Old Vito's Trap

It was Justin's idea. Billy Joe, he had never broken a law in his life, not even as a screwed-up juvenile, but with no jobs to be had anywhere, the bills piling up, two months behind on the rent, and, worse, with the bike dealer threatening to repossess his Harley-Davison 1200 Roadster, his only pride and joy, Billy Joe had no choice but to go along with Justin's plan to rob the old man.

He lived, the old man did, in a one-room brick house he built by himself on a lot he bought when he came down from some big city up North twenty years back. That house he built like a fort—one narrow, thick steel side door, small barred windows so high that you'd need a ladder to reach them, and no trees or shrubs around for anyone to hide or approach unseen. About thirty yards behind the house was a shallow concrete pit with a ramp leading down into it, where the old man had installed the water pump of his well.

From the looks of him, he must have been a least eighty, shriveled up like a prune, and tiny, not much taller than five feet. Yet he had a spring to his step and no trouble hiking the two miles to town and back with a backpack full of groceries. He had no car or other motor vehicle, and would accept no rides. In fact, he had no use for company of any kind. Not that he was unfriendly or nasty with people. Just the opposite. He was always polite and would return your greeting if you greeted him, but that was the extent of it. Without saying it, he let everybody know that he didn't need no help. He wanted people to leave him alone, and everybody did. He went by the name of Vito, his first or last name, nobody knew which. Just plain Vito.

By the way Vito talked it was obvious that he was a foreigner. Our town librarian, who knows something about accents, claimed that he was from Sicily, that's in Italy, home of the Mafia. So Justin figured that if the old man was from there, the home of the Mafia, then he must be a rich gangster running from the law or, more likely, from other gangsters for making off with their loot. What made Justin think all that was that his ex-girlfriend, Linda, a teller in the only bank in town, had told him that Vito had no bank account; and from talking to store clerks, he also learned that Vito had no credit cards, either, that everything he bought he paid for in cash. And from a real estate agent and an accountant at ABC Supplies Co., he further learned that Vito had paid cash, in full, for his five-acre plot and for all the materials to build and equip his house. That, then, would explain the fort-like design of the house, the old man's secrecy, and even his building skills. From watching gangster movies Justin knew that many Mafia types had a hand in the construction business. And if all that was true, then there was no question in Justin's mind that old Vito had a huge pile of cash stashed somewhere in his house, just begging to taken.

At first Billy Joe had his doubts about robbing that old man. Maybe Vito was no ex-gangster after all. Maybe he was some honest immigrant who busted his ass all his life to earn and save his money. But Justin refused to believe it.

"No way," he said. "Me, I know a crook on sight. I can see it in is eyes. And that guy is a crook, from way back, trust me. He's robbed plenty of people before, maybe killed some, and deserves to get robbed himself. Justice, I call it."

Justin was right about one thing. He had met plenty of crooks in his life, having served time, first in juvenile detention when he was underage, and later in adult prison, for stuff like burglary, car theft and, at least once, for assault.

"Besides," Justin went on, "Even if he ain't no crook, what difference does it make? I mean, what's a guy that old want with all that money? Hell, at his age, he ain' got no need for women or fancy clothes. And knowing him, he ain't got no relatives or friends or a favorite charity. When he croaks, which should be soon, the government will get it all. Better us, than the fuckin' government. Think about it."

"Makes sense," Billy Joe concurred, the though of him losing his Hog Roadster clouding his better judgment. "Whether or not old Vito is a crook don't make no difference to me. It's the money. That's all I care about."

"Come to think of it," Justin added. "He owes us for all that money deducted from our paychecks before the factory laid us off. Half of it went for government benefits to old farts like him. Young guys like us, we get nothing but grief."

It occurred to Billy Joe that if old Vito was getting government benefits, as Justin was saying, he would've had to give out his name and address, but if he was hiding from the law or the Mafia, that would be the last thing he'd do. So old Vito probably didn't owe them anything. But Billy Joe kept these thoughts to himself. To get Vito's stash, he and Justin had to work as a team, and Justin knew how to go about it better than he. No point starting arguments with Justin at this late in the game.

"Yeah, you're absolutely right. The old guy does owe us plenty. But, I've been thinking, How in the hell are we going to break into that house of his? Shit, busting down that thick steel door, will take a power machine, and coming in through them high windows won't be easy. We'd need a tall ladder to reach them, then hacksaw the bars, probably made of hardened steel, and even if we could cut them with a hacksaw, the openings look too small for guys our size to squeeze through."

Justin shot Billy Joe a disparaging grin. “My plan, old buddy, is simple. Even a yokel like you should be able to understand it. You see, we don't try to break in when the old guy is away in town. That would be stupid. No, we make our move when he's home, so he can open the door for us."

"But why would he do that? That guy wouldn't open the door for nobody." Billy Joe had figured that Justin was kidding. But no, Justin wasn't kidding. He did have a plan, and though Billy Joe didn't like it, he again let the vision of the stash of money cloud his better judgment.

"We'll do it like this," Justin explained. "There's this guy in the National Guard who owes me. He once beat up this girl in front of me, almost killed her, actually, but when the cops came asking, I pretended I didn't see it. Anyway, this guy stole some tear gas from the base where he serves and has agreed to give me a couple of canisters. So, we bring along a ladder, climb up to a window, dump in the tear gas, and when the old man comes out for air, we hogtie him. Hell, a guy that old can't put up much of a fight. We then wait a while for the tear gas to blow away, then go in and get the money. Very simple."

"But what if he has an alarm system or calls for help on his cell phone? Everyone has got one of them nowadays. And I know he’s seen us in town. He's sure to recognize us."

Justin sniggered. "Put your thinking cap on, old buddy. A guy like him hiding from the law or the Mafia, or both, probably, ain't about to call the cops. And as for him recognizing us, there's no way he can do it if we are wearing ski masks. I already got me a couple, shoplifted them so no clerk can testify later that I bought them, in case the cops investigate, which, as I said, ain't likely to happen. So, don't worry about a thing. I've got it all planned out and ready to go." Then fixing Billy Joe with a camaraderie look. "You still with me, ain't you?

"All the way,” Billy Joe, nodded, though little red flags of doubt kept popping up in his head. The old Sicilian, he sensed, would not be that easy a prey. Billy Joe had seen when he went to town how those dark eyes of his shuttered like little cameras, taking everything and everybody in sight, including him and Justin hanging around the convenience store. His ear too must have picked up the distinct sound of their voices. Billy Joe had also noticed that Vito didn't follow a regular schedule. Sometimes he'd come to town in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and on different days of the week, obviously so nobody could predict where he'd be at any given time. A guy like Vito couldn't have lived as long as he had by mere accident. He had a built-in sensor that warned him of trouble. But then, again, Billy Joe figured, Justin must have though about that, too. As he said, he was always a step ahead him.

At first light next day, Justin pulled up to Billy Joe's trailer with an 28-ft extension ladder attached to the roof of his old panel truck.

"Rise and shine, old buddy," he announced cheerfully, "Time to rock and roll. The old man was in town shopping yesterday late afternoon and chances are he ain't about to be going out two days in a row. So he must be home now, probably still in bed."

On the floorboard of the truck were two large-sized Army backpacks, each containing a ski mask, a plastic bottle of water, a brand-new pair of work gloves, no doubt shoplifted like the ski masks, and a tube-like container with official-looking lettering stenciled on it, the tear gas canisters. The back pack closest to Justin also held an object bundled in a shammy cloth. The knapsacks would later serve to bring back the loot. That was why Justin got the large-sized ones.

They parked the van out of view in a clearing by an abandoned dirt road half a mile behind Vito's property. From the backpacks they took the work gloves, put them on, detached the ladder from the van, set it on the ground, shouldered their backpacks, picked up the ladder, one at each end and, following Justin's lead, headed though the wooded area toward Vito's house. It being late fall, all the undergrowth had lost its leaves, so the going was clear and easy. In ten minutes they arrived at concrete pit behind the house and, setting the ladder down, stepped in the pit and took a position there to reconnoiter the house and consider their next move.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan, yet Billy Joe felt that something wasn't right. The doubts that had been worrying him earlier, the red flags popping up in his head, had not gone away, and when Justin drew from his knapsack the shammy bundle and opened it, Billy Joe knew at once that he had made a big mistake. The thing wrapped in the shammy was a pistol, a .45 caliber, the kind that could blow fist-sized hole through a man.

"What the hell is that for?" Billy Joe was about to ask, but just then the water pump turned on, drowning out his words, and next thing he knew, Justin was lying on the concrete floor, jerking all over, the top of his head blown clear off. Billy Joe's eyes then caught the glint of the rifle barrel sticking out through one of the house’s back windows.

Funny how the sight of violent death makes stupid fools like Billy Joe suddenly smart. Now he saw it all: Justin had planned to kill the old man, not just tie him up, and, after he helped Justin tote the ladder and the money back to the truck, he would kill him, too. Justin wasn't about to split the loot with him and leave alive a half-willing accomplice who might later talk under pressure.

Billy Joe now realized that he old man had been expecting them all along. He must have sensed when he last saw him and Justin in town, how they looked back at him, the tell-tale smirk on Justin's face, what they were planning to do, and he was ready for them. But, if the old man was that perceptive, Billy Joe figured, hoped, then he must also have seen that it wasn't his idea to steal his money, that he was dragged into by Justin, the real thief. And if the old man had sensed that, then he might forgive him, spare his life, and the fact that he hadn't shot him already, though he had him dead in his sights, was a good sign.

Waving his arms friendly-like, he yelled out against the racket of the water pump. "Hey Sir, I didn't mean you no harm! Really! You let me go and you'll never see or hear from me again!"

And Billy Joe meant it. He would return his Road Hog to the dealer, leave town, get a fresh start somewhere, out West maybe, where no one knew him, go back to school, learn a trade, land a decent job, get married, have kids, lead a normal life. Hell, at heart he weren't no criminal. He remembered his Christian upbringing, his loving parents and sisters, his getting decent grades in school, until he got mixed up with the wrong crowd and dropped out, joining the Wanderers motorcycle gang and later, tired of that, go off on his own and end up in Rock City, where he met Justin. He glanced at the body of Justin sprawled on the floor, his limbs still quivering. Billy Joe didn't want to end up like that. He deserved better. The old man would see that would spare his life. But Billy Joe could barely hear himself think. The racket of the water pump was deafening.

Old Vito had figured correctly that to avoid detention the two intruders would approach the house through the wooded area behind the property, and that they would likely stop at the concrete pit to gather their gear and plan their next move.
Imbecilli! Running along the walls inside the house was a permanent scaffold that Vito had erected so he could look out the high barred windows. Positioning himself, atop the scaffold at one of the windows with a clear view of the pit, his vintage WWII M-1 rifle at the ready, he waited. for the intruders to enter the pit. With a remote control switch, he then turned on the water pump, to startle them into a moment of stillness so he could get a good aim. To assure that the pump made a loud enough racket, he had beforehand loosened the bolts attaching its casing to the concrete floor. Now taking aim through the rifle scope, he shot one intruder, then the other, both clean through the head. The interval between shots had taken less than two seconds.

Cow Path Road Execution

Though the pain had not hit him yet, Mad Dog could tell he was badly hurt. The steering wheel had crushed him against the driver's seat, and blood oozed from his mouth with each labored breath. On the floorboard under the passenger's seat lay Bronto, muttering curses, his thin body grotesquely twisted, like an unstrung puppet, unable to move.

Mad Dog took stock of the situation. The sun was sinking behind the cliffs and the temperature dropping fast below freezing. But Mad Dog did not despair. The old man in the Chevy they had passed a few miles back should be coming up the road soon. He would see the wreck and stop, as the law required, and call for help. Surely he would have a cell phone, and if by chance he didn't, he would drive back to town and alert the rescue squad. The "Jesus Saves" sticker Mad Dog had seen on his rear bumper was especially reassuring.

So he sat still and waited, listening through Bronto's muttering and the moaning of the wind, for the sound of the Chevy.

At one time, the only way by motor vehicle between Hebron and Rock City was across the mountain on Cow Path Road, so named because the engineers who laid out the road had conveniently followed the paths trodden by generations of cows from the dairy farms that had once served the two towns.

Between Hebron and Rock City the distance on the modern four-lane highway along the piedmont was considerably longer than by way of Cow Path Road. But the half hour or so saved by taking the winding, now crumbling, desolate road wasn't worth the trouble and risks involved, unless one happened to be in big hurry, as were the two young drifters that late Friday afternoon.

Mad Dog and Bronto, as they had dubbed each other, had been high school classmates. At age 16, after a long history of suspensions for unruly behavior, they had dropped out of school and embarked on an aimless cross-country journey, working odd jobs to survive and, when no jobs were to be had, as was often the case, panhandling or shoplifting, skills at which they had become consummate experts.

The rickety old van they drove, a gift from Bronto's grandpa, had been their only home for the past two years, its side compartments stuffed with clothing, mostly unwashed and, strewn on the floor amid empty soda cans, fast-food wrappers and other assorted trash, their sleeping gear. Every couple of weeks, if they could afford it, they would pull up at a truck-stop for a hot shower.

"It don't get no better than this!" Mad Dog would exult, and Bronto, smiling blissfully, would nod in agreement.

At Hebron they had lucked out on a job with a fly-by-night contractor who specialized in conning elderly folks into making needless repairs in their homes. Attired in an official-looking uniform, a hardhat, a photo ID pinned on his lapel and bearing a clipboard, the conman would introduce himself as an inspector for a nonexistent "Municipal Services" agency and warn the homeowners that their waterline might be leaking.

Once inside the house, he would find things that needed fixing--the water heater, the furnace exhaust, loose insulation—and propose to make the necessary repairs at a reduced price. If they accepted, as most did, he would phone Mad Dog and Bronto, who would promptly show up wearing "Municipal Services" tee-shirts and toting official-looking tool boxes. After an hour or so of audibly tinkering around but repairing nothing, the conman would hand the elderly homeowner the bill, to be paid, at once, in cash, keeping 50 percent of it for himself and paying his two assistants the rest for a job well done.

"Old folks, they are easier to deal with," the conman explained. "For most, their home is all they got, but because they can't get around to check, they're afraid there are a lot things, particularly in the basement and attic, that need fixing. And because their minds are slipping, they tend to be leery of checkbooks and credit cards, so they prefer to pay in cash, no questions asked."

The conman here would pause a moment to give Mad Dog and Bronto time to marvel at his cleverness. "What I do may sound illegal, but it isn't. I never tell them I'm working for the city. "Municipal Services" is just a name I thought up. And in most states, if I charge less than $30,000 for a job, I don't need to have a contractor's license. I consulted all this with a lawyer friend of mine before going into business."

"Yeah, but you neglect to consider that a relative of one of them old folks you dupe might figure that you stole his inheritance and break your legs, or put a bullet through your hat with your head still in it," Mad Dog thought, but kept it to himself. As long as he and Bronto were getting paid, he didn't give a damn how the conman made his money. In the two weeks that they had worked for him, they had earned over $2,500, more than they had ever seen in their young lives, and now they were itching to spend it.

For his part, the conman, in accordance with his game plan, had already considered what Mad Dog was thinking and had prudently taken the highway along the piedmont to Interstate 81 and on to another town with a sizeable old-folk population.

Mad Dog and Bronto knew that they also would have to high-tail it soon, for once the scams were discovered, they would be regarded as accomplices. But they had planned to leave, anyway, Hebron being one of those dry, tight-assed towns with more churches than gas stations—not the kind of place for fun-loving young studs like themselves to spend their leisure time and money.

By contrast, Rock City on the other side of the mountain was a wide-open town, teeming with bars, gaming joints and police-protected whorehouses offering everything from pricy teen-aged chicks to toothless bargain-rate hags that specialized in oral sex, or so a waggish truck driver had told them.

So the same Friday afternoon that the conman left town, the two young studs filled their gas tank and took off for Rock City by way of Cow Path Road, to save time.

"If we hurry, we can make it in time to take a hot shower and join the party," Mad Dog said.

"And get us laid real good," Bronto grinned, humping lasciviously.

But no sooner had they turned into Cow Path Road than they came up behind a blue Chevy sedan moving at a turtle pace. Mad Dog leaned hard on the horn.

"Pass him, Man, pass him," prodded Bronto.

"Can't, damn it! There ain't no room. This fuckin' road is too goddam narrow and there ain't nothing but gully on either side. Shit!"

"Shit is right, man. That asshole is holding us up. At this pace, it'll be midnight before we get to Rock City."

The "asshole" driving the Chevy was a shrunken old fellow with both hands on the wheel and peering through it at the road ahead. Mad Dog and Bronto could barely make out the back of his head.

"One of them religious old farts from Hebron," sniggered Mad Dog, noting the "Jesus Saves" sticker on the rear bumper of the Chevy. What in the hell is he doing out on this God-forsaken road? There ain't supposed to be no farms or nothing else between here and Rock City. Shit!"

"Probably got confused and took a wrong turn. Old farts, they do shit like that all the time. My grandpa, he got his license taken away for forgetting where the hell he was going. Caused a bunch of accidents. That's why he gave me the van."

Again leaning on his horn, Mad Dog accelerated until the van was bumper to bumper with the Chevy. "Maybe if I tailgate him a little he'll pick up speed."

"Yeah, do it. if he sees you so close on his ass, he's bound to drive faster."

But the old man didn't speed up. Through the rear window of the Chevy, Mad Dog and Bronto could make him out, head stiff, peering back at them in the rearview mirror.

"Old farts, why do they have to live so long?" Mad Dog mused aloud.

"Yeah," Bronto put in, "When they get to be a certain age and can't work and fuck and enjoy life no more, they should call it quits and die. A pain in the ass, a burden, that's all they are."

They drove on so for several miles, Mad Dog tailgating the Chevy, honking his horn now and again, Bronto cursing, and the old man in the Chevy stubbornly refusing to speed up.

Finally, they came to a spot of level ground on the side of the road and the old man pulled over to let them pass.

"Fuck you, you old fart!" they bellowed in unison as they passed, punctuating their curses with jabbing middle fingers. "Fuck you!"

The old man didn't so much as cast a glance their way. He just sat there behind the wheel, like a mannequin, staring straight ahead. Mad Dog gunned the engine and darted up the road. By his reckoning, they were at least a half hour behind schedule.

Years ago there had been speed-limit and warning signs posted on the more dangerous curves, but these had long been removed for firewood or had rotted away. So Mad Dog drove on, unaware of the risks ahead, the tires of the van squealing, and Bronto egging him to drive faster and faster, the thrill of the ride heightening their anticipation of the wild weekend awaiting them in Rock City.

Then it happened. Mad Dog had taken his eye off the road for a moment to say something to Bronto, when the road suddenly dipped and curved 90 degrees. Unable to make the turn, the van careened off the road, flipped over once, twice, and crashed against a boulder in the bottom of the gully. Like a mortally wounded animal, the van rumbled on for a moment, then went silent.

So Mad Dog sat still and waited, listening through Bronto's mutterings and the moaning of the wind for the sound of the Chevy bearing the religious old man who, surely, would call for help and save them.

At length the Chevy came up the road and stopped. Taking his time, the driver got out and gazed down at the wreck. Mad Dog looked up at him. The guy was a lot bigger and stronger than he had appeared sitting behind the wheel, and looked familiar. . . Yes, he now remembered. This was the man he had noticed a couple of days ago on the porch of a wheel-chair bound old woman that the conman had duped, chatting casually with her, just a neighbor stopping by to say hello, probably a member of her church, not one to worry about, Mad Dog had though at the time.

From a rack in the Chevy cab, the man took an antique double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun, the kind that could blow the head off a bull and, glancing around, making sure no one was watching, he sure-footedly descended the gully to inspect the wreck.

First he peered into the passenger's side and saw Bronto lying unconscious on the floorboard. Then he went to driver's side where Mad Dog was crushed against the seat, gasping and coughing up blood.

"Please help us, Mister," Mad Dog, now in great pain, pleaded. "Please! My buddy and me, we're hurt real bad!"

Mad Dog tried to make eye contact with the man, to elicit compassion, but the man looked past him, saying nothing, as if he didn't exist.

Then of a sudden it dawned on him. The man with the shotgun had set up the accident. He must have been shadowing them since he learned of the scams, seen them preparing to leave Hebron and sensed they would be heading for Rock City on Cow Path Road, hurrying get there before sundown. So he had driven on ahead and deliberately slowed them down, figuring that once they passed him they would drive on at reckless speed to make up for lost time. He further must have known that old road like the back of his hand and picked the place where he would pull over to let them pass, and predicted where they would crash.

Mad Dog's pleading here gave way to a wail, and the wail to a protracted shriek that pierced the cold mountain air. But the man wasn't listening. He calmly returned to his Chevy, put the shotgun back on its rack—he wouldn't be needing it after all—and slowly drove away.

The Enemy Soldier

He must have dozed off for a moment. Last he saw, Jimenez had been there in the hole with him. But now Jimenez was gone. Probably went back to regroup the squad. He and Jimenez had got ahead of them, or lost them, and ended up here in this hole, an artillery crater, not thirty yards from the enemy line. He could hear them talking, and their wounded moaning. They must have taken a direct hit. “Our guys sure know how to work those big guns,” he grinned. But now he had to stay awake. Been, what? Two, three days since he had an hour’s sleep? “Gotta stay awake,” he kept telling himself, “Awake. Alert, till Jimenez returns with the squad.”

He must have dozed off again because he didn’t see the German soldier. He didn’t see him running up to the crater and jumping in. By the time he did see him, the German was almost on top of him, giving him no time to reach for his rifle or draw his pistol. But luckily, by chance, he had dozed off with the bayonet in his hand and, at the last moment, when the German’s body was a foot away from his, he swiftly pointed the bayonet upward, and let the German fall on it.

They lay there, the two of them, face to face, gazing into each other’s eyes, as if recognizing something in them, or expecting an explanation, but saying nothing, not uttering a sound, save their heavy breathing.

The German was about his age and size, same complexion, same blue eyes and close-cropped red hair. Reminded him of his brother Zeke, and of his father when he was young. And by the way the German was looking back at him, blinking, knitting his brow, it seemed to him that he, likewise, reminded the German of someone. Everything between them was similar, near identical, except for the uniforms and insignias on the sleeves.

Who was this man? At first he didn’t care to know. Just another Nazi, a barbarian, a threat to America, a brain-washed fanatic he had to kill or else be killed by him. Nothing to feel bad about. He was doing his duty. But then he looked up and saw that the sky and the trees and all things outside the crater had become a gray blur; and he realized that, at that instant in time, in that Godforsaken hole, that he and the man lying on top of him were intimately alone in the world; that they had been inextricably bound by fate in a brotherhood of their own.

So, no, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t just ignore him and get on with the war. He would wait until the man’s body went limp, then turn him over and search his pockets for an ID or a wallet with photos of his family. All soldiers, even Nazis, had a family back home, parents, siblings, maybe a wife and kids. He would keep the ID and photos, and maybe, some day, years later, after the war was done and forgotten, he would contact the man’s family. By then he would know what to tell them. The man might have done the same for him.

But when he tried to move, a weakness came over him and felt the bayonet slip from his hand. The German had not impaled himself on the bayonet as he had thought. At the last moment, as he fell, the German had deflected the bayonet with one hand, and with the other sunk his field knife deep into his abdomen. The blood soaking their uniforms and the ground around them was not the German’s, it was his. He opened his mouth to say something but only a soft gurgle came out.

When Sergeant Jimenez returned with the ten-man squad, he was dead. Spriggs, the medic, inspected the wound, the slushy pool of blood, and shook his head. “Abdominal aorta. Severed.”

“He musta dozed off when the Kraut jumped him” Jimenez said, clenching his fists, his voice heavy at once with sorrow and rage. “Otherwise it would be the Kraut who’d be lying there dead.”

Spriggs laid a comforting hand on Jimenez’s shoulder. “With a wound like that, losing blood so fast, he must have died in seconds. Probably never knew what killed him. At least he didn’t suffer.”

Before covering him up with the medic’s blanket, Jimenez searched for his dog tags and through his pockets, but found nothing.

“Sonafbitch! The goddam Kraut took his dog tags and wallet with all the photos of his wife and kids! He used to show them to me and talk about them every chance he got. ”

“Them fuckin’ Krauts, they’re all like that,” said another man. “Have no respect for the dead. Probably took the tags and pictures as trophies to show off to his buddies and gloat about it.”

Jimenez spat. “May he get his soon. And take a long, long time to die.”

Word squawked over the radio that enemy had retreated, and the squad was ordered to stay put until further notice. The rest of the day they took turns, some catching up on their sleep, while others stood guard. Come night, they emerged from the crater and buried their dead buddy in a patch of daffodils that miraculously had been spared the artillery barrages from both sides of the line.

Paul's Good Hand

Predictably, the Saturday yard-sale addicts would not be denied. By 9:00 a.m. most of the stuff that Judy and I had laid out on our front lawn just an hour earlier—old garden tools, dented pots and pans, rickety chairs, stiff baseball gloves, dog-eared do-it-yourself manuals, chipped picture frames, and other unwanted junk—had been snapped up, and $336 added to our petty-cash kitty. Only a wig inherited from Judy’s mom and a lumpy sofa that had served as bed for our 90-lb German Shepherd remained. For all our scrubbing, his paw prints still showed on its frayed upholstery.

The wig we tossed in the dumpster, and the sofa I was about to demolish and likewise commit to the dumpster, when a late-middle-aged couple in a vintage station wagon, the woman at the wheel and the man seated stiffly in the passenger’s seat, pulled up to the curb.

“How much you want for that sofa?” the woman inquired.

“Fifteen dollars,” said Judy. Though she would have gladly given the sofa away and spare me the trouble of disposing of it, she sensed that this woman was the kind who would derive more satisfaction from haggling a bargain than from getting a freebie.

“I’ll take off your hands for ten,” replied the woman, offering Judy two five’s.

“It’s a deal,” said Judy, taking the money.

I had meanwhile stepped to the tailgate of the station wagon and was waiting for the man to come and help me load the sofa, but it was the woman who came out instead. Shoulders drooping, flesh sagging, gray hair carelessly gathered up in a bun, she projected the fuzzy image of a woman who at one time might have been attractive, even beautiful, but had long since given up on life.

“My name is Mabel” she said in a half-hearted attempt at civility and, without given us time to introduce ourselves, she hastened to explain that the man in the passenger's seat, her husband, Paul, was an invalid. She opened the tailgate and, pushing a folded wheelchair aside, made room for the sofa.

“Been like that for four years since he had that stroke. Can barely walk or talk, grunts and mumbles mostly, like some sort of animal, and totally incontinent. A hopeless case, the doctors say, and because we can’t afford a nursing home—Paul never made much money—the burden of taking care of him has fallen entirely on my shoulders. Social Security and Medicaid is all we have to fall back on. The little money i made on the sale of the house will soon run out.”

Mabel scowled, sniggered. “Me, I’m still strong enough to get a job, but can’t leave him home alone. Our two sons, they moved to California and have plenty of stuff of their own to worry about, so they can’t help. Both on their third marriage and unemployed.” Then sighing deeply. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.”

The stroke had rendered Paul an invalid, but it was evident by the way the back of his neck reddened at Mable’s comments that his hearing and comprehension had not been affected; and, judging from the calculated brutality in her voice, it was further evident that this was no isolated incident, that she routinely tormented him with a litany of her wretchedness, in private and in the presence of strangers, as she was doing now.

The sofa loaded with Judy’s help and Mabel’s instructions, I stepped around to the open passenger window and gave Paul a congenial tap on the shoulder. “It's a pleasure doing business with you, Sir. Enjoy your sofa.”

Paul's head slowly swiveled toward me and, as our gazes met, the pained look in his eyes gave way to a strange twinkle. Then, to my astonishment, his left hand, as if having a life of its own, reached across his paralyzed body, took hold of my arm an gave it a firm squeeze. Big, sinewy, thick fingered, the hand seemed to have preserved and compacted the strength that the rest of the body had lost.

“That’s all that he’s got left, that hand,” sniggered Mabel, as she slipped into the driver’s seat. “At least he can feed and wipe himself. Thank God for that.” Then tugging at Paul. “You let go of that young man’s arm. I’m sure he’s got better things to do than stand there and watch you looking up at him.”

Reluctantly Paul did as told. He had meant to say something, but it wouldn't be until the following day that I realized what it was.

Spewing dark fumes from its tail pipe and making clunking sounds, the old station wagon took off down the street and turned the corner.

“Them there was Paul and Mabel Jackson. Used to live on Sunset Street,” offered the little old lady who had shuffled across the yard to watch the loading of the sofa. A never-married, retired postal worker, Mary Baker had lived all but three of her eighty-eight years in the house next door, and since retirement had assumed the role of neighborhood historian. Though she had trouble finding her way inside her own house, she could recount in detail the life stories of every neighbor for blocks around, going back to World War II, and the few blanks in her memory, she would fill in with plausible fabrications, as might any professional historian, so her accounts, on the whole, rang true.

“Them two,” Mary went on, “they were once your Hollywood couple. Met in college. Paul was the star football player and Mabel president of the student body. After graduation Paul went to work for a company that made parts for NASA. He was one of them rocket engineers. Mabel, she became a big-time real estate agent. Sold most of the houses around here, including yours, when it was built, back in 1962, for $23,000, a lot of money back in them days.”

“Yeah, I could tell that the guy was a former athlete,” I said. “Or maybe a construction worker. Stroke and all, he still looked strong, and the grip of his good hand, it was pretty powerful.”

“Problem was they were too incompatible, like oil and water. Mabel was your big spender, flashy dresser, big on parties, while Paul, he was your quiet, stay-at-home type. Spent his off hours taking long walks by himself and tinkering in his garage. They had no friends or in interests in common to speak of.”

“So how did they manage to stay married so long?” Judy asked.

“Well, at first Paul made pretty good money. Invented some kind of device for making rockets work better. In a year his company’s stock went though the roof, and Paul got promoted to Vice President, then to CEO. But he was no good at management. Nearly ruined the company with costly mistakes. At age 50 the company had to retire him, fire him, really, and he never again could land a decent-paying job. Mabel’s real estate business, on the other hand, was taking off. The year Paul got retired she raked in over a million in commissions.”

The little old lady who had shuffled into our yard to tell us the story of Mabel and Paul was on a roll, and the more she talked, the stronger and younger she looked. Reminded me of Judy's vivacious 64-year old mom.

“But that device he invented," commented Judy, "that alone should have made him, if not rich, at least financially secure for life.”

“Well, problem was that it was patented under the company’s name, not his, and he agreed to it, because he figured he was working for the company at the time he invented it, though he did most the work in his garage.”

“True to his football captain ethic," I said.

“Yes, that’s the kind of man Paul was. Mabel, she hounded him to sue the company for the patent, contacted a hot-shot lawyer from D.C. to take the case, but Paul would have none of it. She could have killed him.”

Mary’s voice had developed a hiss. From talking with such verve, her dentures had worked loose. Giggling apologetically, she readjusted the dentures and resumed her story.

“Then Mabel’s career began to slip as well. Their two sons, no doubt, had much to do with it. Both got into drugs. Dropped out of high school and did time in juvenile detention, for theft, drug dealing, stuff like that. Eventually they went off to live in California and, from what I hear, they haven’t changed much. The grief they caused their mother made her bitter, rude with customers, so her sales record dropped down to zero, and her bosses finally had to let her go.”

“Sad story,” I said, with Judy nodding in agreement.

"Yes, very sad indeed. With no money coming in, they were forced to sell their nice home on Sunset Street, together with all their valuable antiques and move into a cheap condo, and when Paul got the stroke, into subsidized housing. The rest of the story you can guess from their condition when came to buy your old sofa.”

Her account of the Jacksons’ sorry life told, Mary’s vitality suddenly left her. Her shoulders, then her legs drooped, and she was again her 88-year-old self. She shuffled across the yard back to her house and, for a long while, stood confusedly in front it, looking around, as if in a strange, unfamiliar strange place. Finally she opened the door and went in.

That afternoon we took York for a fetch-the-ball game in the park. After dropping him off at home, we treated ourselves to a full-course sea food dinner at the premiere restaurant in Old Towne, Alexandria, and a paddle-boat cruise down the Potomac River, all paid for by the money we had made on the yard sale, with some left over.

I was weeding our flower garden next morning when Mary Parker strode over.

“Did you hear the news?”

“No, what news?

“Mabel and Paul Jackson! They were killed in a car accident. On their way home after buying your sofa. Crashed into one them concrete light poles on Duke Street. “

“Both killed? Jesus! How did it happen?”

“The police figured that Mabel must have taken ill or dozed off. Paul apparently tried to take control of the car because when the paramedics arrived they found him with his good hand clutching the steering wheel.”

As usual, the more Mary talked, and the more tragic the subject, the younger and stronger she waxed.

I paused a moment to gaze at the old woman, at the marigolds and zinnias blossoming in our garden, at the rich, dark soil, at the cumulus clouds drifting against the immensity of the blue sky overhead.

“Yeah, that must have been what happened,” I nodded, though I knew different.

Catharsis

I

The man spread-eagled on the floor was still groggy. He tried to get up, but couldn't. His limbs and torso were restrained by leather straps attached to steel clamps bolted into the concrete floor. Suddenly aware of his plight, he regained full consciousness.

"Where am I? How did I get here?"

Illuminating the man was a bare light bulb dangling overhead. Beyond the reach of the light, the surrounding space faded away in shadows. From the deep resonance of the man's voice, it was evident that he was in a large and empty room.

From the shadows a voice spoke to him in an amiable tone, as would a host making his guest feel at home. "Hello, Professor. Have a nice nap?"

The owner of the voice let the man on the floor wonder for a while, then slowly stepped into the lighted area, bearing a baseball bat, and knelt close, face to face, with the man. "Remember me, Professor Hernandez?"

Hernandez stared up for a long moment, as if seeing an apparition. "Robles! Carlos Robles. Yes, I remember you. You're the grad student that dropped out of our program and joined the Marines,"

"Yes, Professor. I did joined the Marines, and served two tours in Vietnam. But I did not drop out of your graduate program. That part of the story you got wrong. What happened, refresh your memory Professor, was that you forced me to quit."

"No, Carlos! No!, I would never have done that to you. You were my best student, like a nephew to me, and a fellow Cuban. The faculty committee, they were the ones that recommended you transfer to a school more to your liking."

"Oh, yeah? And who was it that chaired and browbeat the committee? You, Professor! You were the one who screwed me, and now you're about to pay for it, in full."

Robles got up and, studiously swinging the bat, doing stretching exercise with it, as would a baseball player on the on-deck circle, he began pacing around the prone Hernandez. "Like my bate, Alfredo? Bring back fond memories of our Cuban pastime?"

"Carlos, please! I can explain!” Hernandez pleaded. “We're fellow Cubans. No? We understand each other."

"Wrong, Professor. I'm American, one-hundred percent re-blooded American. Came to this country at age 4, harbor no memories of Cuba, fond or otherwise." Then caressing the bat. "Save for the game of pelota, baseall. Played semi-pro for four years, in fact. Center fielder and clean-up hitter. Could have made pro if stayed with it.”

Robles resumed circling Hernandez, swinging the bat, a trim, sinewy man of around forty, clad in boots, jeans, a military green tee-shirt, hair closely cropped, the classic figure of a U.S. Marine, in stark contrast with the pudgy, fiftyish man shackled to the floor.

"Carlos, please, be reasonable! Hear me out. Please!"

"O.K. Professor, I'm listening. But, Hey! Why am calling you professor? You never deserved that title. You got your Ph.D. back in the days when they were giving them away. A fraud, Alfredo. That's what you are."

Piqued by the remark despite his fear, Hernandez said. “Are you suggesting that my Ph.D. in Spanish Literature from the University of North Carolina is a second-rate degree?"

"Well, no, not exactly. Second-rate is too good a word for it. Worthless is more like it. That so-called Ph.D. you got it under an idiotic Federal program to mass produce foreign language educators. All one needed to qualify was a speaking knowledge of some foreign language. In your case, that was easy, Spanish being your native tongue. Had the demand been for educators in math, science or some legitimate field, phonies like you would have never made it."

Robles as he spoke kept pacing around Hernandez, pivoting, changing directions, and swinging his bat, ever more forcefully. "But, hell, I can't say that I blame you. America, after all, is the land of upward mobility. You were offered a freebie profession and took it."

"No, no, Carlos it wasn't like that at all!"

"Bullshit, Alfredo! I've met more than a few of so-called exiles from Cuba who were accepted in those Ph.D. programs with forged credentials, sight unseen, no questions asked. And having witnessed your educational limitations first hand—Hell, you thought that Aristotle was a Roman emperor—I suspect that you are one of those impostors."

"You're mistaken, Carlos! Much mistaken, My Cuban undergraduate credentials were legitimate. From the University of Havana!"

"Whatever, Alfredo. As I said, I don't blame you for taking advantage of the freebie that the gullible Gringo acdemics offered you. They got what they deserved. What I hate is the way you clawed your way to the top and abused your power. For that, I can't forgive you."

"I did my job, Carlos. My record as department chairman is impeccable. I have commendations to prove it."

"Bullshit, Afredo! You're no scholar or administrator, not even close. A third-world crook, and an evil bastard, that's what you are."

"Not true! Not true!"

”Yes, true. People who knew you in Cuba told me you were an informant, a chivato, for Batista's secret police, and when Castro took over you had to flee for your life. Well, Alfredo, fate has finally caught up with you,"

"Carlos, please, can't you see?"

"See what, Alfredo?"

"That your war experiences have distorted your recollections of what happened between us. I'm not the monster that you think."

"Oh, so you think the war made me crazy."

"No, no I didn't mean it that way!"

"Well, for your information, professor, my war experience had the exact opposite effect. It cleared my mind of all delusions. There I was in the hell hole of Vietnam, killing people I had no quarrel with, while my real enemies stayed home, out of harm's way. The corrupt politicians, the rapacious CEO's, the fat old men in tailored suits that started the war for profit, the frauds like you. Those were the ones that needed killing."

"That was 14 years ago, Carlos, too long a time to bear a grudge."

"For me, Alfredo, my grudge against you has been most inspiring. You'd be surprised by all the insights and wisdom I've garnered by re-living my ugly memories of you. In a sense, you and others like you, have been my muse."

Hoping that the longer he kept Robles talking, engaged in an argument, the more likely he would listen to reason, Hernandez said: "So I take it, Carlos that I'm not your first victim." The fear in him was rendering his Spanish-accented English even more accented.

"Jesus Christ! Alfredo.” Robles said, mocking Hernandez accent, “I can barely understand what you're saying. What kind of leenguist are you? Lived een thees country for over twenty years, chair a university language department, and estill can't espeak English worth a damn."

Robles for a moment ceased pacing and squaring himself, made swift, thrusting movements with the bat, as if attacking with a bayonet, then resumed pacing.

"Yes, Alfredo, my stint in Vietnam turned out to a blessing. Not only did it open my eyes to the real world, but it also taught me many marketable skills, like how to make undesirable types like you disappear."

"Carlos, please! please!"

"That's what I do for a living nowadays, by the way, as part of a team with other veterans. Pays quite well, though for this job my partners offered their services for free. We now and then do personal favors for each other. The old warrior brotherhood."

Robles leaned down and ran his fingers over Hernandez's Cuban guayabera shirt. "See, not a smudge on it, and not a mark on your body except for the prick on your arm where I shot you with the tranquilizer dart. A clean, professional job."

Hernandez's mouth opened wide, as if to cry for help.

"Go ahead, Professor. Call out all you want, but you'd be wasting your time. This place I chose for our little reunion is in the middle of nowhere, next to a garbage dump." And sniffing the air: "Which explains that foul odor you smell."

"Carlos, please!"

"Yes, an ideal location. No one for miles around, except for my buddies waiting outside for me to finish. Plenty of vermin in here, though. If you listen carefully, you can hear the rats squealing. They're hungry. Omnivorous creatures. They eat anything"

Atop a shelf on a rack, half hidden in shadows, sat a black box-like object blinking a tiny red light. Robles glanced at the black object, then at his wrist watch.

"But time's a-wasting, Alfredo. Let's get on with our reminiscing: Remember the day we met? You, the big-shot tenured professor, and I, the lowly grad student? Remember?"

Hernandez shook his head no.

"No? Well, let me jog your memory. You were supposed to be interviewing me, quizzing me about my qualifications, but all you did was talk about yourself, trying to awe me. And when you realized I couldn't be awed, that intellectually and creatively I was your superior, you resolved right there and then to crush me."

"You're imagining all this, Carlos."

"But you didn't crush me right away. No, you took your sweet time, leading me on here, putting me down there, plagiarizing my term papers, stealing my ideas. Then, when I submitted my dissertation, a piece of scholarship far better researched and written than anything you had ever done or would ever do, you rejected it out of hand. Had others professors not read it, you would have stolen that, too." Robles punctuated his comment by poking Hernandez in the thighs with his bat."

Finally realizing that Robles wouldn't be swayed, Hernandez lost all hope, and with his hope, some of his fear. His accented English now became less accented, more deliberate, with an arrogant, demeaning edge to it, in keeping with the voice of the abusive man that Robles remembered.

"You misunderstood, Carlos. In the Old World tradition where I was educated, grad students were regarded as apprentices. Whatever they work they did was the intellectual property of the master professor. I made that perfectly clear in my orientation sessions. So I did not steal your work, as you say, I merely incorporated it into mine, and the fact that I did was a sign approval, like giving you an A. You should have felt flattered."

"An Old World scholar? You? A fraud with fake credentials from the University of Havana and a trumped-up Ph.D from a gullible American University?

Mentira, lie! You have no proof. It’s all in your imagination. The war made you lose touch with reality, or maybe you had lost touch already.

Bullshit, asshole! And what about your forcing students to do your laundry and run errands for you, and the expecting sexual favors from them? Plenty of proof about that. Was that also in keeping with of your Old World tradition?

"Yes, of course, Very much so," Hernandez said sarcastically, what remained of his fear giving way to aggressiveness.

”This is modern-day, democratic America, asshole. Your Old-World serfdom has no place here."

"Too bad.” Hernandez sneered. “Your great American democracy could use a little Old World class."

Robles smirked. "You may deem me a typically crass American, Alfredo, but you're much mistaken. Actually, I harbor more Old World values than you, and despite my profession, I can be quite gracious. Had you shown me the slightest hint of decency, I might have forgiven you. But try as I might, I couldn't detect any."

"None? None at all?

"No. None, not even in your personal life. You made it a sport of cheating on your wife—the old Latino macho man act—until you forced her to leave you. And your son and daughter, from what I heard, once they finished college, they moved away and never again had anything to do with you. You must have abused them pretty bad."

Robles again poked Hernandez with the bat, this time hard enough to make him wince. At that, Hernandez strained angrily against the straps binding him to the floor, and for several long minutes kept at it as Robles, half amused, half impressed, looked on. Gasping for breath, Hernandez and breaking into a cold sweat, Hernandez finally lay still: "You can't get away with this, Robles! The police will track you down."

Robles sniggered: "After all these years, Afredo? Fat chance. The only ones under suspicion will be the enemies you've made since you screwed me. So many, I figure, that the cops will eventually get flustered and give up. Besides, changing identities to elude the law is an integral part of my professional training. I'm an expert at it."

"Damn you! Even if you manage to evade the law, in the end God will punish you."

"God! Which God are you talking about, Alfredo? The middling deity served up by churches to control and exploit the gullible rabble."

"A psychopath, a matón, murderer, that's all you are, Robles, and a filthy atheist. I had you pegged since the day I met you.

"Oh, no Alfredo, I'm no Atheist. On the contrary. I devoutly believe that the Creator exists, and that the only way for us mortals to achieve joy and fulfillment to the extent we are capable is by emulating his modus operandi."

"So, you're playing God, is that it?

"No, not playing, emulating. The real Creator, you see, is at once a demolisher and a builder, a destroyer and a preserver. He divides and unifies, kills and heals, avenges and . . .."

Damned you! You're even crazier than I thought!"

"Maybe, Alfredo. Maybe I'm crazy. But calling me names isn't going to save your sorry ass."

Robles laid the baseball bat aside, and stepped off into the surrounding shadows.

Hernandez had meanwhile espied the black object on the beam overhead and was gazing up at it, cursing in Spanish. "Coño! Hijo de puta!"
Robles returned with a thick wooden dowel and a length of rope, and showed them to Hernandez.

"The garrote. A far neater form of execution than the gas chamber or the potassium chloride lethal injection. Don't you agree, Alfredo?"

Robles tied the rope loosely around Hernandez's neck, leaving enough slack under the chin to insert the wooden dowel. "A traditional garroting would have the torque applied behind the neck, but because you're lying on your back, this front-of-the neck variation will have to do."

Robles suddenly leaned over his captive, startled. "Hey, what's this? Why are you sweating and having so much trouble breathing when I haven't started yet? . . . Shit! You have bad heart, don't you? That bottle of pills I found in your pocket must have been your medication. And that sly smile on your face. You're aiming to die before I can kill you! Cheat me one last time. Well, Professor, it's not going to work."

Robles swiftly straddled Hernandez's heaving chest and proceeded to twist the dowel, hard, and kept on twisting well after the chest stopped heaving. Then rising to his feet, he gazed up at the black object on the shelf and, as if addressing an audience, announced: "Alfredo Hernandez. September 4, 1982." He then turned off the overhead light, and the room was engulfed in darkness.

II

John Nagle packed the last of his belongings into the U-Haul trailer. Effective that day, his two-year contract as visiting professor of English at Dawson College, North Carolina, had expired. First thing tomorrow morning he would turn in the key to his rented apartment and leave for Radford University in Virginia, 150 miles up the Interstate, to his next visiting-professor post, this one for only one-year.

Despite his impeccable credentials—M.A., Dartmouth, Ph.D., Yale— he had never been able to win a permanent position in any of the schools where he had taught, English Ph.D.s like himself being a dime dozen, a pool of cheap labor for institutions economizing on full-time salaries. At some schools, as many as one-third of the humanities faculty were of the visiting kind, on temporary, dead-end assignments. Since his graduation 16 years ago, Nagle had bounced from job to job, earning less than the average department secretary, a nonentity at the very bottom of the academic pecking order.

But it wasn't the glut of English Ph.D.s alone that was keeping him down. H he not been so contemptuous of conventional scholarship, "that mind-numbing crap in the limbo of university libraries; had he followed the lead of savvy professors and rehashed chapters from his dissertation as articles for professional journals; and had he been a bit more diplomatic, more subtle, not so apt to criticize and gall his tenured superiors, he might have been given a chance.

But, no, he would not abide by academic tradition or hold his tongue. Predictably, the insightful pieces he wrote on the 9/11 attacks and on the war in Iraq for a local newspaper were dismissed out of hand by the powers-that-be in the Dawson English department. Nor did his sixteen short stories, none yet published, count for anything in their esteem. He had pissed them off once too often, and they couldn't wait to see him go.

So there he was, at age 42, unmarried, no close friends or family ties to speak of, waistline a bit thicker, hair a bit thinner than a year ago, a veritable failure due as much to his obstinate idealism as to external circumstances.
Having by now seen the writing on the wall, he resolved that if he failed to earn a permanent position at Radford, he would quit academe and seek employment in a more secure, rewarding field, probably home construction. During summer breaks, he had worked for local subcontractors, building and renovating houses, and had become pretty skilled at it. Half of the boxes packed in the U-Haul held his collection of construction tools, ranging from state of the art power tools to antique mallets and chisels.

Typical of institutions of higher learning in America, Dawson College gave much lip service to social equality. The pictures and blurbs of every college employee—secretaries, technicians, receptionists, book store clerks, security guards, cafeteria worker—were listed together with those of the faculty members and administrators, the president included. But, in fact, the Dawson College community was sharply stratified in castes. Other than a cursory "Good Morning," full professors did not socialize with assistant professors, nor assistant professor with temporaries like Nagel. Especially snobbish was a dean who smiled wide with his mouth while skewering inferiors with tack-like eyes. The unwritten social order required that everybody know their place. In this, too, John Nagle messed up, big time. His tendency to get chatty with everyone alike made everyone feel uncomfortable. The you-must-show-more-respect gestures from the bigwigs and the suspicious frowns of underlings were lost on him.

The only one who reciprocated his friendly overtures was a fellow named Chuck, the head of the buildings-and grounds crew. The old apartment building where Nagle resided was property of the college. When Chuck came one day with his crew to repair a crumbling the deck behind the building, he and Nagle struck up a conversation about the materials involved, and the two hit it off.

Several times a week they would meet for coffee in the school cafe. At first, figuring that Chuck was at most a high school graduate, Nagel tried to steer away from intellectual topics. But much to his amazement, the building and grounds man turned out to be the most erudite person he had ever known. Not only was he conversant in English and American literature, Nagle's field, but he could shift from literature to history to philosophy to physics to art to economics to biology, seamlessly tying it all together, as if orchestrating the work of his crew.

When Nagle inquired how he came to acquire such a vast erudition, Chuck would simply smile, saying : "I'm a hedonistic reader." And would leave it at that. Their chats in the college cafeteria thereafter waxed more intellectual, and one-sided, with Chuck doing most of the talking and Nagle the listening.

A trim, sinewy man in his sixties, clean shaven, thick head of hair cropped short, and ever in a bright mood, the person of Chuck the grounds-and-building man had taken on mythical proportions in the eyes of the middling visiting professor. And the fact that Chuck never talked about himself lent him an air of mystery that enhanced his image all the more.

For all the hours he had spent listening to Chuck expound on everything under sun, Nagle never heard him utter a word that might betray who or what he was before he came to Dawson five years earlier. Nagle had to look in the college directory to learn that Chuck's surname was Ortega, though, given how careful Chuck was to keep his past secret, Nagle suspected that the name was fake. And as far as he could tell, he was the only person in Dawson to whom Chuck had revealed his erudite side.

So it was that in their chats Chuck did most of the talking and Nagle most of the listening, until the day that Chuck happened to read the short stores that Nagle had put up on his webpage.

Among Chuck's pet themes had been the healing power of catharsis, not as Aristotle would have it, where one vicariously purges a troublesome passion by identifying with actors acting out the passion on stage. In Chuck's version of catharsis, the spectator and the actor were one the same.
"First one acts, then one recalls and reflects on the act, as if watching oneself on stage," Chuck had explained, as Nagle listened intently. Perhaps that was what he needed, the kind of catharsis advocated by Chuck, to turn his life around.

After reading Nagel's stories, Chuck again brought up the theme of catharsis. This time, however, with an ulterior motive. The second-hand adventures and social commentaries in Nagle's stories he found sophomoric, if not silly. But the way Nagle had braided the stories together, the language and style, struck a chord in Chuck's imagination. Nagle had unwittingly offered up himself as a tool that Chuck had long been searching for and intended to exploit.

So now the tenor of their chats in the student union was reversed, with Nagle, at Chuck's prompting, doing most the talking and Chuck the listening.
Nagle had at first felt flattered, but after a while Chuck's undue admiration of his stories made him feel uncomfortable, then suspicious. The building-and-grounds man had too abruptly and too drastically morphed from the intellectual superior to a deferential inferior angling for attention. Even his speech changed, from a calm Southern drawl to an obsequious voice tinged with what sounded to Nagle like a Spanish accent. Clearly, Chuck wanted something from him, something important, but what that was, he did not care to know. He had enough problems of his own. Finally, he told Chuck that he was too busy preparing classes, and broke off meeting him in the student cafe.

A week before he left for his new post at Radford University, Nagle received this email from Chuck:

”John, by the time you read this, I will have left Dawson for another job at another place, the details of which I do not wish to disclose. You no doubt have wondered why I was so enthralled with your stories. Let me explain. To be truthful, the contents of your stories are trite, unoriginal, boring, to say the least. Small wonder that no publisher would accept them. On the other hand, your literary skills are first-rate. Though you have nothing of interest to say, you know how to say it brilliantly.”

”But that alone was not what appealed to me. It was that fact that your half-gift complemented mine. You see, I have much to say, great stories to tell, but, alas, I cannot write worth a damn. Try as I might, the right words and sentences elude me, probably because English is not my native language, and what limited command I once had of my native language I have long lost.”

”Many an hour I had spent analyzing the style of ghost writers, hoping to find one that might be able to convincingly express what I wanted to say, but to no avail. Then fate brought us together. Your unique style was precisely what I was looking for; and, as you will see in the DVD records I have sent you, my real-life experiences are precisely what you need to make your stories ring true.”

”When you get to Radford you will find a box of the DVDs in your mailbox, waiting for you. Some are copies of old VHS tapes, so the images may be a bit blurred, but the details are clear enough, and the contents self-explanatory.”

“Since you don't know where I've gone, or, for that matter, who I am, I do not expect any recognition. (My original self was officially killed in Vietnam 40 years ago.) So, if you decide to use my records in new stories, as I hope you will, please feel free to submit the stories for publication as if they were entirely your own. The fact that what I have to say is finally written up and presented to the world in print would be all the reward I need.
Good luck to you.—Chuck”

John Nagle liked Radford a lot better than Dawson. The apartment he had rented, walking distance from the campus, was much more comfortable, the surrounding mountain landscape more scenic, the weather more pleasant, and the university community more congenial, though some were still jittery over the massacre of 32 students and one professor by a psychotic loner, which had taken place that April at Virginia Tech, just 10 miles away.

He arrived at Radford on Friday, three days before classes started. The parcel of DVDs from Chuck were already in his department mailbox, as a Chuck had promised, along with a faculty orientation folder and rosters of his three English 101 classes. The U-Haul trailer unpacked and returned to the local rental office, he spent the better part of the weekend settling into his apartment and making lesson plans.

On Sunday he watched the late evening news, most of it coverage of the war in Iraq. Then, curious about what Chuck had proposed, he opened the parcel of DVD disks. There were 16 of them, each in plastic cases labeled with a person's name and a date, the dates ranging from 1980 to 1999. Randomly selecting the one labeled Alfredo Hernandez, September 4, 1982, he turned on his DVD player and inserted the disk in it.

The Botched Interview

The ad read: “An international non-profit organization, The Displaced Children Association (DCA), is looking for an experienced writer/editor to manage its weekly newsletter. Applicants please submit your résumé by e-mail attachment to dca@hotmail.com.”

I submitted my résumé as instructed. Two days later the receptionists at DCA called to inform me that I had been scheduled for an interview the following week. The job, I realized, wouldn’t pay much, but still, it would be more remunerative, and certainly less stressful, not to say dangerous, than my current part-time as a public school substitute teacher. On more than a few occasions I had been threatened with bodily harm--by beating, slashing, burning, and shooting—-for having the gall to ask some middle-school rowdy to refrain from interrupting the class. Complaining to the principal was of little avail, as the powers-that-be in this politically correct school district always sided with the rowdies. I had thus learned to tolerate the abuse as an unavoidable occupational hazard, but my store of tolerance was fast running out.

A job at an institution like the DCA would afford me the experience and contacts to move up to a rewarding, life-long career in a Federal Agency or, maybe, the United Nations, in the footsteps of my parents, both now dead of cholera contracted while serving in Africa five years ago.

In preparation for the interview, I spent hours on the Internet, late into the night, reading up on the prestigious DCA, and checking out the bio of its Director, a no-nonsense, never married, career woman and former missionary of unimpeachable credentials. Considering my experience as chief editor of my college newspaper, my two-year stint in the Peace Corps and working knowledge of three foreign languages, I felt eminently qualified for the job. The night before the interview I spent a good hour before the mirror practicing poses of self-assurance I recalled from an article on body language. Not only was I ready for the interview, but was eagerly looking forward to it.

Dressed to kill my best suit (my only one, really), I arrived at the DCA headquarters just as the previous interviewee, a somewhat unkempt bearded fellow, was leaving. By the dejected look on his face, it was obvious that his interview had not gone off very well. “One less competitor,” I grinned smugly.

The receptionist, a prim, well-dressed young woman, not much older than I, ushered me into the Director’s spartanly appointed office: an oak desk and chair set, all four chairs unpadded, the Director’s included, a steel file cabinet, bookshelves stacked with journals, newsletters, directories and manuals, and a free-standing rack stand on which hung the Director’s hemp shoulder bag.

She was standing behind her desk, hands on hips, studying a document I assumed to be my résumé. Sternly eyeing me for a moment through wire-rimmed spectacles, she gestured me to take a seat on the chair in front of the desk, waited until I was settled, then sat down.

The Director’s physiognomy and demeanor were consistent with her professional profile on the Internet: tall, angular, thin lipped, unsmiling, no makeup, gray hair its natural color, modestly dressed in a gray slacks-shirt combination; and yet, in some peculiar way, not entirely un-sexy. (Were her pheromones sending me signals?)

“Mr. Saunders,” she said at length. “I see here that your formal education and work experience might qualify you, in part, at least, for the position we are offering. To get a better fix on your qualifications, I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Please do,” I said confidently.

I had come prepared to wow the woman, and wow the woman I did. Assuming my studied posture of self-assurance: body relaxed, fingers steepled, legs slightly spread, I answered her questions calmly yet without hesitation, subtly weaving in my experience and career goals with the mission statement of her organization, commending her for accomplishments without sounding obsequious, and even hinting, by glancing subtly into her eyes, that she was a most attractive woman.

Fifteen minutes into the interview she was nodding approvingly, her eyes softening, and the corners of her thin lips curling slightly in what, for her, must have been a smile.

Then it happened. The interview over and capped with a reassuring handshake, I inexplicably tripped on my own feet and pitched against the rack holding her shoulder bag, spilling its contents onto the floor: a notebook, a set of car keys, a hairbrush and an oblong object the size of a cucumber tapered at one end.

On hitting the floor, the oblong object began to hum and make slow spinning motions, as might a dormant animal suddenly coming alive. Though I had never seen a vibrator in real life, I knew what one looked like from pictures in sex-aid ads, and this one, clearly, was one of your more expensive, state-of-the-art models.

“Clumsy me,” I apologized, reaching down to pick up the things on the floor, careful not to give special heed to the vibrator, pretending I didn’t know what it was, but, as I reached down, so did the Director, and our heads bumped.

“Ooops, clumsy me,” I said again, this time with a slight chuckle, hoping to defuse the situation with a touch of humor.

But the Director didn’t see any humor in it. None at all. The slight smile on her lips had changed into a hard slit and the grey eyes behind the spectacles into steel tacks. Putting the things on the floor back in the handbag and my résumé away in the file cabinet, she said dismissively: “That is all for now, Mr. Saunders,” and, half-turning her back to me, called the receptionist on the intercom to bring in the next applicant.

Next day I received a pro-forma e-mail from the CDA informing me that I didn’t get the job.

The Killer Fog

The stench startled him from a deep sleep. He got up out of bed, went to the open window and gazed up at the cloudless, moonless, starless canopy of darkness that the sky had become. He closed the window and for a long while stood gazing down at his sleeping wife, her firm, youthful body dimly illuminated by the light of the digital clock. It read 3:35 A.M. Come morning, he knew, that she and their toddler in the next room would fall victim to the fog, and the blissful life he had strived so hard and long to create would come to end.

He went out to the porch and sat on the steps, to wait. At dawn, as expected, the fetid yellowish fog emerged forth from the unknown beyond the horizon, destroying every living thing before it —the corn crop, the vegetable garden, the chickens in their coop, the hounds in their kennel—as it steadily, inexorably approached the farm house.

He wanted to awaken his wife and child, see them alive one more time, embrace them in a final goodbye, but then, on second thought, decided it would be best if they perished in their sleep. He would not, though, allow the fog to defeat him. So went in the barn and hanged himself.

---------------------

The nurse on duty found him dangling by the neck from an extension cord affixed to the ceiling fan in his room.

That afternoon the head psychiatrist was discussing the case with an intern. “What happened with this patient was totally unexpected.”

The intern asked. “Have you heard from his family yet?

“No, as far as we know he has no close family or next of kin.. He was a highly successful futures trader, one of the best in the business, a genius, by all accounts, but an eccentric loner in his personal life. Eventually he became delusional, to the point of being a danger to himself and others, and had to be committed. That was two years ago.”

What sort of delusions was he having?

“Only one, actually: That he had bought a farm and moved there with a wife and child. Everything here at the hospital—the halls, the cafeteria, his room, the plants and decorations he saw as parts of his farm. That farm in his mind was the only reality he recognized.”

The intern shook his head. “A tough case, to say the least.”

“Yes, very tough, indeed. For two years we tried to reach him, bring him back to the real world, but to no avail. Then last month we tried a different medication cocktail and it seemed to work wonders. For the first time since he arrived he started to see and ask questions about his surroundings.”

“So it would appear that he was improving,”

“Well, yes and no. In his delusional state, he was content, even happy, but when he stared coming out it he became increasingly apprehensive, depressed.”

“Obviously, he didn’t want to leave his imaginary farm and family.” surmised the Intern.

The head psychiatrist nodded in agreement, and explained. “We figured that with the right medication and therapy, “he would eventually make the adjustment, as have many of patients with similar conditions, but, regrettably, it didn’t work out that way in his case.”

“Maybe the treatment was too fast, too traumatic” suggested the intern.

“Yes, so it seems,” said the head psychiatrist. “Maybe we should have proceeded with more caution.”

“Or leave well enough alone,” thought the intern.

Billiy's Last Rites

To Marine Lieutenant Rob Shapiro all religions, his Judaism included, were fabrications designed to explain away the troubling mysteries of the world to the intellectually limited, that they might get on with their lives as best they could without destroying themselves or each other. When the subject of religion came up in conversation with friends he would quote Marx: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Or, more mockingly yet, Voltaire: “Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.”

Yet Shapiro was no atheist. A fledgling physics professor in civilian life, until faculty politics turned him off to the profession, he conceded that the probability of the world having come into being by mere serendipity was virtually nil. There had to be a God, a Creator, a First Cause, a Prime Mover of some sort to get things started. But what this God was like, what it wanted or expected from his creation, if it wanted or expected anything, was to him a mystery beyond human comprehension. He respected and even admired the faith of the religious devout, but he could never accept their spurious arguments grounded on the lame premise that some divinely endowed or inspired guru—-Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Zoroaster, Joseph Smith or whoever—-had opened a direct and unerring line of communication between humankind and God.

If God was so easy to sway or appease through rituals and prayers, if he was susceptible to sadness and anger, if he could be depicted in paintings and praised in song, if his word was so clear to humankind, then he could not be the all-mighty deity that his followers claimed. By Shapiro’s lights, the God who created the laws of physics resided in a dimension infinitely distanced from the world of mortals. An Isaac Newton may be endowed with the genius to discover some of these laws, and students at MIT, Shapiro’s alma mater, may have the brains to comprehend them, but no mere mortal could possibly know how or why the Creator created them.

So Shapiro had gone about his business, unconcerned about what Rabbis, Priests, Ministers, Imams or Gurus had to say, trusting that the Creator knew what He was doing. Two plus two equals four, the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of its hypotenuse, bodies on Earth accelerate toward the ground at 9.8 meters per second square—those were the only kind of truths that Rob Shapiro believed in, needed to believe in, especially now, caught as he was in the hell of war. Emotionally he was not insensitive to the horrors he had witnessed, but mentally he did not dare register them as anything other than inevitable, natural events, or else lose his sanity, or his life.

But, though manageable, tolerable at first, the conflict between emotion and reason, had inexorably been building up inside him, and today had come to a head in this foliage darkened, parasite infested jungle, rain pouring down on him and his squad, and a baby-faced 18-year-old kid moaning softly under a blanket. Shapiro didn’t have to take a close look. The dark blood soaking the blanket and stench of partially digested food told him that a mortar round had torn open his abdomen, a hopeless wound. Spriggs, the Navy Corpsman, had done all he could for the kid, but the morphine would soon run out.

Lieutenant Shapiro remembered when Billy O’Brien, joined his unit, fresh out infantry training at Camp Lejune, the scion of three generations of gung-ho Marines, ready to take on the enemy, single-handed if need be, to fight for his country, for democracy, for justice, for freedom, and return home to a cheering crowd with a chest fill of medals on his dress blues and a brass band in the background playing “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

But, as with most newcomers, it didn’t take for Billy O’Brian long to wise up. The rows of caskets lined up on the airport tarmac when he arrived told him right off what Shapiro and others, the smart ones, had learned from day one. Namely, that there was no honor or glory in the hell of war, that personal survival was the name of the game, and that the only sure strategy for winning the game was to bond closely with your fellow Marines, no matter who or what they had been before the war. You depended on them, and they on you. In those cases where circumstances made the bond too risky, one had to draw on one’s moral reserves and play it by ear. It was that simple. Reality whittled down to its least common denominator.

So Private Billy O’Brian had survived, until now. An enemy patrol had caught Shapiro’s squad by surprise, and, before they could take cover and return fire, two men were killed where they stood, their bodies now laid out side by side, covered with ponchos, and Billy O’Brian mortally wounded. Shapiro radioed for support and in no time two H-1 Cobra choppers appeared over the treetops and proceeded to rake the enemy position with machine gun and rocket fire. Then, for good measure, an F-4 came flying low and incinerated the survivors with napalm. Their screams assured the Marines that this battle was over.

The other battle, however, the one raging inside Shapiro, his wondering what to do for the kid under the blanket, that battle persisted, along with the rain pouring down through the canopy of broad-leafed trees that blocked out the sunlight, and the ungodly mix of smells permeating the jungle—gunpowder, napalm, garbage, rotting vegetation, putrefying animals and humans. Combat veterans may in time forget the sights and sounds of war, but never the stench.

“You gotta do something, Lieutenant. The kid, he ain’t aiming to die just yet.” The man who said this, Lance Corporal Benitez, the squad’s gadfly, had picked up on Shapiro anguish and saw that any further indecision on the Lieutenant’s part might imperil the rest of the squad. Another enemy patrol might well be approaching from another direction.

“What the hell am I supposed to do? Leave him? Shoot him?” Shapiro snapped. “Goddam it, he’s one of ours!” Then gazing by turns at the men. “Anybody got any bright ideas?”

Private Billy Joe Higgs, a former truck driver with Confederate Bars and Stars tattooed on each forearm had been kneeling by Billy O’Brien, holding his hand.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” he beckoned. “Listen to him. What he’s saying don’t make no sense, but you can tell by the way he’s looking that he wants something real bad.”

Shapiro, Benitez and several of the men stood over the delirious kid. He was talking now to his mom, now to his dad, to some girl named Peggy, an Aunt Claire, a Mr. Sullivan, a BeeBee, probably a pet and, interspersed in his rambling, the word Viatecum.

Higgs was right. Every time Billy uttered Viatecum, his eyes opened wide and his brow furrowed, as if asking, pleading for something.

Shapiro and the others looked each other quizzically. “Viatecum? What’s that?”

“I know what that is,” offered Spriggs, the Corpsman. “It’s the Catholic last rites. A Latin word meaning traveling expenses for the final trip, or something like that.”

“I didn’t know you were a Catholic,” said Higgs.

“Actually, I’m not. But my girlfriend in Detroit was. She told me a lot about the religion, trying to convert me, but it didn’t take. Me, I don’t believe in nothing but what my five senses tell me.”

“Me neither,” put in Benitez. “I’m what you’d call a devout atheist. Have been since I started thinking for myself.” Then turning to Shapiro. “Anyway, our buddy here, he wants his Viatecum, and he’s no going to die in peace unless gets it.”

Back at the base there was a Catholic priest, a gutsy old-timer who would come at a moments notice if called, but he wouldn’t be able to get to Billy on time. The sound of Benitez’s voice grated on Shapiro’s nerves, but the corporal was right. Something had to be done, fast.

Gazing around at the men, Shapiro inquired: “Anybody here ever been a Catholic, an altar boy, attended a Catholic mass? Anything?”

No response.

Exasperated, he turned to Spriggs. “Spriggs, you’re the only one here who seems to know something about the religion. Did your girl friend ever tell you what a Catholic last rites were like? I mean, what does the priest say, what does he wear, how does he go about it?”

“I don’t know. That, she never told me. All she said was that it’s called the Viatecum.

Again he looked around at the men. Again no response.

Shapiro pondered the situation for a moment, then finally said: “O.K, I guess I’ll have to do it myself.”

“But Lieutenant. . .,” objected the men.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m no Catholic padre, not even a Christian. But goddam it, Billy here is one of ours. I don’t intend to let him check out without a Viatecum of some sort. We owe him that, at least that.”

Groping in his memory, Shapiro recalled an old WWII movie where a priest gave the last rites to a dying soldier, and the scene vividly came back to him.

From the corpsman’s gear he took a sling bandage, and from his pack a flask of suntan oil and an aluminum tumbler, which he filled with rain water. Then draping the bandage around his shoulders, shawl-like, he knelt close to Billy and proceeded to recite random verses from Hebrew prayers he remembered from his childhood: “Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. . . ” Then seamlessly moving on to the universally familiar Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .” And next to lines he recalled from references to the Sermon on the Mount” “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven . . .”

The praying concluded, he squirted some suntan oil on his index finger and gently traced a cross on Billy’s forehead. Then lightly sprinkling Billy’s face with rain water from the tumbler, he whispered to him: “Your sins are forgiven, Son. Now go in peace.”

Billy O’Brian, in his delirium, either did not recognize the Lieutenant, or did recognize him, but now saw him in a different light. Either way, the effect was the same. He had duly received his Viatecum for his final journey. He gasped one last time and was gone.

Presently, a Medevac helicopter landed in a nearby clearing and carried away the bodies of the three dead Marines. Lieutenant Shapiro’s squad, now down to nine, gathered their weapons and packs and silently filed into the darkened jungle to get on with their mission.

Man's Best Friend

York, the German Shepherd, and I, his owner, had no interests in common to speak of. He couldn’t care less about my landscaping business, nor did I give a hoot about those scents that would sent him scurrying nose-first to tree trunks and under bushes. Yet, in the three years we’d been together, we had developed so close a bond that he could read my moods better than any person I’d known. That Saturday morning, when I put my Remington M-7 rifle in its gun bag, he could tell that it wasn’t for target practice as usual, that I had something different, more serious, in mind. Whining softly, ears back, he tucked his tail between his legs and went to lie down behind the living room couch.

As a Marine Sniper in Vietnam, eight years earlier, I had killed my share of men. The killing I did, though, was not like the killing in regular combat, nothing personal or messy about it. At 300, 400 yards, my kills were merely targets. Through my rifle telescope I could see them fall and flop on the ground, but the agony on their faces was too remote to register, hardly the kind of experience that would cause me any psychological trauma after I returned to civilian life, as it happened to many of my fellow Marines.

Of course, had I been captured, I would have suffered a slow, painful death in the hands of the enemy, as snipers were not among their favorite people. My first week in Vietnam one of the snipers in our squad was captured. The glint of a religious medal he was wearing had given him away. They purposely tortured him near our camp so we could hear him scream all night. Next morning we found his mutilated body skewed to a tree. But me, they would never capture. I was too clever for them.

Sniping to me was like a game. I would lie hidden in tall grass, perfectly still, often for hours at a time, so as not to stir the grass and give away my position, soiling my pants if I had to relieve myself, oblivious to insect bites, waiting for the right moment. My assigned targets, enemy officers, would shed their insignia to blend in with their men and avoid detection, but I could always tell by their body language and demeanor who was who. Then I would shoot, but not to kill immediately. Seeing their leader wounded, some of his men would invariably come to his aid and, while they made over him, they, too, became easy targets, usually good for one or two more kills. And before the rest of the unit could react and start searching for me, I’d be slinking away and back to my base for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

Since those two tours in Vietnam I had felt no need to harm, much less kill, anything, not even the mice that now and then came to forage in my kitchen. Them I would discourage by not leaving food where they could reach it. The sight of a fellow mammal killed in a trap for merely trying to survive saddened me. When deer season came around, my hunter friends, having heard of my shooting skills, would ask me to join them, but I would politely decline. My Remington I had used only for weekend target practice in the local firing range. Today, though, my target would be a man, not of the faceless kind I took out in Vietnam, but a man who had wronged me personally, someone I knew and detested. This killing would earn me no medals. The law would call it murder.

How this dumpy, barely literate boor managed to con clever me out my hard-earned life savings is a long story, which, frankly, I’m too embarrassed to recount. I therefore skip to what followed next. The con job he had perpetrated was no mere civil matter. It was rife with felonies and misdemeanors. So I pressed criminal charges, and he was arraigned and brought to trial. But come the day of the trail, the local police detective who had investigated the case somehow lost the reams of evidence that I had provided him, and the witnesses willing to testify, reputable citizens my family and I had done business with over the years, were never called to the stand. Consequently, the conman walked.

Later I learned that he was a career criminal, with a record of 43 arrests for a variety of offenses in 12 different states—fraud, embezzlement, forgery, writing bad checks, auto theft, assault and sexual abuse--yet he had never been convicted. Either he was someone very well connected, a protected FBI informant, or a filthy rich crook with the means to buy cops and judges. Whatever the case, I realized that the law would never bring him to justice. That, I would have to do myself, unless somebody else beat me to it, which would have sorely disappointed me, for I was really geared up for it.

I did not, however, act hastily. For two years I mulled over the moral angle. Maybe the man had a loving wife, or ailing parents who depended on him, or children to support. Maybe he gave generously to charity, attended church, felt pangs of remorse or pity. Had I been the only person he ripped off, I might have forgiven him, turned the other cheek. But no, I found no hint of decency in him. None at all. His long arrest record suggested that he had been screwing people without a qualm all his life, probably since childhood. The man was born without a conscience, but from living among folks who did, he understood what a conscience was and had learned to fake one, the better to dupe and manipulate his victims, the ace card of his confidence game.

A no-good scumbag, that’s all he was. The sight of his dumpy figure strutting about town, showing off his Rolex watch and diamond jewelry to strangers, ostentatiously pulling from his pocket thick rolls off 20’’s and 50’s to pay for smallest purchases, ogling at pubescent girls, everything about him had galled me once to often. The man needed killing, and his time had come.

Like most people and animals, he was a creature of habit. I had watched him from afar, knew his routine, knew that on this Saturday morning he’d be out on his driveway washing his three luxury cars. Clad in my camouflage outfit, I took my position in clump of oak saplings by the golf course across the road from his house. At a mere distance of around 80 yards the shot would be easy. I could have killed him instantly with a single shot to the head, but chose to hit him in the chest instead, not to make him suffer--He couldn’t have survived the big caliber slug for long, anyway--but because I wanted him to realize before he died, at least for a moment, that justice had finally caught up with him.

The local cops, of course, knew of my grudge against him. If they recovered the slug, found that it came from a Winchester, learned from the attendants at the firing range that this was the kind of rifle I owned, matched the markings on the slug with the spirals in the barrel of my M-7, they would have all the evidence needed to charge me with the murder. I had, however, taken the precaution of purchasing an identical Remington M-7. The one I used for the killing, I would toss in the deepest part of Lake Norman, 200 miles away. Should the cops came to investigate, I would give them the other M-7, the spiraling of which would not be exactly the same. Moreover, this second rifle I had purchased and registered legally, whereas the first one, the murder weapon, I had purposely bought illegally, from a shady character in West Virginia. So there would be no evidence that I ever owned two rifles and made the switch. Besides, the Remington M-7 was a popular hunting gun, and I wasn’t the only person the conman had screwed. The cops would have more suspects to investigate than they could handle. There was a reason why I survived Vietnam unscathed.

I waited patiently for the man to turn in my direction, so I could see the expression on his face when the bullet hit him. My finger was on trigger, the cross hairs of the M-7 on his sternum, when, suddenly, the wind blew open the door of the house, and a tiny dog of mixed pedigree dashed up to the man and, wagging his rear end for all it was worth, started running playful circles around him. Turning off the hose, the man picked up the dog and began cuddling, kissing it, letting it lick his face, kissing it some more, whispering in its ear. The scumbag in my cross hairs had inadvertently won my forgiveness.

I crawled out of my hiding place, put the M-7 back in its gun bag, and went home to York.

St. Paul the Anti-Christ

Having caused one fender-bender too many, and his dementia rapidly worsening, 75-year-old Felipe Romero suspected that his gerontologist would soon ask that his driver's license be revoked. So, while still legally and mentally able, he planned to spend the better part of his time driving about in his Ford Explorer, for the sheer pleasure and sense of freedom it afforded him.

That morning after breakfast he was taking a leisurely drive on a side road that led him through a neighborhood of dilapidated shacks and mobile homes, their weed-overgrown yards littered with discarded tires, rusting auto parts, broken kitchen appliances and other assorted trash. At that early hour the only person about was a shirtless man of undeterminable age yawning and scratching his quivering belly on the stoop of a trailer. From the caved-in look of his mouth it was apparent that he had left his dentures inside the trailer, or maybe lost them, or didn't own any. Romero's and the toothless man's eyes met and they waved to each other.

Along the way he tuned to in a Christian talk show on the radio. A Pentecostal preacher had just delivered a sermon in the traditional preachy tone of the profession (Did Jesus talk that way?), and was making it clear to his listeners that he was interested in their salvation only, not in their money, mind you. Yet, he would not dissuade them from making a donation, if the Lord so directed them, to help him spread The Word. And to assure that they knew exactly where to send their checks or, if they preferred, to pay by credit card, he carefully enunciated his mailing address and phone number, not once but three times; and in case they didn't get it, his loving wife of 44 years took the microphone and did the same. Then it was his loving daughter's turn.

Listeners then started calling in, quoting a verse or two from the Bible to support their views, though none of them, it was obvious to Romero, had ever bothered to read, much less study, the entire book.

The old man could no longer remember once familiar names and faces, and he increasingly tended to forget where he was going to or coming from. Yet, minute details from books he had read decades ago he could recall with ease, particularly Biblical passages. Not only could he quote entire passages verbatim, but also cite their reference numbers and, more amazing, pose cogent theological arguments.

Pretending he was the talk show host, he would glance toward the passenger's seat, as if the callers were there riding along with him and, mimicking the preachy tone of the preacher, he would lecture them that they were falsely using the Scriptures to validate their personal hang-ups and prejudices.

To a man recounting the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and quoting from the Book of Leviticus to argue that lesbians and gays should be put to death, he lectured.

"Yes, I realize that some people are repelled by queers. But in the Bible homosexuality per se is hardly an issue. The men who threatened to rape Lot's angelic guests in the city of Sodom were not really gay. They were heterosexual thugs, the kind found in prisons, who rape other men to show their dominance over them—the proverbial 300-lb 'Bubba.' In many cultures, it's accepted practice for a man to demonstrate his masculinity by screwing—if you'll pardon the vulgarity—a weaker man or a homosexual. As a youth in my native Cuba I knew macho men who boasted that they often screwed maricones. As long as there was no affection on the part of the man perpetrating the act, it was not regarded as homosexuality. The film Deliverance offers a good example."

A cat scampered out on the road, and Romero slowed down to let it cross, leaning long on his horn, hoping to instill in the cat a permanent fear of moving vehicles, and thereby spare a fellow mammal the misfortune, not to mention the ignominy, of ending up as road kill.

Romero lectured on: "The Mosaic Law did prescribed the death penalty for homosexuality, but it also did for murder, rape, kidnapping, witchcraft, idolatry, treason, sedition, contempt of court, temple desecration, cursing one's parents, pre-marital sex, adultery, incest, and bestiality—this last sin apparently a nagging problem in the shepherding culture of the Chosen People, not only for the people, but for the sheep and goats as well."

Romero grinned impishly and paused a moment to allow the imaginary caller in the passenger's to register what he was telling him.

"Mentions of sodomy—sexual perversions in general—crop up several times in the Old Testament, but homosexuality as such only twice. In the New Testament, Paul denounces both male and female homosexuality, but Jesus Christ, the ultimate authority on sinfulness, doesn't mention homosexuality at all. So, sorry to disabuse you, brother: God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because the people there were violent and wicked, not because they were queer."

To a woman who held that the government of a Christian nation like United States was obliged to care for the lame, the sick, and the poor, and to rehabilitate rather than punish criminals, as the Lord had commanded, he retorted:

"Wrong, Sister. Acts of charity do not count in the eyes of the Biblical God unless they are voluntary and personal, as illustrated in Book of Ruth. Read the Bible through and you'll see that taxing citizens, under pain of fines or imprisonment, to fund welfare programs, as the government mandates, then spending half the money on salaries and pensions for the bureaucrats running the programs, is not true Christian charity. Legalized thievery, that what it is. Governments, courts, corporations, organizations of any sort cannot have a charitable soul anymore than they can fall in love and procreate. Only individual human beings have that capacity."

Romero's mock preachy tone had gradually given way to a shrill ranting, and as the ranting waxed shriller, his foot pressed harder on the accelerator. The speedometer was reading 85 miles an hour. Afraid of getting a ticket and losing his license sooner than anticipated, he slowed down the Explorer to the lawful 55 mph speed limit and, as he did, the pitch of his voice dropped back down to a normal 60 decibels.

"Nor did the Lord grant the judicial system the authority to turn the other cheek on behalf of citizens by letting criminals run free, as it happens in eighty-five percent of cases in this country. Nor did he endow the pseudo-science of psychology, that latter-day witchery, the power to rehabilitate hardened criminals. That kind of power is the Lord's alone."

To a caller who held that abortion was murder, a blatant violation of the Sixth Commandment, Romero pointed out that this pet abomination of Catholics and Evangelicals, was not even mentioned in the Bible.
"The closest thing to it was the special case in which a pregnant woman caught in brawl between her husband and another man suffers a miscarriage. If the woman was injured or killed, the man fighting with her husband was criminally liable. If not, no big deal. The fetus, obviously, did not mater--Exodus 21:22."

A homemade sign affixed to a light pole, advertising free dirt, caught Romero's attention. He could use a truckload or two of dirt to fill the bog that over the years had been forming in his backyard, but as there was no phone number or address on the sign indicating where to inquire about the dirt (maybe he imagined seeing the sign) he drove on and continued lecturing.

"And as regard the 'thou-shall-not-kill' injunction of the Sixth Commandment, there were many exceptions. The Lord himself prescribed the death penalty for a number of offenses—by burning, stoning, hanging, beheading—and, on more than one occasion, commanded the army of his Chosen People to commit genocide, as in the destruction of Jericho. Nearly every prophet, priest, hero and heroine of the Old Testament either killed or had somebody killed in the Lord's name. So I say unto you, dear brother and sisters, study the Good Book in its entirety, and learn what it really says, before you go around quoting it."

But Romero's lecturing was for his satisfaction alone. Had the callers actually been sitting there in the passenger's seat next to him, he wouldn't have had the heart to refute their un-Scriptural version of Christianity. For most, it was the only glue that held their lives together. Without it, they probably would self-destruct. Besides, who was he to say that they were wrong? Maybe there were Scriptures yet undiscovered or purposely hidden that would substantiate their gut convictions. And even it there weren't any, maybe their gut convictions made more moral sense than the stories of the men who had penned the scriptures served up as the word of God.

Tired of blaspheming, he turned the radio dial from the Christian talk show to a worldly country music station. Between lengthy servings of rapid-fire commercials, the DJ played a song about an unemployed young couple in the throes of a nasty divorce; another one about a woman working two jobs because her no-good husband had left her and their three young children for a honky-tonk tramp; and a third about a waitress and a truck driver who had met one evening in a roadside café, and from there gone to a motel to consummate their chance encounter; but come dawn the waitress stole out of the motel, leaving the truck driver with nothing but an empty six-pack. As a high school student in rural Florida, Romero had learned to appreciate American country music. Those no-bullshit songs about the nitty-gritty of life were the kind he enjoyed listening to, especially now that he had divested himself of all illusions.

On the way back home Romero slowed down for a panel truck pulling into a gas station. The truck's rear bumper bore a sticker that read: "Honk if you love Jesus," and his thoughts again turned to the Bible. Which Jesus did the driver of the truck love? The liberating, forgiving, anticlerical Jesus of the Gospels, or the theocratic, judgmental Jesus of Paul's Epistles?

Romero had always been troubled by the stark disconnect between the Gospels and the parts of the New Testament penned by Paul. He recalled an annotation he once had made on the back leaf of a Bible-study booklet on Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "This contradicts everything that Jesus taught in the Gospels. He clearly did not intend to create a church. The Kingdom of God, he said, was 'within you'--Luke 17:21. So you don't need intermediaries to show you the way to Heaven. All you needed to do is believe in him. His apostles were not professional priests or theologians. Their mission was to spread his Gospel, not by preaching, but by example: 'Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven(Matthew 5:16). Preaching was the Son of Man's job alone, and he had already done all the preaching that was necessary. As described by those who knew him personally, his ministry was largely a condemnation of the organized religion of his time. When he died on the cross, the curtain to the Holies of Holies, the exclusive domain of the high priest, was rent--(Matthew 27:51."

"Now here enter the tentmaker from Tarsus, claiming to have been visited in a vision and ordained by Christ to speak on his behalf, then rebuking the true apostle Peter, preaching out both sides of his mouth, one side praising Christ while the other refuting and confounding his simple message, elliptically telling the faithful that they were spiritually unqualified to comprehend its mysteries, denouncing intellectual curiosity, fomenting guilt, casting us all as born sinners so he could save us, fabricating a new church; in effect, resurrecting the priesthood, restoring the Holy of Holies and thereby laying the foundation for the collective fanaticism that gave rise the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem witch hunts and other crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of a loving Christ."

The recollection of the tent maker's duplicitous rhetoric was causing Romero to speed up and start ranting again. But he checked himself and, glancing at the truck with the "Honk if You Love Jesus" bumper sticker, now pulling up to a gas pump, he calmly resumed his theological musing.

"In 1 John, the writer, like Peter, an apostle who had known Jesus personally, alludes to a rift that had developed among believers and to the existence of an Anti-Christ that 'is now already in the world' distorting the teachings of Christ. And in Revelation 19:20 the same writer depicts him as a false prophet condemned to be destroyed and cast into the fires of Hell."

Suddenly, as in a counter epiphany to Paul's, it occurred to Romero that this Anti-Christ was none other than Paul himself. "What better way for the Anti-Christ to insinuate himself than by becoming a writer of the New Testament? What better way to keep the faithful duped and disoriented for two millennia?"

But then the epiphany ceded to common sense: "On second thought, Paul may have been right after all. At the gut level, the mass of humankind prefers the security of a well-organized group, however despotic, to the risks inherent in personal freedom—the herd instinct. Maybe by recasting Christ as a leader rather than a liberator the tentmaker from Tarsus saved Christianity from extinction—as I saved that cat from ending up a bloody smear on the asphalt."

Felipe Romero wasn't sure which Jesus the driver of the truck with the "Honk if You Love Jesus" bumper sticker worshipped, but he honked anyway.