing in common: their bodies had been found face down with their backs torn open from the rectum to the neck, vertebrae turned into jagged pebbles.

One every October and one the following month. No witnesses and no weapon found.

This was chilling indeed; if done by the same killer, the unsub must be at or past a century old or there was a damn good copycat. The murders had stretched from the Florida state line to North Carolina. He instinctively knew there had been some in the mountains as well, but nobody up there would ever talk to him about it.

Tuesday

21 October

They had shared dinner at a restaurant in Merriweather County, then gone to her house. It was old, homey and full of rich paneling and antebellum hardwood floors. The night was cold but she broke out blankets from a linen closet and they made love before she could even lay them out.

It was great at first, but as it continued, Frank began to feel drained and sick. He finally had to ask her to stop and though visibly upset, she dismounted him and rolled over.

He was sick, weak to the point of passing out, but he wasn’t staying here; and while she voiced her concerns about him, he dressed and prepared to leave. A sheet covering her to the waist, she said he’d feel better tomorrow as if she knew.

He had worse than the usual nightmares that night and awoke at 02:30. He chain-smoked Camels and drank two Scotches and couldn’t think of anything but his nightmares.

Saturday

25 October

She had been correct; he had felt better the next day. In fact, he felt better driving back that night, and the long drive, a stop for Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and icy air coming in through his cracked window, and by the time he turned into his street, he was fine. If not for waking up from nightmares he would have been in a great mood.

Just in case, he saw his doctor on Saturday, and aside from his already existing maladies, he was fine. He got a flu and a covid shot, but before leaving asked one nagging question.

“Doc, I was, uh …”

“What’s up, Frank?” Never did know you to be bashful about anything.”

“Okay, Monday night I was havin’ sex with this younger lady, and –“

Doctor Allan Kneebreaker, who regretted his unfortunate family name, but never dreamed of changing it because down here that wasn’t done, said, “You want Viagra.”

“No, I don’t want Viagra, will you quit clownin around? This is serious.“

“Go on, Frank. I apologize.” He could see now that this was something that had his patient and friend almost frightened.

“Well, everything was fine at first. She’s young, beautiful and…”

When he was finished, Frank saw something he had never seen on his doctor’s face: fear. The man had even gone pale.

“What is it, Doc? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Doctor Kneebreaker fell into his chair without looking, still drained of color. He held up one shaking finger as if asking for a minute to get his shit together, then swiveled around to his desk. He pulled out a bottle of pills and swallowed two without water. He was breathing rapidly and trembling from head to foot. Frank had the unmistakable feeling that he had been right not to answer Randi’s calls all week. And not just because she happened to be in all of his nightmares.

He had seen flashes he couldn’t explain while they made love, images that came and went too swiftly to make out, but which were nevertheless disturbing. Each time, he felt as if he had expended a massive burst of energy. Now, as he watched his doctor, he decided that he was wrong, very wrong.

“You’ve heard this before, Al.” He said.

The doctor nodded as vigorously as he could, but five minutes of silence followed before a powerful drug kicked in and he stopped shaking. “Stay away from that thing.” He pulled a small flask from his lab coat and took a sip from it. Bourbon, Frank said to himself. He’d never known his friend to be a drinker; the man would order ice water or club soda at the bar when they played golf.

“Frank, have you ever heard of a striga? The correct spelling, if you’ve ever seen it, would be s-t-r-z-y-g-a. It’s from Hungarian and Polish but the creature’s origins aren’t known. By definition, they’re timeless. Female demons who eat human flesh and drink their blood. Therefore, they would always have been here and can’t be killed. They can fly, I think, in the form of an owl. But here’s the thing that no reference source says, and it’s you. If they fall in love, if they choose a man to mate with, copulation is rumored to be fatal, and the striga always forgets that. It kills what it loves most, and henceforth lives with a broken heart.

“I believe that this is who — what you were with on that night. She was draining energy from you without intention. It’s just what they do. So if they get pregnant, which seems ludicrous, it’s rare. Yes, I have absolutely seen patients before with the same thing and you won’t believe this, but they described the same woman. One of those men died in Atlanta General.”

“She claims to be a folklorist,” Frank whispered. He felt as breathless as if he had been gut-punched.

“Well she would make a good one,” the doctor said. “She’s been alive since before humans.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“As a doctor, my advice is to stay away from her and let her pick another mate.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Not at all. There’s nothing funny about this, Frank. Forget it. Fallen though they may be, demons are still angels, and we can’t kill them.”

Frank froze. His eyes closed for a moment then flew open. He gagged, reaching for his throat with both hands. “Frank!”

Doctor Allan Kneebreaker hadn’t seen this before. “Nurse! Bring me the crash cart and call EMS!”

Frank was sitting on the examination table and he lowered the detective to a prone position then to his side. He used his penlight to check the airway and it was clear, but Frank was already beet-red, and that was serious.

The nurse wheeled the cart in and other doctors from the clinic were entering from another door.

When all clothing had been cut away, and the patient had been intubated, Frank Sanders was unconscious and in big trouble. Two men, doctors of cardiology and pulmonology, worked on him speedily, but his vitals were bad and getting worse.

“It’s not an infarc,”

His lungs are clear, the trachea is clear,”

“Start IV saline, push atropine.”

Paper and plastic packaging fell on the floor. The medics arrived but stayed in the hall. Words like “established” and “no change” were followed by “push epi!”

This much Frank heard, then he went into a place of darkness. He wasn’t standing or lying on anything, and he knew somehow that he was alone and there was nothing around him. The darkness went on, in every direction, forever. He felt no emotion. He just knew one thing.

That Randi had, across a distance he didn’t know, reached inside of him and killed him for telling the doctor about her. And she wasn’t finished killing, either; his last impression was that she was going to kill more than her annual bag limit, she was so angry.

The Horn Man: The October Killer

This is a work of fiction.

Warning: adult themes, graphic detail, smoking, alcohol use, substance abuse, violence

Monday, 13 October

03:40

Detective Sergeant Frank Sanders was slow to wake up. It seemed to him like the phone had been ringing for a while, but he didn’t know for sure; his sleep had been deep but troubled. Always with the fuckin nightmares, he thought. As the memory of this one already began to fade, the ringtone on his department cell phone, the music from The Munsters, grew louder. Wasn’t that part of waking from sleep paralysis? He didn’t know.

His supervisor, Lieutenant Timothy Cobb, had heard his ringtone in the squadroom last week and snapped that it wasn’t funny and that he should be a bit more sensitive; it didn’t do for a homicide detective to play such a thing because Herman represented a body put together by a grave robber.

“Fuck you, Tim,” Frank had retorted, making everyone else in the room smother laughter, turning away and holding both hands over their mouths. Frank Sanders was the only detective who got away with things like that, and no matter how jealous some were, two cadets working with the Robbery detail cringed as if Frank had just uttered a blasphemous thing that would land him in Hell the moment he died.

Lieutenant Timothy Cobb wasn’t even mad at him; he had learned long ago that Frank was irreverent, smart-assed and deeply cynical. But the veteran detective made him and the whole department look good: in his 30 years of service, over twenty of which had been spent as a detective, not once had he failed to solve a case, a miraculous feat.

Cobb was aware that now, at age fifty-two, grizzled, gray and a wreck of a man, Frank dreaded retirement. He by no means was compelled to retire, but he was deathly afraid of being retired by the department. Everyone knew he was an alcoholic, but only Cobb knew about the pain pills. Still, his body was wrecked. That was serious.

In such an expansive part of Georgia, there shouldn’t be a single man who had, in the line of duty, been shot, beaten half to death too many times to count, stabbed and slashed, and had taken over a thousand stitches, so many that the department’s insurance had paid for cosmetic surgery, and also, long ago, he had even been gored by a bull with a raging erection.

He’d lost his spleen to that bull, whose owner had, before Frank had even been wheeled into surgery, riddled the animal with bullets from his antique Thompson submachine gun. The dairy farmer would later tell Frank, “…that fuckin bull, even dyin he had a fuckin boner.”

But the dairy farmer had not stopped there; he had then shot every single cow sired by that old evil bull.

Lieutenant Cobb was positive that once retired, or confined to the office, Frank Sanders would die. And so were a lot of cops and people in the county. Frank had been around, and he had friends everywhere. Starting around the 18th of December, they would bring pumpkin pies, donuts, wrapped gifts, gift packs of Scotch, and someone inevitably would donate a Christmas tree to the department, which would stand in the lobby until the end of the holidays.

Cobb also dreaded the day he would lose his friend to retirement. He was an Eastern U.S. legend. And he got the job done.

Frank missed the call, but the iPhone hurt his eyes with the screen light, so he put it back down on the bed beside him.

He groaned. His back ached and he had to pee. He didn’t want to move, but if he didn’t —

Sure enough, he didn’t make it in time. He was already pissing before he got to the toilet. Then his head started to ache, and the hangover was on. He ignored the phone, turned on the shower, kicked his soaked briefs toward the hamper and fixed up a glass of Alka-Seltzer.

Fuck, it’s cold, he thought. The furnace should have kicked on, but when he looked, the thermostat and temperature matched, 71 degrees. He turned it up.

Shivering, he stepped into the shower, not caring about the water being too hot.

Barely audible, the phone rang on. In the middle of the night if his phone rang like that, someone had been killed. It could be a suspicious death, or something obvious. The iPhone made it seem like this was the obvious kind.

He let the water soak his pounding head, then he leaned forward to throw up. Nothing in there to throw up: a yellowish slime was all; he was killing himself by not eating and instead downing half a bottle of Cutty.

He let the water rinse down the shower tub, then gently, slowly, he soaped and rinsed. Once out, with a towel around his waist even though he lived alone, he answered the phone. “Tim, what the fuck? Did someone shoot the president in my county? Pin a plastic, gold-leaf toe tag on his limpy and UPS that sorry fucker to D.C.”

Without bothering to humor Frank, Cobb said, “You remember that abandoned truck stop down on I-

60? That spooky-ass fucker?”

“Of course I do.” Frank’s furnace was groaning like a living thing threatening to eat him. “What the hell would happen there? It’s surrounded by thickets and brambles and all kinda shit. Can’t get into the fuckin place. Don’t tell me someone out walkin their dog just happened to find a stiff!”

“No. But some boys, they cut a path, drive in and start looking round and they see an old cabover Brockway, and Sheriff Hardesty over in Merriweather County says it had air, which I didn’t know was possible, so they pulled on the air horn, it wouldn’t release, and some guy yells, “Stop it or I’ll shove that horn up your ass,” so they high-tail out of there, left their pickup and everything, cause once they saw the guy, he scared them to death. So there’s four guys, a four-seater Dodge, and a junked Brockway, and some crazy homeless guy that they never anticipated being there, except they make it back to the ramp to the highway and one of em is missing. So they go over to Hardesty’s office cause it’s closer and he says by the time they flagged down a ride, they heard him screaming back there. But they couldn’t call 911?

“Anyway I’m heading there now but I asked Hardesty for backup. That truck stop scares me.”

“Don’t feel bad about it. That place is enough to scare Stephen King.”

“Not helping, Frank. He’s scared of everything. That’s how he writes all them books.”

“Well then it’s enough to scare the devil, how’s that?”

“Shut up, Frank. You got your socks on yet?”

“I will in a minute, you stop talkin long enough.”

He ended the call and finished toweling dry.

Skinner‘s 76 Truck Stop! It was more than scary. It had operated from 1960 through 1979 when Interstate 60 was closed east of it within two miles. Once a busy place to eat and refuel, get repairs or just get some sleep, it was obsolete by 1970, too small to handle the traffic its 80 foot neon sign attracted. The in-ground tanks only held ten thousand gallons between both, and the pumps would get shut down regularly. The restaurant didn’t have the room to sit, much less the staff to feed the truckers who were hungry, and the repair shop lost money because once drivers got sick of not getting what they needed, they detoured over to the US highway then the new interstate after five more miles. A newer and much bigger truck stop awaited ten miles from there, and by July of 1979, the restaurant had to close, sealing the fate of Skinner’s 76 Truck Stop. One day in June, only one customer had come in, and had coffee. One of two waitresses had quit by sundown and the last one did serve customers afterward but never received even a cent as a tip.

The state had, on finding that the entire place had been abandoned, issued a warrant for the owner’s arrest, but he was never found. There was still fuel in the ground, and the tanks slowly leaked, rendering the whole area contaminated.

A few hulks of trucks once awaiting repairs sat in the spacious shop, but strangely, there was no registration information on them. No plates, no tax decals, not even a company placard on the doors.

Eventually details like this made it into the local papers, and when the state finished pumping the diesel from the tanks and scrapping them once they were lifted out of the soil by a crane, Superfund refused to do anything because the contamination extent was so negligible.

This made Governor Atkinson so angry that he initiated a lawsuit, which didn’t get results. Here was prime real estate, ready for rezoning and homes and a state road to connect to closer towns, a new shopping mall, and Interstate 50. And it was useless!

Atkinson lost his bid for reelection. The site, including four acres around it, was fenced off with 12-foot chain link topped with barbed wire.

It was possible for someone to buy a house six miles away and never know the place was there nowadays. It was hidden by trees and bushes, wild and overgrown with weeds that blocked it off more efficiently than barbed wire ever could have.

Until now. Frank, dressed and ready to go, walked to his car and unlocked the door. He had no use for newer cars with key fobs. His 1989 Viper, custom ordered in a beautiful metallic dark green, still gleamed and ran perfectly. He used good money to keep it that way, and his mechanic still drooled every time she saw it.

He headed out, suddenly getting the feeling that he was going to regret not retiring.

Skinner’s 76 Truck Stop (abandoned)

04:17

Frank was confused. He couldn’t see anything. No police lights, flood lamps or anything. He called Cobb. “Where are you guys? I’m at your end of the exit ramp but I can’t see anything.”

“I see your lights. I’ll walk out to you. Just move forward about fifty feet and park it. Make sure you carry your flashlight and your weapon, but don’t shoot me.” He sounded grim. Frank had never heard Cobb sound like that. Like his mother had just died.

When they were facing each other, Frank asked, “What? What’s in there, Tim? The hell’s wrong with you?”

“I’ve been to some weird crime scenes in my time. But I’ll betcha a steak dinner even you never saw anything like this shit.“

“Cheapskate. Even if I win you ain’t going to do that. You shitting me?”

“Frank, after tonight, you’ll be a vegetarian.” He turned and led through a path cut to the dirt through tall grass and weeds and a freshly cut gap in the fence big enough to drive a Dodge Ram through. Up ahead the back of the truck was visible and beyond that were flashing lights, red and blue, of several county SUVs.

“We found the missing boy. The others are being held at Hardesty’s office. Once we found the kid, we kept them out of here. If they’re the killers, they’re really sick pups. The oldest one is nineteen, and the deceased is sixteen. Brace yourself Frank. This made the Merriweather boys puke.”

Again, Frank had the unmistakable feeling that he shouldn’t be here. He saw why when they stepped inside the shop. Portable floodlights connected to a small generator just outside the door glowed over the most grisly scene Frank’s eyes had ever beheld.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Told you,” Cobb said grimly.

His long light in one hand, Frank holstered his 1911 Colt. Rumors among the department had it that Frank had notched the grip with the number of kills he had made, but it wasn’t true; he had killed and wounded with it, but he certainly never wanted to think about that. Taking a life, any life, was serious business and every pull of the trigger was traumatic to him. He buried it as deep as he could and just did the job. He never had a shooting that was not justified, but that had never been any comfort.

The victim was not in one piece. He lay face down on a floor covered in grass and weeds that had grown through cracks in the concrete or on top of soil blown in over the years. It was hard to tell which pieces had already been removed and dragged about by the enormous rats that darted about and which ones had been taken apart by his killer.

Blood was everywhere, even ten feet away, indicating arterial cuts while the boy was still alive. He must have died slowly though, because there was just too much of it, and after death, blood settles in the lowest part of the body. He’d bled out in agony or had gone unconscious, but this was a horrible way to go. The worst thing he had ever seen.

Frank didn’t get closer. He couldn’t move. He stared. What kind of monster could do a thing like this?

“Motherfucker,” he whispered. This person, he decided, would never be arrested. If he found the fucking animal, he was going to kill on sight, and it would not matter if there were witnesses. The person, or persons, who did this were already tried, found guilty, and sentenced to capital punishment. There could be no other outcome.

However it had been done, Emory Samuel Phillips the Third was a testament to the existence of the Devil in Hell himself. No human could have done such savagery to his body without help.

The body had been hacked open from the gluteal section to the shoulder blades, right between them, turning the spine into gravel. Vertebrae stuck out like pebbles covered in ketchup. The stench of the opened entrails made them all sick, nothing else smelled like that. But what had been done to the intestines was just weird. A truck’s air horn had been torched into pieces and shoved inside. Finally, gloved and masked with Vick’s inside the mask, Frank knelt beside the boy. “Tim, this was done or at least started while the boy was conscious. Look at the initial hemorrhaging. I’d say he immediately passed out and never regained consciousness even when he hadn’t bled much yet. Whoever did this is still here. Have everyone pair up, no more than twenty feet apart, and start a search. He’s armed with a heavy blade, looks like a vintage machete. Could even be a small chain saw. Everyone has swords these days so watch for that too, probably a medieval long sword. If anyone gets hurt, I will personally deal with them. Nobody else dies today. Nobody even gets a paper cut.”

Cobb, always wise enough to follow Frank’s orders, could see that his friend was on the hunt. That was normal.

What wasn’t normal was everything else. This case was bad, and it was going to get worse.

“Get the K-9s out here. He’s still close. I want a chopper too. Bag the body. He needs to be transported.”

The coroner had already been notified and was standing by. Frank prepared himself to face the parents.

“The Insanity Syndrome” Part Three (Conclusion)

Caution: adult themes, sexual references, adult language, violence, fear, smoking, racist language, triggers. Read with caution and enjoy the story. As always, thanks for stopping by!

“Insane”

Cara Nguyen was her name. She was the child of Vietnamese parents, but also a French grandfather, so there was some real history there. History can be pathetic, and she told me that she had no place. The French had abandoned the fight, the country and its people because the colonial period, profitable as it was, had ended. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu had lasted almost two months, and the French had their asses handed to them. Bad thing being that, for less than a century the French had colonized Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The 3 made up “Indochina”, known officially or politically as French Indochina, and I remember hearing that name in some fuckin geography class. World War Two wasn’t very nice to the French, who lost control of the region to Japan, which, after it was defeated, ended up leaving a vacuum. When the French, who couldn’t even keep their own country safe from the Nazis, tried to get their former Eastern territories back, they found someone waiting for their ass. The Viet Minh, and they was vicious mothers. They could fight any which way they thought up, from guerrilla to more modern-equipped style once the Communist Chinese and Soviets found them so fascinating. The end of the “First Indochina War” resulted in the geographic line across a map, North and South Vietnam. And the United States had walked right into the second war, because no other fuckin reason than hysteria over communism. Now I look back and can’t see why it happened. Back then, I was sold on the fuckin Domino Effect, like if Vietnam went full-commie, next would come all of the South Pacific, on up to India and from there, instructors who gave lectures said, the whole world. That was to keep the troops gung-ho.

I didn’t know any of that shit. All I knew was that it didn’t matter. North or South, the gooks hated us. Didn’t want us there. But like Cara, some were stuck. She had no choice but to aid the South and American and allied troops. Others truly hated the government in the North, having lost family and friends to their indoctrination or just plain bad luck. Or death. Ain’t nothin like death to make you fear something.

I loved Cara. Our first kiss came one night when she was off-duty but in her office, having coffee and a cigarette. She looked at me, leaning against her doorframe, and said, “You visit me and every time you leave I get more frightened that it will be the last time I see you. You come for stitches, bites, burns and dehydration, we talk while I fix you, but I know it is I that you come for. You can get minor wounds treated anywhere, but you come here. I know that you love me, and I believe that you know how much I’ve loved you. But you are afraid to say it. So was I at first. I do love you, Lee. I always will. I do not want you to say it back if it scares you. I know anyway. You made a promise to me. You will keep it, yes?”

She got up and walked to me, and she looked into my eyes and said, “Sometimes people are hurt. They carry their wounds, the ones no one ever sees, but I see yours, and you see mine. We don’t know what is in each of our pasts, but it is what makes our love so special.”

And she kissed me, and I held her, and kissed her back, and she held me back. Soon, breathless, we kept kissing then stopping to look at each other, and we both had tears running down our faces. That just made the moments stretch into a place where time had no meaning, where we could go back any time we wanted. Back then I didn’t even know such things were possible. I left that night after we had been in each other’s arms and talked until 04:30. Her shift was starting soon and she wanted to bathe and get changed. If I had known then what was in store for me, how long it would be before I saw her, or even if I would see her again, I wouldn’t have left.

The Last of the Ghost

I got a mission relay from a courier, a lieutenant who called me “sir”. I didn’t like the reason he did that when I read it, when I sat at a Cafe from the French days, where I could get real coffee, a real breakfast like back home, and even shower in the back room while my uniform was cleaned.

I opened the thick manila envelope and first took out the papers. Oh, the news just kept getting worse. By now I thought I’d seen everything. I’d been through Tet 1 and 2, had slit the carotid arteries of countless men, held their mouths shut while they bled to death, shot hundreds, assassinated officers, taken on entire platoon-size NVA groups with nothing but what I could carry with me, and been shot, stabbed, burned by friendly fire (some wahoo who panicked and tossed a Willie Pete too close and while I was screaming and burning, I broke his neck) and I’d had malaria, jungle rot, lice, rat bites, and whatever one it was that made you shit pretty much always. I’d been hit with frags from grenades, had an eardrum rupture, several bones broken. Cara didn’t worry for no reason.

She leaned over me and kissed me, and her tears fell on my face.

But this time I had one truly fucked-up mission. The General knew this. He began his brief with an apology and he was no bleeding heart type. It read:

I’m sorry, Sergeant Geldmacher, I know this isn’t what you want. I hereby promote you to the rank of bird Colonel. You will receive the official commission when you return, but the subdued rank insignia you will immediately use. This is necessary to complete your mission and, I hope, to live long enough for me to see your face again. See next page for mission brief. Good luck, Colonel.

The General

That shook me. I ordered fresh coffee from Yvette, and I would need Charles to alter my uniform. He was on his way, she said, and delivered eggs easy with bacon and French bread, lightly toasted. “How do you need alterations, Lee?” I dumped the rank insignia and subdued patches onto the table. She chastised me in French and English, asking me not to do that lest I attract a VC bullet. I apologized but did say, “I’m scared, Yvette. First time since I got here, I’m scared to death.”

“Should moi not congratulate my good friend? This is big, non?”

“Christ, don’t congratulate me,” I said. “This has a price tag I don’t know if I can pay. They’re sending me straight to the dragon.”

“Mon dieu! Surely not!”

“Yes. Yvette, I’ve known you and Charles for how long now?”

She said, “Eat, mon ami. Even a ghost needs strength, non?”

“Seriously, how long?”

“You came here after you were wounded. That was Tet, non? Now it is Summer of 1971. Too long to fight, even for ghosts. But never have I seen my ghost like this. Do not let Charles see you thus, for you are his hero. Long have we been here, too much has been seen. My husband needs a hero. I beg you, Colonel, do not take away what sustains him. I will get fresh camo uniform your size, startch and iron like a colonel should be. Charles will be very happy to place patches and remove tags. My husband is sentimental. It will be proud moment. You will see. As for dragon, beware. You losing focus like this is no good. All that I know is, le dragon is real. As you are now, he will eat you.”

She leaned close and said, “After Kent State many soldiers were hurt in their heart. You know this, non? There are many who go about on false missions and do nothing but protect in sand bags and call air strike. Like doing something, yes? They are betrayed. They want to go home. These soldiers are in trouble. My sources have all of their positions known by NVA who will kill them all. Then they will use propaganda to show American people how cowardly their soldiers are. Your country is divided. Your president is madman. The North knows this. Knows that it will win. They know about Kent State shooting. They shall never let it go as a political tool. If you go to dragon, you must eat and take water and be in focus, mon ami. Otherwise you never come back. Charles has map. You look at your derelict platoons. You go get them and kick asses to go with you. Alone, you will die.”

I had forgotten that Charles and Yvette were great sources of intelligence. They knew things military intelligence never did.

“The Dragon” referred to a group of villages by the Ho Chi Minh trail on the Cambodian border. I had permission to cross that border but Nixon had been bombing both Laos and Cambodia off and on anyway, and we did have troops in both doing some really dirty shit, but the goals weren’t clear and the losses too high. Those were winding down as pressure at home forced him to back off. I never thought much about Johnson as a CiC, but Nixon was a fuckup. I hated everything he said and did. This war had indeed been unwinnable from Day One, just like the General had told me.

Seemed like a lifetime ago now.

And the Dragon was a cult. A real one. The word was they was cannibals, worshipped some ancient diety, a dragon no less, killed anyone who came within 50 kilometers of them. That was the extent of their reach because the jungle surrounding them was pristine, primary growth and had triple canopy. Not even Sopwith Camels (what we called single engine recon planes) had found its exact location. A special forces unit had.

Of a ten man unit, two came back alive. But they weren’t close to being sane. They were already back in the World.

But Army Intel knew little about it. And it was so remote that I wondered why I or any unit had ever been sent there. It would turn out that American POWs were suspected of being held there. I knew already that no American or other friendlies could be alive in a place like that.

There was only one way in, according to the Green Beret survivors: on foot, you were a dead man. Air drops were impossible because of the canopy, choppers could get you no closer than 400 klicks, and you’d still be going in on foot.

But a Navy PBR could put me within one klick if they muffled the Detroit engines. Some boats could not. If mine couldn’t, everyone on board would die.

That fear was put to rest when the boat captain welcomed me aboard. He was a brute, skin cracked and dark from too much sun, muscles huge and everywhere and a rough voice that couldn’t make me believe he was so smart. He said, “I know where that is, Colonel. And I can get you close, but it’s between Saigon and Phnom Penh. The jungle by the river goes north and west and it’s thicker ‘n’ the hair between a mama-san’s legs. But you get out where I say, go the path I’ll draw on your map, you’ll get the drop on em. Whatcha packin, anyways?”

I had my -16, the grenade launcher, making it heavy. It was really M-209. I really couldn’t pack much with all the ammo it would need. I had two canteens, a machete, some frags, 2 C-rations and insect repellent. And my fuckin uniform that stayed soaked the whole time. He said, “Hell. Hell. They gave you the wrong load out. Hell, you go in there with that, they’ll play with you like a cat with a chipmunk.” Not only that but it’s too heavy. You won’t never make it. Hell. Colonel, they done sent you on a suicide mission. I’ve heard of a place. They say part of it’s in a huge tree. They got tunnels, and rope bridges up in the air. You’ll be dead before you get close. We’re probably bein watched now because this part of the river’s their outer territory. They won’t fire on us because they want to stay hidden. But Colonel, you’re already a dead man.”

He begged me, “Colonel, let me take you back. Okay? You can say anything you want. Tell em you got lost or something. I can drop you near Saigon and you walk in, hell, you already look like shit. Tell em you couldn’t get close.”

I didn’t say anything but my mouth had gone dry. The guy on the left sixty had a bottle. I asked for it. He grinned and passed me the bourbon. Not being used to liquor, I coughed and he grinned wider. But as soon as it started getting into my bloodstream, I was taking gulps. “Easy, Colonel,” the gunner said. “I got more, but you’ll dehydrate you drink any more. The headache won’t help you think clear, either.” He handed me some aspirin in a small tin. Anacin. I took two and he said, “Keep it. You’re gonna need it.”

On my map, which was covered in bullshit symbols from some REMF (rear echelon motherfucker) dick head.

The captain drew the approximate position of the tree camp. He marked where others had told him were minefields, and said the tunnel network went clean under the mines. He had escorted some half-assed special forces unit and waited on the other side of the river. One guy made it back. He said where the mines were but the booby traps, tunnel outlets, and gun nests he never saw. He did not see the camp but at least one of his men had, he could hear the guy screaming as they tortured him.

“What the fuck do I do now?” I asked. The captain said, “Look at it this way, Colonel. You’re supposed to die in there. You’re packing too heavy but not one single rocket, no field dressins or scoped rifle, not even a Springfield with a starlight scope? Colonel, you gotta be a bad mother to draw a mission like this, but you should know better than this bullshit. I ain’t tryin to fuck with you, sir. I just don’t wanna see another fuckin suicide mission, I seen too many, and that’s what you have yourself here. Sometimes they do that. Back home it is a really big deal and they all fighting. Even the fuckin hippies. Veterans throwed all their medals over some fence I heard. Even they protestin. So Nixon is gonna step up the pull-out. Even you can go home soon. All you gotta do is not do this mission. Think of it, sir. You never have to worry bout nothin again. Take a desk job. Retire a full colonel. Then you mow your lawn on Saturday, watch the game on Sunday, sleep all day Monday, and the rest a the week sit around the park starin at hippie bitches.”

Then I got an idea. There were rumors of guys who had no fight left in them who would go out on search-and-destroy missions but only go so far, dig in and call air strikes on fake targets. Yvette had said it was a fact. They would expend ammo themselves too, coming back in without their frags even. I asked, “Captain, can you expand these coordinates a bit for me, to where you think this place extends? Allowing for a spread wider than anyone could of seen?”

He smiled wider than I ever saw anyone smile over there. “Colonel, that guy who made it out? He was insane. I’m not sure if any of this is exactly right. And I can guess but you’re still gonna have to get to your first marker just to spot. I’d rather ya didn’t do that.”

“I ain’t stepping one stink ass boot on that beach. And I think it’s out of range for Arty. Hell, I’m calling in the 52s for this. Wanna watch a real show?”

“Smartest goddamn officer I ever met,” he laughed. “You’re gonna fuck a lotta shit up. Roads, the Trail, lots a shit. Sir, that place ain’t no hamlet. It’s a goddamn kingdom. Tell em drop HE, nape and willie Pete. Burn the fucking jungle down.”

“Let’s see that happen, shall we?”

The -60 gunner was in awe. “Two officers…”

I chuckled. On the radio I gave my codename, “Kingpin calling Bowler,” and got an immediate response, “Kingpin, this is Bowler Actual, read you.”

“Bowler, mission aborted, repeat, mission aborted. Am back at the transport, enemy strength and location as follows: two to four divisions, possibly more, coordinates exact unknown, but no village, repeat, no village. Underground bunkers, troops bivouac in trees and under thatch, mine fields surrounding perimeter to three klicks, tunnels beyond, gun positions include long range heavy artillery, heavy machine gun nests, mortar crews, infantry deployed inside perimeter. Snipers for certain. Recommended action as follows: carpet bomb entire region With Whiskey Papa, Napalm, Hotel Echo. Recommend fighter escort to accompany as there is high confidence for Sierra Alpha Mike emplacement under thick canopy. Repeat if you read, Bowler Actual.”

They had it perfect, everything down to their expanded and fuckin huge area of attack the way they read off coordinates. “Bowler Actual, be advised I am hit. Repeat, I am wounded. Will come home when safe. This is Kingpin signing off.”

“Fuckin crazy, man? Wounded? Why?” The captain asked.

“To keep you fuckin heroes who saved my ass from bein’ asked questions. I owe ya that much.”

The captain was silent. The sun was setting. “I gotta rig the blankets for blackout,” he said. “I got a Russian pistol off a NVA in a sampan. Hell. Got a full magazine, too. Was gonna keep it as a — never mind. Doc! Get back here and bring your supplies for a Foxtrot Oscar.”

The medical corpsman was their forward dual 50 cal gunner. Never made sense to me, until one day I thought, well, fuck, the whole boat ain’t but thirty by ten, ain’t no place safe!

“Problem, Skipper?”

“Nah. Son, I want you to take my commie gun and shoot the Colonel with it. Not fatally, you crazy fuck.”

“Sure thing, Skipper. Good timing too, just got some morphine last resupply.”

“THAT WON’T BE NECESSARY!” I screamed.

“I get it, sir, but that ain’t all I’m gonna do. You want it should look like the real thing, right?”

I nodded.

“Smart man. Best you start with these. He was holding dried plant stems with short thorns. “Close your eyes sir.” And he whipped them all up and down and side to side over my face, neck and the backs of my hands. “Not bad,” he said. “Drew blood, some nice deep ones. Like you had to beat it outta some hot zone. Next, you got snake bit.” He dug into an OD green satchel and I swear, he pulled out the biggest snake head I’ve seen. “It’s okay, sir. All bleached, sterilized and clean. Sink this job in and they gonna wonder how ya lived.” He got me right through the right arm of the uniform and damn near the place a Willie Pete had burned into me. To this day, that shit hurt me worse than anything I had ever fuckin been hurt by. No bullets, burns, broken bones or my old man’s bullwhip hurt like white phosphorus did. Then the Doc said, “now roll up the sleeve. I gotta make the X cuts with your machete. It’ll hurt.”

That didn’t bother me.

“Now the bullet. We gotta be quick so they don’t see the flare.”

The bullet resistant blankets had been rigged. But we needed distance. “Too close and there’s gonna be powder burns. But also we don’t want the bullet to go through. Surgeon gotta see that it’s a Commie round.” He thought for a minute, had me up in the bow, while he stood where I couldn’t even see him. Then came the zing of the bullet. It came before I heard the shot.

I collapsed. He had taken careful aim but we were on the water. The boat took a small wave, from what I never knew. I passed out.

The boat wasn’t moving when I woke up. “Colonel, I had to use the morphine.” Doc said. I was below, and I felt like I was in hell, it was so fuckin hot. My face burned from the scratches, the fang marks and cuts burned, and the pain of the gunshot was screaming somewhere in my gut. He held a canteen to my mouth and I drank, but got dizzy. “I got you kinda stable Colonel, but you’re in trouble. I hit something by mistake and I hope to God it ain’t yer liver. You got a fever so I can only give you a bit more morphine so when ya need it, nod. I’m gonna stay with ya, okay? In a minute we get under way. Captain disposed of the gun but had trouble restarting the motors. By the way, that jungle is a hell. The bombers keep coming. It’s the Phantoms and Skyhawks that drop the Willie Pete and most Nape, but the 52s come with incendiary and high explosive bombs. Those you can feel clean out here. I want ya stay awake so I can keep a eye on ya. Stay wake now. I got plasma and penicillin goin into ya but I’ve see yer dropping BP and that ain’t good. Keep drinking water. Ready for more?”

I don’t know what happened next. I was out for six months, deep in a coma. I weighed 80 pounds when I came back. I couldn’t even talk. In a display on a table next to my bed were ten Purple Heart medals, two Silver Stars, and a Medal of Honor. I had new rank insignia too. A single star: Brigadier General. How the fuck did that happen?

Because nobody enlists, starts out as a E-nothing, and gets to a one-star general without years at West Point.

Four months. Retraining the body, baby steps. I felt silly and I felt weak. Then one day I suddenly had the mental clarity to ask where I was. I was shocked and heartbroken at the answer. Walter Reed Army Hospital. I was long outta Vietnam. Cara, I thought. I wondered where she was, if she was alive. She must hate me. I didn’t keep my promise.

Never before did I feel anything like the pain in my chest. I cried in my private room. All the time. Two nurses saw it. They both worked different shifts, and they both wrote extensively on my chart.

It was already 1972. Nixon was running for reelection, but the protests continued. The NOW movement was added to the antiwar demonstrations. Bra burning was becoming a big thing. I watched Cronkite and wondered what had happened while I was gone. I’d missed the moon landings. I’d missed so much. Good things had been done but the country was oblivious. There was too much hurt, too much anger. I knew one thing.

I would never return to Oklahoma. Too much pain lay back there in that fuckin place, where it all began.

A general? Shit. They had plans for me. A ghost must be kept busy, under supervision. Never allowed the latitude to talk. I wondered why I had gone through so much when my own country hated me so much for doing it. The General had told me I’d be saving lives. I did, too. But the cost was what was left of my sanity. I wound up calling in bombers because I was sent on a suicide mission. The first base I had ever been to had been halfway destroyed by sappers and mortars. What had I–what had we — accomplished?

I had arrived in country an enraged animal ready to kill anything that moved. My old man had initiated my insanity. The war had finished the process.

One day a supervising doctor stopped by. It was time I knew. He sat down on a wooden chair, crossed his legs, put on glasses and opened a thick file. My medical records, the complete edition. “General Geldmacher, you have some significant scars from before the war. I have your records here. You never sought treatment. Why?”

“Cause one day I wanted to kill my father. I did try.”

“Yes, I see. That’s part of what got you to Vietnam. But the injuries since are what concern me. White phosphorus. Fragmentation grenades. Gunshot wounds. So many we can’t count them. Snake bites. A medium range gunshot from a Russian Makarov. That nearly did you in. We had reports of initial treatment on a Navy PBR, followed by a two-day stay in Saigon, then to Okinawa, then Germany. You were deep in a coma and although we were finally able to fix the problem, a simple procedure known as a bowel resection, you took lots of blood. You had an active bleeder that the first surgeons couldn’t find. That means that your brain was not getting the blood it needed, and my biggest worry right now is whether it left damage behind. I am calling in our finest neurologist and neurological team. You’re having visible trouble with basic light exercises and you seem to cry often. While I know some of what you went through out there, I can’t know what it was like, what the aftereffects are. So your malnutrition and lack of will to participate in rehabilitation I do understand to a point. General, you were a great soldier. I wager you have become a great man. My job is to watch you walk out of here healthy, whole and with renewed life. I will not give up on you. Is that clear, Sir?”

A week passed. I went to 78 pounds. I guess I was giving up.

The one thing I cared about in my whole life was lost to me forever. Why the fuck would I want to live? I didn’t even want to kill anymore. Every good reason to live and every bad reason to live, all were nullified. I wanted to fuckin die right in that bed.

I went to critical care when I fell unconscious. They couldn’t bring me back. I flatlined for five minutes before they got me breathing.

Then I awoke in a recovery room. A tube kept me breathing. I winked in and out for quick times of hearing nurses talking, then blackness again.

I don’t know how long it took. Long, I can say, but how long, I have no clue. I registered sunlight coming in through steel venetian blinds. A flower in a vase beside me on a table. A red rose. A get well card from someone. I was very alert, very clear-headed, and monster hunger begged for a hamburger. I’d had more than my share of Beans and Motherfuckers. It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten since before I was shot.

Now it was 1973. The war was over. I was down, a nurse said, to 50 pounds. Any more and I would die. I asked for hamburgers and she was ecstatic, but said no solids yet. I could have soup, broth, pudding, ice cream. Stuff like that.

That night my neurologist came in. The lights were low, and she wasn’t really visible. She said, “You did not keep your promise, so I will keep it for you. But I’m surprised to find such a great man like this. You are lucky they finally called me.”

“Cara!” I cried. “Is it really you? Tell me it’s not a dream!”

She came closer, hands in her lab coat pockets. I saw tears glistening on her face even in the low lighting.

“No dream, Lee. I’m a U.S. Army surgeon now. Also citizen. And Lee, I looked and looked for you. Now I find you here like this. Tell me my love: for whom do you cry at night? I have seen your full record. You cry. Why?”

“For us. I thought you might be dead and I was broken. My heart and my soul.”

“So tell me, broken general, will you fight back and will you still marry me?”

“When I get out of here.”

“Then,” she said, “you must work harder. I will see you every day for your therapy update. I’m head of neurology here. I look to be a major soon. We were meant to find each other again and God gets his way. You were tough, Ghost. Now maybe you can be tough again for me. I love you. I never stopped loving you. I was so happy even though to see you like this on my operating table made me cry. I did good work to save you. Now I need you to save me. You were not alone in your sadness.”

That’s when I knew I was going to live.

Healing

The years went by so fast. Cara is still with me, but I’m retired. She’s still a doc, still at Walter Reed. Papers have been written about her and she’s written a few herself. We never had kids because of our careers, but more because of my violent life. I just didn’t want children. Mental illness obviously ran in my family, giving Cara the idea to write a case history on my family. She titled it “The Insanity Syndrome” and addressed DNA and hereditary mental disorders.

She has not aged. Still willowy, delicate, her long black hair without a streak of gray while mine has turned into a shock of snowy white. But our love, our passion for each other never faded. We still get into sweaty, moaning tangles, and hold hands in the park, give each other gifts for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and Valentine’s Day. She loves to grow flowers, spend time in the garden, listen to 70s rock, dance in the living room. So full of sunshine and love. I never thought, back then, that I could be happy. But I am.

I told her once that I didn’t deserve her. She said it was the other way around. I was a “virgin” until our wedding night and she was hardly that. It was nothing to me. I just plain loved her at first sight.

I told her sex had nothing to do with it. I was insane for the longest time, bloodthirsty and evil. She was everything good that humanity could create. I’d loved the kill. Feeling a heart stop beating against the point of my bayonet or that cursed knife. The blade I bought for killing. I guess I lost it when I was hauled out of that PBR. Everything had been left behind. I told Cara how much I had loved it. I said, “I was an animal.“

“You are still the man I fell in love with. The animal is always inside us all. What matters is not how we have lived before, it is how we learn from it, who we become. You are no longer a ghost. You are a good man who has had the world thrown onto his shoulders and lived to tell the story. You think yourself unworthy. You are the strongest and wisest man I could ever have hoped to marry. I never felt loved until I met you. I knew we would be together forever. You alone never cared about my past. What I had to do to go to France and medical school. Never asked a question. Never became insecure. No other man could I ever love. We do deserve our happiness.”

Yesterday we went to the Vietnam War Memorial wall. As always, I wore my uniform. I’ve seen names on it, every year, that made me cry. Every year, I spot names of guys I knew, although for very short times as I moved around. And I remember. They were just guys who did the best they could under conditions that drove some to desperation. There were suicides. Self-inflicted wounds. Some guys went away forever. Over 58,000 of them. Yesterday was Memorial Day. There was a good turnout there. There are, it seems, still patriots. Cara stayed behind me. I broke down crying. The PBR captain’s name was up there. Cara was beside me in an instant, supporting me and hugging me. I forced myself to stand steady, at attention, and rendered the man who had saved me from certain death a lingering salute. Then I sobbed, “Why? Such a brave, good man. Why?”

Cara did a rubbing for me. I sobbed softly until a black woman my age said, “Excuse me, General. How did you know my husband?”

I couldn’t hide the tears, didn’t even want to. With her were two grown men, also not young. Their sons. I told her, “He saved my life. I’ll always be grateful. I never forget him. Never. He was a great, brave, wise man. I loved him even though the mission was short. I almost died that time.” Then I shook, uncontrolled, a prisoner of tears. And she hugged me, that kind lady, and she said, whispering in my ear, “You’re the ghost he wrote about. He said the whole crew worried about you and how he hoped and prayed that you would make it. He said if you lived, then that mission was his best and proudest of the war. Now you can cry today, because you found him where you didn’t want to, and that makes you a good man. You can’t cry for someone you didn’t love, not how you’re crying now. I believe he knows you made it home. I believe the good lord let him see you and your…”

“Wife, Cara. She refuses to age but we met over there.” I understood her caution. She didn’t know if Cara was my wife or daughter.

“Well she is a lovely lady. You’re blessed. Now I’m going to give you my number. Every year we will meet right here. He wouldn’t want you to grieve. Next time we praise God for him giving me such wonderful boys, and giving you the chance to live. Are you alright, now?”

“Yes. Ma’am. And thank you,” I whispered back.

“Honey, I know my husband hated that war. But he did some good when he was there. And that’s what made him keep going. And maybe you’ll be thinking it’s unfair, he didn’t come home to us. But don’t forget what I said. Saving you would be his proudest thing. You take care, General. Live your life. Be good. Be happy. Do it for you, for your wife, and do it for us.”

She touched me deeply. But both troubled and inspired, I’ll never forget that visit.

I stopped using names like “gook” and “spook” years ago. Hell, decades ago. But then, I was destined to lose my anger anyway. That’s why the judge sent me to the fuckin Nam. He knew. Somehow, he just knew.

“The Insanity Syndrome” Part Two

Warning: Violence, drug use, smoking, gore, fear, offensive language and triggers. Proceed with caution.

Part Two

Ghosts

In the late winter of 1967-1968, my training complete, I boarded a jet headed to war. It took us as far as Thailand after a stopover for fuel and a fresh pilot and crew somewhere, I guess maybe Germany? Only because this wasn’t any airport. Nah, this was an   Air Force base of good size. Then after Thailand I think a C-130 flew us to Da Nang Airbase. It was during the Tet offensive when I was integrated into a unit as a “cherry”, a name for guys ain’t been in any firefights, or not many of them. I never doubted myself for a second. I was a natural, I was full of rage, and I had no fear.

I forgot most of the units I served with because I was probably the most transferred soldier in-country. They flew me and some silent, faceless officer down to Saigon to beef up the defenses after the Vietcong had flooded over the borders with Cambodia and Laos. It struck me how fucking much that place stank and how ancient parts of it looked, almost as if Huck Finn woulda felt at home.

I was puking for the first 30 minutes on the ground. Then mortars and gunfire opened up. I wanted to kill already because the place smelled like a sewer next to a landfill. I had to defend the ugly motherfuckers on these streets who smelled worse than the whole place did? I thought, Fuck this, and told a guy with sergeant stripes to give me the M-60 gunner, an ammo carrier (or A-gunner), and a guy who had three LAW rockets slung over his shoulders. He said, “Cherry, shut up and go sit on yer ass.”

I went and got the men behind his back anyway and went to the end of a wall half a kilometer south. I had them keep down in tall grass while I scoped around. Two mortar crews, 60 meters apart: one firing over the wall and one, northward, firing to the northeast. A rifle squad. 50 men, concealed, about five with rockets. All too close. They’d warned us at Bliss that the VC were too clever for that. I ducked down into the grass, said “LAW”, and told the -60 gunner to fire from concealment where he was. This put him firing blind, but all I needed was covering fire. Four paces to their left I crept so the back blast wouldn’t fry them. I had both mortars lined up and I thought I might get em both with one shot.

I did. And then I saw Charlie spring up comically from the grass like Jack in the boxes, and the -60 cut them to pieces. I got another rocket and hit a cluster of men and all enemy fire ceased. The four of us just kept going like that, grabbing weapons and fresh ammo, and killing the attacking groups of VC on the perimeter of the city.

We ran into trouble when we got to the south and went too far. Charlie was moving in to encircle us so we backed off, me tossing frags and the -60 gunner smoking his barrel pouring rounds into guys who made me laugh when they dropped. Then it got very still and quiet. That sergeant yelled for us to go get a body count, and I was suddenly exhausted. Drained of the adrenaline, I began to shake all over and fell back on my ass. The sergeant looked down at me and said, “Doc, over here. Cherry’s hit.”

I just looked at him. “Your chest,” he said. I did, suddenly, feel the blood inside my shirt, running down my stomach to my waist.

The first time is the worst, I was told. Nobody is ever prepared for it. They either fear it so much that shock kills them when they get so much as a nick, or, they get hard, mean and realize they gotta survive because that’s the only real way to go back to The World. The other way was in a rubber bag.

The wound wasn’t good. Chipped a lung on its way through. I believe even now some cats wouldn’t of survived it. Three days into the post-op infection, they got a handle on it and I had dope and penicillin running through me and I fuckin enjoyed it. That first day of being kinda awake and all dopey were some good fuckin days. After a general walked through the ward I was on, he stopped at the end of the beds and turned around and looked right at me. He talked quiet to the Docs and over the window air conditioning units in the lower half of every window, I couldn’t hear, so I ignored them. I just relaxed.

That night the guy in the bed on my right was moved. I could tell by the stink that his replacement was a local. What the fuck? This was a ward for American casualties so what the fuck was this worm doin next to me?

And then he started fuckin with me: “Why you here, Joe? You not wanted here, American is number ten, you fucking! Go home to Alabama, Joe. Take guitar with you, Joe!”

There was something not right about this commie pig. I said, getting up to a sitting position, “It’s a fuckin banjo, you stupid zipper. A fuckin banjo, okay, and second, someone wanted me here, because if you think I’m here because I like you or your stinkin country or I give a fuck about you, you’re just as fuckin stupid as every other gook piece a shit I seen.”

I pulled the needle and the hose outta my arm and pulled down his sheet and started carving into his chest. I drew an Army star and beneath that wrote my name (Lee Geldmacher) and USA as deep as I could. “Fuckin commie pig,” I said, and looked down because my feet were sticking to the floor. I’d lost a shit load of blood, and tried to make it back to my bed. That’s the last thing I remember.

I woke up, they told me, ten days later. Blood was still being given through one tube and bottle while the other arm had the dope and penicillin drip. A doctor was called as soon as I opened my eyes. “Private Geldmacher, you killed a patient of mine. You should be in a prison hospital, but that fuckhead general ordered you to be kept here. He’s taken some kind of interest in you and gets regular updates.

“I understand that this war is….unclear as to its mission, but you crossed a line. That man stuffed part of his sheet so far down his throat that he choked to death on his own vomit.”

I was too weak to laugh, but that was the funniest shit I’d ever heard. He saw it in my eyes and said, “Why you sick bastard, you! You think it’s funny? Captain Peters, discontinue the morphine drip on Private Geldmacher starting at 0700, and have an MP guard him around the clock.”

By the time the infection cleared and the withdrawal had passed (which the docs and nurses obviously enjoyed watching) it was late April. They ordered me to rehabilitation in Germany, because I’d lost weight and lean muscle mass. I swear, it was worse than basic training and infantry school put together. Yet I was angrier than at any time in my life. That general had tested me by putting the gook in the bed to my right. In Germany that general caught up with me. When he told me it was a test, I said I kinda suspected, but he was at fault, not me. Then he dropped the bomb.

“Where’s your Purple Heart?”

“I didn’t want it. Didn’t ask for it. Didn’t ask for any of this. What is this game you’re playing with me? What is it that you are hidin up your sleeve?”

“I retrieved your Purple Heart for you. I’m safekeeping it until you’re ready for it. You were out of it but you’ve also been awarded other medals and citations. You found your callin here, Sergeant Geldmacher. I’m good at spotting raw talent, you could say.

“Once again you will serve your country, and I can use what you are: a killer. An avenger, a killer angel even. When you leave here you will attach to various units, use them and be used, but you will get orders from noncombatants. These orders will be shared with no one. You will discuss this conversation with no one. Know this, Sergeant Geldmacher: you will be a ghost, but you will save lives.

“One more thing. No man I know of ever commanded handpicked men in such a small group on his second day in-country, before being in any other action, and got a confirmed body count so high. Which brings me to the final condition I will ask that you keep,” and he leaned close and said softly, “I don’t ever want to see a message or hear on the radio your voice and the words ‘body count’ followed by a number. I am not interested in Westmoreland and his fucking body count. Together, you and my operatives will save American lives and friendly civilians, but with the standin order that in some situations you will have to look the other way regardin civilians because we do dirty shit to save American lives. This war makes me sick. Soldiers and pilots and marines wasted so senselessly that nobody in Washington should be able to sleep at night. Bastards.” And even more softly, he repeated, “Bastards.”

I was sent on two solo missions, dropped off by Hueys in the bush, south of the DMZ. Both insertions were hot, drawing fire from hills to the north, and both times I could hear bullets hit the chopper. There were no door gunners to lay down covering fire, and once in the tall grasses, I had no choice but crawl to my first marker. The second time was the worst. The war in early 1969 wasn’t kind to the soldiers. The second Tet was on and tensions were high. Nixon lied to the folks back home, like, every day, and we got news from home there that really hurt us. We began to feel betrayed and unappreciated by everyone back home, and that’s exactly what we were: they protested, carried signs with dirty names for soldiers, and as time went on, men rotating back home to The World were warned against wearing their uniforms, especially dress uniforms with any decorations.

On the second solo foray, maybe my tenth assigned mission, I was fuckin up. Thinkin about how celebrities called down the wrath of God on us when all we were doing was serving our country. I was thinkin, here I had turned 19 and I never even been on a date, never kissed a girl, and it was less likely to ever happen each time I went out into the Bush. I wasn’t focused. I made it to the backside of a ridge, thinking vaguely that I could stop for a drink from my canteen, and became suddenly aware of an entire regiment of NVA to my northwest, well separated and staged, and an unknown number of VC to my immediate south and west. In other words, I fucked myself. I could tell by certain dialects that the soldiers on my left were VC. I had only one way of gettin out of here, and it was the way I had just come in. I couldn’t get to my objective, so the mission was an abort. But I couldn’t even use my handset here. I cursed at myself for losing focus and thinking about stupid shit. Without showing myself, I began to withdraw, but now I ran the risk of detached infantry patrols walking right on top of me. They had seen me coming in and I believe they knew I was a Ghost, a Con ma. We had made the name into something they feared.

Without knowing it, we had also put a price on our heads. For the past year we had spread out, assassinated NVA top officers, the best snipers they had, blown up bridges, laid mines, infiltrated and booby trapped camps and even been on an ambush or two with other units. I know I did some crazy shit, but none of it was ever as crazy as the fucking ambush. Those were the times, the only ones, when I got truly frightened. With a enemy like these guys, NVA or VC, sittin in one place and waitin for a firefight was askin for bad shit to happen. I hated it. When my gut told me to, I’d get out of the holes and hide out in a position I calculated would have most of the enemy end up in front of me, and I’d pick them off at leisure, usually by just bein quiet and usin’ my bayonet.

As I retreated this time, the second solo mission to assassinate an enemy officer just over the border at a camp in Laos, I knew before it happened that I was gonna draw fire. I could hear patrols all around me in the darkness. And my God didn’t the darkness move in fast in that fuckin wasteland. But when I would hear one get close, I’d inch away, slowly but still fast enough to keep from getting stepped on. My bayonet was in one hand, my Colt in the other. And I made it out eventually but now, without any way of reading my map or fixing my position, I was almost as screwed. This was NVA territory and if a spotter saw a flashlight, he’d report it. They usually targeted the whole area with artillery from the high hills, and I sure as hell didn’t want that. I had been through one shelling down south in some valley that wasn’t even on a terrain map. Of course they had the drop on us and some stupid, asshole 2nd lieutenant ordered us right into the perfect killing zone, the best I saw that whole, miserable war.

Out of two platoons of Army infantry, I was only able to save five men. Of course, I shot the lieutenant four times in the head. Vermin like him didn’t deserve to live. He had got a lotta men killed while he sat on his ass for three days, trying to call in medevac and reinforcements. I made him look at me too; I wanted to see the life run outta his eyes. I’d been on foot and belly, encircling the rear of the gun emplacement with five hand-picked guys. We fucked em up enough that they knew it was Ghosts. In the end, we had terrorized them to the point where they fucking ran away, leaving their artillery, tents, a command hooch and radio station. The bastards had it set on our freq, and had heard every word the pussy lieutenant had sobbed into the mic.

The trek down the hill was steep, it was hot as hell, and my new Ghosts (I personally took them with me to the general to recruit them because they had listened to me and learned) dreaded the things they knew they’d see at the bottom.

Over one hundred men. Masks of surprise or terror, some with no heads at all, some with nothing below the torso, some with nothing above the waist.

I cried. They were all fucked-up, every single man. I fell to my knees and bawled like a baby. I had tried so hard to save them. The new Ghosts also wept. They had been buddies with the fallen. Traded stories, shown pictures of their girlfriend back home, crouched together for protection.

And then they had died together.

The lieutenant, he was alive and whole. How the fuck did he manage to do that?

I told him what he had done. Tears still mixed with the sweat running down my face and I never would’ve covered it up. At least I felt the sorrow for the dead men and their families, who had to live every day from now on with an empty chair at the dinner table. Kids growing up with no father or calling the wrong man “daddy”. Never knowing how fucking noble and honorable the old man was because the World hated their soldiers and veterans. Hell, I’d heard a story about a honor guard at an air base in the states threatening to fire on some protesting scum who laughed as the flag-covered coffins were unloaded. A sea of red, white and blue, no matter what Nixon said about Vietnamization. I had been all over the country and seen only what I took as half-ass operation classes for weapons and vehicles.

I told the general that within six months of our military leaving South Vietnam, they would lose. He got angry and said, “I told you I don’t give a fuck! I want our men and women to not go home in a God damned body bag! Now I’ll tell you why, since you seem to have forgotten our mission. I don’t believe in this war. We can’t ever win this war. Too many American lives have been lost, from grunts to Airborne to Navy pilots to civilian reporters! And not one of them should be dead, Sergeant Geldmacher. You’ve heard, no doubt, what’s been going on back there. Veterans getting beaten half to death. Protesters staking out airports. Throwing all kinds of things on the returned soldiers. See what I mean? They knew we were losing when LBJ was in command. Then the first Tet. They didn’t care that the VC failed. It ruined their faith. They never got it back either. I don’t know if you’re aware of my Lai, but American soldiers slaughtered 500 men, women and children there last April. That was no little village. It was a group of villages and there’s been rumors of court martials. But word got out. Still in the unconfirmed section of the news, but somebody’s going to talk. The protests are gettin worse. This war is killin our country. I have one intention, and that’s to save any lives I can. Now. You insolent fucker, get outta my sight.”

I never brought it up again, but it seemed that our relationship had been strained and he held me in lower esteem. I didn’t know it at the time but it affected my performance in the bush. And getting killed in Vietnam, something I never believed could happen before, began to creep into my mind as the inevitable end of my miserable life.

And on my second and last solo, I had no idea where I was or where to go. I knew that to go too far north or south was suicide, but east was too far to a base to hope for.

By the time I was in too much pain to low-crawl and had to walk upright, I heard the commotion to my rear. Puff and a Spooky were circling the enemy back there, both firing fierce destruction that I’ll never be able to stop hearing.

As I watched the tracers, I felt something hit me in the back, like someone hit me with a rock. Before it dropped me, I knew I’d been shot again. As I laid there trying to breathe, I could feel pain, so I figured no spinal injury.

I woke up looking at the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was working on changing a dressing. My eyes didn’t focus very fast so I asked her to wait when she turned to leave. Finally I saw the beauty as she looked at me with concern. “Please, don’t leave me. Please dont.”

A grown-ass man. A pitiless killer. Never feared anything after my old man had whipped me — killed men in the Bush with my bare hands, smellin them, lookin right into their eyes because I enjoyed it, hated every Zip ever created, hated any god who would inflict the world with their miserable asses — here I was, scared of the dark, begging this beautiful woman, a Vietnamese woman, not to leave me.

She sat on a wooden chair beside me, and asked what was wrong. On that perfect face, a look of genuine concern. “What’s wrong, Sergeant Geldmacher? Oh, I see on your chart it is Sergeant Major Geldmacher. I apologize.”

“Has he been here?” I asked. She knew!

She just nodded. No real reaction. I considered the neutrality an act to conceal disdain.

“Another promotion, that’s terrific. He thinks I’ll stay. It’s a bigger jump in pay this time. I get shot once more, I’ll probably make brigadier general.”

She laughed. Then she said, seriously, “I hope not. This time you lost your spleen. You can’t afford another upper body wound like that. I want to send you home. You will try to refuse, I know. As a doctor, I’ve treated many special forces men who were the same. Although none so handsome as you. When you were brought to my care, and I saw you had lost so much blood, and saw your face, I was not sure I could save you. Such a man, I have never seen the like of. Now I am going to give you a tranquilizer to calm your mind with. You must sleep. I will see you when my shift begins tomorrow. Please rest. You are in Da Nang and we’re safe. And you need to start looking forward to going home.”

“Doctor, I don’t know your name even, but I’ll go home, but only if you come with me. For the first time in my life, I want to live. I really want to live. With you.“

“The Insanity Syndrome” a short story for Memorial Day, Part One

Caution! Adult themes, violence and language. Contains triggers!

Part One

Disorder in the Court

I was a total fuckup. In high school, in my senior year — 1967 — I don’t belive one day passed when I didn’t have to visit the principal’s office. My old man would get a phone call, and he’d be waiting when I got home. Fucker actually had a bullwhip, a family “heirloom” from the wild west, or so he said. He bragged about it and and would show off his skill with it every year at the county fair, all dressed up like fucking Roy Rogers. Nobody knew he used it on me to keep his skills sharp, and I wasn’t never gonna tell. That would have been humiliating.

Oh, yeah, my mother. I forgot. She was already dead. Her body was found outside of town in some ditch. Someone had cut her into Christmas ribbons. I heard from an ambulance driver they took her away in burlap sacks. Only way they knew it was her was a locket with a picture of me on her lap. My father was suspected but in that county at that time, men never got arrested for beating or killing women. Cause all the fuckers on their old tractors or in business suits at the First National or State Farm had a past. They just did.

It was the most fucked-up town you can imagine. I had zero friends because my old man had beaten me into a state of constant fear over being hurt. Of course, other guys sensed this, and regularly beat the shit outta me after school or whenever I went to the old shopping center to cool off or warm up. My old man never did have heat or a air conditioner. Truth was, he was raised worse than he raised me and in World War Two was a POW held by the Japanese right after the first islands were taken. Never fired a shot that whole war, but when I was little, my mom told me he just wasn’t right in the head when he came back. They’d tortured him pretty good, too. Scars from head to toe. The fake cowboy who was crazy and sure as hell cut her up, he was the reason I believed in the devil.

So in the Autumn of 1967, while the school football team was beating nobody but themselves and even the cheerleaders got booed because none of them could remember who to cheer for and were all hideous with pimples making them look like Roman’s Frozen Pizza pies, and still wouldn’t put out, I spent my time driving over to St. Keep and paying off a mean ass hunting knife. It was like a Bowie but longer and bigger, and by October when the team was already 0-6, and the leaves were beautiful gold and red and orange, I had it paid off and took it with.

All afternoon that day I had been letting my anger build. I got to the field after the game and I knew I’d find the Gringley Brothers there with the rest of my bully tormentors. All I had to do was walk up to them as they leaned or sat on the splintery wood bleachers and serve myself up like a slab of bacon. They went for the trap. I stabbed Terry Adams’s side and I felt the blade slice into a rib. He fell down and cried and screamed and everyone else dragged him off to Craig’s beat up 59 Ford.

By the time I got home, the news had spread, the streets empty, little kids usually out playing after homework were inside behind closed drapes. My old man was at the end of the front walk, leaning on the mailbox, a .45 hanging in his free hand at his side. Never forget that moment. It pissed me off. I screamed “So now you’re gonna shoot me? Best be fast, Pops!” and I moved too fast for the bastard to think. I slashed his throat then, on the rebounding swing, sank the blade deep into his left shoulder.

The police were already turning down the street from Elm. They called for backup and an ambulance. I guess both ambulances were gonna be used that day, minutes apart.

Now one of the coppers, I never liked. He had his nightstick out before the car stopped and he clocked me bad. I woke up in a cell with Doc Dawson giving me some kinda shot.

A few days passed while my head thundered and Earl Fegler just smelled worse by the minute, finally pissing me off to the point I swung on the old bastard. He hit me about as hard with his fist as as Mean Officer Keene had with his stick. I damn near passed out but held on and grabbed smelly old drunk Earl. By the balls, I grabbed him, squeezed and twisted as hard as I could. His rolling round on the filthy concrete and throwing up brought an officer in, lazily picking his teeth. Probably had lunch at Aunt Laurie’s Kitchen. The fish had bones, the red meat was tough, the ham was veined with white fat and somehow, even her milkshakes had hard lumpy shit. Toothpicks were free, but the dentist charged mortgage rates for payments. “What’s wrong with Earl?” he asked and I said he probably caught a whiff of his armpits. “Boy, when the judge gets holda you tomorrow, he ain’t gonna take none a your smart mouth. I advise you quit fighting and smart-eleckin. And by the way, old Earl got a good one in ‘fore ya dropped his stinkin ass. You got a hell of a shiner comin. I ain’t gonna give ya no ice, neither. You ain’t shit, boy. But for what it’s worth, I’m on your side. That boy ya stabbed, he had it comin. He’s rotten as all git-out. And you ain’t killed him or yer old man. The throat is a scratch. Should hear him cryin at the hospital. Confessed to killin yer mama, beatin ya till ya bled and everything right down to the first time he beat off; he didn’t care long as we kept you away from him. I get ya, boy. I told yer defense to have you take yer shirt off in court. Goddamn I ain’t never seen shit like what the Doc showed me while you was out. I got kids. They don’t wanna stab me. Know why? I ain’t never lifted a hand to em. Never crossed my mind to. I jest tell em how things’re supposed to work. I hug em and set em on my lap and tell em I love em, always will. I expect em to do great things and get outta this county one day. And I know they will. What kinda man does that shit? Your papa deserved it.”

The monolog over, he said, “You ain’t a bad kid, ya know. You jest had enough. If I’d a known, I’d a locked yer pa up and took you in myself. Good luck tomorrow. Just remember do what that lawyer fella says, call the judge His Honor, you’ll be okay. And no smart-mouth, ya hear me? Dont. Oh. Forgot. Yer pa, ya got him good in that shoulder. Had surgery even. If he were left-handed, well, I guess he ain’t no more. I’d say fine job, ya know, but I swore a oath to uphold the law. Night, kid.”

That was the first time any man had ever made an effort to help me learn about life. Lookin back, I believe he saved my life.

The courtroom was full when I was led in and remained handcuffed. The “lawyer” had not even come to the jail to prepare me. I didn’t like him on sight. Cheap suit, half Windsor knot, garrish ruby-studded tie clip, matching cuff links and the breath of a coffee addict. At the sound of the door in back opening he whispered, “I’ve got a plan. Stick with what I say and you’ll be fine. No prison time at all. Trust me. You going to do that?” I nodded. He said, “Excellent.”

“All rise” came a deep voice. The judge came in and my heart skipped a beat. Fuck, Judge Heiman. I’m screwed.

But it wasn’t like that. The opening by the SA was weak. The opening by ruby-boy was terrific. He went into my past, the recent confession by dear old dad, my history of being bullied, and said I had built up so much anger that I couldn’t hold it back anymore. He told the jury that a trained psychiatrist was prepared to testify to that effect, and that my scars would prove I’d been through hell.

And in two days, it was over. The last hanging judge considered the guilty verdict an affront to decency and said he almost declared a mistrial. On reflection, he’d come up with something better.

I had flunked second grade, so while still in the first semester of my senior year, I was going to turn 18 before Christmas. Judge Heiman knew. He said, “The convicted will stand for sentencing.” I stood. My knees almost gave out.

“Franklin Lee Geldmacher, you have anything you’d like to say before sentence is declared?” I shook my head.

“Mr. Geldmacher, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, esteemed counsel: we have heard shocking testimony from you and from a veteran police officer as to your past, and while the laws of this state make no allowance for leniency based upon such a horrifying history, I want to make one thing clear.

“Your violent behavior must be punished, but I take no joy from sending such a young man to his death. I believe that you are sincere, honest and that you have been broken in body and spirit. I have thought about my decision constantly. I am sure that it will affect myself and most people present years from now.

“Franklin Lee Geldmacher: it is the decision of this court that upon your release from the town jail on the date of your eighteenth birthday that you will go straight into the military service of your choice: the United States Army or the United States Marines. You will not be permitted to serve in any other branch. You will likely be serving in Vietnam, and as that conflict escalates, it will become more unlikely that you will ever return. However, with your instincts and the will to fight against all things that you consider evil, I will check on your progress when I can, and pray for your safe return. May good fortune and the Good Lord favor you. Mr. Geldmacher, I am deeply sorry for what you have been through — and for what you are about to. This court is adjourned.”

There was a hysterical outburst, but I couldn’t make out who it came from. The judge banged his gavel and yelled, “Order! This court stands adjourned and any further disorder will see those responsible immediately imprisoned! Clear the room!”

I looked at the ruby lawyer and said, “Go fuck yourself,” and he filled his soft leather briefcase and beat it while I was being led back to my cell, where I would be alone for the next month. I was allowed to read Life and the LA Times and they scared me at first.

Then, sitting up one frigid late November night, I had a comforting thought: I was born for this. I was meant for it. Every shitty day of my life had led me here.

And, live or die, I’d give it everything I had.

Watch for Part Two!