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Right Lane, Wrong Way

2014-06-11T02:09:00.004-04:00

I consider myself a good driver. You may not, but I wasn't really asking.

At least I consider myself a good driver when nobody's in the car with me. For some reason, the moment a passenger steps in the car, I suddenly rely on them for direction and I end up getting flustered and confused without much effort. I don't know why this happens, but it does. If nobody is in the car with me, I do fine. I just go along, follow directions, and I get where I'm going.

I'm going to tell two stories real quick, and, as the best stories often do, they involve road trips.

First, let me tell you the story of our romp in Dallas. My friends and I had gone to Shreveport to see Georgia play Texas A&M for the Independence Bowl (Dawgs won), but we got there a couple days early and decided to keep on moving down the road because...surprise...there's nothing to do in Shreveport except gamble and eat casino buffet food (which is fantastic).

So we're in Dallas driving around and we have no idea where we're going or why we're going there. Keep in mind, this was after we were nearly murdered at Dealey Plaza (things I have in common with JFK...sorta). So we're driving and, long story short, I end up accidentally turning into the wrong lane of traffic. I had somehow mistakenly turned one road early on a turn lane and ended up in the wrong lane. I still have no idea how that happened, to be honest. It was a scary couple of seconds, but we got back in the right lane of a divided highway no problem. I know Rylan, Andrew and Todd are still glad to be alive after that one.

My next story also involves Todd (although similar versions of this have happened with just about everyone I've driven around). We were on our way to see Garth Brooks in Nashville when we come up to a road where I'm not sure which direction I need to be going. Well Todd is holding the GPS, so he's supposed to be directing me. I ask him, "Which direction do I go?"

He says, "Go right."

I say again, "Todd. Which direction do I go! They're both right!"

He says again, "Go right!"

By this point, I'm furious and confused, just like any time someone gave me clothes at Christmas when I was a kid. I eventually grab the GPS out of Todd's hand and discover that I want to take the North exit for the interstate, not the South one, which was the question I needed answered in the first place...Todd. I would also be remiss if I didn't admit that Dana and Rylan were in the car with me for this trip, too, and can attest to the absurdity of that moment.

It gets worse, though. About a week or so later, a few of us are driving around in Memphis to see Georgia play UCF in the Liberty Bowl (I don't want to talk about it). This time, for whatever stupid reason, Todd was once again directing me where to go. Once again, we had the same absurd exchange. Once again, Andrew was witness to my frustrated driving. Sorry.

The reason I throw Todd under the bus is this. It was very clear very quick that I was in the wrong lane of traffic. I mean, it was painfully obvious. It's not normal to look ahead at a red light and see cars staring you down in the same lane, or at least it isn't unless you've been visiting Little Britain.

Then again, had I made the wrong turn onto the interstate and taken the route north instead of the route south, it could have taken a while before I realized I was going the wrong way. I have actually driven the wrong direction more than once before getting a few miles down the road and realizing that I had made a mistake.

No question plagues the mind of Christian young adults and college students today more than, "What is God's will for my life?" If we're being honest, many not as young adults would probably agree that they still struggle with this question, though maybe they're no longer in a place spiritually or emotionally where they feel like it's really appropriate to ask such a question.

The answer to God's will for our lives has two parts. First, there's the path often described as the "straight and narrow." Observe:

Matthew 7:13-14 (NLT)

¹³You can enter God's Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to Hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. ¹⁴ But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

God clearly wants us to follow the road to life. God wants us to follow His commands and live according to His laws. While we may disagree on certain aspects of Scripture and what parts of the old and new covenant apply to us today, most of us who identify as Christians and actually intend to live by the Word of God have an idea of when we are following the wrong path. We can tell when we are living in a way that is contrary to God's love and His commands, right?

But we all know what people are really asking when they say, "What's God's will for my life?" Again, it first comes down to trusting in Christ and following Him, living by His commands and obeying His Word, but then it comes down to something more difficult to ascertain: what does God want me to do?

In that regard, the original question is a bit flawed. We put the onus back on God here by asking what He wants. Yes, it's good that we care about God's plan and that we seek out His will, but that's not what we really want. We want answers. We want God to just tell us what decisions to make.

Unfortunately, God gave us free will. The whole point is that we make our own decisions. Just like I blamed Todd for my near mistakes earlier simply because he was holding the GPS (which I still do blame you for), we put God in the potential blame seat. The real question we ought to be asking is "What should I do for you, God?" It's a subtle difference, but I thrive on subtle differences. When we ask what we should do for God, that puts the requirement back on us. Yes, we need God's leadership and guidance, but the responsibility to act is on us. The buck is back in our court, so to speak.

While it can be pretty obvious from a distance whether or not a decision is a good thing and keeps us on the "straight and narrow," it can be much less obvious when we are making good decisions but following the wrong path. Sometimes Christians make this mistake in dating and relationships. We think that just because someone is also a believer that it should work no matter what. I know a lot of great Christian women in this world, but I couldn't be married to most of them. To be even more specific, I could only be married to one of them: my wife. I love her, and she is a Christian, but there's more to our relationship than that one thing we share. While our faith is a vital point of agreement between us, that's not the only thing. She had to be the right woman, not just a good one. I had to be the right man, not just a good one.

We can do the same thing with our job or our college or any number of big or middle-sized decisions. We think that any move we make has to be the right move because we follow God. If it's not a sin, it's okay. As long as I'm not dealing drugs or selling children into third-world slavery, I'm doing okay. As long as I go to a Christian college as long as I'm working in ministry, I must be doing right.

It comes down to the difference between accuracy and correctness. Have you ever seen someone put a basketball through the wrong hoop during a game? I have, and it's both hilarious and depressing. They made an accurate shot, sure, but it was still wrong.

I have been in situations where I knew I was right where God wanted me and I was doing exactly what I should, and it was great. I have also been in situations where I was doing something that was morally good, but it wasn't really where God wanted me to be. How could I tell, you ask? Why, because that's kind of the premise of this post and it's taken me the better part of 1,000+ words to get there? Okay. Fine. I'll tell you.

But first, let me tell you what isn't the way to know. Some folks think that if they're happy, they must be in God's good graces. Some folks even think that if they see God moving and working, they must be where they're supposed to be. Now some people may take umbrage with what I'm about to say, but I still believe it to be true. Just because you are happy, and just because you see God work in someone's life, that doesn't mean you're following the right path.

After all, didn't God even use Jonah's storm to show His power to a group of sailors who eventually proclaimed Him as the one, true God? Clearly Jonah was going the wrong direction. He was intentionally going opposite the direction that God had called him to, yet God used that experience for His glory.

Just because we see God move in a situation, that doesn't always make it the right place for us to be. That just means that God won't waste our mistakes. Rather, He will still find a way to use them, even if the benefit is not what it could be with our full obedience.

Happiness isn't really enough of an indicator, either. After all, I'm sure folks on the Titanic were having a grand old time right up until they hit an iceberg.

No, what really tells us whether or not we are following God's designated path for our lives is peace. When we are living in full compliance with the life that God has prepared us for, both morally and directionally, there is peace.

Philippians 4:6-7 (NLT)

⁶Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. ⁷ Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

God's peace is the greatest indicator that we're following in the path that He has laid before us. If we are living without that peace, then we are probably either violating God's moral commands for the Christian life or we are following a path that is not what He made us for. God is the only perfect craftsman, and He made each and every one of us for a specific purpose. When we are fulfilling that purpose, we will know His peace.

Now that doesn't mean that everything wrong in life happens because we are outside of God's will. No. Not at all. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Sometimes, God will prepare us for the struggles in life through the path He has planned for us. Just as happiness and seeing God move are not automatically valid indicators that we are following God's plan, pain and suffering are not necessarily signs that we are living outside of God's will.

At the same time, God's path for us is rarely static. Instead, He has laid before most of us a fluid, dynamic path that will see shifts and changes in direction over time. A certain activity could be right for us one day and wrong the next, and God will let us know that. If we lose that peace, it may be God's way of alerting us to a bend in the road. We need to change direction to keep following the right road.

The truth is, God's will is complicated. If we could understand it, we would be God. The best we can do is follow the steps and listen for God's voice to deliver us in the right direction. His peace will guide us in the way that we should go, and it will surely do a far sight better than Todd.

Thanks, Todd.

BONUS THOUGHT:

I feel like this post would be incomplete without the addition of one more key passage. I had been debating on how exactly to include this piece of scripture, but I knew that it needed to be included one way or another. Essentially, it comes to this. For all of my long-windedness, God's Word pretty well sums up the idea of following God's path in just a few words; a few simple words (Go Dawgs...sorry; force of habit). In order to follow the path God has for us, we just have to...follow the path God has for us.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT)

⁵Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
⁶ Seek his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take.

Well. Maybe next time I'll lead with that.

Turn on the Lights

2014-01-30T04:02:00.002-05:00

An older gentleman got out of bed one night to use the restroom. He almost forgot, but he put on his glasses so he could see.

As he stepped out of bed, he bumped his knee into the night stand and let out a bit of a whimpering yell as not to wake his sleeping wife. A few steps later, the elderly man stepped on the dog's tale and caused it to bark and nip at the man's foot, nearly knocking him over. He finally got to the door to enter the hall, but he fumbled around for the doorknob and created a scratching ruckus loud enough to wake his wife.

"What are you doing, Edgar?" (His name is Edgar. I probably should have mentioned that sooner.)

"I'm going to the bathroom, but I can't find the door," Edgar responded. His name is Edgar. Did I tell you that?

"Well...have you got on your glasses?" Myrtle asked. Her name is Myrtle, but you don't really need to know that.

"Yes, of course I've got my glasses, Tabitha," he answered. I forgot. Her name is actually Tabitha.

"Is the doorknob still there, Edgar?" Myrtle came back.

"Yes, I'm sure the doorknob is still there. Where else would it be?" an impatient Edgar snapped.

"Did you bother to turn the light on?"

I wear glasses. Many people wear glasses. Those who are insecure enough in their appearance wear contact lenses or go around blind. Glasses are great for making your vision clearer and letting you see better either at a distance or closer up. That's fantastic, I think. You know what else glasses are great for? Making a fashion statement, which you wouldn't know if you wear contacts or had wimp laser surgery done.

The point I'm getting at, though, is that glasses can do some things well and others not so much. Unless your glasses are of the night-vision variety, they will not help you see in the dark. That's just not something that normal eyeglasses can do. For that, it's best that you just turn on the lights.

Edgar had forgotten that crucial step, and he ended up causing some problems. A lot of us have the same problem when it comes to our spiritual lives. We're real clear on what we think of Jesus, but we don't really have Jesus.

It's great that you spend time in the Bible reading about Jesus. That's fantastic. It's wonderful that you read message boards and supporting materials to see what people have to say about Christ and our relationship with God. Cool! Do that. I love it that you want to have deep, religious conversations with people and pick their brains about who Jesus is to them and what He means when he says this or that. Good! But y'all...there is so much more than that.

When we take care of the intellectual aspects of religion, we're putting on glasses in the dark. It makes the picture clearer, sure, but you still can't really see the picture, can you, because it's still shrouded in darkness. There's no such thing as a saving knowledge.

Don't misunderstand me. Our knowledge of Christ and our Biblical IQ can lead to a saving faith, sure, but that intellect alone will never be enough. You're just seeing the dark more clearly.

John 5:39 (NLT)

"You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to Me!

It is great if people want to know who Jesus is and what He did, but knowing is just half the battle. It all comes down to faith, and faith is far more active than knowledge. Faith requires sacrifice. And action. And doing stuff. Which is action.

But before I get to action, let's talk about those Scriptures I referenced up there...with Scriptures. (Cue Inception button) I fully believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that we should take it at it's Word. If we do not, we are essentially calling God a liar, in my opinion.

I've heard people say that they admire the teachings of Christ but they do not see Him as God. Some people go so far as to say that perhaps there is a grand conspiracy that Jesus' political followers made him out to be more than He said He was later on so that their movement would gain traction.

Interesting theory, really. However, it has a few flaws. The primary flaw is this. If you say that you like what Jesus said and you like his political movement, but not the statements about Him being God, then how can you trust the political statements in the Bible? How do you know they're really what God said?

That is why we have to ask ourselves if we trust the Bible's claims of God fully or not. If we do not, then we have no business claiming Christ in any way, shape or form, whether religiously or politically. If we do, then we must take Him at His full Word. Fully.

The reason I branch off into this tangent is because if we are going to approach the idea of Faith in God through intellectual knowledge about God, then we have to understand what exactly that intellectual knowledge of God indicates. If our knowledge of God is flawed, then our Faith will never be fully realized. Again, consider the story of Edgar and Mary. Or Maybelle. Whatever her name was. You have buttons. Scroll up and read it again. Seriously, that story couldn't take you more than thirty-seconds to read. I'll wait.

So consider the story of Ed and Willamena once more. Had he turned on the lights, but not put on his glasses, his vision would still be obscured. Now we know that our knowledge of Christ will never be complete in this life, but that doesn't mean we should not strive to know God more, and if the light is on, then the picture really will become clearer the more we know of Jesus Christ and who He is.

When you pair the two together, knowledge and faith, you get a brilliant picture of who God is, and that is an image that nobody should half experience.

The story that John 5 tells is one that is common in the gospels. Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders of the day, very intelligent men, just after performing a great many miracles. These guys don't like Jesus very much, and He rebukes them for it. Go read John 5 and see how Jesus talks to them. He says that Moses will judge them because Moses wrote about Jesus long before any of these things had happened, but they would not believe. They had no faith in Jesus.

Let's jump ahead, though. Look to John 18, specifically v. 10-11. While Jesus is being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Simon Peter cuts off a dude's ear with a sword. I'm not sure if that's the worst aim ever or the best aim ever, because it can't be easy to cut off an ear, but he was probably aiming for the middle of this guy's head. So...yeah.

Anyway, look at what Jesus says to Simon Peter. He tells Simon Peter that He must go do what He is supposed to do. Jesus tells Peter that these things must happen. Peter didn't know what Jesus was going to do. Peter lacked knowledge, but man, did he have some faith, or what? Not necessarily the right faith, maybe, but his love and his passion for Christ was so great that he was willing to attack a servant of the high priest. That's pretty serious, y'all.

So that's what happens when we pair faith and belief with ignorance. We get action without direction and results. We get action without compassion. I think that right there describes so much of what the Christian culture is about these days: we act without concern for consequences. We're chopping off ears left and right because we're trying to defend Christ.

Had Peter known what the purpose of this arrest would ultimately be, I doubt he would have been so eager to chop off a man's ear. Or head. Either way. But Peter had no idear. (Ha. I didn't even mean to type that, but I did, and now I'm leaving it because I like puns.)

To review: knowledge without faith is darkness, but faith without knowledge is dangerous. When we do not know and understand Christ's capacity for love, we act without thinking or loving people. We fail to realize just how much God loves people, even those who do not know Him. Yes, we are absolutely called to minister to the lost and share Christ's message with them, but we cannot do so at the cost of everything we're working for. If we chop off people's ears, how will they hear that God truly loves them?

So what happens when faith and knowledge come together? Stephen.

Go read Acts 7. In Acts 7, Stephen becomes "the first martyr." More importantly, he schools the Sanhedrin. He recounts their entire history and their religion, but he does so while proclaiming Christ. He knows that this will get him killed most likely, but Stephen has the faith to follow Christ's calling to the end. Stephen uses the knowledge he has of Christ and the Jewish faith to spread the Word.

"I don't think God's going to call me to share the gospel with the Sanhedrin, Adam." Yeah. You're probably right. I think they've disbanded by now (speaking of which...did you hear about Motley Crue?), but that doesn't mean you can't put your knowledge and faith to action. I have a hard time believing that Stephen's first time speaking up was in front of those guys. Oh. That's right. He was there specifically because he had been caught sharing with people about Jesus, along with a little good'ol fashioned courtroom lying.

When our faith and our knowledge of Christ come together, we can do incredible things. Not just for others, but also for ourselves. Like I said, I want you to read your Bible. I want you to be in the Word. Great! Do those things. But do them with the light of Jesus guiding your reading. Do them with the knowledge of Christ guiding you closer to Him.

Please. Turn on the Light. If you do, people will see it.

Also, put your glasses on. Don't step on the poor dog's tail.

"Someone Always Has It Worse Off..."

2013-05-16T02:24:00.001-04:00

If there is one phrase that is the worst, most overused phrase in the English language, second only to "If there is one..." whatever, it's this: "Someone always has it worse off than you."

There are a couple of reasons I hate this phrase. First, it's literally impossible. I know there are a lot of people in the world, let's say 7 billion and one. That would mean that there is one person who, at that moment in time, has it worse off than 7 billion others. Aside from a land-swell of pity I feel for that guy or gal, because they must be having a really bad day, we must admit that there is a lowest of the lows. There just has to be. "But Adam! It's just a figure of speech. You can't take it literally." Bullcrap. If I can't take it literally, then don't say it. Because if you know me, you know I'm going to take it literally.

The second reason I hate this phrase, though, is a little more important. There are few things you can tell someone that sound more selfish and heartless than this throw-away phrase. You may think it's offering someone perspective on how other people are in pain, but what you're really doing is telling someone that their pain is less important than someone else's. And worse, you're giving them the idea that you really don't care to talk about the pain they're feeling because "someone else has it worse, so I should really go listen to that person instead of you with your silly little problems."

Yes, we should always maintain perspective when we're hurting, but that doesn't mean that our pain is any less real. If I kicked you in the leg and then chopped off your friend's arm, I'd go to jail. But before that, what if I said to you, "Hey. At least I didn't chop off your arm." Wouldn't you still be hurting? Would your leg be any less swollen? No. That still happened. Your pain is still real. Yes, your friend is worse off, but you're still hurting, too. And it isn't right for anyone to deny you the care you need to heal that hurt.

True, I'm making a lot of bold comparisons and outlandish statements, but there's a great truth here that we need to understand as a culture. People are hurting. And as the church, we need to understand that people are hurting. There's a country song out there called "Merry Go Round." If you haven't heard it, yet, I suggest you go take a listen right now. This next sentence can wait. If you have heard it, remember that line in the 1st verse, I guess you'd call it the second stanza? Let me relay it here:

And it don't matter if you don't believe
Come Sunday morning, you best be
There in the front row like you're supposed to,
Same hurt in every heart,
Same trailer, different park.

That's some tough music and lyrics to deal with. Do you see that? This song is talking about people seeking out help, sitting through church no matter what, just because they're in pain. Sure, they may be in the right place, but it isn't working. Why is that?

Some people would tell you that the reason the church isn't good at consoling hurting hearts is because we like to act like we've got it all together and nothing's wrong. I think their may be some truth to that, but it must go deeper. That can't be all that's wrong. I think the reason we're not good at consoling hurting hearts is because we don't act like their pain is real. Or like it matters. In this generation of Christians, we've gotten really good at looking at war-torn nations and third-world countries and seeing how we can help them. And I commend that. But we can't look to them and see their problems and start ignoring the hurt in the guy sitting next to us at dinner.

But what if we think someone's pain is...well...stupid? We've all seen Apollo 13. We all remember that scene where Tom Hank's daughter freaks out because the Beatles are breaking up, and she doesn't even realize that her mother is freaking out because her husband is about to ride a tin-can into space on the back of a giant explosion. Sure, we can look at that and say that her reaction is a little ridiculous in the face of her circumstances, but it was real pain to her. That girl was a wreck because four mop-headed tea-drinkers weren't going to be making music anymore. It's stupid, though! Sure, the Beatles are great, but that doesn't merit her reaction at all. But would she listen? No. She was hurting, and she wanted to deal with that hurt, not have someone tell her it was pointless and short-sighted.

Let me offer you a seemingly irrelevant piece of trivia that will prove essentially revealing in about ten seconds. What is the shortest verse in the Bible? Anyone know? Yes, you sir with your hand up! It's John 11:35, "He wept," or "Jesus wept," in heathen translations that don't love God. (I will admit, my own favored NLT goes so far as to translate it as "Then Jesus wept." AH! Blasphemy!) So what was Jesus crying about?

If you know the story, you remember that Jesus had just learned that His friend Lazarus was dead. That's understandable, isn't it? Jesus' close friend, probably his closest friend who was not one of the 12, is now dead. I wouldn't blame Jesus or anyone else for crying...

Until we examine things a little more closely. Jesus is the son of God, right? So He should know that Lazarus is in a better place. He should know that Lazarus is now with the Father in Heaven and is infinitely more joyful now than he was when alive. So Jesus shouldn't be crying. Jesus also knows that He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. After all, the whole reason Jesus didn't come to see Lazarus sooner is because He wanted to let Lazarus die so that the Father's glory and power could be revealed through Lazarus' resurrection. So Jesus shouldn't be crying.

Should someone have given Jesus a stern warning about how unspiritual He was being? Or should someone have reminded Jesus why He was there? No. Of course not. Especially because Jesus wasn't crying at Lazarus' death. Let's take a closer look at what is really happening here:

John 11:30-38 (NLT)

Jesus had stayed outside the village, at the place where Martha met him. When the people who were at the house consoling Mary saw her leave so hastily, they assumed she was going to Lazarus’s grave to weep. So they followed her there. When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.
They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”
Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance.

Why was Jesus crying, then? He wasn't sad because of Lazarus' death, so why was He upset? Jesus was upset because He saw that someone He loved was in pain. Read that second paragraph again, verse 34, "When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him..." Jesus was not upset because of His own pain or sadness. Jesus was upset at the pain He saw someone else going through. Jesus was upset because one of His children was upset. The Bible tells us that Jesus was angry because of their pain. It drove Jesus to anger that someone He cared about was having to go through this situation.

Now Jesus has an eternal view of all things. He knew that Lazarus' death was all part of God's glorious plan, and He even knew that it would all work out for the best. But did He give Mary and Martha a stern talking to, or did He give them a sermon about how things will get better, or worse, did he tell them that, "Someone else has it worse off than you?" No, Jesus did not. He knelt down and endured that pain with them. If Jesus is moved by someone else's pain, how much more should we be?
To Jesus, this situation was pretty silly. He knew that Lazarus was but minutes away from being alive again. And even if Lazarus had stayed dead, Jesus had an eternal view of the situation. He knew that Lazarus was with the Father and was probably better off dead. To Jesus, Mary and Martha probably looked a little bit like that girl crying over the Beatles. There were more pressing matters at hand, and they should've just pulled it together and had faith in Jesus, right? But Jesus didn't condescend to them. He didn't treat their pain like it was stupid. He loved them. And He consoled them. And He empathized with them. Jesus cared for them, no matter how silly their pain looked to Him.

Now I'm a sucker for a sob story. I really am. If someone comes to me in pain, I crumble. I'm not quite a sympathetic cryer, but I hate to see people in pain. For me, it takes something pretty silly for me to want to tell somebody that their pain is pointless. For some of you, though, you probably won't stop for anything less than a life-threatening injury. We all have a different threshold of empathy. Where our threshold is just doesn't matter. What matters is that when people are in pain, we don't have to understand or agree with what they're crying about. We just need to find a way to be there for them. The worst thing you can do for someone in pain is to tell them that what they're feeling is wrong, or that it doesn't matter. The best thing you can do for them is offer them a shoulder to cry on.

But what do we do if someone really is dealing with something that is kinda silly? You folks know that I am a huge Georgia fan. If you cut me, I bleed red and black. Well, mostly red, but just go with it, okay? So this past December, when we came within a few yards of playing for the NCAA Football National Championship, I almost wept. It was a tough few days for the Bulldog Nation. I still can't really talk about that game without getting angry or borderline depressive. But these are the times when we have to ask ourselves if someone's pain is worth feeling? Alabama fans didn't really care, they were ecstatic, and they should've been. Tech fans were pretty jubilant about it, too. And so were a whole slew of other fanbases. They probably thought it was funny. And you know what, in the grand scheme of my life, I know it doesn't really matter. That doesn't make it any less real. That doesn't make it any less upsetting.

What it really comes down to is this. We don't have to agree with why someone is upset. We don't have to agree that it really matters. What we do need to understand, though, is that if someone is important to us, then their pain should be important to us. The subject of it may not important to us, but their pain should be. Their may come a point where we have to lightly encourage them to move on and outgrow that pain, because few things can be worse than wallowing in a long-forgotten injury, but that should never be our first inclination. Our first thought should always be to empathize with someone and make sure we treat them and their pain like they're important to us. Because they are important to us.

So let it be known that if you ever tell me "Someone else always has it worse off," that someone will very likely be you.

And if your favorite band ever breaks up or your favorite TV show gets cancelled, I'm here for you. For a little while.
Adam W. Wynn

Author's Note: Adam Wynn is the author of the mildly unknown internet novel "Will Baker is Dead," and is currently preparing to marry the love of his life, Ivey Nash. If you have any problems with that, do not come to the wedding and expect to hear "If anyone has reason these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your piece," because we're cutting that part out. He enjoys writing and speaking and teaching children about Jesus on the weekends.

The Prodigal Son's Older Brother and The Ray Lewis Dilemma

2013-02-06T17:55:00.001-05:00

As I've said before, most of us imagine ourselves to be the protagonists of our own epic story, when the truth is that we might just be the antagonist in someone else's. Or, if we're lucky, we get to be the comic relief. Either way, we often have a very self-centered view of the world. Not in a selfish sort of way, just in a way that means everything we see or hear or experience revolves around us. See? Totally not selfish.

So this week I've been preparing a lesson for our children's church this Sunday (shameless plug - bring your K-5 kids to Mars Hill Baptist in the Athens/Watkinsville area at 10:30am!) on "The Prodigal Son." You see, we're spending the first three weeks of February talking about some of the small holidays we celebrate in the month of February, and how they can be connected to the Bible. Some of them are admittedly a bit of a stretch, like comparing the story of Lazarus to Groundhog Day (yes, I'm brilliant), but this week we'll talk about God's love for us and how that's evident through the story of the Prodigal Son.

If you're not familiar with this story, I'll let you take a minute to read up on it in Luke 15:11-32.

[INSERT JEOPARDY! MUSIC]

Done? Good. Now let me summarize what you just read. The story of the Prodigal Son is a parable Jesus told. In fact, it's the third parable in a series of three (not a trilogy, though, George Lucas didn't do this one) about lost things being found. There was a missing coin, and a missing sheep, but also a missing son. More accurately, a runaway son. The younger of two brothers asked for his share of the inheritance, essentially telling his father "I wish you were dead," and went off into the world. He spent his money on wild living and whatever similar nonsense, and wound up broke and in the dumps. Quite literally. He was feeding pigs.

He eventually got so desperate that he crawled back to his father. The boy had a script he was going to follow, down to the letter, begging his father to take his son back on as a hired hand so that he could eat something better than what pigs ate. But you know what his father did? Well of course you do, because you just got done reading this story! But let me tell you anyway. He said, "Forget that! You're my son! We're gonna have the biggest party this town's ever seen, because you're back!" (Adam Wynn Translation, AWT)

It wasn't exactly a hard decision for this father to make, either. The story goes that the father saw his son coming from a long way off. That means he was looking for him, waiting for him to return. The father was so excited that his son was back that he never dreamed of treating his son anything other than an honored member of the family.

But not everyone was so excited. There was one character who took great insult at this younger son's return, and that was his very own hermano. That's spanish for brother. That's right, the older brother was enraged when he came back to the casa (in my version, apparently this family is Hispanic) to find that their father had killed the fattened calf and started a real party (or fiesta, for those of you worried about continuity). It was clearly a big deal to this older brother. So much so that he whines like a little girl about it to his father. Look what he says here in verse 29-30:

Luke 15:29-30 (NLT)
"All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!"

His father's response is priceless, though. He can't understand why this man is so upset that this younger brother has returned. He just looks at him and says:

Luke 15:31-32 (NLT)
“His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”

That's a pretty good reason to celebrate! They assumed he was dead, they assumed this son of his was long gone, but he was finally back! He was alive!

The same is true when we come to Christ in a broken, humbled spirit. He forgives us and he lets us in to the family. That's a reason to celebrate!

So now on to the dilemma I so not-subtlely alluded to in my title. I, like probably 60+ million Americans, watched the Super Bowl this past weekend. It was a boring start, an interesting half-time, and then a power outage. After the power outage, it looked like the down and out 49ers were going to come back and make a miracle run at it...but fell short. So yes, the thing that most of us Atlanta folks had hoped wouldn't happen happened. The Baltimore Ravens and renowned-but-not-convicted murderer Ray Lewis won his final game in the NFL, the Super Bowl.

And of course, the first thing he said when given the microphone was "If God is for us, who can be against us!" My first thought, of course, was, "So it was God who got you off the hook for that murder rap?" Followed by a couple groans of, "Please shut up, Murderer!"

As you can imagine, I don't much care for Ray Lewis. I remember the trial. I remember the fervor over the deaths of two men in Atlanta, possibly at the hands of Ray Lewis. And I was bitter. I was angry. I kept thinking, "Where is the justice that a man like this can be involved in the deaths of two people and still go on to win the Super Bowl?" It doesn't seem right, you know?

And that brings me to today. You know, most of us like to picture ourselves the protagonist in our own story. That means when we read the story of the Prodigal Son, we like to think of ourselves as the reformed younger son, the one who returns from his wild living to sit at the father's feet. Sure, it's not perfect, but we can't be the father, because that's God, and we don't want to be the curmudgeonly older brother, because he's a jerk. But I started to realize. When it comes to this Ray Lewis debacle, aren't I kinda acting like the older brother? Am I not acting like the one who has all the answers and acted like he never received forgiveness for anything ever? Am I not thinking, "Why him, God? Why not me? Or at least someone a little more virtuous?" The truth is, I don't know Ray Lewis' heart. Only God does.

If you want my personal opinion, I think Ray Lewis is fake. I think he's using the Gospel as a cloak to make him more palatable to people, hoping they'll forget about his prior issues. But you know what the beauty of grace is? My opinion means nothing. The only opinion that matters is what God thinks of Ray Lewis. And I will yield that there is every possibility that Ray Lewis is a changed man. I may not believe it, but I don't have to.

And the same goes for each of us. No one's opinion of me matters except that what God thinks of me. When He looks at me, He sees a man saved by grace, covered by His Son. That's it. He doesn't see my past, he doesn't see my future mistakes. He just sees a soul saved by grace. So even when I start acting like the "older brother" I can sometimes be, God doesn't see that. He forgives it, and He moves on, and He loves me anyway, just like the forgiving Father He is.

If Ray Lewis is fake, then him and God are going to have a not-so-pleasant conversation one day. But. If he's not? Then Heaven celebrates for him, just like it did for me, and for anyone who calls on the name of Christ. I honestly don't know if I can ever get beyond what he did. It's something I'll probably hold a grudge for in the back of my mind for years to come, any time that someone mentions the career of the "Great Ray Lewis."

But it doesn't matter.

To quote the ever incredible Relient K, "the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair." I always tell myself that if he would just come out and admit to what he did, or if he would just talk about it to the media and give us a clearer picture, maybe I'd forgive him. But he doesn't have to. It doesn't change anything. Do I have to go to the media and talk about all of my past mistakes? I mean, not that they would really care, but seriously? What does it change? If he's for real, then God accepts him and forgives him. And that's good enough for me.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Adam Wynn is a fan of most Georgia sports teams, and as a result was very bitter about this year's Super Bowl all around. When he's not crying due to his unfortunate lot in life to be a fan of teams that will always come so close and yet never win a title, he is the Children's Ministry Coordinator at Mars Hill Baptist Church in Watkinsville, GA and a Part-Time Campus Minister at the Baptist Collegiate Ministries for both the University of Georgia and the University of North Georgia - Oconee. That's a long couple of titles. He is also engaged to the beautiful and intelligent Ivey Nash, the smartest nurse in Rome, GA. He is also the author of the internet sensation Will Baker is Dead. If you've never heard of it...well, that's okay. It really isn't that big of a sensation yet, anyway. He is also currently working on other writing projects that are due out sometime later than today. If you're into that whole social media scene, you can find Adam on Twitter (@42Cobras...go figure) or on Facebook (you don't need help with that one, too, do you?). Adam also has published a short story "Have Souls, Will Travel," available for $1.99 from Amazon for Kindle. He appreciates your business and your readership, but mostly, he appreciates it if you brush your teeth before talking to him, given his low tolerance for bad breath.

Wonka Was Right

2011-09-05T03:53:00.002-04:00

Remember how in the original Willy Wonka movie he kept saying, "So much time so little to do! Strike that. Reverse it?"
Well if not...he totally did.
People (and preachers) usually like to say that, "We have so little time on this earth, so we should make every moment count!" I gotta be honest with y'all. When we really think about it, this is kinda wrong. Sure, we have a ridiculously small time on earth...when you compare it to eternity! But when we consider just plain averages, we see that we're doing pretty good. The life expectancy for people in America is something like 150 years [citation needed]. We have quite a bit of time to do whatever we want with it. If that weren't true, then why do you think we have 300 tv channels with 24 hours of crap programming just to fill our boring lives, especially when you consider that half of these shows are made up of watching other people's boring lives?
We have an insane amount of time. Not that we're promised all of it, mind you, but if all of us just live to the average life expectancy, we can expect to lead long and (questionably) fulfilling lives. The problem seems to be, however, that we have so much time and little to do! (See, told you he was right) So some people go to work. I guess they've gotten used to eating. And so have their kids. Some people go to school so they can learn and then one day go to work. At this point, most of them aren't all that used to eating quite yet. Some people meditate. Others just watch wrestling and women's football (yes, it's a thing). So many options!
Now let me ask you a question. When you were a kid and you wanted to go stay over at your friend's house for the night, how did you ask your parents? Let me take a guess, here. I'll bet 9/10 (conservative estimate) of you would have said, "Mom? Dad? Can I go spend the night at Jenny's?" If you were a little boy, this question probably got a no. If you were 15, it probably got you grounded. And what did you do this weekend? "I spent this weekend watching football?" If you had one day left to live, what would you do? "I'd spend time with the people I love...and write an angry letter to CBS for cancelling 'The Unit' in the fourth season."
We have this concept that "spending time" is how we're supposed to look at our lives. I had a Sunday School teacher once ask us how we would spend $86,400 in a single day if we had to, and there was no saving allowed. The general conceit of the question was that there are 86,400 seconds in a day and that we should plan to spend them all wisely. It was a great question and provided some real thought, but there's that nagging concept again. That we should spend our time like a thing we're given and just have to throw away on junk food and bad movies (which is exactly how I like to spend my Saturday nights, oddly enough).
In Ephesians 5, the same chapter responsible for bringing us the question, "What's the wise thing to do?" we see someone offer a slightly different concept of time. Of our time.

Ephesians 5:15-16 (NKJV)

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, for the days are evil.

What's this? We have to...redeem...the time? We can't just spend it? There's this natural conflict at work between redeeming and spending. If I give you $500, you can just go off and do whatever you want with it. Sounds nice, right? But what if I give you a ticket good for $500 no questions asked? You could just walk up to any bank and hand it to them. What's the difference here? Is the end result any different? Just what's the big idea?
If I give you $500 (and don't hold your breath), you've got all this money right there in your hand. Piece of cake. Just run off and spend it however you wish because it's good for anything. But if I give you a ticket worth $500 at a cash register, how much good does that do you? Can you give that ticket to your grocer and ask for change? No. You've gotta go and redeem that ticket first. What you've been given is inherently worthless. It means absolutely nothing until you get it redeemed. Until you take that meaningless paper and turn it into something of value.
That is the difference between how we view time and how scripture viewed time. How God views time. Some translations, the NLT for instance, translate this particular phrase "redeem the time" as "Make the most of every opportunity.." because that is what it truly means to redeem the time. It's like we've been given something that is inherently of no good to anyone. However, with that gift of time, we have the immense opportunity to make something beautiful. Something valuable. We can take what is given us and give it back to God, or the people around us, and even ourselves, as something that will actually be worthwhile. If you really want to know what a man is all about, give him 24 hours. Give him a day off to use however he sees fit. What he does with that time is perhaps the most telling indicator of what kind of man he is. You can tell what kinds of things are important to him and what people he sees worth being around. You can tell what kind of civic or social responsibility he feels. Does this man understand the value of time?
We have been given the chance to use our vast allotment of time in whatever manner we choose. Shall we spend it? Or shall we redeem it? We must take control of the hours and redeem them for noble and worthy purposes. We cannot squander the time we are given when there is still so much to be done and so many ways we can redeem our time that will improve this world and will glorify the Kingdom of God.
Now today is Labor Day, so feel free to spend it relaxing and preparing for a week of hard work. Watch some movies on TBS/Peachtree TV, they put good stuff on today. Grill out and eat some burgers. But as you rest up for the days to come, don't forget to redeem the time with family and loved ones around you. Consider how you might redeem the week ahead. Think of ways to redeem your time otherwise spent wasting away in languid boredom.
There is not a single day that comes with the promise of being worthwhile. We are given so much time on this Earth that every second we spend wondering what to do or not caring about what we do is another minute we could have redeemed making this world a better place, help the people around us, or just help ourselves to live better, more meaningful and useful lives. And when we really think about it, we're kind of fools to spend our time wasting such a magnificent gift that we've been blessed with.
And with every hour we've already spent on this earth, maybe it's time to redeem some.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Adam Wynn likes to spend his time making people think about words they probably don't fully comprehend, like "redeem." When he's not doing this, he works as an intern at the Baptist Collegiate Ministries at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. And other times he spends less time by typing abbreviations. He is the author of the wildly popular, as of yet unpublished novel, Will Baker is Dead. In case you weren't sure, it's about someone dying. He also has to keep his emotional complexes in check by reading nice comments from the blogosphere and shunning individuals who deign to question his literary and meta-literary (?) genius. You can follow him on Twitter (but not in real life) at @42Cobras or find him on Facebook (but not at work/home) as Adam Wynn, in case you happened to miss the obvious conclusion of such circumstances. His Alma Mater is the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs) in Athens, he is from Dacula, Georgia, and currently lives in Atlanta. He's also grown rather fond of Rome, GA and a lovely young lady who lives there (Ivey shout-out). If you want to buy his book, write your congressman and tell them to write their lawyers to write their literary agent friends they made fun of in law school and get them to represent it.

A Dream Worth Failing At

2011-08-18T01:53:00.001-04:00

"What would you strive to do if you knew you could not fail?"

That's easy. World domination.
I mean seriously. Why not? If you can't fail, go for it! After all, isn't that the dream at the heart of all man's accomplishments? To truly own the world? I think so. So yeah. If I couldn't fail, I would achieve world domination. Why? Because I can. What more do you need? Logic?
But here's the question. Why don't more people actually try this? It's been a while since anyone really put any effort into world domination, and I'm pretty sure they were a dirty, dirty communist (Gorbachev was a sneak). We used to see it all the time. From the Khans of Mongol fame to the Romans and Alexander the Great. Then in the modern era you saw men like Napoleon and Hitler and Stalin. We often consider these men horrible for what they did (and rightfully so), but you can't say they didn't go for it (or at least Napoleon, because I really don't want to heap any praise on Hitler or Stalin). So if the answer to this question is so obvious, why is it then that nobody really ever tries anymore?
The answer is quite simple, really, and we've already proven it above. What do we think of those three men who tried to dominate the world? We think of them as tyrants. As evil men. And for the most part, we only remember them for their drastic failure. Because when it comes to great feats such as world domination, failure is not just an option, but it is an option with near eternal consequences. If you fail at it, you tank. Napoleon is mostly remembered for "Waterloo." Hitler is remembered as the man who killed six million Jews and killed himself in a bunker to escape justice. Stalin...well, he tends to get off easy in history, but we'll just assume people mock him for dying of natural causes while only being the dictator of the largest country in the world (by area) and not the rest of it as a whole. They failed, and they are mocked for it.

But if they had succeeded! Imagine how these conversations would go these days. We could all be speaking French and enjoying great coffee or the world's finest pastries. Or we could all be speaking German and enjoying leiderhosen. Or...people would just say, "то был такой позор, что Сталин умер вскоре после завоевания мира, а невосходящие к бессмертию, как мы ожидали." (Just like that)

My point, you may ask? Here it is. That question that people like to tout as so inspirational? It's crap. It means nothing. Obviously, if you could not fail at whatever task you took to, you would take to the greatest undertaking possible. Obviously. The real question, I tell you, is what will you do knowing that failure is always looming? (And you can read it in English) Sure. World domination could be fun. However, I'm not gonna try it simply because I do not want to be hanged for treason. That thought does not appeal to me very much. It's not worth it. I will, however, keep trying other things. I am all about writing me some books. I am all about that. I know I may never reach my goal of being a published author (this doesn't count), but I am still going to try because even at the risk of utter failure, I could not tolerate myself knowing I did not try. This task, to me, is worth failing. It is worth taking a big fat "swing and a miss" if that is what is to become of me. And who knows? I might just succeed.

What do you find worth failing at? That is what I want you to ask yourself right now. What would you do anyway knowing that failure is the only possible outcome? What calling, or what cause, is noble enough that it would merit your life's sacrifice knowing that you would never fully succeed? Because this is what charities are. The world will always have its poor and its hungry. We will not end these things. As long as this world turns, there will always be death. And sickness. We cannot win that fight. Still, are these not great battles worth undertaking? Worth trying to fight? I think so.

It is easy for us to say that we would cure cancer or end child prostitution if we knew success was inevitable. Yet the real way to measure the mettle of a man or woman is to see if they are willing and able to fight this fight even though it will never end. Even if failure is the only way it will end, ultimately, they will take that mantle upon their own shoulders.

As Christians, we are tasked with delivering the Gospel to all corners of the world to all people. It is our calling to bring the people of this world to Christ. The problem is that we will fail. There are going to be people in this world who do not hear the call on their life. Scripture tells us this. It is a perpetually losing battle. There is no way that all people will come to a relationship in Christ. It doesn't mean that the ones who do are not worth it, however, that is not what I am saying. Any man or woman who comes to salvation through Jesus Christ is a cherished soul. But so to are the ones who never will, and that is what makes it tragic.

Now I don't want to completely take focus away from the personal aspect of all this with the global and the grand, but they are not so greatly separated. We all have personal goals that are likely to yield nothing but failure. Okay. Let's try to make it work. As citizens of this world, we have a responsibility to care for the impoverished and the hurting. Although we can never end their suffering on the whole, we must try to do what we can. As members of the body of Christ, we have our own impossible mission that is well worth the task. Accepting a challenge is easy when the outcome is certain success. It is by definition no longer a challenge. The hardest mantle to take on is the one we will never complete, but there is honor in the fight. There is pride in knowing that we have accepted the fight against failure, and we have deemed failure worth our efforts. I encourage you today to take on something that you may very well fail, but do so knowing that your trial is not wasted. The only failure which is unacceptable is the one we do not strive against.

Et si vos es curiosus, si sum vincere mundum, vos omnes latine loqui. Donecsollicitudin nunc.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Adam Wynn is the author of 42Cobras Publishing (what you just read) and the still sorta-kinda not finished internet novel Will Baker is Dead, originally published by 42Cobras Publishing (what you just read). When he is not out tackling the world's failures, Adam works as the intern at Georgia State University's very own Baptist Collegiate Ministries and he lives in a National Park. In case you were curious, this does not make him a Park Ranger, although he is still fighting the Park Services ruling on that matter. He is a two-time graduate of the University of Georgia with degrees in English and English Education, meaning you have no right to question his grammar or spelling or lifestyle. He speaks English gooder'n you and has the paper to prove it. Twice. He enjoys Braves Baseball, Georgia Football, and The Eton Wall Game, all while speaking in third person. You enjoy second person.

The Wisdom of Solomon (or his advisor)

2011-07-17T02:44:00.000-04:00

"It All Ends...7/15"

That's right folks. The night that many of us have waited for since the very first Harry Potter movie was even optioned has come. And passed (but we'll get to that later). On July 15th, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was released in theatres. It was the end of an era. If you're connected to anything resembling a social network like Facebook or Twitter (The verdict is still out on Google Plus...or + if you prefer), then you undoubtedly know what people's opinions of the franchise are. If you're a fan (read: most of you born between 1985 and 2002 with a few of the older generations), then you've probably welcomed this occurrence with lamenting joy, relishing every last frame on screen as a cherished lunch date with a close friend moving away. Sure you can e-mail them, call them, and revisit the memories, but there will never again be an encounter like this one. If you're a dirty, filthy muggle (if you don't get it...it means you), then you're probably glad it's all coming to an end. And you've probably been very vocal about this fact all over the Googleverse (the internet's new name a la Google's inevitable takeover).
Some people cried when it was over. Some people sat in silent disbelief, just realizing the inevitability that had never occurred to them prior. For me, it was a special moment. Not quite as special as when I finished reading the books, a whole month's work of reading and a life goal realized, but it was still special. I even managed to slip a finger up and whisper, softly under my breath, "Mischief managed," just like a truly devoted and mildly emotional fanboy.
It seems rare that we get to experience such a powerful conclusion all as one unified body. The fans of Harry Potter have all shared this journey from the beginning to the end, and though we have all realized our internalized feelings in a different way, we have all experienced this incredible and fitting conclusion (except for one annoying and unnecessary change right at the end, but that's another matter entirely) together.
And I think that makes it more powerful. Let's look at it this way. I can only think of three book series that I have read start to finish, those being Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and the Hunger Games series. Now these are all three fairly popular, but I only know a few other people that have read the last two with me (TLN, holla...again!). But since neither of the other two were as widely known as Harry Potter, the endings still seemed less permanent. They seemed less important. Now fans, don't get me wrong. I loved the conclusions of each (although the Percy Jackson series is far from over, really, since Riordan has started two more series, and Hunger Games will be getting the film treatment soon), but none of them seemed as powerful, just because it was much less of a shared experience.
And let's be honest here. That's part of where the power comes from. So many of us are experiencing this same conclusion that we have a very palpable understanding of what is happening. This is 10 years (or more) of our childhoods' gone. A fact that has been real and impending for so long is now invalid. There will be no more Harry Potter, aside from the rather fetishist realm of fan-fiction (which I do not encourage you to explore, folks).
It's times like this that make us really understand just how visceral and illuminating the end of things can be. And so often, we just let them pass by without a real commemoration. I mean, our lives aren't like movies, are they? How many of you graduated from high school or college just to see everything fade to black over a touching musical number by Matchbox 20 or Train? None of us. It just happened. Then we moved on. Some of us went to graduation parties. When I graduated from college (the first time), I just went to dinner with my family, took some pictures under the Arch (NOT ARCHES!), and went about rearranging the furniture in the East Campus apartment I would now have all to myself for summer classes (TLN-less, holla?). Sure, I thought about it, and I even performed a few symbolic gestures like the turning of the tassel and, again, walking under the Arch for the first time. But then life continued. It seemed like the next day really kept me from dwelling on the importance of the one before.
But is that a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, sure. Every day the sun sets. And every day, the sun rises. That's the way it is. We experience things like this all the time. But do we ever stop to really think about what it means? Or more importantly, do we ever stop to think about the end when we begin?
My mother has been a teacher or administrator in the Gwinnett County Public School system for over 30 years. Or should I say, "had been." This past week, she realized a dream her whole life time in the making. Her career, which includes no fewer than 10,000 people's lives directly, a Teacher of the Year acknowledgement for her time at Dacula Middle School, the creation of an entire department at the Middle School (even if it was careers and everyone hated it...sorry), and countless other honors and accolades and achievements, finally culminated in her well deserved retirement. I was with her on Thursday afternoon as we finished packing up 30 years of history and acquirement. I don't mean to embarrass the lady, but she cried a little. There were some special moments for her and for me. She told me stories of the past that were no doubt brought on by the things she packed away in undeserving corrugated cardboard. I can't imagine what this moment was like for her. Retirement of any kind is an important step, especially when it involves leaving a job that has been so fulfilling and rewarding for so long.
But I was the last one out her door. I jokingly commented at the time how I had accidentally taken her symbolic moment, but I felt bad about it. I couldn't help but think back to Mr. Feeney walking out the door on Boy Meets World all those years ago, with a dolorous and joyful, "Class dismissed." And I had taken that opportunity from her. In my mind, I pictured this moment as her walking out, turning out the lights, her silhouette turning back to admire the office that embodied her final position as an educator, and closing the door one last time. It was to be the symbolic moment of a lifetime. It was an action that she had performed hundreds, maybe thousands of times, with little or no thought. But this one last time, this was her symbolic moment.
My more regular and astute readers will remember an anecdote I shared from my student teaching experiences. I was sitting in Chad Mozley's room at Grayson High School during pre-planning for the second semester when another teacher came in. This lady had been Chad's mentor teacher during his student teaching, and she had also been his inspiration to become a teacher as she was his English teacher in HS. They had a beautiful relationship that I greatly envied and marveled at. This was, sadly, to be her last day at Grayson. She had been asked to retire and did so, leaving the school short one irreplaceable English teacher first thing January. On her last moment in Chad's room, she came to bring him some of her old things that he could have. Their final exchange as colleagues, which I was unbelievably blessed to witness, went like this:
Chad: "Thank you."
Mrs. W: "Bye."
That was it. Three words total. But behind these three words, and if you were there you'd have no problem seeing it, was the summation of an entire career, and a friendship. It wasn't just a picture or two that Chad was thanking her for, but all the lessons that he had been taught about books, literature, words, teaching, and blessed life altogether. And it wasn't the usual goodbye that she offered him, walking out the door to her car to go home for the evening, but it was the goodbye that you'd give someone if you had to put every experience you'd ever shared into a single word. That was one ending that I couldn't help but to admire, to envy, and even to mourn.
What is the point in all of this? And what's the point in that little title you see up above (quick, go take a moment to check it out)? One more story...
The famous King Solomon, as the non-canonical (read: made-up) story goes, asked one of his advisors for a ring bearing an inscription that would fit in all scenarios and situations, whether promising or lean. When the tide of the battle was in your favor, it would fit. When the plagues of Egypt stood at your door, it would fit. The advisor went and thought, presumably hating his life since he was supposed to come up with something so incredibly wise and impressive that not even the borderline oracle Solomon could come up with it. He returned a while later, probably just coming off of his caffeine high or whatever stimulant the ancient Hebrews used to "be wise" and pull all-nighters, with a ring that simply said: "This, too, shall pass." Solomon, they say, was so impressed that he granted this man the privilege of hosting his own reality show (Hey, it's non-canonical, so...).
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing under the Sun that will last forever. In fact, that includes the Sun. It is an unavoidable fact that all things will end, eternity aside, but we're not going to give any time to that one catch-all exception.
What do we do with this? For what reason have I forced you to do all of this reading? Well that answer is two-fold. The easy answer is that I am in fact a blow-hard who considers himself a writer, thus I get a real kick out of making you read what I have to say. The harder answer is that I really wanted to drive home the reality of this fact using some touching and true to life examples (okay, so 2 out of 3 isn't bad).
So, take advantage! How different would we act in any given situation if we considered the ending? In the earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Mr. Covey tells us to "Begin with the end in mind." As Nicolas Cage would say in that movie where they're on Alcatraz, "simple but elegant." (Albeit, this is much less deadly than a string-of-pearls configuration of VX nerve gas, so take it for what it's worth)
How different would we act in any given situation if we consciously thought of how that moment would end in the future? Would we enjoy each conversation more? Would we speak more kindly to those around us? Would we spend less time wishing that the moment would just pass? How does this effect our perception of the bad in life? the good in life? And we can't just begin with the end in mind. What if every moment, we considered the ending? I don't mean for us to wallow in self-pity when we consider that none of the joys of this life are permanent, nor do I suggest that we forget to grieve just because the pain will pass.
There is such a precarious balance at work between considering the end and considering the moment. But we must find it. I'm on vacation with my family right now. On the one hand, I can't wait to get home and see Ivey again. On the other, I am enjoying my time at the beach and at the pool with family. In a few days, this trip will be over. So I should enjoy it. At the same time, in a few days, I will get to spend time with Ivey again. So I shouldn't wish away the time I have here, because this too shall pass. But when I walk out the door of this place, I will turn around and give the condo a glance, tasting one last time the essence of vacation. As we drive over the bridge over the Intercoastal Waterway, I will take a moment to look back at the condo and smile. I will enjoy my symbolic moment, because I can, even if that means fabricating one.
Now I can't be the only person that these symbolic moments matter to, but if I am, I encourage you to give them a try. If nothing else, it might help you keep the end in mind. If you have this watershed action to look forward to, then you'll consider the time when the end will come. And it will give you something to look forward to at the end.
For those of you who know the Harry Potter series (and I'm going to try and avoid any spoilers here, so read without fear if you're not familiar), you know that Harry has a pretty heavy symbolic moment towards the end of the movie, a moment that he's been preparing for his whole life, a moment that he had been quite literally living for. For those of you who don't know the series...it's a pretty big deal and pretty well illustrates the idea I'm getting at here. So you're just plain out of luck. Sorry.
Again I tell you, embrace these symbolic moments. Cherish them, plan them even. Whatever it takes for us to consider the ending we are headed for, in any given situation, I say we grab onto it with a voracious vice-grip, unyielding to the desire to act purely on impulse. Cling to the undying truth, this one truth that is also subject to itself, that this too shall pass. Arm yourself with this knowledge, and when you reach that end, take a moment to consider what is behind. Although you may never get it back, look forward with joy at what is ahead. But don't spend too long looking ahead, or you just might miss it. And don't spend too long on your symbolic moments. Because this too, even this, shall pass.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Adam Wynn is author of the as-of-yet-unpublished internet novel Will Baker is Dead. When he is not busy being somewhat melodramatic, unnecessarily symbolic, and speaking in third person, Adam enjoys whittling tribal spears of the Amazon and watching movies. These two are, in fact, not mutually exclusive activities. He also spends time on the Twitterverse (@42Cobras) and is printed all over the Facebook (Adam Wynn...duh). He enjoys Georgia Football (and other sports, but mostly football) and Gladiators Hockey (stupid Winnipeg). He also has plans to blog somewhat more frequently in the future, although that promise is unlikely to come to fruition, just as all the other times he promised to blog more (namely this almost passed summer). He is unmarried and has no children, but that you probably already knew. One of Adam's favorite hobbies is inserting parenthetical jokes into his work (like this one, except generally more humorous). He also really loves it when people comment on his work, as Adam has a fragile ego and really thrives on compliments. Conversely, he dies a little inside with anything resembling a critique, so unless you have murderous tendencies, please leave those out. Starting in August, he will be the intern for Georgia State's Baptist Collegiate Ministries. He looks forward to your visits. Unless you don't bring food.

What I (Will Have) Did This Summer

2011-05-10T01:13:00.001-04:00

Okay. So I have been reading this book of Lovecraft off-an-on for over two months now and I just recently got to what I really wanted, the humble yet utterly horrifying beginnings of the Cthulhu mythology. You must understand how frustrating it was for me to sit and read the 200 pages of stuff leading up to this, especially when you take into account that he is incredibly verbose. I mean, Lovecraft is an intense writer with some prosaic (read: really tough) prose. But it took me quite some time, and I was rather ready to finally read the words, "Cthulhu R'lyeh" when they came up (although I had some understandable trouble pronouncing them).

Now I don't expect you to feel sorry for me. And if you do, don't. After all, I have had nothing but time since graduation in December. Sure, I had a few obligations and such, things I had to do and just couldn't sluff off, but that took up no more than 5% of my time over the last five months. Couldn't be any more than that. The rest of that time was me sitting at home watching tv with my family, hanging out with friends in Athens (TLN, holla!), or just generally oversleeping.

By this point I have successfully translated all of your pity into loathing, to which I say, "Mission Accomplished!" Because here is the point I am getting at:

I AM SORRY!

(Hope the flash helps bring to light my obvious sincerity)
But seriously. I am sorry. I told you all (hey guys) a few weeks ago that I would be shortly preparing to post the conclusion to "Will Baker is Dead," and I still have not done that. Of course, most of you will just tell me that you don't have the time to read it right now anyway, but your lack of enthusiasm and general concern is no excuse for laziness on my part! I said I would do it, and I shall...soon.
Seriously, though, I plan on releasing the final chapters in the coming weeks after I have edited them. And I will start this Friday. My goal is to be ready for a new Summer Serial by the first Friday in June! Yes, I'm sticking to that format again. I like it and it worked pretty well for me last Summer, so why not? Every Friday until August (Four in June and five in July), I will be releasing to you a new chapter of my newest Summer Serial: TBA.
Aye, that is the rub. I haven't the foggiest idea what to write for you all this Summer. It makes me sad, really. Not that I don't have ideas I've been wanting to work on, but I don't have any that I think work well for this format. But I want to do another one because it worked. I had great success in actually consistently working last Summer, and I would very much like to experience that again. So, this is where a little "Reader Response" comes in to play. Tell me what you want to read. What sorts of things do you enjoy reading during the Summer? What stories do you want to hear? I can't promise you that I'll cater to your every whim and fancy: I do have principles. But I think your input and your ideas will help me winnow through some of the ideas I have floating around in the background. I want to know what you want to hear. And no, I am not above just giving you what you want to hear. In this case.
So let me know! Fill my inbox, leave some comments, for Heaven's sake, Tweet me! I don't care how you do it, just let me know what you want to read for a Summer Serial in 2011. June and July could be great, nay, watershed months for literature if you let them. So tell me, and let yourself let me let you enjoy the great literature that you let me let you read. Because it's coming. I promise.
Also, I haven't been very good at general blogging lately. Aside from the fiction I want to provide you with soon, I also want to get back to some all-around good natured, "Well let me tell you what I think..." writing. You don't get enough of that these days, whether it be from me or from some freckle-faced kid with a shaggy haircut and a trendy gray laptop. So I want to give you more of it! My goal before has always been to post at least once a month (HINT: I failed in Jan. and April), so let's up the ante. Now, fiction aside, I am going to post for you guys at least once a week. Maybe. If I can. We'll see. Let's just call it an outside chance, okay?
So there you have it. My summer plans: write another book (one week at a time for all of you lovely people), write more blogs, and get a wax. Except I didn't tell you that part before. I just decided on that one now.
Also, in the time it took me to type the above, I've already gotten a few ideas as to what I want to write for y'all this Summer. So, if you want your voice to be heard, you better start speaking up soon. The first Friday in June is only...(leaves to check a calendar)...22 days away (and I'd really like to get started on this thing before then, if you know what I'm saying).

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Adam Wynn is a self-loathing writer who hails from Dacula, GA. He also likes to speak in the 3rd person when writing unnecessary author's notes such as this. He is a very social networker, making frequent appearances on Twitter (@42Cobras), Facebook (Adam Wynn), X-Box Live (UGAWynner), Xanga (J146), and MySpace (Kinda Forgot This One). He is also the author of the "Internet Novel," Will Baker is Dead, which made it's debut on this very blog. He is also an avid Netflix-er. Y'know, in case you wanted to know.

Lawn Maintenance vs. Life Maintenance (or "Why Moses Was Kind of an Idiot")

2011-03-25T02:50:00.005-04:00

Ah. The birds are chirping. The trees are blooming. The squirrels have resumed running out into the road.

And the grass is growing.

That's right, what many of you have feared seeing, the grass is growing once more. Our perennial friend, the green green grass of home, has again started poking it's little verdigris head out of the ground, and it is our job to once a week decapitate the little punks. And we do it with gusto. Because we can. I choose to do it with a John Deere 720 Z Zero-Turn hunk of a lawn tractor (or as I call, "The Pod Racer" as to how similar it is in design to the pod racers of "Phantom Menace" fame/infamy).

Well last week I was out on the Pod Racer cutting the grass when this idea occurred to me. It went something like this: "You know, I used to hate cutting the grass. Now, I kinda look forward to getting out here on the Pod Racer. And I take pride in cutting this grass. That seems really grown up of me." It was something like that, except probably less formal and more blurb-esque.

But its true! I used to absolutely despise cutting the grass. I would take Dylan Thomas' sagacious advice and rage, rage against the machine (haha) that was the lawnmower. But I would do it. Now, ever since I've graduated to the big-boy toy and get to use the riding mower, I've calmed down a bit. And, as I said earlier, I have even learned to take pride in cutting the grass. When I finish the job, I look out on it and say, "My, that looks good. I should do this professionally," and then I kick myself for ever thinking such a fool-hardy thought.

But right now, if you're a regular reader here (in which case I should say hi, two of you), you're asking yourself and me the obvious question. "Where's the metaphor, Adam? Where's the brilliant insight you gained from having this mystical thought whilst killing grass?" And, if you're at least half astute, you'll have noticed what I said in the title. But if not, here it goes.

When I thought about this transition in my life, this change from the immense hatred I felt for cutting the grass to the newfound joy I have in seeing a lawn well mowed, it occurred to me. We do that with our lives. A lot. When we're kids, we have these grand dreams of what we will accomplish one day and what we can be. We dream of being astronauts and we dream of being Presidents. Or someone truly great, like a writer. We dream of the grand things we will achieve in this world, and we envision the day that this world shivers when it sees us coming, because it knows that something powerful is about to happen.

Then, time goes by, and life falls a little short of our expectations, so we bide our time doing something else. We bide our time as accountants or lay-people. Or we take jobs that are not exactly what we envisioned ourselves doing. We say it will just be a temporary thing until we get our life on the road, or until our ship comes in, which is odd because those are two completely different forms of transportation employed in that there metaphor.

And do we ever break free from the temporary confines of average citizenry? No. We find comfort there, and we learn to take pride in our work done. We start performing life maintenance. Now I get it, people grow, their dreams change, and they gain responsibilities. They have to do certain things. But I have to wonder. In what order does that happen? Do our dreams change, leading us to step down out of the batter's box and into the score keeper's booth, or do we accept our place and try to fit our goals to match it?

Now speaking of the title, let me bring up a little fellow named Moses. Some of you, especially those of you who may have been in my Bible Study groups in the past, are probably familiar with my love for Exodus Ch. 3 and the story of the Burning Bush and God speaking to Moses through it. Here, we move one chapter to the right and look at Exodus Ch. 4. This past Wednesday night at "The Loft," Hebron's College and Twenty-Somethings ministry, our college pastor (there's that shout-out you wanted, Rando!) talked a little about this chapter and the lunacy of Moses' response to God. Let's take a look.

Here is Moses talking to God I AM through flaming shrubbery. If that alone wasn't awesome enough, God had already told Moses that he was standing on Holy Ground, turned the staff in his hand into a snake, then almost simultaneously struck Moses with leprosy and instantly cured it. So Moses had seen the Power of God at work before his eyes, as potent and obvious as I'm sure the putrid presence of sheep smell was on Moses' cloak. Yet look at what he says:

Exodus 4:10-13

But Moses pleaded with the Lord, "O Lord, I'm not very good with words. I never have been, and I'm not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled."

11 Then the Lord asked moses, "Who makes a person's mouth? Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go! I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say."

13 But Moses again pleaded, "Lord, please! Send anyone else."

So let me get this straight. The Voice of God had just literally and audibly (and I guess pyroverbally?) spoken to Moses and told him of the great thing he would do. There was no question. God had told Moses exactly what He was going to do through him and how, even going so far as to provide him with miraculous signs to show the people. And what does Moses do? He asks God to "Send anyone else." Moses has spent the last four decades herding sheep up in the mountainous deserts, and he is not interested in taking on this great and wonderful task that God has asked him to do. He has gotten so comfortable in just maintaining this life that he is not willing to step out and follow the call that God has placed on his life.

And I think we do that all the time. As Rando said, God has called all of us to do great things. Have you ever heard the saying, "What would you strive to do if you knew you could not fail?" When we are acting in accordance with the will of God, moving as He has called us to do, we cannot fail. And we will not fail. We will not fail because the God of the universe has willed our actions to success. God will not call us to do something that we will fail at, because He is calling us to succeed. He is calling us to fulfill his plans, so why would He want us to fail? If you still need convincing, look what happened when Moses stepped out and followed God's call. He lead the people of Israel out of bondage, slavery that they had been kept in for over four-hundred years. He was the toast of the town (until they got stuck at the river banks and the people doubted him and God again, but that's another story) and he was the heralded man of God. Heck, we're still talking about him today. All because he eventually was willing to follow the call that God had placed on him.

So what does this look like for us? We're not all bound to be famous. Surely not. We are not all bound to be great statesmen or voices of healing to the masses. Some of us will be, yes, and if that is your dream, and if that is the dream to which God is leading you, then my stars, go out and do it. But if not, what should you do?

The simple answer is that you should seek God's call, and you should seek your heart out for it. But the more complex answer looks something like this. I graduated from the University of Georgia with two degrees, one of them in English Education. For a full academic year, I spent day in and day out with people who dreamed of being HS English teachers. They knew that they had been called to teach, and they were going to work their tails off to do it. And they were going to be the best English teachers they could be. It was their dream. For me, however, it was not. I won't lie, I eventually came to the point of understanding that I was in that program where I should be, but it was not God's call that I spend my life as an English teacher. I fully believe that my calling is to write and to let my words reach people and hopefully help them. Does that mean that my calling is better than theirs? Or that I am more important than them because I don't plan on teaching? No. Those people have dreamed of this day, when they would be called teachers, and they are going to be great. It is on them to be the best teachers they can be, and they will change lives if they do it. I did the math, even as an English teacher. With an average classroom size of 30 students, spending a full 30 year career teaching, you will directly reach over 10,000 students (assuming you're working in a school where you teach five periods a day, as I was at the time). That doesn't even take into account the other random students you will see on a daily basis but never teach. With that alone, you have already been in contact for a serious amount of time with as many people as experts say most of us will have as acquaintances in an average lifetime.

But we don't want an average lifetime. We want a great one. We want a life where we are reaching people and changing their lives. We want a lifetime where we are seeing things happen that defy human experience and expectation. That is what we are to be striving for. Moses grew up in the seat of royalty, expecting to have influence over countless numbers of people. In time, however, he gave that dream up for the hills of the desert where he was walking around with sheep all day. Now I'll admit that God had brought him to this place for a reason, and that Moses was even doing his best with the task God had given him, but it was not where he was supposed to stay. And when God called him away, Moses was about to give up his true calling to be just another sheep herder. Do you ever wonder how many chapters of the Bible could have been written about the people God wanted to do things who flaked out on them? Do you want to other side of Moses' coin, when you have been asked to lead the people out of Egypt? I sure as heck don't. I don't want to spend my life knowing that God asked me to do a great work and I instead chose to do an average one. I am not content with just maintaining, with cutting the grass. To borrow a quote, I want to live deeply and suck out the marrow of life, if that is what God calls me to do. I want to soar over the rooftops of the world and sound my barbaric yawp, and do it to the best of my ability as God calls. I ask you to join me in doing whatever it is God has called you to, and doing it the way that only you can. With gusto, and with greatness, engage the life God has for you. Move beyond maintenance and into majesty.

Author's Note: Adam Wynn enjoys staring out into the fog of a mountain morning and sipping warm glasses of sweet tea over hot scrambled eggs breakfast. He also spends time writing, blogging, and cutting the grass in his Dacula, GA home. Except for that last one, which he actually does outside of his Dacula, GA home. He is currently unemployed and spends his time editing the Southern style mystery thriller, Will Baker is Dead, which is available in part on this website. He also spends the time working on other short stories and looking for work as a writer, a newspaper page designer, coffee barista, or whatever someone feels like paying him to do within reason. He also tweets and would encourage you to follow him on Twitter at @42Cobras, or you can just connect with him on Facebook at Adam Wynn (his name, shouldn't be hard to find). He is a huge Georgia Bulldogs fan, along with most Georgia sports teams including the Braves, Falcons, Thrashers, Gwinnett Gladiators, and the like. Adam also enjoys answering fan mail, so please feel free to leave messages on the blog saying what you think about it. Also, please forgive him for typing this note in third person, as it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

Analyzing the Practical God (The Faith of Abraham, and What That Was All About)

2011-03-06T03:44:00.004-05:00

A few months back, sometime in August I believe it was, I posted an entry about the Patient God. In there, I promised to come back later with something about another aspect of God that I had grown to fancy, and that was the Practical God. In that time, this idea of the Practical God has really been at the back of my mind, tickling the Biblical receivers in my brain (hey, I only got a B in Psych 1101, so forgive me if my cranial anatomy is a bit hazy). Tonight, I am here to talk a little about what I've learned about the Practical God.

The first thing I want to say is that for the last however long that I've been thinking about this idea, I have become more and more convinced that our God is the most practical being in all the Universe. Some of you may disagree with me, pointing to convoluted ideas in the Bible or complicated signs and wonders you've heard about, but I believe it and will probably keep examining scripture with this mindset for a long time. Feel free to discuss that with me or leave comments below dis/agreeing with my ideas, either way, but I believe it and will try to convince you.

Now over the past week, my Faith had been tested and shaken. I was hurting and I was in need of something. I was in need of a miracle of sorts, and I didn't even know it. Well as you can no doubt imagine, I received said miracle, and it was much easier to swallow than my last big miracle. But enough of that. Something happened that really just got to me and reaffirmed my Faith, reaffirming the notion that my God has my best interest at heart, and that He is there to provide the best possible life for me, His life for me.

I met an old friend of mine for dinner, and in the course of conversation we got caught up on where each other was in life and had been and was going. We talked about my student teaching experiences and her new job and I just saw how all of these prior experiences in life brought each of us to our present location. I thought about how these loose connections all came to a point, how they came to this point, and how they will inevitably lead to a prepared and protected future. I saw how God was with me in a difficult place, how He prepared the way for me at the school last year and had set things up from the beginning. I saw how God had provided in my friend's life, and how He had brought her to the place she needed to be. I saw God's plan in perfect hindsight, understanding how and why things had fallen the way they did.

Without going too deep into the details of the thing (because as the saying goes, you just might find the devil there...haha), I came away from this meal with a renewed Faith and a renewed spirit in a time of weakness and doubt. So, after rocking out on the drive home to my new favorite song of the week, RelientK's "Devestation and Reform" (go look it up right now...or finish reading first, that'd be better) and a resulting Genius playlist, I opened up my Bible App on my phone and went to a reading plan on Faith.

Which, of course, brings me to Abraham. Now Abraham, as most of you know, was an old man with a very special son. His son Isaac would go on to be the patriarch of the Jewish nation (and, really, that means Abraham was also the patriarch of the Jewish nation, but let's not split hairs). Now this one time, God asked Abraham to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. I encourage you to go look this story up, too, in Genesis 22:1-14 (okay, do that one now, I don't mind waiting.

There are a couple of important things to take away from this story. One of them that often goes overlooked is the fact that God told Abraham to travel to a place that He would determine to sacrifice Isaac. Let's examine this first. So Abraham and Isaac travel for three days with a couple servants before God tells Abraham where Isaac is to be sacrificed. Three days carrying wood and supplies. Not an easy trek by any means. Then, when God does show Abraham where to go, it is at the top of a mountain that he then had to climb. Abraham had to walk with his son up a mountain carrying all this wood (the physical burden he handed to the youthful Isaac) and a torch and knife for sacrificing his beloved child (the emotional and spiritual burden he had to carry himself). That is not an easy challenge by any stretch of the imagination. Now Abraham had already heard the command from God to sacrifice his son, so at any point he could have stopped and killed Isaac as commanded. But it wouldn't have been in the place where God commanded. And for those of you who know the story, you know how tragic that would have been, because God never wanted Abraham to kill Isaac. At any point, Abraham could have decided that he had trusted God enough and would not progress in His plan, but would just kill Isaac then and there and follow through half-way. But he didn't. He followed God's plan until the end, and both Abraham and Isaac were rewarded for it.

But why? I can understand you not seeing any practicality in that whatsoever. You ask, "But Adam. How is this practical? Was there not an easier way?" Let us look, then, at the reason God gave Abraham on the mountain. Let us examine why it is that God told Abraham He had asked the man to go through with this. Upon raising the knife to kill Isaac, Abraham heard a voice from The Angel of the Lord speak.

[Gen. 22:12] -NLT-
"Don't lay a hand on the boy!" the angel said. "Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son."

The first thing that jumps out at me, now, is the part where God says, "for now I know..." Can anyone tell me why? How many of you are familiar with the term, "Omniscience?" Well, if you took Latin in high school or college, then you should immediately recognize a few things here. Or, if you took a Bible class or attended Sunday School past the age of 10, you should just know the answer. Omniscience is essentially knowing everything. God is omniscient. So when God says that this event proved Abraham's Faith to Him, how should we really read that? I mean, God knew. He absolutely knew what Faith Abraham had in Him. But see, Abraham did not know. He was clueless as to the potential for Faith he had, and so God asked him to partake in this impossible journey and commit this unthinkable action.

And even more than teaching Abraham what kind of Faith he had, it also taught him what kind of Faith he could have in God, in a God who will take you so far just to carry you the rest of the way. Faith in a God who will ask the impossible of you, and then complete the impossible in you and through you. That is the Faith that Abraham found when God stopped the knife in his hand from falling on Isaac. That is the Faith that Abraham found at the mountain that people named "Yahweh-Yireh," or "The God Who Provides/God Will Provide."

Have you ever tried to tell someone that they were capable of doing something that they didn't think they were? Most of us cling to our fears and perceived inadequacies like a wool blanket at a base camp on Mt. Everest. They protect us from having to deal with the difficulties and responsibilities of pressing on to face the challenges at hand. But when a person is tricked into realizing their own potential, like that scene in Shrek where the big green guy forces Eddie Murphy's Donkey across a rickety bridge, they are much more likely to realize what they are capable of. God knows this. He should. On top of that handy little omniscience, he created us. He knows our psyche better than we do (so he would probably have gotten an A in Psych 1101, excepting schools that offer the coveted A+, not that God covets).

And let us not forget, the patient practicality of God, as He did not just up and decide one day to task Abraham with an immense test of Faith. For years, God had been preparing Abraham for this very moment and this very chore. God was teaching Abraham and refining his Faith constantly, even through a few key mistakes along the road where Abraham learned that a lack of Faith would be most costly (SEE: Sister/Wife and "Call him Ishmael"). In steps, God showed Abraham the kind of Faith he was capable of, constantly building and improving the man he would ultimately become and the act he would become most famous for. And this teaching moment was not wasted on an old man, either. Isaac was present, and you can rest assured that no teaching moment is more permanently ingrained than the one that endangers and, simultaneously, saves your life.

So I pray that as you read this, God will restore your Faith. Or if need be, He will refine your Faith. As I tweeted earlier this evening (go follow me now: @42Cobras), "Faith untested is Faith unrefined." We will face trials and difficult times, and we will often fail. But, my God is Faithful to bring me through those times, and He will bring me through stronger on the other side. And as long as He can be Faithful to me, surely I can manage to be Faithful to Him.

If you feel your Faith is faltering, take the chance and pray for God to refine your Faith. Pray for God to show you what Faith you have in you and how He has been Faithful to you all along.

Adam W. "Is A 4-Point Letter on WWF" Wynn
Phil. 3:12-14

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So I recently finished "Will Baker is Dead!" And by finished, I mean I wrote the concluding episode/chapter. I technically am not done yet because I decided to go back and add two chapters, one of which will be only a few short pages long, so no big deal. I am currently in the Critical Reading stage, or as I call it, the "Oh God, oh God, I hope they don't tell me my book sucks," stage, where I have friends reading it and compiling commentary for me to go back and figure out what needs to be changed and what needs to be kept. In other words, yes, some people do in fact know the secret of what happened. The chilling conclusion is now known to someone other than just me. Too bad you will have to wait your turn. In a few months, when I am hopefully working on the publishing process and we are entering summer, I will go back and publish the remaining chapters online. Yes, that includes the as of yet nonexistent Episode 6 I always talk about. The last published chapter on here was Episode 9, and the story will go up to Episode 13, so you only have five left to go when you remember Episode 6 (and how could you forget!). I really do look forward to you all reading and enjoying the series, and hopefully buying the book when it hopefully gets published in a time period that is hopefully no longer than three years. For now, tell me what you think of any other postings such as this one or any of the episodes of Will Baker. And go follow me on Twitter! Again, that is @42Cobras. What else would it be?

Abnormally Answered Prayers - An Experience in Brotherhood

2011-02-01T16:41:00.000-05:00

I would have to say that one of the most incredible experiences of my short life so far has been the unexpected privilege of seeing Garth Brooks in concert. When that man puts on a show, he puts on a show. The music is, of course, fantastic. The energy in the room (if it's not an outdoor concert) could power a small city for three weeks. There is just no experience like seeing Garth Brooks in concert. I have always been a fan of his music, and seeing him in person was perhaps the quintessential unreal experience. He is perhaps the closest thing Country music will ever have to a rock god.
However, I must take issue with the man on one point. One of GB's most famous songs is a touching little number called, "Unanswered Prayers." It's one of those (okay, most songs would fit this category) where when he gets to it in the concert, every mouth in the arena was singing right along in near perfect harmony. That's how well known it is. If you're not familiar with the song, go now and YouTube it or something. I'm sure there's an illegal version of it somewhere. Don't worry, I'll wait.

[WAITING PATIENTLY]

[STILL WAITING PATIENTLY]

[KIND OF WANTING YOU TO HURRY, NOW]

Okay, good, you're back. So you see, now? Unanswered Prayers. The overarching theme of this song (yes, English teacher in me coming out) is that God ignores us for our own good, expecting us to understand. Aside from the obvious theological problems with the song, I take issue with the notion that this is God's greatest gift. "Well what is, then?" you ask. Well I'll tell you.
I believe that God's greatest gift to mankind is sometimes abnormally answered prayers. "But...that sounds a lot like what Garth was saying, Adam." Yes, I know that. Which is why I used him as an engaging lead-in. But bare with me for a second here.
When we pray, God always answers (SEE: aforementioned "obvious theological problems"), and he always answers in one of three ways: Yes, No, or my favorite, Maybe/Wait. Yes is great, God answers our prayers and cool things happen or we're blessed in some powerful way by God right then, or at least pretty soon. Good stuff. No is okay. God is usually protecting us from something we don't need or somewhere we shouldn't be, doing His best to keep us from screwing our own lives up. That's who God is, and that's why He has the most difficult job in the un/known universe. You want to make someone do something, tell them you're protecting them by keeping them from it. But then is my personal favorite, and that is the "Maybe" or "Wait" answer.
Oh, the "Wait" answer. It can be excruciating. It can be nerve-wracking. It can be tempestuous, at best, while we wait for God to answer our prayers. And who among us knows why at the time? All we know is that God doesn't like us and He doesn't want us to be happy, so he forces us to sit around waiting on something we really, really, really want. Ugh. But the reason I love this part of who God is is simple. Because when God says yes or no to our prayers, it is usually pretty straight forward, especially with an answer in the negative. It just doesn't happen. But when God answers us with a "Wait/Maybe," He has the chance to get real creative in how those prayers are answered. And that is the aspect of God I love seeing come to fruition.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you that I jump up and down for joy when I feel God answering one of my prayers this way. I am as impatient as the next guy, and I want it now. But when I can see how God worked something in my life like this, that is when I get jazzed up, given the advantage of hindsight and understanding. It's beautiful! Let me give you an example.
When I was a little kid, I remember constantly praying for a brother. That was the one thing I wanted. I grew up with two sisters (who are both wonderful, but let's be honest, I didn't know that at the time and I didn't care), but really wanted a brother. Always. I can remember one time sitting in the back of Mom's van while leaving one of Amanda's softball games at the point of tears because I was begging God to give me a brother. Now at the time, I did not understand the difficult processes and theologies that go behind answering prayers (SEE: all that stuff I was just describing to you). So I just thought that God was ignoring me (Thank you, Garth Brooks).
Fast forward now about fifteen years, we'll say, although I'm not exactly sure. I am still the youngest in my family. I have not been given any little brothers, although Amanda has given me an adorable niece and an awesome little nephew. Now, if you're a more attentive reader, by this time the question you are no doubt asking yourself is, "Where is the answered prayer? I thought this was a story about how God answered your prayer after many years?" It is. I'm getting there.
Biologically, I am still brotherless. There are no little male scamps running around with similar DNA to me, which also eliminates illegitimate children, in case you were wondering. But that is not to say that I am without. Some of you are no doubt familiar with something I've on occasion referenced called TLN, or Tau Lambda Nu. If you follow me on Twitter (go now if not, @42Cobras), you've likely seen #TLN. If you know me from UGA, then you likely either saw the old sign on our apartment door or you heard one of us reference said letters.
If you're not familiar with it, TLN is my fraternity. Not a University sanctioned, "Pay us $1,000 and you can hang out with us," fraternity, but a fraternity nonetheless. Me and three other guys (Rylan, Andrew, and Josh) lived together in East Campus last year and formed said fraternity. At first, it was just a joke amongst the four of us. We would kid around about it, and we would host TLN sponsored events (mainly just movie nights where people could come watch something on Rylan's inappropriately large tv). It was a grand old time.
But over the last few months, ever since I moved back home while those guys stayed in Athens, I've grown to really understand how much of a brotherhood we were. That's what a fraternity is supposed to be about. Brotherhood. I know that when I need someone, I can go to any of those three guys and (almost) expect them to lay their life on the line for me, as they know I would for any of them. On more than one occasion, I've talked to one of these guys about tough decisions and troubles we're experiencing in life. There is an unspoken pledge between the four of us that we would do anything for any one at any time. I don't know exactly where this came from, except to say that in the year we lived together, and in the time since as I have frequently slept on their cat-ridden couch, we have built a brotherhood, and I cannot express how blessed I have been by having that relationship. I thank God that He did not take the easy way out and just give me a brother, because now I have the closest brothers I could ask for.
And to be honest, although there is this core group of Tau Lambda Nu, I feel I can honestly claim that my fraternal relations extend beyond that. There is a group of guys that I've known for the better part of the last four years, and some I knew before that, who have made my life what it is. A man with many friends has a group that will entertain him, but a man with many brothers has an army that will save him. I could not consider myself more blessed than with the brothers I have been given, and for that reason alone, I thank God for abnormally answered prayers.
So when you pray, do not pray like the ignorant who will receive nothing and believe they are being ignored. Listen, and with faith, expect God's blessings to come somewhere down the road. You may not even realize it when it happens, but the greatest thing God can do for you is give you a gift worth waiting for. Trust me on that.

Adam Wynn is the author and proprietor of 42Cobras Publishing, namely the blog you are reading right now. He is also the one typing this message in italics for the sake of humorously looking more important and pretentious than necessary. He graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in English and English Education, both of which obviously qualify him to blog. He is from Dacula, GA and now spends most of his time in his Dacula home writing and looking for a real [sic] job. He is also the author of the ambiguously popular serial novel, "Will Baker is Dead!" the first 8 episodes of which are available for free at 42Cobras Publishing, which is the blog you are reading right now. The remaining episodes are in progress and will become available shortly after their completion this week. In the meantime, he will continue to tweet voraciously, Facebook excessively, and blog randomly at varying intervals at 42Cobras Publishing, the blog you are reading right now. Thank you, and have a nice day.

A Very Merry Will Baker Christmas To All!

2010-12-14T15:28:00.000-05:00

Well it seems that I've finished college...again.
The ever-crucial grade went up last night and now I have nothing to worry about except which tie I should wear to the ceremony, and even that one should be wrapped up in a few hours. So it is time to focus on more important things.
Like finishing "Will Baker is Dead!"
I know that many of you (okay, so like three to five of you tops) have been worrying about this since August when I went on a very nearly permanent publishing hiatus, but the time has come (the walrus said) to fix this little indiscrepancy. I, Adam W. (Don't ask) Wynn, am going to make a promise to you, my faithful reader(s), that I will finish writing the serial "Will Baker is Dead" by Christmas! Mind you, I am not going to make the same mistake this time around. I am going to write each episode by Christmas, edit them, THEN post them. So you probably won't see the first episode until after the start of the New Year (Aud Lang Syne, everyone!). Not to mention, I'll be up in Memphis (Go Dawgs!) for the New Year, so you'll have to probably wait until about Jan. 3rd or some date around then to get the first posting. BUT! Rest assured that I am determined and committed to achieving this goal.
In the mean time, I encourage you all to go back and re-read the first eight episodes ("But why is the last one number nine, then?") so you'll be primed and ready when episode number ten comes along (yeah, yeah, I know).
Also, I would very much like to improve the blog and use it better, starting with more regular non-fiction updates. Any suggestions? Please let me know what y'all think and I'll get on it. I really do look forward to finishing "Will Baker" for all of you (and myself...I can't wait to know who did it!) so you can breathe easy once more knowing that this "serial" killer has been caught (see what I did there?). Thanks everyone for your patience, and I hope you will enjoy the conclusion just as much with freezing temperatures outside as you would have with changing leaves and a little football on tv. But to be fair, you'll probably get the conclusion around Super Bowl Sunday if I'm right about the number of episodes it will take to get it right.
But for now, I'm out!

Adam W. "All I Do Is" Wynn
Phil. 3:12-14

The Journey So Far That Has Been "Will Baker" and What Stands in the Future

2010-08-27T00:31:00.000-04:00

Hey, y'all! First of all, I just want to say what a pleasure it has been writing "Will Baker is Dead" for everyone out there. I have immensely enjoyed this, and I really hope you have, too. That is precisely why it is with great sadness that I must announce that the remainder of "Will Baker is Dead" has been cancelled and I will no longer be able to update you with new episodes.
No, I'm just kidding. Wouldn't that be awful?
But seriously, I have hit a bit of a rough patch with my own personal time constraints. So, for the rest of this publishing process, I am going to push back the goal publication time for each episode to 3pm on SUNDAY afternoon. I am doing this for two reasons. The first one is because I need the extra time. I just can't write and edit an episode in the previous format anymore. Although I am sure this will come as no surprise to most of you, I would sit up until late hours in the past, usually staying up until 3am or 4am (sometimes later) on a Thursday night just so I could be done come Friday afternoon. With classes at 9am on MWF every week, I can no longer afford to do that. That means I need more time to work on an episode.
Now I know my more astute readers will notice that there is the same amount of time between 4pm on Friday and the next Friday at 4pm as there is between Sundays at 3pm each week. As true as that is, you also must recognize the difference in time that makes. By having a weekend to work on my current episode, I allow myself more quality working time. Before, I viewed my weekends as a time to rest from the writing process and think about the next episode. I know that sounds stupid (and it is admittedly unwise), but that was how I worked this summer. Now, I need those few days to really work on each episode. Then again, starting next week I must also contend with Georgia Football Season, so we'll see what happens to my productivity.
My second reason is simply this. Due to getting out of class at 3:20pm every Friday, I am physically incapable of publishing consistently at 4pm on Fridays. I can't get from school to home where my computer is by 4pm, so I was going to have to make a change, anyway. It's just that this change is a little bit more...change-y. Yeah.
I also want to talk about two pretty cool things that are going on in my life right now. First, I am now officially a published and (hopefully) paid writer. Like, in print. On paper. I've had two Opinions columns posted in The University of Georgia's Official Independently Owned and Operated Student Run Newspaper, the Red and Black. I was pretty proud of both of them, and I would encourage each and every one of you to check them out.
The last thing I want to talk about is my living at home right now. There are two main reasons that this is relevant, and the first on is pretty obvious. See, when I was living in Athens all by myself, there were so many fewer distractions to working on "Will Baker," so I was more easily able to pump out an episode a week. Now, I have to really focus if I want to work on anything at all. So there's that. But there's also this, and I have no shame mentioning this because I doubt it was a real secret. I didn't really want to move back. I spent a summer with the illusion of independence thrust at me almost physically tangible, and I loved it. I thrived in that environment, learning how to make meals out of whatever I had at the moment, and learning how to properly manage myself, my time, and my (limited) finances. It was great! But now, I'm back home, and it felt really rough at first. But it got to a point where I really prayed about it and I asked God to help me. It wasn't what I expected, but He was there for me. I'm going to talk more about that story coming up real soon in a blog posting entitled, "When Life Gives you Lemons, God Gives you Spiders." You'll get it, I promise.
I can't wait for everyone to read the latest installment in "Will Baker is Dead," this Sunday at 3pm! For now, I've gotta get some sleep. The alarm clock will start hollering for me in about six hours, and I really oughta be there to answer when it does.

Adam "Not W. Like the President" Wynn
Phil. 3:12-14

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 9 - "Safety and Serenity in Secret Isolation"

2010-08-15T00:30:00.000-04:00

An ocean sunrise is always gray, just as the first light from the sun starts to blend with the dark blues of the passing night. The Caribbean sunrise woke him up this morning as it had almost every morning for what seemed like a lifetime. The soft oranges started pervading the gray sky, and the horizon line became more and more distinct as the distant ocean kept that same deep blue all day long, no matter what color the sky became. The salty ocean breeze stuck in the old gentleman’s hair. In his more advanced age, the prospect of sleeping with the windows and doors open became more and more appealing. Even with the crash of the waves, the old seaman could hear shrimper’s voices down at the docks. It was days like this that Lorenzo lived for, days out on the water where the sky and the sea were all that stood between him and that lost home out on the horizon.

True, Lorenzo’s home was back west towards Mexico, but it was all the same to him. No matter which direction, whenever Lorenzo looked back towards the horizon, he was always looking back on home. He still hated himself for leaving all those years ago. His parents were dead, but his sisters and brother needed big Lorenzo to look after them. Instead, he sold whatever possessions he could muster and took the family boat out towards deeper waters. Lorenzo didn’t leave with a plan, but he left with the boat, and he left with the knowledge his father had blessed him with all those years as a tour guide for wealthy American visitors. Lorenzo knew how to manage a boat in a storm and he knew how to catch fish that tasted good and sold well in the market.

Though he could never catch enough fish to move back home, Lorenzo felt that this most recent job was all he needed to move back to old Mexico, the home that was almost as old as he felt. A fisherman’s life is a difficult life, and it had surely taken some toll on the old man’s bones. That was the only reason he took a job that kept him close up on land more often than not. People had come around in the past looking for a farm hand or an extra seller in the market, but Lorenzo was never interested because he always had the sea. Now, Lorenzo had a young woman to watch over and a second house to take care of.

It all happened about two months ago when this American showed up at Lorenzo’s door. The man didn’t seem wealthy, but he obviously had enough money to pay for a caretaker and a house on a tropical island. To be fair, Lorenzo knew he had some help paying those bills. This man looked average on all accounts, seeing as he had that brown standard American haircut and was a little taller than Lorenzo. Honestly, everyone was a little taller than Lorenzo. He had never been gargantuan, but Lorenzo managed to lose at least a half a foot in the last ten years. That made his already short stature seem even more pitiful to passersby, those tourists who probably thought he went without food and water most of the time. In fact, Lorenzo’s fishing ability kept him well fed and stocked on supplies.

But this man showed up and offered Lorenzo a simple task. He was to first fly to America, land at Hartsfield-Jackson Int’l Airport, then rent a car. He was then supposed to take that car to a small town about an hour or so out of the city called Horizon. Once there, he was supposed to pick this man’s wife up and bring her back to the islands. Once she was in the car, and this is the only part that bothered Lorenzo, he was supposed to trash the house and make it look like she’d been kidnapped. The man who came to visit Lorenzo said that his wife was in great danger and that she had to be taken out of the country. It seemed odd to Lorenzo that someone would trust him as a complete stranger if that were the case, but everything else seemed to fit. The man never gave Lorenzo his name and told Lorenzo that he could never use the woman’s real name out loud, and especially not in public. The people who were after him needed to believe that she was dead and gone, so once they were on the plane, Lorenzo was only supposed to refer to her as Tammy. It seemed a little suspicious to Lorenzo, but he played along. After all, the kind American was willing to put a lot of money on his success, so Lorenzo was more than happy to participate.

Since then, Lorenzo had met the man a couple other times just to receive payments and share his status with the American. The whole thing was well outside Lorenzo’s experiences, being nothing more than a talented fisherman, but it worked well enough. He would meet the American in town somewhere, they would talk about Tammy over lunch or dinner, then he would usually leave right away to go back. He would never go to meet Tammy because that could lead anyone following them back to her. To Lorenzo, that seemed absurd. After all, couldn’t they just follow Lorenzo back to the house? Even still, Lorenzo followed orders and never spoke about his meetings with the American. And he still didn’t have a name for the man. He asked Lorenzo to call him Bill, but in all the secrecy, Lorenzo knew that wasn’t really his name. And according to Tammy, her husband’s name was Ames.

Speaking of Tammy, Lorenzo had almost forgotten. He had spoken to Bill, or Ames, or whoever just a few days before. This time, he gave Lorenzo something he kept referring to as a drop phone. Basically, he gave Lorenzo a prepaid international cell phone. This phone would be the only line of communication the two men would have until the American arrived for good. In their last meeting, he told Lorenzo that it wouldn’t be long now before he came down to stay with his wife. Whatever it was that had to be finished back home would all be over soon. And when that was over, Lorenzo’s time watching the young lady would also be soon over.

With everything that Lorenzo had to get done, he figured it was about time to get out of bed. The fisherman’s life often found Lorenzo out before the sun, but those were in younger years. Now, he was perfectly content to rise when the sun started to peak over the sea. Nothing earlier was necessary. The fish would still be there when he got to them. After his short morning ritual of cleaning up and saying good morning to the only picture of his family that existed, Lorenzo walked out on the dock and started untying the old boat, La Aislamiento. This beauty, though much newer than the one that brought him over from Mexico, was named after the same boat that Lorenzo used to go out on with his father. Those days alone with his father were all that Lorenzo lived for. Perhaps that’s why he got up and left after Senor Velasquez died. Even now as Lorenzo felt the warm sting of cold ropes slide through the grooves in his hand, it didn’t seem right to be going out without Papa. If it was so hard to get on without him here in the Caribbean, how much harder would it have been back in Mexico? How could he untie from his father’s dock, but not be taking his father with him?

Lorenzo stayed back behind the wheel of his boat for the first forty-five minutes of the voyage. He would sail around the tip of the island over towards the side where Tammy’s house was, but he would also press on into deeper waters where the bigger fish were. Lorenzo never liked fishing too shallow, partially due to the fact that cruise ships at port would often scare the fish away. He also just enjoyed getting away from the land sometimes, floating out where it was just him and the sky, and hopefully the fish.

When Lorenzo reached the spot he wanted, it was time to set up a few rods. He’d come across some solid deep-sea rods in the last few years, trading with one of the hated cruise ships. They had promised their patrons some product they couldn’t deliver, but Lorenzo knew just where to catch the beautiful hammerhead. A fisherman would be lucky to spot a single hammerhead in his lifetime here, but Lorenzo knew the animals better than most. He knew just where to find them, and though it was certainly not encouraged merchandise, Lorenzo would occasionally trade one for the right price. So, when he handed over “the only hammerhead they’d ever seen in these islands” to an over-zealous cruise chef, he managed to get a good haul of deep-sea fishing rods.

For the first hour or so, nothing happened. Fishing was a waiting game, and Lorenzo knew he had the time. Mrs. Tammy wouldn’t be up for a few hours now, as she almost never got up before noon. And why should she? As far as she knew, it was a long-term vacation. There were strict instructions not to let her know anything of what was going on. She couldn’t know that she was in danger. Lorenzo had been told never to mention the trouble her husband was in, and especially not the fact that he was probably going to kill someone close to the both of them. So, as far as Tammy was concerned, there was nothing unusual about it.

After a while, Lorenzo drew up the lines and moved the boat. It was getting clear that the fish weren’t in that area today, so he knew it was probably wise to move on out somewhere else. He didn’t make too far of a trip, just maybe a mile or two different, but the difference was immediately noticeable. Within five minutes, enough time for any disturbance the boat had made to settle down, Lorenzo already had hits on two of his lines. He started pulling each one in, gently reeling just like Papa showed him. Lorenzo knew all too well how easy it was to snap a line.

“Now careful, Lorenzo. Pull it in real slow, just like I taught you. There you go. There you go. There you-” his father was cut off abruptly by a sharp snap. Whenever Mr. Velasquez caught a smaller one, he let Lorenzo try to pull it in. He could tell by the resistance on the other end that it was a little fellow, but Lorenzo had tried to pull it in too fast. You could never risk doing that if you really wanted to bring it in.

“I’m sorry, Papa. I thought I was bringing it slow enough, I promise I did.”

“It’s okay, son, you did good. You’ll get the next one, just like I showed you.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I didn’t pay you so I could observe a touching father-son moment. If I’d wanted that, I could’ve stayed home with my own kid. Now where can I bring in a sailfish?” The Velasquez Fishing Expedition, known throughout the local villages as the best opportunity for tourist gulf fishing, had a wealthy gentleman from Chicago on board today.

“Of course, senor. My mistake. But I tell you, the sailfish does not come around here this time of year. They like to take to cooler, deeper waters when the weather gets like this.” Lorenzo watched his father deal as patiently as possible with the man. It wasn’t always easy dealing with the tourists, especially when they started thinking they knew the waters better than you.

“I knew I should’ve gone out with that company in Cozumel. Their guide said he would get me a sailfish no problem.”

“Sir, I hate to disagree, but just because he says it doesn’t mean he can do it. And if you get a sailfish right now, it is likely sick or too young to keep. I tell you, sir, I can’t in good faith recommend fishing for sailfish right now.”

“Look, amigo,” as the customer put an unnecessary emphasis on the only Spanish word he knew, “I paid for sailfish, so I want you to get me sailfish. You comprende?”

“If you insist, amigo.”

They eventually got the man his sailfish, and as promised, it was in no shape to eat or keep. The Chicago man went home unhappy, and then Lorenzo and Papa took the La Aislamiento out just the two of them. This is when Lorenzo was happiest, when it was just him and Papa out at sea. They spent hours, late into the evening, going after fish. When Senor Velasquez would get something too big for Lorenzo, he would get it himself then let it go. They weren’t working tonight. He had one goal and one goal only. He wanted Lorenzo to pull in a fish all by himself.

Eventually, Papa found something that felt just right for little Lorenzo. As he handed the line over to his son, Senor Velasquez kept whispering in Lorenzo’s ear what he should do. He kept telling him, “Watch your speed, Lorenzo, watch your speed. Now ease back on it without reeling, there you go. There you go, Lorenzo. Now pull it in a little more, and pull it in. You’re gonna get this one! Pull!” After a short battle, the young fish gave up. He tired out from Lorenzo’s constant pulling and reeling, and figured there was no shame in going out like this. When Senor Velasquez pulled the grouper up on the boat, he looked sadly at Lorenzo and told him the news. “Now, nino. We have to put him back. This one, he is young like you. And it wouldn’t be fair for us to take him from his world so little. So, do you mind if I give him back?”

Lorenzo thought about it for a moment. He wanted to keep the fish that he’d worked so hard to pull in, but he also understood his father’s wisdom. If he said the little fish needed to go back, Lorenzo knew that the little fish needed to go back. He waved bye-bye to the fish and then watched every move Papa made as he steered the boat back home, going and sitting at his hero’s feet.

Lorenzo loved thinking back to the days alone with his father, and sometimes that was all he had to get through these times. The thought of his father made him wish even harder for the day when he could go back home to Mexico, and it was soon approaching. With the money from this last job, not only could he afford to leave this country, but he could afford to support and help any family he might find waiting when he got back. But for now, he needed to worry about affording dinner, and he needed to bring in whatever fish was weighing down the end of his line.

The beast tugged and pulled, even tilting the boat down a little in that direction. Lorenzo didn’t dare to unfasten that reel, knowing he would never stand a chance of pulling this thing as it was now. He tried hard to turn the reel and shorten the distance between him and the catch of the day, still a little unsure of just what it was that Lorenzo was trying to bring in. Just then, with a turn of the reel, Lorenzo managed to instigate the creature into shooting skyward. There, before his face it seemed, was a great sailfish. This majestic sight, maybe nine or ten long feet of muscle and fin, reflected the morning sun back to Lorenzo from its sea sleek body. The beauty of the creature obsessed Lorenzo as he pulled and pulled as hard as he could, only releasing the reel from its holding place when it seemed he had tired the fish out enough to haul it in.

For the last twenty feet of the fight, Lorenzo pulled with his own strength, not relying on the anchoring of the boat to tire out this beautiful fish. He would lead and reel, lead and reel, giving the sailfish only a second to rest between attacks so he could ease the tension in the line and also play a solid game of give and take with him. After about five minutes of wrestling and pulling, Lorenzo hauled in the most beautiful sailfish he’d ever seen. This gorgeous animal fought him all along the boat, too, threatening to gouge Lorenzo with the business end of its sharp bill. It is generally unadvised to bring aboard a fish of this size and strength when out on a solitary trip, but he didn’t care. Lorenzo knew what he could get for this fish in the market, and he knew it would go a long way towards getting him home. When he got him into the livewell, and that was a labor in and of itself given the incomparable sizes of the gargantuan fish and the miniscule nature of the tank, Lorenzo hauled in the grouper on his other line with an effortless tug. By comparison, the grouper seemed to swim up to Lorenzo with a sign reading, “Eat me.” Without hesitation, Lorenzo labeled the grouper his food fish and the sailfish his market fish. “What do you think, Papa? Did I pull that one in alright?” Lorenzo smiled wide and proud thinking of what his father would say. It was just too bad that Papa could never join him out in these rich waters.

With two decent catches for the day, Lorenzo figured it was time to get his store back to shore. The trip didn’t take long. He was already on Tammy’s side of the island, and the market wasn’t far from there. By boat, it took maybe fifteen minutes to get from one to the other. He tied up to the dock out by the market and made the trip in. The colorful market all around Lorenzo was one of those places that the locals built and the tourists invaded. Most of the booths were geared specifically towards local needs like fruit and produce, occasionally featuring some local kids and the crafts they’d built while waiting with their parents at the market. Each section had one or two folks sitting back and yelling at you to come buy something from their stocks, whether it was food or tobacco or whatever. Lorenzo planned on coming back for produce once he’d hocked off this fish, but first things first.

It didn’t take long before he had some buyers interested in the sailfish. He brought a few back to the boat where they would each try to outbid each other. Eventually, this fishmonger that Lorenzo knew well, a guy named Paul from England, won out. He would often trade with tourists, promising them mantelpiece game at exorbitant costs, but Lorenzo didn’t mind. Paul was a good guy, and the fish was no longer his responsibility once Lorenzo sold it. Even if what he did was occasionally illegal and always disliked by the locals, it paid well when Lorenzo had the product. Besides, Paul would always beat him at poker when they got together and played, so Lorenzo deserved a nice, pricey catch.

After Lorenzo escorted Paul’s muscle back off the boat, and after he’d gone and picked up some produce for the lady back at her cabin, Lorenzo figured it was time to head back and enjoy the afternoon. Tammy probably wouldn’t be up yet. In true vacationers style, Tammy slept past noon almost every day, only once or twice getting up for a late breakfast and a morning walk on the beach. She didn’t understand what was at stake here, and so of course she treated it like a big vacation. Even still, after a month or so, she began to question this idyllic existence and why it was only her.

Lorenzo stayed busy keeping her entertained. He’d been advised to keep her away from public places if at all possible, so she almost never went into town, and then only when the cruise ships were out of port. This left at most one or two days a week open. He would take her out on the boat so she could sun, then he would grill up dinner for her, usually fish that he’d caught, and he would keep the drink cabinet stocked. At first, Tammy didn’t drink at all. About three weeks in, though, she started to sample from the wine cabinet. Before long, she was dipping in pretty heavily. All Lorenzo could figure was that she was trying to hide her questions in the drink.

Sure enough, there were no signs of life when he pulled up. After Lorenzo tied the boat up at their dock, he went in to make sure she was still okay. It was right at noon by now, so it came as no surprise to him that she slept soundly. He found two empty bottles of American whiskey bought off one of the duty-free shops in town. He bought both of them just the day before, so he figured Tammy would probably be sleeping pretty late today.

The old fisherman sat out by the sea reading some travel brochures on Mexico. As far as he could tell, Lorenzo would be back in country this time next month. He wanted to read up on home as to not be surprised by anything. And if nothing else, the brochures were just an appetizer to hold him over until Lorenzo could have the real thing. Before too long, Lorenzo would be looking East over the ocean, not West.

He wasn’t much of a swimmer, but Lorenzo took a few laps in the perfectly clear ocean water. The current was smooth and easy, accepting him like the fish he was. He floated out over the water, occasionally drifting further down the beach than he was interested in doing. After a time of this fruitless exercise, Lorenzo figured he would just get back to fishing. It was never the same for him, going from the boat to the shore, but fishing was fishing, and it made him relax. To tell the truth, he’d grown steadily more and more tired of dealing with Tammy and he needed the relaxation. She was pleasant at first and just glad to be on vacation, but now she was an angry drunk who never really wanted company. Sometimes, he even questioned if the pay was worth it. But it was. And he stayed. Lorenzo would put up with her just a little longer, then he would never need to deal with her again.

The simple motion of casting his lure soothed Lorenzo. He felt at home on this stranger’s beach, and all because he was doing what he was born to do. It didn’t much matter where Lorenzo was so long as he could throw his rod in the water and hope for the best. It was that feeling of being home and that connection with his father that made it so worthwhile. It was that feeling that he was doing exactly what he was meant to do that made fishing his escape. He watched the bait float on top of the water, jiggling a little as it came back to him. No, Lorenzo had never really had any success with top waters from the shore, or anything but live bait in general, but this wasn’t about catching fish. This was just about being there.

About that time, he heard the doors to the little house on the beach open up. Lorenzo turned around to see Tammy coming out on the beach in a lime-green spaghetti strap tank top and a sari, once again fully taking to the full beach culture that she lived in these days. Of course, she was also wearing full sunglasses to protect her likely sensitive eyes. The bright Caribbean sun is bad enough without adding a hangover.

“Good morning, Lorenzo. What are we doing today?” He could sense a small amount of sarcasm and annoyance in her voice. He was also a little miffed with her calling it morning still this late in the day, but he let it go in the name of having a smooth afternoon. As much as she probably hated him being there, Lorenzo didn’t want to let on how much he hated being there with her.

“Good morning, Mrs. Tammy. I think we’ll stay here and grill tonight. I just got back from the market with some fresh fruits and corn. Does that sound good?”

“Are we grilling the corn?”

“We could, Mrs. Tammy, but I hadn’t planned on it.” She was being fussy with him, but he still tried his best not to care.

“Ugh. What I meant was what are we grilling? Do you have any steaks, or is it more fish?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tammy, all I have is fish. I can go back to the market and get some steaks if you want. I just didn’t think you were a steak person.”

“I didn’t used to be. But, man, it’s been so long since I’ve had anything but fish, I would jump on a steak right now.” The short brunette didn’t look like a steak person. Lorenzo had never really met any American women who were big on steak. They generally took chicken or fish, but Lorenzo had to admit that he’d never spent this much time with a Southern girl. She was short, but still taller than Lorenzo, and was quite beautiful in how her features came together. However, her light brown hair had grown lighter since coming to stay with Lorenzo, probably due to all the sun she was absorbing. Lorenzo had also noticed that her once pale skin was growing considerably darker. Though it was bright today, they had been without sun for almost three days prior, and her skin was still retaining some of its beach color. Slowly but surely, Tammy was adapting to her Cayman lifestyle.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tammy. How about I put this down and go get you some steaks?”

“No, it’s fine. Just get some next time, okay? We need to have something that didn’t swim one of these days.”

For a while she just sat out there with him. Lorenzo kept fishing and Tammy kept sitting there being a vacationer. After a while of bothered silence, Tammy gave out an utterance of frustration. “Ugh. I’m so tired! Why am I so tired, Lorenzo?”

“Sometimes, Mrs. Tammy, sleeping all day will do that to you. If you don’t wake up, you won’t want to wake up.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I slept late, okay, but I had a terrible headache! And I’m on vacation.”

“I would expect you to have a headache after you finished off all that whiskey last night. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Tammy, I’m surprised you’re awake as early as you are,” Lorenzo added, uncharacteristically letting his temper show.

“Well I’m sorry I don’t live by your standards, Mr. Lorenzo, and for that matter, why do you keep calling me Mrs. Tammy! That’s not even my name, Lorenzo. And even if it were, why wouldn’t you just call me Tammy? Gawh, you make no sense.”

“I am sorry…Tammy. I’m just doing as I was instructed.”

“Excuse me? Who told you to get my name wrong every day for a month?”

Lorenzo was cornered. He didn’t know how to manage getting out of this without a lie, and even that wouldn’t be convincing enough. “Listen, Mrs. Tammy.” He didn’t care about the first part anymore. “Your husband told me to call you Tammy. He said I should be careful about your real names.”

“Ames made you do this? Why? When’s he getting here, Lorenzo, I need to talk to him.”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Tammy, I don’t know, but he said it was for your best interest. He said he’ll be here as soon as he can get away from business and everything.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “And you’re not supposed to use his real name, either.”

“Oh really?” Her anger was getting visible as she stood up off the sand. With crossed arms and cocked hips, Mrs. Tammy accosted poor Lorenzo. “And what am I supposed to call my husband now?”

“He keeps telling me to call him Bill.”

“Bill? You’ve got to be joking. My husband is changing my name to Tammy and his name to Bill? And he can’t get away from business? What do you mean he can’t get away from business? He runs a grocery store!”

Lorenzo highly doubted that. The man he met was no grocer. That may be what he tells people, and he may even spend some time working in one, but the man he met was all business of another kind, and it certainly didn’t involve the question “Paper or plastic?” Besides. What possible danger could a simple grocer be in?

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tammy, but that’s what I’ve been told. Your husband didn’t tell me much, he just said that you were to avoid public places and you had to go by another name.” Lorenzo could tell that her anger started shifting towards another feeling. She was probably starting to wonder the same questions that frightened him.

“Did he tell you why, Lorenzo?”

“Yes, Mrs. Tammy.” Lorenzo paused, knowing he wasn’t supposed to say anything. He thought hard about his next words, because they may well be the difference between going home and staying in this foreign town.

“Well why?” She thought for a minute, especially about the consequences of her husband’s actions. “I’m not on vacation, am I?”

“No, Mrs. Tammy, I don’t think so.”

Her reactions were now on the edge of hysteria, becoming more feverish with every passing thought. “Do people even know I’m alive, Lorenzo? My friends, my family. They all think I’m dead. You kidnapped me! You took me from my home, you made it look like I’d been killed, and you’re holding me here. Why would you do that? Who does that to a person!”

“But, Mrs. Tammy, that’s not what this is,” he tried to say, using everything he had to calm her down.

“And for God’s sake, call me Melissa!”

“But I can’t, Mrs.” He paused again, deciding which name to use, “Tammy. I can’t. You’re in danger.” She didn’t take this pause as an opportunity to interject again, so Lorenzo continued. “Miss. Your husband came down here and found me a few months ago. He came down here and told me that some very dangerous people were asking him to do some very dangerous things. He told me he had agreed to do it, but that he needed to protect you from them as long as he could, so he asked me to watch you. He asked me to protect you from the outside world so that the people who were after him wouldn’t get to you, too. He’s trying to protect you, and so am I. So please, Mrs. Tammy, or Melissa, sorry. Please let me protect you.”

Despite the pain that she’d become, Lorenzo started to pity the woman. For the first time, she was realizing what he already knew. She was starting to realize that her life was over and it would never be the same. She would probably never go home. She would probably never see a Georgia sunrise again, and he could understand how she felt. For so long now, he’d missed his home and his family. He’d thought about the sisters he left behind, and that was why he tried so hard now to get back. And as much as he was tired of having her around, Lorenzo knew he had to comfort her. “It’s okay, Melissa. You’ll get to go home one day. I promise. And, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but your husband will be here soon. He has me waiting for him any minute now. He’s going to call me and let me know when he’s on his way. So you don’t need to worry. Just sit back and let things work out, okay?”

“It’s not that, Lorenzo. I mean, what is he doing? What does he have to do that’s so bad? How can we even be sure he’s going to make it back here before the police catch him or those people kill him?”

Lorenzo looked at the poor girl, her eyes barely keeping back the tears that sat waiting to come. He had very few answers, but he did have one that would probably tell her all she needed to know. Lorenzo knew that he could answer her question, but it wouldn’t make her feel better. Even so, it was all he had. It was all he could do to bring her back from this squabbling mess, and so he thought it okay to divulge. Just this once.

“Mrs. Melissa,” he whispered, still trying to avoid her real name, even with no one else around, “your husband didn’t tell me much, but I did hear one thing.” Her eyes, still wet and red, eased their focus up to him. It was apparent that Melissa was interested in what he had to say. “You may not want to hear this, but I figure you need answers now more than secrecy. So, here’s what I know. We were talking one day, about you, and he said how mad you would be if you really knew what was going on,” which Lorenzo now knew to be true. “It was the day he told me not to tell you any of this, come to think of it. But anyway, when I asked him what he meant, Bill said that he was going to have to kill someone very close to you.”

Melissa sat back down quietly. Her eyes left their focus on Lorenzo and found a particularly interesting pebble on the beach, hoping that she was wrong. “What is it, Melissa? What is it?”

“It’s just that, I don’t know, I just. I thin I know who he means.”

“I’m sure I heard him wrong, Mrs. Tammy, I mean Melissa, I’m sure I did,” Lorenzo corrected himself, trying to cover the mistake he had made in revealing this little secret.

“No, it really does make sense. I just have this feeling, you know? Oh God, if I hadn’t already ruined his life enough!”

“What is it?”

She sat silent for a few seconds, making Lorenzo fairly nervous. He looked at her, waiting for an answer or a response or something. She just sat there, not answering until she felt there was no way around it.

“Lorenzo. Would you think I was a bad person if I told you I didn’t love my husband anymore?”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Melissa?” Lorenzo had never been married, and he’d never really had any serious connections with other people, so this did come to him with some difficulty.

“I mean, I did. Once. You have to understand, there was this guy I was dating, then something happened, and he just became distant. He left me alone, and I wasn’t going to wait on him forever. It was stupid, but I couldn’t. So I went off and dated some other guys, never anything serious, you know. Eventually, I married Ames. Excuse me, Bill. I loved him for a while, but now, I don’t know if I can love Bill after doing this to me. After stranding me here on this island, after sending me away from my home and my family.”

“He was trying to protect you, Mrs. Melissa. He did all that because he loved you.”

“Please, Lorenzo, just Melissa. No misses.”

“I’m sorry, Melissa, but still. He loves you very much, I know he does.”

“I know he does, but I can’t love him. Not after all this. Not anymore. Especially now that I hear he’s going to kill someone else.”

“Excuse me?” Lorenzo asked her, wondering if he’d heard her correctly.

“I mean, I’m more afraid for who he’s going to kill than I am for him. I know it, I just know it. You know that boy I told you about? The one I dated a long time ago?”

“Yes,” Lorenzo answered, starting to see where this was going.

“I think that’s who he has to kill. I don’t know why, but I feel like that’s who he’s going to kill. He’s going to kill…” Melissa kept talking, her voice trailing off at the sound of Lorenzo’s forgotten phone. He had always carried it as instructed, but it never did anything other than sit in his pocket. Now, it was ringing.

Lorenzo pulled the little thing out of his pocket. It was an older phone with the old calculator style display on the front that read, “1 New Message.” It was old, but Lorenzo couldn’t tell. He just opened the phone and read his message from some number he didn’t recognize. He read the message, but it didn’t mean much. It just said, “I’m headed your way. It’s done.”

As quick as Lorenzo had a chance to read the message, Melissa had stolen it out of his hands. She read it with a certain vigor and excitement, hoping with all her heart that it was from Ames. “It’s from his phone. That’s Ames’ number, this is from him.”

“What does it mean, Melissa?”

She looked at him, not wanting to speak. He could tell that she knew, and instantly so did he. It meant that whoever was going to die was dead. She looked up at Lorenzo and knew it was useless to hide. “It means that he’s dead. It means that,” she paused, tears once more coming from the poor young woman whose world had already faced enough damage for one day, “Will Baker is dead.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am so sorry that, once again, I am late. At least this time it's only a day or two late, not a whole week. There is just so much more distraction now that I'm back home and it's getting harder to work consistently. I'm trying, folks, I promise. And, the exciting news is that we're always getting closer to the incredible finale of "Will Baker is Dead!" I think you're all going to love where we go from here, and tonight was a big step forward in the mystery. We now know that Melissa Laurence is not dead, but has been in a sort of unofficial protective custody in the Caribbean and under the care of the mysterious Lorenzo.

One more update, I will most likely NOT be posting Episode 6 now. This is essentially functioning in place of Episode 6 (except that 6 is centered around Melissa instead of Lorenzo), so there's not much need for it. I'll eventually post it, but probably as a sort of "Bonus Feature" after the series is done. There isn't much need for it now, though. I hope y'all liked Episode 9, and just think, it should only be 6 more days until the next episode, not a full week. I really can't wait to bring you this next installment in the saga, and especially get you to the finale. Writing this one really had me thinking about it.

One last thing and I'm done. This is the first week of classes at UGA, so I we'll see how hard it is for me to write with all that going on. I really hope I can, but we'll see. I'll see you guys soon. And as always, feel free to Tweet me, Facebook me, or just leave comments on here. And don't forget your :42: chat icons on Facebook and to trend #WillBaker on Twitter. We can make this happen!

-Adam W.

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 8 - "Para la Consola, Spanish for To Console"

2010-08-06T18:23:00.000-04:00

Every man’s eyes fell to the lovely young woman sitting before them now. In a room full of cops, it’s never good to have that much attention at one time, but that is where Jules found herself now. She remembered telling them that Robert Evans had killed her husband, but the rest was a blur, possibly because it had only been about thirty seconds. Still, thirty silent seconds was just too much for her, especially given the present crowd. It felt like she was back in the pool having a competition with that evil neighbor girl across the street to see who could hold their breath the longest. It had been thirty seconds, and Jules was about to explode from the lungs out, but she wouldn’t give in first. There was no way she would let them win.

Eventually, Sheriff Conway cut the silence while Jules gave a silent sigh, glad to see that she wouldn’t break first. “Mrs. Baker, that’s a pretty serious accusation. Do you understand what you’re saying?”

Her silent stare was proof enough, even though it was more indicative of the fact that she still wasn’t entirely sure what she had done.

“Mrs. Baker, we don’t think Rob is to blame for what happened to your husband.” Answering the doubt and fear in her eyes, “…but that doesn’t mean we won’t look into it if you insist. The thing is,” he was about to say something important, when one of the suave gentlemen behind Sheriff Conway gave a low cough, so he changed his mind in the course of speaking, “Rob’s got a pretty solid alibi. One of my own men, well you know Officer Rodriguez, one of my most trusted men is speaking on Mr. Evans’ behalf. And, to be honest, Mrs. Baker, I tend to go with a man like Officer Rodriguez. I’ve known Joe for years.”

She felt stupid. Exposed. Why had she been so quick to jump on Rob? If the police weren’t going to look into him, if they were going to cover for him, why did she open herself up to their ridicule and their wondering eyes? It was stupid of her. It was stupid of her to think it, but it was even more stupid of her to admit thinking it. Even if it was true, there was nothing she could do about it. But she had to try.

“But Sheriff, I know it. He was jealous of my husband, and he hated him. He said things, and he sounded so…crazed. Are you sure it couldn’t be him? Are you sure, Sheriff?”

“Ma’am, it’s still pretty early in the investigation. We can’t be sure of anything. Why don’t you go get some sleep in the chaplain’s office, he never uses it. I’ll send someone for you when your parents arrive, okay?”

“No. I’m not going anywhere. You brought me in here to tell me something, and so far I’m the only one who’s said a thing. You must know something, you brought these guys in pretty fast, and Will hasn’t even been dead for seven hours. He’s probably still floating above our heads!”

“Julia, these men are here on another case, something not related to your husband. Don’t worry about them,” the Sheriff tossed out, obviously lying. Jules could see the lie in his grin, trying to appease either himself, the men leering down on him, or the grieving widow who would just as soon slap a cop in his own office.

“Bull…” Her tone and her diction shocking the men in the room. Jules had never been a bold woman, but something about staring at death, yet still breathing, it made her feel stronger. And something about this threat which intended to keep Jules from knowing what killed her husband made her mad.

“She’s gonna find out eventually, boys, we need to tell her,” the Sheriff tossed over his shoulder to the nice men standing at the cork board.

“Sir, you have been ordered. We don’t know if we can trust her, and we need to know what she knows independently before we say a word.” The thought of being ordered in his own office, in his own town, threw Sheriff Conway off the edge, but he regained composure to save face in Mrs. Baker’s eyes.

“You mean, like bringing me into the office where you are conducting a big investigation that probably got my husband killed? Is that your idea of doing things discretely and good investigative techniques?” Again, her boldness pushed the men back a step, and made Sheriff Conway widen his grin. “I don’t know anything, and since my husband is dead because of you, I think I deserve to know something! Don’t you?”

Jules didn’t blame them, but it couldn’t hurt to act like she did. The two men in suits, both somewhat tall with narrow builds and official looking stances, looked at each other, probably communicating telepathically through some government training they had. They were obviously government of some kind, but how she didn’t know. “Mrs. Baker. What we are about to tell you should be guarded with extreme prejudice. You can’t tell your friends, your family, neighbors, whoever.” He paused before looking at the other agent, then back to Mrs. Baker, taking in a big breath, then letting his chest fall before saying a word, knowing well what he risked by speaking at all. The other agent was noticeably against such a rash decision, but it was too late to stop his partner. “We believe your husband was wrapped up in a money laundering racket that ran through the bank where he worked and has been running through Horizon, very covertly, for years. It would seem that some elements of an organized crime family decided that such a small town would be the perfect venue for their operation.” He could tell that Mrs. Baker was about to cry, fearing the worst, that her husband had been a mafia stooge for all these years, when he decided that the last detail may be somewhat important. “But don’t worry, Mrs. Baker, we believe he was only cooperating out of fear, not as a willing benefactor of their indiscretions.” Seeing that it wasn’t enough, he embellished a little more. “Your husband was a good man, Mrs. Baker.”

“Thank you.” She spoke so softly it was barely audible.

The agent who rather not say anything figured it was his turn to be hospitable, and figured that the damage was done, so he knelt down in front of her chair and took up Jules’ hand in his. “Mrs. Baker. I’m Special Agent Walsh. This is Agent Jones. Please, I know this is difficult for you, but you must understand. I’ve been working this case for some time now, and I couldn’t risk anything going wrong. I couldn’t risk all of our work against the men who did this to your husband to go to waste. Please understand that we couldn’t trust you, not yet. We had to be sure you weren’t a knowledgeable partner in all of this. Please, do you understand that we never meant to insult you or vilify your husband or your memory of him?”

She was in fact starting to warm up to Special Agent Walsh, the middle-aged white gentleman who stood before her now. He seemed kind enough, probably was in his 40s or early 50s at the most. He seemed nice enough to Mrs. Baker, but she wasn’t ready to ease up yet. Not after opening herself to some very interesting questions about Rob. It seemed, though, that she would get away without calling forth too much suspicion.

“Then, do you have any leads in the case? Do you have any idea who killed my husband?”

Sheriff Conway, trying to stay tactful, “Are you sure you want to hear this, Julia? These are some pretty gruesome details.”

“I need to know. I…I saw the blood stains on the carpet. I saw you carry his body out of our house. I need to know who did this if it really wasn’t Rob.” And, that was probably stupid of her, too, to bring him up again.

Special Agent Walsh was the one to offer an answer, knowing now that his silence would be a foolish waste. “These groups, they tend to have different assassins at their disposal. They could hire any number of people to do a job like this. After all, one bank manager is hardly a primary target for them.”

“But,” Sheriff Conway added, “we are looking at someone.” It was apparent that the two agents were against this theory and didn’t want to hear it from the fat man, but it seemed he was destined to say it one way or another, especially now that he’d piqued Mrs. Baker’s interest. “We found something in the basement of your house, Mrs. Baker. We aren’t too sure what to make of it, but we found an apron.”

“And it was probably planted by the real killer to make us think it was someone else,” suggested Agent Jones.

“Or it was left by the killer because he was wearing it,” Jules said, obviously leaning more towards the Sheriff’s suggestion. “Isn’t that possible? Was there anything else?”

“It’s nothing Mrs. Baker, it’s nothing. And we’re not ready to say more because we need to be sure we have enough to bring a suspect in.” Special Agent Walsh came in now, offering a little bit of a stern warning to the Sheriff. “We need to play this pretty close to the chest.”

She was still uncertain about trusting these men, but it needed to be done. For now, at least. Jules may have been an obsessive woman, but she wasn’t prepared to begin some crazy, vigilante investigation into her husband’s death. She had to let these men do their job. After all, she would need to be back at the school within a month’s time, and then there would be no time for this panicky worry she held on to. Before too long, Mrs. Baker would have to start thinking about lesson plans and children, lunches and assignments and homework. There was too much coming, so she would just have to let the officials be official and find out who killed her husband.

She didn’t want to trust them. She wanted to question the crap out of them, but what good would it do? Jules felt like there was a suspect. She felt like there was someone out there right now, someone who had killed her husband, and they knew about him. She felt like Will’s murderer was out there and near her, and she wanted to know what they were doing to find him before he got away. And if it really was some big time murder, how long would it take a trained killer like that to get away where they would never find him again? Why were they standing here now arguing about protocol and about who was the bigger man, because really, isn’t that what it all boiled down to? Who held the power in the room? She wanted to question them, but it wasn’t wise. It was time for her to listen and go along with it, not show doubt in these men she plainly had no choice but to trust.

“Why don’t you wait outside, Julia, and I’ll go down with you to, uh, identify the body. Okay? Let me talk with the agents while we wait on your family to arrive. We don’t want you facing this alone. And if you’d like, I can call your friend Rob,” Sheriff Conway asked, before he realized just how dumb he made himself sound, “that is, if you’ve changed your mind about him.”

“That’s a great idea, Sheriff. Mrs. Baker, why don’t we step outside, let you get some fresh air. It’s been a long day for you, and it’s pretty cool out now. That Georgia heat’s gone down a good deal in the last few hours. How’s that sound?” Special Agent Walsh insisted it was a good idea, probably deciding it was a good time to take up the Sheriff on his one smart move all night.

She didn’t protest much, either, wanting to leave the stuffed environment that smelled of old paper and male ego. The summer heat, as bad as it was, seemed to penetrate the offices and leave a dusty smell like hay that’s been dried up in a slow burn. And she didn’t make too much protestation about the Sheriff’s fool comment on Rob, sensing that one of the two agents had a second thought now about why she suspected Rob. She didn’t want to look up and make eye contact, so she wasn’t really sure which one stared her down at the present moment. As far as Jules could figure, those men had the ability to stir her soul with a simple glare. Probably more of that government training.

Once outside, Jules looked up at the stars. It was cooler, and it was clear. No sense of the storms that had melted the sky the night before. There was no sense that the sky was about to fall on her, either, like it had just a few hours ago. “How could you let this happen to me, Will? How could you let this happen to me? We were gonna start a family. We were gonna…we were gonna go to Europe. We were gonna, I don’t know, buy a cat.” She laughed for once, in the midst of the tears. They’d talked about buying a cat, but Jules never wanted to. She never wanted a cat, but would give in to Will now. It felt silly to her, talking to a dead man. She felt strange sitting outside talking to a man she would never see again, but somehow, in a way that felt strange and discomforting, she felt like he could hear her.

And if he could hear her, could he see her? And could he know what she had been doing behind his back? Jules worried, afraid that her husband’s first moment in Heaven would be like a “This was your life, and your life sucked,” moment. And wouldn’t that just be the worst, get to Heaven and find out your wife had been sneaking around with another guy the day you died? Somehow, it felt even worse than thinking he’d died because of her.

Which reminded her. Jules felt she needed to call Rob and give him an apology. True, she wasn’t completely sure he was innocent, but that didn’t matter. It was especially important to call him and apologize if he was guilty. Should her last words to a murderer really be telling him that she was going to tell the cops he was guilty? Jules figured it may be prudent to tell him that she realized how wrong she was and she wanted his forgiveness and whatnot.

The phone rang for a few seconds. Jules could see him laying in bed, no shirt, trying to sleep and forget the day. She could see him thinking about her, wondering if the love of his life would ever come to realize that he was innocent. Oddly enough, she could also see him cleaning off a knife from his most recent kill and bathing in the blood of his now defeated nemesis. It got to where she wasn’t sure who would answer the phone when it finally came time to talk to him.

“Hello? Hello?” His second hello came out with that drawn out vowel at the end, indicating both his annoyance and desire to be asleep.

“Hey, baby. It’s me.” It took Jules a minute to say it. She half expected some kind of comeback or lashing out, but all she got was another worried interrogation from her former favorite farmer.

“Are you okay, baby? Have you talked to the police yet?” And then he remembered what she was about to tell the police. “What did you tell them?”

Honesty is always the best policy, but it can sometimes get you killed. “I told them you killed Will.” She let that sink in with the both of them before he spoke.

“Should I be expecting the blue lights outside my window? Are you calling to give me a fair head start?”

“No, they don’t believe me. Apparently you’ve got a solid alibi in the department. You know Joe Rodriguez?”

“Yeah, he’s a good guy. Joe’s the one I called when I found his body,” Rob trying to avoid using Will’s name around the wife, not sure how sensitive she was to hearing it. “So he stuck up for me, eh? Glad to see someone did.”

“Please, Rob, you know how hard it is for me to think clearly tonight. And you said some pretty scary things today. And you lied to me! But that doesn’t matter. There are these FBI guys up here who say it was some big cover up or whatever. They think Will was in some pretty bad stuff.”

“I’m so sorry, baby, are you gonna be okay? Do you need a place to stay for a few days to make sure you’re safe?”

Honestly, she hadn’t considered herself a target yet, but Rob was right. They may be coming for her next. Maybe staying with Rob wasn’t such a bad idea. “No, baby, I’ll be okay. My parents are headed up here and I can stay with them for a little while. I just…I can’t go back in that house, Rob. I just know I’ll see his face laying there on the floor, surrounded in blood. I can’t do that, Rob. I can’t.”

For the next few minutes, most of their conversation was Jules crying in Rob’s ear with his conciliatory remarks coming out to hers. Jules let out all the anger, and all of the frustration. She let out her pain, and she let out her doubt that the stupid men in stupid suits could do anything to help her. She let out her doubt that anything would ever get better.

When she stopped crying long enough to talk with Rob, she asked him, “Are you coming in tonight?”

“I can if you want me to. Would you like that?”

“No, no, you go back to sleep. You’ve gotta be up in a few hours for work, and I don’t want to throw you off.”

“Jules, I’m coming up there. I already put in for tomorrow off, and they completely understood. One of the guys from the Myrtle City station is gonna fill in for me. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll see you in a little bit, okay? Sheriff Conway said we’re going to go identify the body as soon as my parents arrive, so I may be down there doing that when you get here.” She paused for a minute. Jules had almost forgiven Rob, feeling sure now that he could never be this nice and that monstrous all in the same night, but she still felt that something else was to be said. “Rob. I don’t think you need to go see Will with me. It wouldn’t seem right.”

“I understand. You need to do that with your family. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay. Bye, baby. I, uh,” Jules stopped, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Jules. I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up with Rob in a less passionate manner this time, not throwing the phone or cursing her luck for loving a killer. About then, Jules smelled smoke. It wasn’t like a forest fire, or like car exhaust, or any of the other expected smoke smells. It was cigarette smoke. It was then that Jules realized someone was standing out back with her. How much had they heard? She didn’t want to turn around and see Special Agent Walsh puffing on a stick, but she half knew that’s who it was. It was time to explain herself.

What Jules found when she turned around was none other than Officer Rodriguez. She let herself relax a little, but not completely. In order to not look suspicious at all, she asked perhaps the most suspicious question she could think to. “How, uh, how much did you hear?”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Baker. I know about you and Rob. I talked to him right before he went to see Will.”

“What do you mean? Why was he going to see Will?”

“Mrs. Baker, I came up on Will and Rob talking in a gas station this morning. They tried hard to keep it civil, but I could tell there was something off between them. Rob was scared, and I’ve never known him to be scared of anyone. Honestly, I would’ve expected it to be him in that box downstairs, not your husband.”

“You thought Will was going to kill Rob?”

“Men do crazy things for the women they love, Mrs. Baker.” He could tell she knew this, and he could tell that she was upset by it. “You’ve been blaming yourself for all of this, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have! Until about thirty seconds ago, I just knew that Will was dead because of me. I just knew that someone had killed my husband because of something I did. And now they tell me it was mobsters and they probably killed Will because he tried to protect me!” She was about to cry, but then she thought more about what Officer Rodriguez had been saying. “Did Will know about me and Rob?”

“Looks like it, Mrs. Baker. I went to talk to your husband at the bank this morning, and it sure seemed like he knew something was going on.” As much as Officer Rodriguez wanted to lie, he couldn’t see how it would benefit her. The truth has a way of coming out, and he knew that Jules needed someone to trust right now.

“I can’t believe it. Will died knowing how dirty I am. Does it make me a bad person to wish that he’d died without knowing?”

“Not at all, Mrs. Baker. I think we all like to think that our loved ones will leave with the best impressions of us.” Officer Rodriguez took himself a moment to speak philosophically with Mrs. Baker, hoping to get her mind off of the death and damage of the day and maybe on something beyond these few short hours. “Sometimes,” he started, thinking back to his own experiences with loss, “we just want to keep this picture in our minds of people as they were, not as they are. And so we imagine that the people we love should have that same image of us as we were and not who we’ve become. And sometimes, Mrs. Baker, just sometimes, it’s easier to live with the good memories of a passed loved one than it is to live with the real person, flaws and failures included. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Joe.”

“You’re very welcome, Mrs. Baker.” The two sat on a bench out behind the station, each one trying their best to feel better. Joe smoked, Jules leaned on Joe’s shoulder, and neither one talked about why. “Besides, if anyone is to blame, it’s me. I tried to follow your husband home this afternoon. You know, I was worried what he was going to do. But I lost him when he pulled over to talk to Jonah Davis by the bridge down town. I wonder if I might have followed him all the way home if I could’ve scared off whoever did this. I wonder if I could’ve caught the guy and kept your husband alive.”

“I don’t blame you, Joe. And I don’t blame myself.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I can’t. I wasn’t there when he came home, and that’s all there is to it. And I may have been off with someone else, but I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill him, and that’s all there is to it. But you know what? I want to remember him like he was. Because he was perfect. Once.”

“You know how I recognized your husband this morning at the gas station?” Joe Rodriguez could tell that she wanted to talk about Will now, and he figured the best thing he could do to oblige was to talk about him with her. “It wasn’t the banker’s clothes, and it wasn’t his voice. I’d only seen him a couple times before. It was the eyes.”

Jules looked up at him, a little confused, but ultimately interested.

“Yes, ma’am. He had his sister’s eyes. Those deep blue eyes that just caught you on a glance. I had somehow forgotten them from her. You know I was there the night she was killed. I had forgotten them. But today is the second time I saw those eyes on the dying. Sure he wasn’t hurt, yet. But it was still coming all the same. I imagine that whatever force killed Will Baker was already in motion long before that morning, and I saw into the eyes of a man as he was dying. Just like I saw into the eyes of his sister while she was on the asphalt dying. I guess this is my punishment for not being there to save her life and to keep Ames from running her over.”

The forlorn pair sat out under the stars, each working through their own grieving process in their own way. As she looked up, Jules could see those eyes that Joe was talking about. She could see those eyes, and it amazed her how she never had before. How she had taken the greatest part of her husband for granted. Jules sat back and thought hard about those eyes, still leaning in to Joe’s shoulder. And Jules thought about his song, that sad old Waylon Jennings song he would always hum. And Jules knew that she wasn’t there to forget, and that she never wanted to forget him. She wanted to remember the man she loved, even if he was dead and gone. She wanted to remember him as he was, not as he…

“Mrs. Baker? Mrs. Baker, are you out here?” It was Special Agent Walsh, probably come to collect her for the viewing.

“Yes, I’m here. What is it?”

“Your parents are here, Mrs. Baker. Are you ready to see the body?”

“Yes, sir. I’m ready.” Jules got up to go face her husband for the last time. In doing so, she thought about the poor man facing himself and his own ghosts right next to her, the one who helped her forget and remember all at once in a borderline mystical way. She laid a soft hand on his shoulder, just like his wife used to do. He could feel Mrs. Rodriguez in that hand, and grabbed for hers in his way. “Thank you, Joe. You don’t know what you’ve done for me tonight, and it means a lot.” And, to avoid the ears of the agent, she leaned down and whispered to him, “Rob will be here soon. Help him understand.”

She looked down at the man who was in need of his own understanding. In a look, though, he learned what she meant and what she wanted. He gave a nod, and Jules walked on back through the doors with Special Agent Walsh where Sheriff Conway was waiting with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robin. Mrs. Robin ran to hold her daughter with tear soaked eyes. They cried, remembering the young man now gone. It would be another day or so, probably, until she would have to have this moment with the Bakers, but for now this was what she really needed. Her dad held on to Jules tight, hating to see his little girl feel a pain like this so young. Her mom cried softly with Jules, comforting her daughter with a mother’s love. The three came together well, just like a family, until Sheriff Conway had to break them up.

“Julia, Mr. and Mrs. Robin, it’s time to go see the body. We need you to identify Will for us, okay?”

Horizon’s newest widow walked first in line, followed closely by her parents with the three officials behind them. The stark hallway ran for about thirty feet with no doors on either side, the entire hallway dedicated to a lover’s last walk. Long off at the far-reaching end, the coroner stood at the door waiting for this caravan to arrive, holding the door open and his head down in respect of Mrs. Baker. She walked over to a drawer marked, “Case No. 462; Baker, Will.” The coroner came over once the Sheriff and the two other men said it was okay. He opened the cold metal door and reached his hand inside to pull on the steel slab where this husked out body lay.

As soon as the wheels started rolling underneath him, Jules closed her eyes. She kept saying to herself, silently through the echoes of her mind, wanting to prepare herself for whatever bruised and broken sight was about to be revealed to her, “As he was, not as he is. As he was, not as he is. As he was, not as he is.” Even while Jules focused on that face she knew from the morning light, the face she loved with the eyes that saw her in love, Jules knew she had to see it. Jules knew that she had to see it for herself, and so she decided it was time to open her eyes and look, once more, into his. She knew it was time to finally accept the last proof that it was in fact true. She had to look into the eyes that finally and decidedly proved to her the inimitable truth that Will Baker is dead.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am so sorry that this is coming to y'all a week late. I had a fun week, let me tell you. In the last week, I have moved out of my apartment and back home, I have taken two finals (that is, if you take "the last week" up until last Wednesday), I have helped clean and rearrange the basement at home, and all sorts of craziness. I am hoping to get back on the consistent track, seeing as how this is my second time being a week late on a post. Ugh. Thanks for your patience, and I look forward to your thoughts about this episode. As always, don't be afraid to Tweet me (@42Cobras) or talk to me on Facebook (Adam Wynn). You can also leave comments straight on here, but that's not as much fun, now, is it? Thanks for reading, y'all, and let me know what you think. Tell your friends!

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 7 - "Taking Initiative"

2010-07-23T20:55:00.002-04:00

He had never ignored his alarm clock before, at least not while he was sober, but this morning was different. Work usually found the big man out of the house by 6am, but today he enjoyed sleeping in and watching the sun bathe the fields from his bedroom window, bringing in a pristine view of the world from his house on the hill. The sun rose just as it had every morning since the first days of creation. The shadows from the hay split the light into distinguishable slivers, each one individual and part of the whole in its own right. He could have counted each one, for he saw the world as new this morning. The fog over the trees started to burn away as the Summer sun heated the sky, and although it was a familiar scene, Rob Evans knew now that today would be like no other day he had ever experienced.

He had spent the last ten years or so obsessing about the “girl next door,” Jules Robin, now Baker. He had spent the last three years mourning her marriage to the prick next door, Will Baker, wondering how he was going to get around that little barricade. Rob could think of nothing in life he wanted more than his dream girl, the Southern beauty she was. He had courted her and tried his hardest to lay down some slick whiles of his own while he worked the stock room at Horizon Grocery, but nothing would catch her eye. It was like she had this perpetual vow of celibacy that he just couldn’t penetrate, but he tried to just as hard. And now he had done it.

He had finally gotten that girl to look his way, and Rob Evans made good on a promise he made to himself all those years ago. And last night in the rain, in something that can only be described as a moment of weakness by Jules and a particularly strong work by Rob, he found a way to make her give in. And now that he had her, Rob would do anything to keep her from getting away.

The day ahead looked to be a long one of farm work and yard work, so the lazy morning had to end. He turned on the radio and headed to the shower, reluctantly washing away the luck of the day before and the scent of a woman he had always loved. Rob didn’t mind too much, though, figuring it wouldn’t be too long before he got that scent back. The radio was pretty nice, playing a little Tom Petty as he was rolling into the shower. After the weekend rock wore off and they turned over to the usual repertoire of acoustic guitars and other twangy strings, Rob wandered the dial looking for another good rock show, finally settling on one of the bigger stations. It was a good choice. They had just started playing his favorite song, “Bad Moon Rising.”

It didn’t take long for a farmer like Rob to get ready. He’d get showered off, brush his teeth, scruff his hair down under a John Deere hat, then fill a thermos up with coffee before pulling out of the drive. And the last few years being in the fire department had helped teach Rob how to get ready in no time flat, always moving as if a call-out was right around the corner. Rob pulled on one of his old Bulldog t-shirts, covered it up with a light summer plaid fitting a country farmer from Horizon, all over his jeans and work boots. Sure it was Summer, and sure it would probably be a hellish temperature that afternoon, but the man had customs, and he wouldn’t break them for anything. Not even the threat of heat stroke.

The morning was still cool, so Rob just rolled the windows down on his old GMC, a beautiful white truck his dad had given him for high school graduation. It got the job done, and it had a cab cozy enough to fit a big guy like him. Rob wanted to get some fences built out at the back of his fields to try and keep the deer out, and maybe some of the smaller animals with a little chicken wire, so it meant tripping down to the Home Depot in Myrtle City. He never understood why they couldn’t put a store a little closer into town with all the folks in Horizon who could use a good home improvement store, but it wasn’t his call. They used to have the Horizon General for smaller purchases, but even then they wouldn’t have had his wood and wire.

Before he got too far, Rob thought he’d stop in and fill up at the Minit Save, get a paper, and maybe talk with some of the old men in town. It meant crossing the highway twice over, but that was no problem for Rob. He loved any chance to meet up and talk farm with the former earth turners of Horizon. It always meant free lessons and sometimes free coffee.

Rob eased up to the curb and turned off the engine. It was a shame, though, because it meant turning off one of his favorite songs by The Who, but he had the Limp Bizkit cover on CD and would just play it later if he really wanted to.

The store looked about as dirty and poorly managed as always, and there were no old men standing by the counter talking with old Frank. They weren’t as consistent during the Summer when everyone’s schedule was different. It was nice to see another friend in the store, though, as Rob recognized his cop buddy in the back. He figured that Joe Rodriguez was getting some coffee or looking around for a morning snack. Probably, “checking in on the store” to avoid getting another one of those meaningless calls he hated so much.

They exchanged head nods, and Rob went about his business. He looked at the gum on the counter, poured a cup of coffee, and looked over the weekends lottery numbers, not surprised to see that none of his lucky numbers had come in. Rob never bought tickets, but he knew what numbers he would play if he did buy one. He always checked the winning numbers just to see. He felt like that if any of his lucky numbers came up, or even all of them, it was destined to be a lucky day.

That gosh awful chime on the door alerted everyone to another presence in the store, but Rob had gotten used to tuning it out back when he spent an hour or more talking to folks at the counter. A part of his mind always wondered who it was, but never really cared. The sound he heard next, though, that was one he wasn’t quite as accustomed to, and he instantly knew exactly who walked in the door.

“Lenny! What a pleasant surprise to see you in here this morning. How’s the farm coming?”

“Morning, Will. It’s coming along well. I’m actually heading up to Home Depot this morning to pick up some supplies. I’m gonna build a fence along the back of the fields, right up next to the woods there.”

“That sounds nice. That gonna keep all the rabbits out? Or do you want to keep them all in?”

“I’m mostly working for deer this time, but I may do something about the rabbits.”

Oh, Rob knew what Will was doing. They’d had Junior English together back in High School, and after they read Of Mice and Men, Will liked using his little nickname for Rob. Rob thought Steinbeck sucked about as much as Will. It was a pretty fitting nickname in some ways, given that Rob was a big man and he was a farm boy. Oh, Rob knew what Will was doing, but he chose to let it go. After all, Rob had something on old Bill Walker that he didn’t know about, and that was enough to make this a pleasant encounter for the farm boy.

Will crossed around him to reach the coffee, trying to fuel up before a long day down at the bank. “The deer messing up your fields?” Will finally dropped the act and just talked to him about the farm.

“Yeah, they’ve been eating on my apple trees and eating at some of the crops, but nothing too serious. I wish it were season so I could’ve shot one of them, but they aren’t that big of a problem. How’s the bank?”

“It’s okay. Handling other people’s money is just great, you know? Handle theirs while making none of your own.”

So said the man driving a fairly new Charger.

“I hear you there.” Rob tried hard as he could to talk to Will without giving anything away. He just wanted to look at the man and say, Hey, I’m doing your wife, but it didn’t seem too prudent. Instead, he grinned excessively and acted like he was in on the joke with Will. “Where were you this weekend? I didn’t see your car around any.”

“Oh, I was out of town on business, setting up an account for some clients. It was nice and tropical, really. You?”

“I was on shift Saturday to yesterday morning, and I’ll go back on tomorrow morning, so I’m just trying to get some work done on the farm. Maybe cut the hay this afternoon.”

“That sounds good, sounds good.” The banker just sort of trailed off after a minute, and just when it looked like Rob would get away with it, he came back. “You know, that reminds me. When I came in last night, I noticed something odd. The house smelled a bit odd. You know what might’ve caused that?”

“Well that would depend on what the smell was, Will. What’d it smell like and where was it coming from?”

“Well it smelled like hay, and it seemed to come from my wife.”

Will stood eye-to-eye with Rob, somehow, and challenged him to come up with a reason.

“I know what you’ve been doing with her, Rob. I’m on to you, and I’m not gonna let you get away with it. Tonight, I’m sitting down and talking to her about it. I’ve been watching her these last few months, and I know what she does when I’m gone. You can’t have my Jules, Rob. You touch her again, and I’ll kill you.”

The words of his voice came off smooth and uncontested, like there was no doubt that he meant it and he’d thought about it very hard. It bothered Rob, though, that Will seemed to think they had been going on for months and months. Before last night, Rob could’ve very easily dismissed this crazed husband, but for some reason, he didn’t want to correct the man. Rob felt more powerful when his competition thought of it as months, and that was something he didn’t want to give up.

“You threatening trouble with me, Will?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Boy, I could tear you up. You really want to do this?”

“I’d kill you where you stand, Rob.”

“I’ll be sure and tell my cop friend what you said when he comes back to the counter.”

Will took a glance back, and without missing a beat, “I’ll be sure and pull the trigger on my .22 so he knows it without having to walk over here.”

“You carry a gun around in your suit?”

“Sure. Bank’s a dangerous place. We got held up a few years back, I might as well be prepared just in case.”

Though Rob and Will had known each other a ways back, Rob never knew the timid man to be a violent one aside from the occasional outburst, but who didn’t fit that bill? Nor did he ever know him to be a member of the National Handgun Owner’s Association, but he also knew well enough not to push a man who’s wife you were sleeping with. Something told Rob that he probably wasn’t bluffing it.

“Now look, Will, there ain’t no need for you to do this. You shoot me right here in what looks like cold blood, my friend back there will have one between your eyes before I hit the ground.” Rob glanced over his assailant’s shoulder, trying to make contact with the officer, but it didn’t work.

“And if you get that guy involved, your both gone. So just keep those eyes on me, okay, friend? Now. You touch my wife again, I’ll kill you. You’re gonna call her up this afternoon and tell her it’s all over. Make up whatever story you want, I don’t care. Just don’t tell her I know about it, we’re all good.”

Rob couldn’t stop thinking about his saving grace, a police officer right in the back of the room just itching and waiting to pull that trigger. He couldn’t help but thinking that maybe alerting the officer was the best he could do.

“You really want to risk this? You want to die, Will?”

“Today feels like a good day to die. Why not, sure?”

That failed.

“What if I don’t leave it alone, Will? What if I go on doing what I’ve been doing and your wife just keeps on doing what she’s been doing, which right now happens to be me. What would you do?”

“Well, Rob, I think you know what I’d do. That seems to be the topic of conversation today, doesn’t it? I would take my gun, put it in your mouth, and pull the trigger. And I wouldn’t aim up, either. I’d shoot straight back. Your windpipe would be ruptured, and if I’m lucky I’d get your upper spinal column. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t move. You would die, alright, but not all that fast. You could be laying on the floor for hours and nobody would come to get you. Sound fun?”

About this time, Rob’s hero had finally come to save the day. Officer Rodriguez must’ve seen the discussion and wanted to get in on the talk.

When he first spoke and alerted the men to his presence, because neither man had the concentration to spare that would allow them to see him coming, Will shot Rob a look that pretty much repeated the message he had given him three or four times already: talk and your dead. “Hey, Rob. How’re the crops looking?”

“Oh…hey there, Joe. They’re doing well, mostly looking good this season.” Rob tried to hide the quiver in his voice, and it worked pretty well, but Rob just knew that something got out.

“What’re you boys talking about over here?”

“We’re just talking about that Braves game last night, Officer. We were disagreeing on whether or not this is Chipper’s last season,” Will said, once more looking back at Rob as if to get his message across. “You a baseball fan, Officer…Rodriguez?”

“Oh, yeah. Great game last night, finishing up that sweep of the Phils. McCann launching one in the eighth to put us back up, that new kid, Heyward, coming in and knocking a few guys home. It was a great game.”

Rob, feeling a little emboldened by his friend’s arrival, decided to send a message of his own “I don’t think Chipper’s done yet. He’s still playing a really good game right now. I think he’s poised to have a pretty good season, even if it is his last,” he thought out loud, adding the real punch to it with his last statement and completely abandoning the illusion of sports talk. “I’m thinking he’s gonna put in a pretty good game this afternoon, if you ask me.”

“See, I’m pretty sure he’s done. You know him. You never can tell when his last game will be. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he didn’t even make the lineup today. If he didn’t even play this afternoon,” Will brought back in retort, clearly responding to Rob’s brazen attempt at throwing him off.

“He’ll have a good game today, you just wait and see.” Rob had regained his height advantage on Will, feeling ever stronger with a cop there on his side. His eyes were a good five inches above Will’s and looked down on them with a furious passion. Will returned the look with his own cold stare.

“Hey, guys. Braves are off tonight. It’s a travel day down South. Marlins, coming up, I think.”

Rob felt about useless at realizing his mistake, making the first strategic stumble in the battle he was having with Will. “Oh, yeah. Well, I never pay much attention to the schedule. I figure I’ll wind up listening to it no matter what, why care who they’ve got coming up?” It was a decent enough cover, but Rob just knew that Joe saw straight through it.

“Right. Well, friends, I hate to cut the water cooler chat short, but the bank won’t open itself. Have a good morning, officer. Rob, have a good day,” his last words coming off almost like a challenge to the farmer. And with that, Will took his coffee and left, Rob finally breathing easy for the first time in almost five minutes. Something had happened in that confrontation, and Rob could feel it. And what he felt was an upper hand.

“What have you got yourself into now, Rob?”

“It’s nothing. Just a friendly competition is all. And it’s one I plan on winning.”

“You be careful. I can’t help you if you get into anything, Evans, and that guy’s trouble. I can tell. And if I’m not mistaken, I think he had a gun in his pocket.”

“You think so? A banker?” Rob knew that the banker had been carrying a gun, but it just didn’t seem to matter anymore. The danger was gone, and he had no reason to fear it. Guys like Will were always making ridiculous promises that they never really intended to carry through with. Things like foreclosures and loans? Rob knew that he could win this, he just had to figure out how.

“You be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

“You know me, Joe. I’ll leap, then look, and shout a big’ole yeehaw just to make it sound better.”

“Yeah, yeah, you redneck fool. I gotta get back to work. And I mean it. Don’t push this guy. I can feel something’s wrong there.”

And with that, Rob and Joe split off, Joe getting back to wherever he’d been before, and Rob breaking for the truck. He’d wasted enough time and needed to get on to that Home Depot before too long. That lumber wouldn’t sell itself, you know.

It was that part of the day where the sun was brightest but not the hottest, where the soil hadn’t quite gotten accustomed to the rays beating down on them, but the sky was already so much lighter than it had been a couple hours before, you just couldn’t tell. And the sun was still low, so you couldn’t really avoid it no matter how hard you tried. Rob was used to being out in the field by this time, or just showing up to the fire house and eating breakfast, so it didn’t bother him so much. He drove on for about twenty minutes, mostly because Monday morning work traffic and the stragglers heading into Atlanta for their jobs. This was the other problem with stopping at the Minit Save, he now had to contend with metropolitans who wanted “the country life” filling up the roads around him. Folks like Will.

Reports on the radio weren’t any more helpful, saying there was a wreck on down the road past his exit on the locally known St. John highway. It took longer to get there than usual, but Rob was still riding high from his confrontation with Will. What should’ve sent the man cowering back to his plow actually brightened his eyes and widened that grin, Rob never being the kind of guy to step back from a challenge he knew he could win. It was all just a matter of playing it right and catching Will. If nothing else, the threats gave him leverage. All he had to do was convince Jules that it had happened like he said, and nothing would stop her from leaving Rob. This day just kept getting better.

He finally got to the store and found a mostly empty parking lot. The weekend warriors had all picked up their supplies and headed on to work their office jobs. Monday morning was Rob’s time to shop, and for guys like Rob. He walked past the lawnmowers and the pre-built sheds out front, and even stopped to glance at a grill or two, wondering if he could really afford to replace his old charcoal burner. When he finally went in, past the automatic doors and the sales associate in an orange apron, Rob went about looking for what he needed. His main priorities were the wood and the chicken wire, but no trip to Home Depot would be complete without browsing and thinking about building projects. Rob wasn’t normally the browsing kind, but he could do some looking in a place like this.

After a few minutes of aimless wandering, Rob stumbled upon the wood he needed for his fences. There were tons of choices when it came to lengths and thickness and durability. He checked each type for quality, looking it over trying to decide if it would hold up for his purposes. He eventually went with an 8ft post, 4 inches thick at each side, to build his fence. And now came time to get the chicken wire. He would start with a wood and wire fence, eventually adding posts across each length to bolster the strength of it when he had the time and money to do so, but for now this would do.

He went through the store looking for chicken wire, not really seeing any. He could find sinks and pipes and locks and all sorts of tools he didn’t need, but nowhere could he find chicken wire. Finally giving in and forsaking his pride, Rob asked one of the employees, “Hey, you guys still carry chicken wire?”

“Chicken wire? I…uh…no, I don’t think we do,” he responded in a long, drawn out thought speak.

Rob could tell the man wasn’t too sure, so he tried again. The guy looked new on the job, a middle-aged man who had probably just been fired from his office and forced to take up a job requiring an apron and a reasonable knowledge of home improvement and/or construction. He had the apron. “You know, chicken wire. That stuff you put up for basic fences or Pee-Wee baseball backstops at practice fields or occasionally to actually fence in chickens? Chicken wire?” The man still looked hopeless. “Metal, intertwining wire fences, made up of a lot of little hexagons or something like that?”

And the light came on. “Oh! You mean poultry fences.”

“What?”

“Yeah, we have poultry fences. Right back here, let me show you.”

Sure enough, there was the chicken wire. Under the label of a poultry fence. Despite the fact that he had basically said as much in describing the stuff, his friend, the out of place salesman, still needed some prodding to get it right.

“Thanks, sir, I’ll just put this on my cart and head to check-out,” he said, trying to curb any attempts at conversation or further tips the man might give. He grabbed up a few rolls of poultry fence, also known as chicken wire, and moved the load on down to check-out, picking up a post hole digger along the way. His was about worn and broken, so it was okay to replace it.

When he got to the check-out, Rob felt a little dismay at there only being one register open. The line was empty, but Rob still didn’t want to use it. The cashier was a girl that Rob knew from high school named Jenny Miller. Jenny was a short brunette, about his age, who had always had a thing for Rob. She was a pretty girl, someone who Rob used to not mind wasting time on. Jenny didn’t go to Horizon High School. They’d met elsewhere. She was a Bronco, and somehow managed to wrangle Rob despite the bitter county rivalry. They dated for a little while back in high school, even getting pretty serious from Senior year onto about a year later, but nothing ever came of it. They even managed to have a genial break-up despite all odds. Rob tried whatever he could to deal with her, sometimes hanging out with her and playing the friend game, sometimes ignoring her completely, and once or twice even trying to reap the benefits of their friendship. Nothing really felt right when it came to her, so he tried to avoid her when at all possible. He knew she worked at the Home Depot, but she usually worked night shifts. Someone must’ve called out.

“Rob! What’re you doing here?”

“Just getting some fencing supplies. Deer keep getting into my fields, and I’d really rather they didn’t.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’ve got that farm going back there. I guess it’s going pretty well, then?” Jen cheerily tried to carry on this conversation while she rung up his supplies. Rob just tried to carry it on until she finished ringing up his supplies.

“It is. Mostly hay for the other farmers in the area, but I do grow some corn every once in a while, and I keep some old apple trees. That’s what the deer mess with most.”

“Oh, it sounds nice. I should come out and see it some time.”

Trying not to be rude, but not wanting to invite the girl over who had just invited herself, “It’s a nice enough place. I keep it going on the off days.”

“Cool, cool.” They stood there for a second while she finished checking everything out, Rob thinking he was gonna get off easy on this one. “I was wondering, what are you doing this Friday?” Jenny asked with a tempting look in her eyes.

“Some friends of mine are having a fish fry in Horizon. Probably about…” he wanted to think of a time that would be too late for her to come but too early for her to want him afterwards, “eight o’clock. Yeah, about eight. Why? What’s up?” He knew dang well he wasn’t going to that fish fry, anyhow, but it just might work for him here for Jenny to think that he was.

“Oh, that’s too bad. See, my parents are having this big anniversary thing at their house this Friday and, I’m supposed to bring a date, and all. And then they’re leaving after that to go on some big second honeymoon and I’m gonna have to watch the house all alone. I just thought you might want to…join me?”

Rob only had himself to blame for this, because he knew it was his own fault for making her think anything would ever come of them. Truth be told, though, he might have taken her up on the incredibly tempting offer any other time. He knew well what she meant, and it almost sounded good, but it was time to let the poor girl know the truth. It just wasn’t gonna happen, and she had Mrs. Jules Baker to thank for that.

“Look, Jenny. I, uh, I can’t.”

“What? Why not? Is it the parent’s house thing, because I totally understand. The thought of it almost creeps me out, too, but they’ve got a guest bedroom.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was her who creeped him out and not the house, but whatever. “No, Jenny, it’s this. I’ve got somebody else. You know? I’ve met somebody, and I can’t just go running around with you anymore.”

“Oh. Really? Wow.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to tell you like this, Jenny, but it wasn’t right, you know? It wasn’t right to let you keep thinking that I was your go-to guy.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just I always figured you’d end up getting yourself a married woman pregnant, not leave me for some normal, happy relationship. Just wasn’t your style.”

After a bout of nervous laughter, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe that’ll be next week. Oh, besides, I just remembered, I’m on shift this Friday night. I can’t.”

“The big fireman, gotta go out and save the day.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, Jen. You gonna be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Just…give me a call when that other girl doesn’t work out for you, okay? And you know where to find me.”

Rob broke off the conversation with her pretty easily, carting his wood out to the truck. He really did feel bad for the girl, especially knowing that it was his fault for dragging her along. Part of him wondered if that made him feel better about dragging along behind Jules for so long, the fact that he had somebody else feeling what he felt. Well that was all done, anyway, and now he could focus on other things. He could finally focus on what it would take to get Jules for himself once and for all. He had to figure out how he could remove Will from the picture permanently, and then something caught his attention.

After Rob loaded the wood and poultry fence in his truck, something else caught his nose and his eye. It was the gardening center next to the store. He saw it, and he realized what he needed to really get that girl. It was a garden. He knew how much she loved to garden, and how much that garden at home meant to her, and Rob knew that if he grew her a garden, he could win.

He walked into the little tented area. The shade obviously wasn’t for the benefit of the patrons, because it was just as hot in there with the flowers as it was out in the parking lot. They kept all sorts of gardening supplies out under that tent, with garden hoses and slate tiles for adding decoration to any garden. When Rob passed the tomato cages, he couldn’t help but conjure up images of rogue vegetables…fruits running wild in the countryside of Horizon. The manager in charge of garden supplies walked by and couldn’t help but give Rob a questioning look as he laughed to himself about giant tomatoes going on a rampage through town. He felt good knowing that seeing Jenny hadn’t completely ruined his good mood.

He kept admiring the different supplies, spending a few minutes looking at each section of plants from the junipers to the rosebushes, and the lilies and what have you. He couldn’t find anything that either she didn’t already have in the garden, or he felt would fit appropriately out in front of his house. He looked and looked, and nothing looked right.

It was fortunate, then, that he smelled one in particular, out of all of the floral aromas pervading the store, that seemed perfect. The perfect scent wafted to Rob and gave him a satisfied feeling unlike what he had expected. When he found the source, it was a large flowering bush that he recognized from his father’s old garden. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but he knew it was the one he wanted. There stood a tall, blooming bush with magnificent pink buds all over. Each bud stuck out from the branch with a long string of smaller flowers hanging off. The scent that had first caught his attention now drowned out all other feelings and senses with a gentle authority, reminding Rob of nothing but the quietly overwhelming sense of home. It was perfect, and Rob had to have them.

He checked out of the garden section, now carrying three large bushes of these pink flowering plants, and he knew this is what would get Jules. The scent rode with him, making him feel right about everything, but nothing in particular. He just felt right.

When Rob got to the truck, he saw one of those fliers sticking out of his windshield. Someone had gone through and put leaflets under everybody’s wipers telling them about some concert downtown that weekend. He’d heard of the group before, these guys called Thesaurus Slam, but he’d never got the chance to hear them. It was too bad. They seemed like the kind of band he might actually enjoy. If they hadn’t put a sheet of paper on his truck, he might’ve gone. Rob hated people messing with his truck. It was just one more spot on his somewhat lucky day.

Rob drove down the highway, bushes, soil, wood, and poultry fencing all piled up in the bed of his truck. He’d spent so long in the store looking at the flowers that it was almost lunch time and he’d abandoned the house for far too long, so Rob went straight on back where he would start planning the garden and the fence, garden first. The heat had picked up, and the humidity was overwhelming from the storms last night, but none of it even mattered to him. All that mattered to him was winning that girl and putting to rest all of his worries and desires with her. Rob was content and satisfied, perhaps since the first time he looked into Jules’ eyes that night out behind the grocery store.

When he looked into her eyes, it was when he knew that he had to have her, when he knew that he loved her. He had looked into those eyes again last night, he looked into her eyes again last night and kissed her. They both looked at each other after that, frightened at the possibilities and the things still undone, and then they both closed their eyes. The way it should be.

Rob’s house was still sitting there waiting for him when he got back, plainly sitting atop the hill above his farm just like always. Rob drove on around back and unloaded the bed of his truck. The wood was laid out in a pile, the “poultry fence” was laid out in a pile, and the bushes were stood up next to the entry to the barn. He had to keep them shaded for now until he could figure out where it was best to plant them. Obviously they would go out in front of the house, but he still had to figure out exactly where. He’d talk to some folks, get some ideas, and eventually plant them down in his own garden, but for now it just mattered that he cared for them where they were.

After a little time in the barn, Rob decided to go in and have a quick lunch, even if it was a little late. He hated missing meals, and he hated working without at least a good sandwich, so Rob stopped to eat lunch. He heated some left over steak and made a banana sandwich, wanting something that was filling but quick. It all got washed down with the afternoon news and the last glass of milk from his last gallon. Robert went about cleaning up after himself and started getting ready to work in the field when he saw something he little expected. Sure he’d meant to call her, but he didn’t think she’d come over so soon. Work in the field could wait, because his ambiguous day had just become his lucky day.

She got out of the car with those awful sunglasses covering most of her face, the ones that Rob just hated, but not even that could put him off today. He’d spent all morning thinking about his beautiful girl and the night he’d been dreaming of for a decade before and every hour since. “Hey, baby, come on in, it’s burning up out here. If I’d known you were coming I might’ve cleaned up a little better.” The place didn’t look too bad, but it wasn’t ready for her company just yet. He leaned in to kiss her as she came in the door like it was what he was expected to do. She pushed him away because it was what she was expected to do.

“Look, Robert, we can’t do this ever again. It’s over. It’s over between us, and this can’t happen.” Now Jules was talking like they’d been together for months instead of just once. Rob had to wonder just how Will had gotten to her so quickly. “I love my husband very much, and I can’t let you do this to him. He’s a good man, and he doesn’t deserve this.”

“That’s not what you were telling me yesterday,” Rob recalled. The whole purpose of their getting together the night before had been so Jules could talk to somebody about her frustrations with Will, and she certainly let them out. She’d called the man about everything she could, and Rob could tell she felt abandoned by him. So that’s when he made his move, and it just so happened to work out that they once again found themselves behind the grocery store and soaked to the bone.

“I was wrong. He’s not a perfect man, but he is a good man, and I won’t have it anymore. You’ve always given me these, these sideways looks and winks, and I can’t resist you. I can’t stop you, and I have to,” her words of inevitability giving Rob at least some confidence back. “You can’t let me do this to Will. I love him.”

“Are you trying to convince me or you of that fact?”

“Stop it, Rob! If you’re really my friend, you’ll leave this alone! Just stop. It’s done.” She had started to get uppity at Rob, throwing him off a little. He always panicked when she got this excited about anything, because she’d been known to really let loose in the past. Even so, he had to try and bring her back to his side. Rob had spent too long as her friend to let Jules bring that label back out on him. He could see it in her eyes when she had called him a friend, and she meant it to hurt. She fought dirty.

“Do you remember that night a few years back when you were stuck out in the rain behind the grocery store? And I promised to give you a ride home, but you were all soaking wet and had to dry off in the back room? Do you remember that?” He knew she did, or else nothing the night before would’ve worked. “I think about that all the time. And I think you do, too. I wonder, what would’ve happened to us if we would’ve gotten together that night?”

“I don’t think about it, and I don’t know,” returned Jules, her voice a little shakier now that her vicious diatribe was done.

“I think you do, baby. I think you do.” He could play the name game, too, and he did to great effect as he whispered in her ears everything she wanted to hear. “I would do anything to keep you with me. I can’t let you go, Jules. I just can’t. It took me so many years to get you here, I can’t let you leave me.” By now, his arms were around her waist and he could feel her breath on his neck, behind the ears, as he whispered softly to her. She fell into him without resistance, and he knew the game was working.

“How do we do this, Robby? How do we do this? I have to be in your arms, but I can’t.”

Rob let her push away some, but only because she was crying. He didn’t want to make her cry. He pulled her back in after a second and whispered to her softly, one more time, telling her that everything she felt and everything she wanted was right there and was perfectly open to her, “Sssh, sssh. It’s okay. The first time…” he thought for the words, seeking what he really wanted to say and what he knew would bring her back to him again, “the first time is passion. The second time is compliance.” She looked up at Rob, as tall as she was having to crane her neck into his eyes as a little girl would to look up at God, the tears forming on her eyelids. He kissed the tears away on her eyes, then she came the rest of the way and returned his kiss.

Although it was only the second time that Rob and Jules had been together, really together, he knew that this moment was bliss. He knew that this moment was what he wanted and that he would do anything to protect it. To keep it forever.

The two came together that afternoon, fully in love and touch, letting the afternoon sun give way to the bedroom’s night. As they lay there together, the young lady drifting off to sleep in his arms, Rob whispered to her again. “I want to grow you a garden, babygirl. Would you like it if I did that?”

There were no words, but she sighed and pushed up against him in a sleepy stretch that he took for a yes. And Rob just lay there, feeling her with him, and right this time. Not just in a frenzied passion reminiscent of his adolescent fantasies, but really together. He was afraid to move, knowing that waking her up would collapse the moment. When he did finally move his arms away from her, her body quivered again as his touch grazed her skin, but she slept on. Rob started to dress, knowing what he had to do. He knew it was time for him to fight for the girl he loved, and he knew that it meant just going up that banker and calling him out for abandoning such a beautiful girl. It meant shaming him for leaving such a perfect woman with an empty love that would neither cover her nor satisfy her. It meant ignoring the threats and bringing the fighter to his knees. But just to be safe, Rob grabbed his gun out of the drawer. It was an old revolver his dad had kept around the house for security, and now Rob kept it around to think of the man in his life that had been taken too soon. He knew that this act may well be the end of him, but Rob knew it was far better to give up your life knowing you had done all you could rather than to give up your soul to secure a better future.

As he finished tying his shoes, Rob’s phone rang from the pocket of his recently replaced blue jeans. “Hello?”

“Rob, hey, it’s Joe.” The cop on the other end was not what Rob had hoped for right now, but there wasn’t much he could do but listen.

“Joe, hey, how are you? You still on shift?” The attempt at reminding the man he was on the clock didn’t produce the desired effect. Rob spoke as softly as he could, hoping the combination of loud talk and a ringing phone wouldn’t wake Jules.

“Yeah, I’m still on. Hey, Rob, wh…why are you whispering?”

“Whispering? No, I’m not. It’s my throat, my throat hurts.”

“You’re a bad liar, Rob, what’s going on?”

“I’m trying to keep quiet, yeah, that’s all.”

“But why? Why are you trying to keep quiet? You live alone on a farm, Rob.” Rob hated being friends with a cop. “Who’s there with you?”

“Just some girl.” He thought about telling him it was Jenny from the store, but being that specific in a lie might come back to bite him. “She needed a place to stay, she’s been having a real tough time and needed a friend.” Rob took the call out of the bedroom and let his volume come up a bit. “I’m not doing anything wrong, I promise you.”

“God, Rob. It’s Mrs. Baker, isn’t it? You’re doing the banker’s wife.”

“No, no. It’s…” and here’s where Rob knew lying was just too exhausting to be worthwhile, “yeah, you’re right, it’s her. But she doesn’t love him, Joe. And we go back. We’ve got a history.”

“Just tell me you two ain’t got a future, Rob. That guy’s dangerous, Rob, and that girl’s not any better. Something’s gonna happen to you, boy, and I’m not gonna be able to help you.”

“I know what I’m doing, okay? Look, I’m gonna end it with her, but not yet. I can’t, not now.” Rob had no intention of ending anything except Will’s hold on her, but Joe didn’t need to know that.

“You send that girl home right now, you hear me, Rob? You send that girl home to her husband right now, he’s here waiting on her.”

“You mean to tell me he’s home right now?” The news of Will’s present location made the thought of a confrontation instantly more dangerous and equally more tempting.

“You don’t do it, Rob, I said send her home. Don’t you dare go over there with her.”

“I’ll call you later, Joe. Have a good evening.”

“Rob, don’t you do it, I swear, I’ll…” Rob could hear Joe saying as he hung up the phone. He had no intentions of going over there to see Will with her. Jules was going to stay at the house and watch the farm. Or just lay in bed waiting for her man to come back and find her sleeping. Either way worked for Rob.

He sat in the barn for a minute before cranking the truck, wondering if this really was a good idea. It took Rob some time, but he pushed the idea of fear out of his mind. Rob would have to resolve himself that this was the right thing to do before he would crank that GMC up, and it was no easy task. Impatience finally found Rob out on the road with the windows down and the radio off. He had to focus on getting this done.

Rob parked his truck about two blocks down from the Baker house and one block off the strip. There was a small church there where he could leave it in the parking lot and no one would notice. The plan was for Rob to walk over to the Baker house from here. If something went wrong and Will did something stupid, he wouldn’t see Rob’s truck to dispose of it, and investigators might be able to piece together what happened. If Rob did something stupid and, Heaven forbid, shot Will, then his car wouldn’t be too close to the scene for anyone to tie him to it immediately. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was all that Rob had.

He walked quickly in the July heat, not wanting to attract too much attention. He’d already decided on leaving the flannel over shirt in his car it was so hot, and a guy walking down the road in a white t-shirt, jeans, and work boots would probably get some attention in the quiet streets of Horizon, GA. Rob’s focus was on nothing but his words and the coming confrontation. Rob knew what he was going to say, that he was going to tell Will he would never give up Jules, he thought about threatening him a little with Joe and telling him that his cop friend knew where Rob was going and he expected a phone call or whatever nonsense. Or not, really. Rob didn’t want to cause trouble for his friend, especially the kind that could get him shot again.

He ran the script through his head, over and over, making sure everything was right, until he finally saw the Baker house. Rob saw the garden first, then Will’s Charger, then the front door. Should he knock on the door, or break it down? Knocking on it sounded best. He went and knocked on the door. No answer came. He tried again, and still no answer came. Finally, he tried just opening the door. Surprisingly, the banker had left his door unlocked. Rob slowly opened the door and then pulled it shut behind him.

“Will! Will, I wanna talk to you.” Rob was standing in the welcome area right before the living room, still turned and looking at the door he’d just now closed. “I’m not giving up your girl. She’s not happy with you, Will. She’s not happy with you, and that’s why she’s laying in my bed, in my house, waiting on me to get back to her. So you know what, it’s over for you two. You can shoot me if you want, but you’ll never have your wife back. You hear me, Baker?”

How could Will not respond to this call? Perhaps he wasn’t really home, or maybe he was sitting and waiting calmly, preparing to surprise Rob when he least expected it. Maybe he was just out back in a hammock, Rob really didn’t know. All Rob knew is that it would have been impossible for him to ignore a challenge like that, and he figured Will was the same way.

“My friend, Officer Rodriguez, the cop, is waiting to hear back from me. If I don’t call him back in ten minutes, he’s sending in the SWAT.” It sounded as fake as it was, but Rob had to try.

Against his own better judgment, Rob moved further in the house. He thought about following the stairs down into the basement, but he went into the living room instead…and immediately wished he hadn’t. There in the middle of the floor lay a lifeless man, face down, breathing in the carpet. Rob instinctively reached down to check for a pulse or for breathing, only barely being able to even make out the man’s lips due to the intense beating he’d taken to the head. Whoever had wanted him dead had done a pretty bang up job of it. He was definitely dead. Rob couldn’t find a pulse, almost unable to even find the proper place in all the blood and carnage before him. He put his ear down to the soft blue collared shirt that Will had been wearing as he accosted Rob, very much alive, just a few hours ago. The same shirt was now beyond recognition, beyond identification, having been drenched in the same horror as the rest of the body and this God-forsaken home. Rob knew that Will was dead and that he would be the first suspect.

His hands were covered in blood from trying to find a pulse or heartbeat, so he wiped his hands on his own shirt, there being no place to avoid blood on Will’s Van Heusen. As he left the broken body there before him, Rob dialed his friend the cop while running out of the house in a fevered panic. The horrified farm boy had never seen a scene to compare with Will’s house. Even as a fireman, the calling card of death had never been so plainly laid out in front of his eyes as it had been this night.

“What do you want, Evans? I do not have time for you right now.”

“Joe! He’s dead! Somebody’s…he’s dead, Will’s dead.”

“What did you do? What did you do, Rob?”

“What? Me? No, Joe, no…I…no.”

“What happened, Robby?”

“I just…the blood, man, he’s dead.”

“Okay, look. Get home, wake that girl up, and get her over there. She needs to be there as soon as we show up if possible.”

“Right, yeah, right. What else?”

“You’re gonna be there with her, and we’re gonna talk about this when I see you there.”

“You mean I have to go back?” The last thing Rob wanted was to see that house again, or experience the horrors he only glanced at inside, but with greater detail. He was afraid of cops forcing him to look at it, frightening him into a false confession.

“Yes. You’re going back there with Mrs. Baker, and you’re gonna tell me what you did. I’ve gotta go call this in. Now just do it!”

Rob didn’t feel like arguing when Joe hung up with him after Rob had done the same thing to him just a few minutes earlier. Instead, he ran to the truck like he was running from Death himself, and started it up without even thinking. Rob flew home, thinking that all of the police in the area would be too busy getting to a murder scene to worry about a speeding truck. He passed the station on his way home, and sure enough, everybody was rushing out and starting up their blue lights and their sirens. Rob just kept on going, hoping that Joe wouldn’t see his truck.

Robert Evans pulled into the driveway of his little farm house and left the motor running with the keys in the ignition and the parking brake on. He didn’t have time to think about his course of action, he just knew he had to get undressed so that Jules wouldn’t see the blood before he had a chance to speak. Rob threw the blood stained mess in the garbage before he even got in the house, just being covered by his summer flannel. He slammed the door behind him with no consciousness of how that would affect a sleeping girl. Rob tried to wash his hands under a scalding sink, hoping to remove the stain of her dead husband’s life from under his nails. When that was all done, he ran into the bedroom and tried ripping his shoes off. While standing one legged and out of his mind, Rob heard Jules start to stir and speak, startling him off balance onto the floor.

“Where do you think you’re going, Robert Evans?” After he hit the ground, he heard her apologize a bit too late. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry, are you okay? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Rob groaned, almost forgetting why he was so shaken in the first place, then remembering why he had been trying to undress.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Robby. What time is it? Oh wow, I need to be going. I guess I fell asleep. See, this is how it’s supposed to work. You don’t leave me alone, it’s your house. I’m the one who leaves. I’ve gotta go home and get dinner ready for Will.” Rob couldn’t speak at hearing that man’s name, the man he once hated so viciously. Now he couldn’t even control the muscles of his face and keep them from betraying him. “What’s wrong?” And still he wouldn’t speak. “Rob, what’s wrong?”

“You need to get dressed.”

“Rob. What is going on.”

He tried to bite the words back without telling her, but Rob had to say it no matter what. “Baby,” he said, taking her hand, “I just got a call from the station. They found him laying on the floor.” Even as vague as he was being, Rob couldn’t help but see that image again, this tortured carcass engulfed by a warm red spot.

“Be honest with me, Rob. What are you saying? Who’d they find? It’s not Will, it’s not Will.” She spoke swiftly, trying to talk herself out of the truth.

“I’m sorry, baby, it is, it is.” He knew all too well how true it was. She started beating Rob in grief, and it took all he had to keep her from throwing this giant of a man back to the floor. “You need to get dressed now, we have to go.”

“No! No! It’s not, it’s not!”

“I’m sorry, baby, but they found him beaten to death on the floor. It’s your husband. Will’s dead.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: We're drawing ever closer to the end of this mystery, and I hope you're still enjoying it. I certainly am enjoying writing it for all of y'all! If you're curious or confused about the odd nature of the numbering, go check out my Facebook page and see what it says there. I wrote a note explaining why episode 6 has been temporarily passed over, and will not be posted in order. I'll put it out in a few weeks when it fits better in the timeline. It just wouldn't make sense yet. Also, please tell your friends about 42Cobras! It's a great experience for me writing this, but no amount of writing is really worthwhile if you can't share it with people. Otherwise, what's the point? You know? I want y'all to read it, tell me what you think, and share your comments/questions/theories with me. I want to know what you think is going on here in Horizon. So, for now, I hope you enjoyed Episode 7, and I look forward to posting Episode 8 for all of you next week. I'll go ahead and warn you, I have no idea when I'll get next week's episode posted, because next Friday I'll be busy with my final exams and moving out of the halloed TLN-Part I. Later, folks! And keep using those :42: Facebook chat icons, if for no other reason than that it's a whole lot of fun.

2010-07-16T16:24:00.001-04:00

There is no new episode today. I'm no vacation. Check back tomorrow and we'll see if I have the ability to post.

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 5 - "Mere Acceptance"

2010-07-09T16:51:00.004-04:00

The pain in his shoulder smoothed itself away as he started rotating the bones about within their shell. The ache in his neck took a little longer, given the restraining nature of his soft, dead pillow. His knees, the worst offenders, cracked with each bend, made worse by the pops in the big man’s hip as he had to raise his legs to bend them. The cool night breeze, coupled with the tense air of the passing storm, made each joint rack as if it were mutilated by the slightest change in the weather. Sleep had not come easy for the man ever since taking two shots in the line of duty, and it was just another day of duty for Officer Rodriguez. At least he could take solace in knowing that it was the middle of summer. Those winter winds really made it hard to get up in the morning, especially when the sun was still about two hours off.

The clock showed 5am, so his alarm was still thirty minutes coming. Even so, Joseph Rodriquez knew that sleep was done for him, as the constant aches in his body meant that the next thirty minutes had best be spent on stretches and a hot shower instead of the preferred relaxation of a dream-filled sleep. That was the only comfort he had left: dreams. The shooting wasn’t all that ruined him, though it helped. Officer Rodriguez was getting older, and he was getting lonelier. It took him much longer to get ready in the morning, and Joe never could sleep much, so he was running on fumes perpetually. That kind of wear made a cop’s job hard to complete, but Rodriguez managed to get it done.

Joe dragged over to the shower, tripping over last night’s pants as he went. The hot water was a good start, bringing some ease to his pain. He stood under the water for what was a short-lived eternity, massaging each limb and joint extensively before once again subjecting himself to the cruel cold that was a July morning in Horizon. So it wasn’t a life threatening temperature, but to a man of Officer Rodriguez’s unfortunate state, anything of the sort brought pain enough to make him wish it were. Before the shower water started to wear off, Officer Rodriguez, a 25 year veteran of local police, stepped over to the sink and poured himself a glass. Looking at the cop on the other side, hating what had become of this lonely husk that was once a respectable police officer, he took out his last pill and popped the prescriptives that were written out for an older woman on the other side of town. This was who Officer Rodriguez had become, and this was who Officer Rodriguez hated more than anything else. And what he hated more was the sudden need to call that kid and put in a new order. He pulled out his phone, haunted by the picture of him and his long gone wife, to send the dealer a text message: i’m out and need more. where and when? call me.

The worst parts of the morning routine were over, so the officer was able to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee over a morning paper that had just arrived while he was brewing up a new pot. The pain in his body slowly leaked away with the aroma of Colombian beans and the feeling of pharmaceutical aid, almost keeping at bay the other pains he remembered with the scent of coffee and cream at his table. An officer’s sunrise, that period of the day where he was awake but it was still rather dark out, always reminded Joe of the days when he and Mrs. Rodriguez would sit and enjoy coffee together before he would head off to the station and she would go back to bed, only staying up long enough to enjoy breakfast and the paper with her husband.

It had been about three years since she had been in their home. Mrs. Rodriguez was ever so proud of her husband, but ever the more fearful for him. A policeman’s wife never really knows comfort, always wondering if she would get that call or not. With him it was even worse. He came home. She had to look at him day in and day out, tending to his every need for the first year. After he was able to do some things for himself, she split, unable to take the constant reminder of how easily she could lose him again, and unable to accept the fact that he would never be whole again. Joe begged her to return, writing letters to her family and trying to get their help, but no one would tell him where she had gone. No one would tell him where she ran off to, so he was left with nothing more than pictures and two scars that she once kissed and helped make better.

The slow roasted morning brought Joe out of a fog, so he gathered up his things and went on in to the station. He drove an unmarked car, these days, having been put on “special assignment” ever since returning to the field. Special assignment most literally translated to easy duty, never forcing Officer Rodriguez to experience a situation where he would be shot, or asking him to endure too much physical exertion. He was getting old, and he was getting slow. A slow cop was only good to talk to school kids and check into minor crimes. They promised him a full return soon, but soon never came. So every day, Officer Joseph Rodriguez, hero of the county police stationed in Horizon, went in to the station in a non-descript suit with his unmarked car, lacking any real insignia to prove he was an officer. The man just was, and that’s all they ever asked him to be.

He arrived early for roll call, still sipping coffee out of the County Police Dept. thermos he carried around, the silver kind with black lettering and detail, just one of the many perks of being a plainclothes officer with no power. Sherriff Conway, a large man in many ways, one of them being his Sherriff typical curly moustache, walked in at precisely 6:50am, ten minutes before roll call was supposed to begin. “Good morning, old buddy. How are we doing this fine Summer morning?”

The fat man was cheery at this time of day, and that bothered Joe. But, being that it was his boss, Joe couldn’t let it show. “Doing fine, sir. I can’t complain,” when in fact that’s all Joe wanted to do. “What’s got you in such a good mood this morning?”

“It was my wife and mine’s anniversary yesterday. You know what I’m saying, ol’Joe?”

“Yes, sir, I think I do.” Joe put a soft grin out there, as required by the unwritten demands of superiority, but threatened by the utter disgust in his mind. “I’m happy for you.”

The two talked for a bit, most of the conversation coming from Sherriff Conway in his upbeat drawl, a drawl that slowed down a bit as the conversation wore on and the hour started to catch up to him. Eventually the other officers had arrived for their shift and Sherriff Conway began the rundown.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I trust that everyone had a good weekend, but it’s back to work now,” one of the men grumbling about weekend duty and how his was just wonderful. “Last night wasn’t too eventful, but let’s go down the list, see what happened here in our district. Miss Emma, you’ve dealt with her before, Officer Callaway, called in another monster sighting on her property. It turned out to be a deer…well, two deer making noises.” A subdued chuckle from the gallery was cut short by Conway’s stare. “We had a prowler call out in the 3000 block of the Horizon St. strip, but turned out to be the homeowner working in his garden at an ungodly hour. Uhh…let’s see. We had a few speeding tickets out on the highway, one DUI on Church St., and oh yeah. Looks like there was a break-in over at the Minit Save on Horizon and Third Avenue. No real surprises there, report came in an hour ago when the owner was opening shop. Probably some missing cash, and a busted lock. Nothing special. Any volunteers want to start their day checking up on that situation?” The silence of the crowd fell right in where expected for such a thankless and mundane assignment. Joe thought he might as well volunteer for it, seeing as how it would inevitably fall on him anyway.

“Sure, yeah. I got that one.”

“Thank you, Officer Rodriguez. That oughta be a good warm-up for you. As for the rest of you, you should have your assignments for the shift. Check your areas, keep the routes clean, and keep your eyes open. Serve and protect, boys. Oh, and whoever has the block out by the old bridge, go check on Miss Emma. Make sure she was able to get out of bed this morning after her traumatizing ordeal last night.” And with one last laugh at poor old Miss Emma’s expense, the crew was off.

It hadn’t been a particularly long roll-call that morning, with everyone arriving on time and very few issues to run through, so Officer Rodriguez had mounted up the car and left the station by 7:30am. The sky was clear, but the roads had traces of fog, the Summer sun meeting the cool of the rains from the night before, leaving that eerie effect all about the place. It was a light fog, the kind that you could easily miss without much trying, but it was certainly there. The benefit to being Officer Rodriguez was that he could turn on his car radio and not have to worry too much. Occasionally he would miss a call-out, but never anything he was wanted at, anyway. This morning, fitting perfectly with the fog, he was listening to some of the softer Creedence on that Atlanta rock station. Somehow, though he wasn’t sure how, he could tell that there was a bad moon rising.

After the short drive through town, made longer by having to observe the speed limits in his on-duty car, Officer Rodriguez made it up to the Minit Save on the strip, Horizon St. He was slated to open up at 8am, so Joe would have to look around fast before customers ruined the scene. By sending him, the police department admitted that this incident wasn’t important enough to put a lot of resources in to, so odds were the owner wouldn’t be requested to keep the store closed for the morning.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Joe. Those kids broke into my store again.”

“What kids, Frank?”

“You know. Those new kids in town. Those gang kids. They broke into my store and they stole all the money in the register.” He tried to avoid the more descriptive terms that would really get at his meaning, mostly due to the rules of what you could or couldn’t say in polite society. Frank had run the Minit Save in town for as long as most anyone could remember, and he was about as ornery as he ever had been with the rash of “small crimes” in the area. He was always reporting a vandalism that was more likely caused by raccoons than some other masked bandit, or a robbery when he misplaced a little cash. And he always blamed it on the ubiquitous “new kids in town.” The man has one run-in with some unruly teenagers back in the mid-80s, and its all American Graffiti from there. At least that’s how he described it, his only knowledge of the movie coming from the word “graffiti” in the title.

“Have you checked the tape yet, Frank?”

“No, just got in, myself. Figured I should show up to open the store, right? I’ll go do that right now. Just let me go unlock the pumps, I don’t want to miss the morning rush, you know.”

“Oh, Frank. Before you go check that tape, how much money did they steal from the register?”

“Let’s see, uh, there was a fill-up about 8:49, then uh, Miss Emma came in and bought some Michelobs from the back, and then, uh…”

“Frank. How much?”

“Oh, yes, uh, $17.89.”

“That all, Frank?”

“Oh yes, that’s all. I put most of it in the safe last night, and with all they spilled out on the floor in a hurry to get away, that’s all I seem to be missing.”

“I’ll see you later, Frank. Just check the tape and tell me what you see.” Joe had taken about all of it he could handle this morning, with the roll-call and the pain and aches he put up with just to do this job he used to love, and he didn’t have the mind to sit through another day like this, not right now.

“But aren’t you gonna check the scene? Make sure there’s nothing else missing, or no big clues? I wouldn’t feel right opening the store without you here to check the place, or protect me in case they come back for revenge. I hear that’s how those foreign gang kids operate. I tell you, this town’d be better off if all that foreign trash would just leave us alone. Can’t stand them running around like they belong here, trashing my store and scaring away my customers.” Joe didn’t bother pointing out to the idiot his own last name, thinking it might be indicative of something beyond Horizon, no matter how many generations removed he was. “Yep. It’s all ‘cause of them that good folk like me and you can’t make it along here.”

Joe’s grandfather came to Horizon a good many years back and married a local woman, just one incident that helped push the town further and further, eventually coming to a head back in the mid-50s. His father had also married a white woman from town a little later, but by then it wasn’t so bad. People were really able to handle it pretty well by the time Joe came into the picture, and Horizon was growing ever more accepting, but there were always pockets. There was always the occasional Frank or whoever that Joe had to deal with, never really taking the brunt of it seeing as he was big, a cop, and two generations removed. But still, it was moments like this one that made him feel even more outside of things than usual.

After considering the options, one being to drive around wasting his time and the other being to sit in the store and waste his time, Officer Rodriguez conceded. He started by examining the door, making Frank promise to hold off opening up for another five minutes, then checking each corner of the store for “clues” and “evidence” in a case that would never get past the curb outside. He swept around every corner of the store, looking for anything that was truly out of place and not just misplaced due to Frank’s horrible store-keeping habits. All this time, for going on ten minutes now, people had been coming in and out of the store, buying their morning coffee or grabbing a newspaper. Most folks in Horizon had to leave town for work, and as this store was one of the closest to the highway while still being in town, it was about the only time of the day where Frank paid the rent, so to speak.

One of the folks that Officer Rodriguez saw come in was an old friend from the fire department, Rob Evans. Rob had been a fireman for a few years now and had worked with Rob a little during his training, seeing as how Joe was just getting off of his rehab assignment. Joe had also been there at the site of Mr. Evans’ accident, and had helped the pastor notify Rob of what had happened, so they went back a ways. He’d known the kid growing up some, recognized that farmer’s brow and broad shouldered fireman even from back behind the store at the slushie counter. Trying to stay professional, Officer Rodriguez didn’t bother to stop and talk to the guy while he was on duty, just opting for the manly head nod.

Officer Rodriguez kept his back to the door and his eyes to the ground, examining every inch of the store with exceptional precision. He heard the entrance chime go a few times, never bothering to check the personnel responsible for making the noise. The slushie counter was clean, the chips aisle didn’t feature anything odd other than one bag of Doritos having been gnawed open by mice. It wasn’t on the shelf anymore. The cop checked each aisle closely, looking up eventually to see if Frank was back watching tape or making money. On one of these routine glances, though, Joe saw his friend Rob having a quiet discourse with an obscured gentleman. Officer Rodriguez, though he was somewhat out of practice, could still read the hint of fear in his friend’s eyes, something he didn’t expect to see from an amateur farmer standing a good six inches above his assailant.

Since his friend’s safety meant more than recovering missing pocket change from Frank’s store, an amount that wouldn’t even secure a Constitutional “Jury of Peers” for Frank, Joe started to incidentally ease towards the door where the two men were jawing.

“Hey, Rob. How’re the crops looking?”

“Oh…hey there, Joe. They’re doing well, mostly looking good this season.” Just as Joe thought, his friend seemed out of sorts, almost caught off guard, something that wasn’t common for this champion of bravado.

“What’re you boys talking about over here?” And now he recognized the other man. Rob’s companion finally turned to face the officer, revealing his face and name. Before, all that Officer Rodriguez could see was the back of a young white man’s head, a little short of six feet and maybe 180 lbs, brown hair with a clearly professional cut. The man’s suit, a light blue dress shirt with long sleeves and gold cufflinks, offset by the contrasting white collar, indicated an indoor job of some kind. Though his constable’s instincts served him well, Officer Rodriguez could until now come up with nothing more than the description of thirty percent of the men in Horizon. In case he needed to, Officer Joseph Rodriguez could never have picked the man out of a crowd before, but as soon as he turned to look at the cop, Joe recognized Will Baker instantly.

Just like with Rob’s dad, Officer Rodriguez remembered Will most for the tragedies in his life. He was one of the first officer’s on scene when Nikki Baker was killed by an alleged drunk driver while crossing the street after a big Horizon football win. This was all well before Rodriguez’s own accident, back when he was still considered a prime cop and a worthwhile husband and father. A happy time for him, really. Though he’d never really had many dealings with the Baker family before, it was hard not to recognize them after the court ordeal that was Nikki’s case. Will was much younger then, maybe six or seven years younger, but those eyes had not changed the least bit. It was him, alright.

“We’re just talking about that Braves game last night, Officer. We were disagreeing on whether or not this is Chipper’s last season,” Will said, indicating Rob as he spoke. “You a baseball fan, Officer…Rodriguez?”

Rob took his turn, going back to the other topic. “I don’t think Chipper’s done yet. He’s still playing a really good game right now. I think he’s poised to have a pretty good season, even if it is his last. I’m thinking he’s gonna put in a pretty good game this afternoon, if you ask me.”

“He’ll have a good game today, you just wait and see.” The two men stared, giving something away to the cop, especially given how hard they weren’t trying to hide it.

“Hey, guys. Braves are off tonight. It’s a travel day down south. Marlins, coming up, I think.”

Rob, embarrassed he’d slipped up so obviously. “Oh, yeah. Well, I never pay much attention to the schedule. I figure I’ll wind up listening to it no matter what, why care who they’ve got coming up?”

“Right. Well, friends, I hate to cut the water cooler chat short, but the bank won’t open itself. Have a good morning, officer. Rob,” his tone changing ever so slightedly when dealing with Rob, “have a good day.”

Will walked on out with his coffee in his left hand, sunglasses down and sleeves rustling as he moved, right hand down in the pants packet of the same side. Both men watched this character saunter on out to his car, a two-year old Charger back from when they started making them again. Banker, indeed.

“What have you got yourself into now, Rob?”

“It’s nothing. Just a friendly competition is all. And it’s one I plan on winning.”

“You be careful. I can’t help you if you get into anything, Evans, and that guy’s trouble. I can tell. And if I’m not mistaken, I think he had a gun in his pocket.”

“You think so? A banker?” Rob just looked off after the departing banker, now easing on to Horizon St. off towards the center of town, out where the grocery store and the bank and all were. The fear in his eyes was gone, replaced now by the more common hint of a grin, that farmer’s optimism he held on to. It could be described as wide-eyed, or gleaming, or wily. Either way, Joe recognized those eyes, and he knew those eyes were looking at trouble.

“You be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

Rob went on off, similarly with coffee in hand. His old truck sat out in the parking lot, filled up for a market run. Probably going to the big hardware store a couple towns over for his weekly supplies. Joe knew how rigorously and strictly Rob ran that farm during the summer months, or at least when his shift allowed him to stick to routine, and Rob was on the second day off between shifts. He had plenty of time to get his supplies, flirt with the cashier, and do whatever other things he might need to get done on Monday before going back to work the next morning at 8am.

The store was clean, nothing yielded up to help the old policeman figure out what happened. Frank had finally gone back to his security tapes when the morning customers filed out, and he finally called Officer Rodriguez to the backroom. “Come look, Joe, come look! I think I got’em!” Sure enough, there were four teenagers walking around in front of the store, looking around for witnesses or cameras or cops. The time stamp indicated 3:13am, and his years of police experience told Officer Rodriguez that nothing good was about to come of this. In a flash, they were in the door.

“Run it back.”

“How far back?”

“Just run it back…stop!”

“What is it? What do you see?”

“Frank, do you see how fast those kids got in your door?”

“Yeah, fast. They must have practice picking locks, right?”

“I can’t tell from this video. But you know what I can tell?”

“What’s that? Do you recognize them? Do you think you could pick’em up this afternoon and get my money back?”

“No, that’s not it. I can tell that you should probably learn to lock your doors at night, Frank. All they had to do was pull on the door. It wasn’t even locked.”

Frank spent a good few minutes apologizing to Officer Rodriguez then sent him on his way. The store owner declined to press formal charges out of embarrassment. The scraggly old man couldn’t risk his pride by filling out a police form where he must admit leaving his store doors unlocked, much less for only a handful of missing money, much less admit falling prey to those thieving teenagers and their gang influences. Feeling even more reassured at his uselessness on the job, Officer Rodriguez pulled on out of the Minit Save and back through town, watching the day to day activities of small town Georgia unfold as they had an infinite number of times before, and as they were in an infinite number of towns all over the country. Nobody watched what happened in Horizon closer than the dedicated and self-loathing cop, but only because nobody really watched what happened in Horizon at all.

He left the Minit Save feeling uneasy about what happened between Rob and that banker. And his cop instincts were almost never wrong. Officer Rodriguez just knew that something more was coming between the two men. It was still early in the day, and the station didn’t have any more pressing issues for Joe to check out, so he thought a trip to the bank on a Monday morning was in order. It was about 10am by the time he got to the bank, giving the early morning customers time to come through and time to spare before the lunchtime crowd would start showing up. He sat in the car for a second, trying to see if he could gather what was going on just from a brief but candid observation, but nothing came. “Dispatch, I’ve got a 10-25 on a Will Baker, works down at the bank. Copy?”

“Copy, Rodriguez. I’ll get back to you when we get something.” Officer Rodriguez figured it wouldn’t hurt to check the man’s possible criminal background, and so the real investigation began.

The Monday morning bank had in fact settled down, 10:13 showing on the clock, conversely a tight 89˚ and rising already displayed on the thermometer. The new bank had been open just a few years, now. They had some troubles at first, being hit by a shrouded, serial robber just about two months after opening. It was in fact this Horizon bank where police cornered and killed the mystery suspect, all this taking place during Officer Rodriguez’s “down-time,” so of course he didn’t get to participate in the action. That was a violent stretch for Horizon, with Joe’s shooting and the bank robbery happening pretty close, but things calmed down soon after. Since then, not much had really happened in the way of action in Horizon, and for once Officer Rodriguez really hoped the trend would continue at least a little longer.

The large glass doors swung open with ease, at first. On the inside, though, he couldn’t get the second layer open. No matter how hard he pushed, even checking to make sure they weren’t pull doors, the stubborn doors resisted Officer Rodriguez just a little longer. The clerks and tellers, all noticing the frantic action at their front door, started looking a little panicked. Of course, Officer Rodriguez finally remembered the new system they had installed after their first robbery, the highlight feature being a built-in metal detector that bolted the doors. After flashing his badge, someone flipped a switch to let him in.

At first, the banker he wanted wasn’t visible. Rodriguez knew he was there, after all a car that nice didn’t go unnoticed in the parking lot no matter how full it was. After a second or two of looking, Officer Rodriguez saw the man, Will, step out from one of the back offices. Trying to act casual, as they say, he walked over to the counter and just waited for a reaction.

“Good morning, and welcome. How can I help you sir?”

“I was wondering if you had a place where we could go and talk?”

“You’re a little early today, aren’t you supposed to wait until…” finally noticing the badge plopped out in front of him, “Oh. Of course sir, right back here. Mrs. Williams, hold my calls. I’ll be meeting with the officer indefinitely.”

Will Baker and Joe Rodriguez sat across from each other, a solid 18 inches of rich wood between them forming the banker’s desk. All across the desk were pictures of the banker and a beautiful young woman. She was about his age with long blonde hair and a smile fit for a goddess. “Is this your wife?”

“Yes, sir. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“I’ll say she is.” And now Officer Rodriguez was starting to get the idea that she was part of the problem here. Knowing Rob the way he did, it made plenty of sense. There was another picture on the desk, he noticed, with Will Baker, an older couple he recognized to be Mr. and Mrs. Baker, and a lovely brunette once named Nikki Baker. “You don’t remember me, do you, Will?”

“Excuse me?”

“From that night. From the night your sister was hit by a…”

“By a drunk driver, no, I don’t remember you. Did you make the notification?”

“I did. But I was also the first officer on scene. I sat with her while the EMTs arrived, not that it ended up mattering.”

“I wasn’t there, Officer. I was still inside the stadium with,” he paused and waited a moment, “somebody. She was crossing the street to meet me, though. I’d told her not to be late so we could get home quick.”

“I don’t know you too well, and I don’t know if it’s too much of me to assume this, but you should know it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that, officer. It was Ames’ fault. He’s the one who hit my sister, and he was already drunk at 9:30pm on a Friday night. Trust me, officer, I know who killed my sister, and it sure wasn’t me. Might I ask what you’re doing here?”

While Will was talking, Officer Rodriguez took the liberty of examining his mail and the other contents of his desk. “I see some of your mail is incorrectly addressed, unless of course you’re name is actually Bill Walker.”

“What are you, the postal inspector? Some of my clients have been getting the name wrong since I started here. Heck, it goes back to elementary school. People have always wanted to call me Bill Walker. I can’t understand how it’s such a hard name to get right, but it was for them, and for some of them it still is. And for you, I’m still trying to figure out why you’re here.”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?” He could tell that Will grew real tired of the cop games, so he just came out with it. “Look, Will, Rob’s a friend of mine. He helped me out through some stuff a few years back. And I owe him a great deal. Now I won’t pretend that he’s perfect. And I don’t know what he did to get you so upset, but I’m also not dumb enough to believe that little exchange was about baseball this morning. I won’t tell you you’re wrong, and I won’t tell you he’s right. But I will tell you this. That man’s a friend of mine, and I’d stand by him until Judgment Day if I had to.” Will looked back at the officer, and he was sure that the banker started understanding what was coming off without being said. “Don’t start nothing with my buddy, you hear?”

“You married, officer?”

“I was.”

“Did she die or leave?” Will asked in an astonishingly matter-of-fact tone.

“She left.”

“You mind if I ask why?” Will’s stark appeals continuing.

“Yes. I do. But she left because she couldn’t handle being with me anymore.”

“And how you feel without your wife, Officer Rodriguez?”

“I hate she’s gone,” and that was definitely a true statement. “But I also hated that look she gave me when I just knew she was unhappy. And I hated hearing her cry at night, trying to muffle it so I wouldn’t know just how miserable my uselessness was making her. Does that answer your question?”

Getting a bit more than he’d wanted, and showing obvious defeat, “I guess it does. Look, I don’t mean to cause problems, officer, but your buddy has been. And he needs to stay out of where he isn’t wanted. And I think he knows that.”

“Let’s hope he does, Mr. Baker.” Telling this conversation was nearing an abrupt end, Officer Rodriguez started to stand and leave. “But I will tell you a couple things. First, I can’t really tell anybody about our conversation or anything in here, since I’m very well not even supposed to be here, so you’re safe there. Next, I have no problem planting evidence for justice to reach the right conclusion, so you’ll know my feelings if anything happens to Robby. Lastly, Mr. Baker, I may just be one of the few people in this town who agrees with you about Ames. That guy killed your sister and got off lucky when he should’ve been put away for at least ten years. Don’t go burning all your bridges in this town. Some people are better to you than you might think.” Once more taking that upper hand that Will’s impertinence had given him, Officer Rodriguez just added a warning and hearty “Good day” before leaving the bank.

He walked out the front doors and saw Horizon Groceries, and almost forgot about the utter need for that important appointment he had to make. Pulling out his private phone, Officer Rodriguez sent another message to this kid he knew. When can u meet? There was something pitiful in his reliance on an immobile teenager. One of the problems with being a cop, especially in an uptight community like Horizon, is you have to rely on unorthodox dealers when they come along. Either way, it would probably have to wait. It didn’t seem likely that this kid would even be up for a while.

The rest of the morning’s work was less inspired. He wanted to work on the Laurence disappearance, but Officer Rodriguez just drove around Horizon, even a ways out of town at times, checking on certain landmarks as a matter of habit. He drove out to the bridge over County Line River. He drove out to Horizon Baptist and then some of the stores, making sure everything was in order. He even drove out by Miss Emma’s, just to see. After a couple hours of this, without a single callout or reply from dispatch on that earlier request, he finally decided to take a short break. “Dispatch, I’ve got a Signal 95 out by the High School.”

“Go ahead, Rodriguez, take a lunch break.”

“Thanks, dispatch. Let me know if you need me.”

Officer Rodriguez had already bought his lunch, knowing good and well that they weren’t gonna need him. And this particular Signal 95 found him sitting out by the Horizon football stadium, at the same spot where Nikki Baker was struck and later died. It had been a long time since Officer Rodriguez thought of that night, even with a constantly decorated cross on the curb.

He thought back to that night, the late autumn sky already solidly dark, and that October air uniquely cold. Horizon had just had a big game against one of those cross-county rivals, the Broncos, and most everybody was hanging around on-field to celebrate, or just around the stands, but a few of the young girls were walking back across to the other parking lot. A young Nikki Baker had stopped to call back to one of her other friends, just long enough to get separated from her crowd walking on. When she ran to catch up to them, it was right as a white Silverado jumped over the crosswalk hitting her with unyielding force.

Officer Rodriquez had been chatting it up with one of the guys directing traffic, just talking about the game and the solid season the boys had been having, when he heard a host of screams and shouts from up at the crosswalk on Horizon St. The two men ran up to see, hoping for a fight. It was much worse than that when they arrived. Rodriguez had the other man call for an EMT while he held the girls hands, trying to keep her awake and breathing. “Breathe, girl, stay with me. What’s your name, girl? What’s your name?”

“Her name’s Nikki.”

“What’s your name, Nikki?”

She couldn’t answer, even being given the answer. There was nothing new about the look in her eyes as he’d seen it before, except never before all in one face. He could see the shock and fear in her eyes, just as clearly as the tired expression coming from her overtaxed face and the uncertain movements of her mouth trying to give up those important last words. In his arms, and on his knees, Nikki Baker closed her eyes and stopped breathing right there. His makeshift partner went to grab the drunk fool out of his truck, now lodged in a light-pole on the side of the road. Officer Rodriguez traded glances from the girl to the truck, wondering what idiot could have done this, wincing to see Ames Laurence step out with some heavy assistance. How that fool kid went on to marry the beauty queen Melissa was beyond him or anyone else.

There was no telling how long he’d been like this when a common noise brought the officer back to reality. It was his phone going off, though, and not the police radio. Behind Horizon Grocery in 15. It was about time. The pain in his legs had slowly come back throughout the day, keeping Joe confined to his car and out of the heat since the bank. And thinking back to his days before the gunshots just made it worse, how no one remembered his actions even then, and how much less important he was now. That power play with a banker earlier was just an old man’s attempts at feeling strong again, even though none of it mattered. He wasn’t going to plant any evidence. And what could he plant, and what crime did he have to blame the man for? It was all talk, and it was all pain building up in his joints, and it was all about to go away again.

The cop drove away, trying to forget her eyes, her ice-blue eyes looking back from beneath. Come to think of it, she had Will’s eyes. Maybe that’s what had made him uneasy instead of any “cop instinct.” It was hard to tell these days, until Joe could get himself clear again.

He pulled up behind the store. Nobody would question a cop meeting up with someone behind a store like this. They’d probably just think he was getting tips on gang activity or something stupid like that. People may ignore Officer Rodriguez, but that also meant that nobody questioned him. If there was a bright side to anything, that was it. “What’ve you got?”

“I can only get you three weeks worth, Mr. Rodriguez. You’ve got one a day here, okay? I think Mamma V’s starting to figure out what’s going on. And the pharmacy didn’t want to give me a refill today. They said I was early and that they weren’t supposed to. I almost had to cry just to make them give me the pills.”

“That would’ve been a good trick, kid. How much you think these…what, 21 pills are worth?”

“$150.”

“Price is a bit steep, ain’t it, for such a small crop?”

“That’s all I need. Please, sir?”

“Fine, fine, take it. Does this mean we’re done?”

“We have to be, officer. I can’t keep doing this to her. She knows, and I think it’s hurting her going without these pills I keep selling you, so yeah, we’re done. You’ve gotta find somebody else.” Jonah shook and stuttered as he talked to the police officer, and Joe could tell he was terrified. It couldn’t be easy to tell off a cop who you also manage to sell illicit prescription drugs to. “But…Thank you.”

“Thank you? For what? Buying your gramma’s pills off you?”

“No. You don’t remember it, do you?”

“Remember what?”

“You saved my parents a few years back. There was a robbery and you showed up, got them out of there. You were shot weren’t you?”

“Yeah, I took two.”

“Really? Thank you. I’ll never forget you, sir.”

“Alright, whatever, kid. Here. Take your money, go do something fun with it.” He counted out the bills, then counted out the pills, and watched the boy run off to do something with all that money he’d got. Joe didn’t much care what it was, so long as it wouldn’t get anybody any attention or trouble. “And don’t spend it all in one place!” which he probably didn’t even hear Joe yell out.

The effect of the first pill was almost instant, about like hearing Jonah remind him why he was a cop. It wasn’t that the feeling hit him, so much as it was a feeling that eased off of him. But as good as he felt in his knees or in his back, he felt that much worse in his chest, just knowing these pills made him a worse cop and a worse person, but he couldn’t take the pain. He just couldn’t stand the pain anymore. He sat in the front seat of his unmarked car, still behind the grocery store, and just let the day wash over him, the air leaving his lungs and then back in. It was a good feeling, mostly. And it was even a good day.

“Officer Rodriguez, this is dispatch.”

“Go for Rodriguez, dispatch,” he said, probably with more excitement than he should have. It wasn’t often that he got called in for something by dispatch, and he just knew that maybe they were finally taking the training wheels off.

“Yeah, I’ve got something on that Signal 95 you put in earlier.”

“Go dispatch.” He was a little disheartened by the revelation, but was glad to get some answers finally on what had been going on.

“Looks like he’s clean. No record, no priors. He’s clean.”

“Thank, dispatch. Let me know if you get anything else.”

And still, Officer Rodriguez had nothing to go on. He figured that Rob had tried pulling something with that man’s wife, but couldn’t prove it. He knew that the two men had been fighting that morning at the Minit Save, but couldn’t do anything about it. And most disturbing, he knew there was something wrong with that banker, but he couldn’t tell what it was. So naturally, he did what any other cop with spare time would do. Joe took his car out to the bank and waited on Bill Walker to leave…wait, Will Baker to leave. If he couldn’t learn anything with the files, Officer Rodriguez would have to do it with his eyes.

Officer Rodriguez hated stakeouts. They were boring and uncomfortable, and more often than not a fruitless waste of time. This one was nothing like that. No more than thirty or forty minutes after he first parked out there, Will Baker walked out the front door in his suit and looking ready to head home. It wasn’t quite time to leave work yet, even on banker’s hours, so something was up. He tried to keep some distance, not wanting to give away that he was following the guy. That would defeat the purpose, after all. So he followed at a distance of maybe four or five car lengths, moving at slow in-town traffic speeds. It was a normal enough drive, going past the intersection at Horizon Baptist. What did seem odd was when he turned off of Horizon St. down towards the lesser roads, taking the long way to get anywhere, really. It only made sense when he turned back towards Horizon St. about a half mile down. He’d gone that way to avoid passing the school and the crosswalk where Nikki died. He didn’t want to pass that old cross, and old Joe almost felt bad about suspecting him of anything.

Up ahead, though, Officer Rodriguez saw something distressing, when he noticed Jonah standing on a bridge overlooking the river, and he had this box in his hands. Officer Rodriguez had to choose between his chase and this kid, knowing he couldn’t well make both work. He could see Jonah set the box down on the bridge, and it looked like he was trying to climb up on top of it. No matter how much he wanted to follow the banker, Joe knew he had to make sure this kid lived through the day.

But the decision became more difficult really quick. As Rodriguez got ready to turn on his mounted lights, Will pulled over and jumped out of his car, running up to Jonah himself. So now Joe could neither follow Will nor help Jonah, and he just kept driving. He went moving on down the road, back towards the Minit Save and heart of town. It just seemed like this day was meant to go against Office Rodriguez, and he couldn’t win. There was no file, and he couldn’t follow the suspect. Instead, he thought he might just try to keep Rob from doing something stupid. If you can’t figure out what’s going on, you might as well try to keep it from happening.

“Hello?”

“Rob, hey, it’s Joe.”

“Joe, hey, how are you? You still on shift?”

“Yeah, I’m still on. Hey, Rob, wh…why are you whispering?”

“Whispering? No, I’m not. It’s my throat, my throat hurts.”

“You’re a bad liar, Rob, what’s going on?”

“I’m trying to keep quiet, yeah, that’s all.”

“But why? Why are you trying to keep quiet? You live alone on a farm, Rob.” It was another one of those moments when those cop instincts stepped it up and told Joe what he needed to know. “Who’s there with you?”

“Just some girl. She needed a place to stay, she’s been having a real tough time and needed a friend.” He heard a door close in the background, and with it, Rob’s voice got louder. “I’m not doing anything wrong, I promise you.”

“God, Rob. It’s Mrs. Baker, isn’t it? You’re doing the banker’s wife.”

“No, no. It’s…yeah, you’re right, it’s her. But she doesn’t love him, Joe. And we go back. We’ve got a history.”

“Just tell me you two ain’t got a future, Rob. That guy’s dangerous, Rob, and that girl’s not any better. Something’s gonna happen to you, boy, and I’m not gonna be able to help you.”

“I know what I’m doing, okay? Look, I’m gonna end it with her, but not yet. I can’t, not now.”

All this time, Joe had kept driving and found Will’s house. That gorgeous car was out in the driveway, but it was the only one. He knew where her car was, and he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You send that girl home right now, you hear me, Rob? You send that girl home to her husband right now, he’s here waiting on her.”

“You mean to tell me he’s home right now?” The way Rob had said it, Joe knew what he’d done.

“You don’t do it, Rob, I said send her home. Don’t you dare go over there with her.”

“I’ll call you later, Joe. Have a good evening.”

In perfect futility, Joe tried to offer one last warning, but the phone had already died. In all the frustration in him, Joe threw the phone and saw the clock. “It is time for my shift to end. I’m done with this job, I swear I am!” The in-car thermometer read 101˚, and Joe felt each degree of that heat building up behind his head. Between people inciting riots and going off into the mouth of their own lion, all freely chosen, there was nothing a good cop could do to protect the people around him. A bad cop like Joe felt even more powerless. It was just impossible. He drove on back out of town, past the houses and occasional shops, back over the highway that divided Horizon from the country, and back towards the station. It wasn’t made better when he saw Rob’s truck blow past, knowing good and well where he was going and who he was aimed to see. It was impossible to protect these people when everything they do aims for destruction. The cop himself even drove towards destruction, what with the buying pills from middle schoolers and all. And if he couldn’t protect himself, how could he protect anyone else?

“Officer Rodriguez, this is dispatch. Come in, Rodriguez.”

“Yes, what do you want?” The long pause alerted Joe to his mistake.

“Officer, we have a reported Signal 67 out at 3225 Horizon St., reported to be an older African-American woman on the sidewalk. Her grandson called it in, says she fell over in the heat. EMTs are 10-6 and might be a few minutes. They’re not reporting any immediate health risks, but her and her grandson are both shaken up.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m 10-76. Let me know if anything changes, dispatch.”

And of course, it would go on just a little longer. He was in sight of the station, and now he was going right back where he came from. Apparently one of Will’s neighbors had fallen out in the street and needed some assistance, and of course Joe was the only guy they could think of to bother with it. Everybody else was busy being important. So he headed on back. This day was going to be one to forget for Officer Rodriguez, and it couldn’t be over soon enough.

And if it weren’t enough that dispatch had called him back out, now Rob was ringing up his phone. “What do you want, Evans? I do not have time for you right now.”

“Joe! He’s dead! Somebody’s…he’s dead, Will’s dead.”

“What did you do? What did you do, Rob?”

“What? Me? No, Joe, no…I…no.”

“What happened, Robby?”

“I just…the blood, man, he’s dead.”

“Okay, look. Get home, wake that girl up, and get her over there. She needs to be there as soon as we show up if possible.”

“Right, yeah, right. What else?”

“You’re gonna be there with her, and we’re gonna talk about this when I see you there.”

“You mean I have to go back?”

“Yes. You’re going back there with Mrs. Baker, and you’re gonna tell me what you did. I’ve gotta go call this in. Now just do it!”

About that time, as if the world were acting in unison now for the sake of Joe Rodriguez:

“Officer Rodriguez, this is dispatch. Are you still enroute to the Signal 67 out at 3225 Horizon?”

“Yes, dispatch I’m headed that way, but…”

“Cancel that last call, we’ve got a Code 2 situation about a Code 28 with a possible Signal 27 reported by the old lady in question. She claims to have seen a young man running out of the house with blood on his hands. All units are responding.”

“Yeah, I know, dispatch, I know. I was just about to call it in, myself.” Realizing that every word he said further condemned his friend, Joe had to do it. “I think…I think Will Baker is dead.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So we're getting into the meat of the story, here, and I actually posted it (almost) on time! In dealing with a police officer, I wanted to make his language somewhat authentic. Now I know most of us don't have memorized the official codes and signals and "10-4"s, so if you have trouble with the codes and police talk I used, there's this great website called www.scangwinnett.com with a list of actual terms and signals used by police. I used it as a reference to keep things sounding authentic, though I tried to provide good context to clear it up. If you need a hand, feel free to check them out and see if it helps. And again, I encourage everyone to let me know what they think either on here or on Facebook. I'm also on Twitter. And speaking of Facebook, don't forget to use your ultra-special, limited time engagement, :42: Facebook chat icons. And when you're friends ask what it means, just tell them it means 42Cobras Publishing. Thanks to all of my avid readers out there, and I look forward to hearing your comments, theories, and suggestions. Until next week, enjoy!

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 4 - "Confrontation"

2010-07-02T23:54:00.000-04:00

On the mantle over the fireplace there are three pictures from their wedding day, the sun-drenched white dress on her soft shoulders while she stands next to her husband in the traditional black tuxedo. His office has a small computer desk they picked up at a yard sale for $25 two summers back. Their bedroom looks pristine, his beautiful bride having made the bed that morning after they both prepared for their days. The garden out front shows evidence of care and concern, each flower placed exactly where it best complements the others around it.

But in the living room, there is a blood stain. And around that blood stain there are police officers and investigators taking samples and pictures to preserve the scene. In the kitchen, men examine the blood trails trying to determine how far the man crawled before succumbing to his fate and where his attacker went after finishing the job in the hallway. Around the front door, they take fingerprints trying to determine just who was with Will Baker that afternoon. And in the center of the living room, in that bloodstain on the floor, lies the end of Jules Baker’s life, the end of everything she had come to know in those three short years.

One of the police officers, a sort of hero around Horizon, carried his presence through the scene over to the mantle and grabbed up a picture of the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Will Baker.

“Officer Rodriguez, where are you going with that picture?”

“It’s for Mrs. Baker. She’s waiting in my car to follow the body to the station. Have you catalogued it yet?”

“Yes sir, but…”
“Then you don’t need it near as much as she does. I’ll be sure to log it into evidence for you later tonight, don’t worry.” Officer Rodriguez had carried weight in the department ever since sustaining two bullet wounds a few years earlier, all in the process of stopping a robbery outside of town one Saturday night. There weren’t very many shootings on this side of the county, and having endured two bullets made Officer Rodriguez some kind of a rarity. His enlarged frame, coming in at nearly 6’5” with very broad shoulders, didn’t hurt Officer Rodriguez’s reputation for being the man you yield to.

Jules sat in the back of the car, separated from the world by plates of quarter inch glass. She had been waiting to follow her husband to the police station for almost thirty minutes now, as soon as someone a grade up from even Officer Rodriguez determined it was okay for her to leave the scene. And now he had disappeared, leaving her alone with the air conditioning and her thoughts. In the space of a single day, she had managed to lose her husband and gain an affair, along with forsaking any sense of security she had before. And it still pulled at her, who could have hurt her husband? Who could want him dead so badly as to…treat him as they did? And how could she despise him enough to lie about her love? Jules had lost any sense of certainty about her world, and she had lost any sense of security in her home. Out the window Jules could see her home and her neighborhood, and out the window she could see the same sunset she had seen over Mrs. Davis’ home like any other day, but she cried to think that she would only see her husband one more time, and even then it wouldn’t really be him.

“Here you go, Mrs. Wa – Mrs. Baker.” Officer Rodriguez corrected himself, wanting to keep from further upsetting the woman. He handed Jules the picture she had requested, “Should I have a car pick Rob up for you?”

“What?” she responded, startled out of her shock.

“Do you want me to get Rob to meet you at the station? He hasn’t been gone too long, I’m sure we could pick him up to meet you. I know you two are real close, and I really feel like you could use a friend right now.”

“No, thank you. I’ll be okay.” She must’ve seemed cold to Officer Rodriguez as Jules had already run out of tears, only able to show the depths of her pain through the hollow eyes that now focused on the once smiling love between her and Will.

The two held hands outside of Horizon Baptist, right down the street from where they would soon live. The pair dreamed of a nice starter home where they could grow their family, and then move out of town a little and build their perfect dream home with a three-car garage and two teenagers learning how to drive. They dreamed of two good jobs helping to put their kids through college and themselves through middle age. They dreamed of happiness and love, but mostly they dreamed of a long life together.

Jules squeezed Will’s hand for the picture, tighter than she ever had when they were dating. And the harder she squeezed, the wider he smiled, making sure this picture would be one they were both proud of for years to come. This was the last one he would get, since they’d already taken a few pictures with his parents and her parents and her cousins and his cousins and the mass of extended family they had both invited to the wedding. Everyone from second and third cousins to old teachers came to see the young couple married off, them both being local kids and all.

Will whispered into her ear, soft with a hint of villainy to his voice, “Mrs. Julia Robbins, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“Only if you, Mr. William Reginald Baker, will take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife.”

“Oh, gawh, you would,” both of them laughing, knowing how much Will hated his middle name.

“It’s a beautiful name. And you know we’re going to have to give it to our first son. I think it would kill your dad if we didn’t.”

“Yeah, he loves those old family traditions, doesn’t he? But what if we have a girl?”

“Well…” she thought for a minute, wanting to be sure she answered the question right, “either we’ll name her Julia Jr. or…” She paused for a second, wanting to soften the impact of what she was about to say. “We’ll name her Nikki.” Will looked down, but he was smiling, clearly agreeing that it was a good choice.

“I like it. Maybe we’ll have one of both.” Will gave her that grin he had, the one he used when he couldn’t quite smile, but wanted to melt her anyway. He gave her that grin with what could only be described as a 3/4 smile where the left side of his mouth smiled higher than the right. “But we’re a long way away from that day. Maybe in a few years. Let’s just enjoy what we’ve got here.”

“Sounds good. I tell you what, why don’t you help my dad load up the gifts, and I’ll talk to the guests before we have to leave. What do you say?” Jules grinned back at her husband, hoping to coerce him into it.

“I like it. The faster we get everything loaded up, the faster we can leave.” As he walked by his new wife, Will gave Jules a pinch. Sure it was a public place, but it’s their wedding. How could you really chastise a man for pinching his wife just under an hour into the marriage? They both laughed a little in anticipation, and she went on about meeting with guests and taking their congratulations in the mid-May air on a somewhat cool Saturday afternoon. Finally, she saw Mrs. Baker, Will’s mom.

“Erin! Erin!”

“Oh, hey baby, come here, let me give you a hug. You are so beautiful in that dress!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Baker. It means so much to me, everything you’ve done for us,” Jules wanted to add, noting how Mr. and Mrs. Baker took care of the greater part of the expenses, seeing as how they were both poor students, fresh out of college.

“Nothing’s too good for my son and his girl. After all, you’ve been like a daughter to me. I know it’s meant a lot to Will’s father, too, all you’ve done for us.”

It was hard not to talk about Nikki around the Baker family, as much as they hurt to mention her. Will’s younger sister, Nikki, was killed crossing the street, struck by a drunk driver, after a Horizon football game a few years back right before Jules and Will went off to college. Even before Jules started dating Will, she had been like a surrogate daughter for their family. It meant a great deal to both of his parents to have a young girl in their lives, especially after losing their own. In fact, it wasn’t until after Nikki’s death that Will really caught Jules’ eye. They knew each other, but were never as close as she and Rob. Honestly, she thought he was a bit of a jerk in high school, but they grew closer, and they really came together when they were off at the same college.

Jules hadn’t even thought of his parents, Erin and Phil, with everything that was happening. They were off on vacation in Hawaii for his retirement from work, and were probably just sitting down to a nice lunch. Jules didn’t want to, but she had to tell them about what had happened to Will.

By now, they were pulling up into the parking lot of the police station and Officer Rodriguez helped her out of the car. She recognized the area, as Jules often passed the station on the way to Rob’s house out in the more rural areas of Horizon. Why it was so far out of town, she never knew, but it felt good to her being closer to Rob. She knew he was right around the corner, and she would probably call him after both her and Will’s parents.

“Officer,” she asked softly, hinting at the soreness of her crying throat.

“Yes, ma’am? What do you need?”

“Can I make my phone call now?” Not fully understanding what Jules asked, she added, “I get one phone call, right? Can I make my phone call, now?”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Baker, you’re not under arrest. Goodness, no, you’ve got a clear alibi. You can call whoever you want. I’ll give you some quarters for the phone, or you can even use yours, it doesn’t matter either way.”

Almost worried that he had first jumped to the word, “alibi,” instead of picking up on her humor, Mrs. Baker added, “I was kidding. It’s a joke.”

“Oh. Haha. Yes, ma’am. Go right ahead.”

“Thank you.” Even in the worst of moments, Jules tried to keep her humor. Even when you’re at your worst, you should always try to look your best. And you should always try to act your best. So Jules threw out that patent humor of hers whether it was to make people laugh when she wanted them to or make her smile when she needed it.

And Jules needed all of the smiles she could get right now. She called her parents and cried with them for a minute. They’d already heard and had actually been trying to get in touch with her while she was in Officer Rodriquez’s car, but weren’t able to. Before she hung up with them, they promised to meet her at the station as quick as they could get there.

It was easy talking to her parents, because as much as they loved Will, it was mostly their sympathizing with her own pain. But to call Will’s parents meant telling them that their only other child was gone. It was just a few years ago when the pastor of Horizon Baptist walked over with the police to see them and deliver the news. Though Jules wasn’t there, she heard about the pain and anguish they had gone through and could just see it on their faces. And as much as she didn’t want to, it was time for her to deliver a similar blow.

Jules pressed each number with a definite certainty, delaying the moment when she would actually have to tell them. The phone rang. And it rang. And it rang. She thought for an ever too fleeting moment that she could avoid this, but then… “Prince Hotel, how can I help you?” The sweet, Hawaiian young lady on the other end answered, promising a service that Jules didn’t want.

“Yes, ma’am, could you connect me to…” she choked back, having to say, “…Mr. and Mrs. Baker’s room? It’s an emergency and I really need to talk to them?”

“Your name?”

“Jules Baker, I’m their daughter-in-law.”

“Right away, Mrs. Baker. I’ll put you through.”

In her ear, the on-hold ukuleles and tropical breezes played, almost distracting Jules with the paradise she was about to shatter for her mother and father-in-law.

“Hello?” She waited for a second, then repeated, “Hello?”

“Oh, hey, Erin. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, hey! How are you, Jules? How’s the garden?”

“It’s all good. I was working out in it this morning,” hoping to hold on to conventional conversation as long as she could.

“Is something wrong, dear? You sound upset. What’s wrong?” Erin, never losing her motherly sense, could tell that Jules had been crying, and she wanted to do whatever she could to help the poor girl who had given her a daughter. “Did you and Will get in a fight again? What did he do?”

“No,” cutting off her mother-in-law quickly, not wanting to even think of the bad times between her and Will. “No, that’s not it. Erin. Something happened.”

She waited for a second, counting the red dots in the speckled floor of the police station. She watched the officers walk around with folders in their hands, trying to piece together various puzzles of what had happened in Horizon that day.

“Erin. He’s dead.”

Neither of them spoke, waiting for Jules to clear up what she meant. Every part of Erin wanted to scream back at her, ask her who she meant, and make her say it wasn’t her son.

“Will’s dead, momma.”

The next few minutes in Hawaii were hard for Jules to hear, as she was shouting “Oh, God” and kept denying it, knowing it wasn’t true. “No, it can’t be. He can’t be. Phil, No. Phil, it can’t be. Will’s dead.” And the three of them cried together, his dad asking her what happened. How he died. Who did it. She wanted to tell him, but Jules didn’t know. And what she did know was fear that it was her fault and that the other man she loved had done it because of her, but she couldn’t tell them this. She couldn’t do it. As much as the Baker’s needed their daughter-in-law now, she needed them, and Jules couldn’t have the only other people feeling her pain to blame her for it all as much as she did.

“We’ll be headed out first thing in the morning, okay, Jules? We’ll be there with you by this time tomorrow night if we can get a flight out. Be strong, okay? You know…you know he loved you, and you know he wouldn’t want you to be hurting.”

The two women shared a short cry, one parting goodbye to acknowledge what had happened to them. They would soon be discussing funeral arrangements and burials, but for now all they wanted was to cry together, and hold each other over the phonelines, and console a pain that would take more than sleep to beat.

Jules looked down at the wedding portrait in her hands during the lull in conversation, thinking back to that day and talking to Erin about her son in a real way for the first time.

“You know, he’s a strong boy. He really loves you, he does, but he can be difficult at times. He can be stubborn. After all, he is a man.” Erin and Jules laughed together, just like sisters would, or a mother would with her daughter.

“I can’t blame him for that, can I? I’m sure I can train him up right, though. I’ll get him fixed,” said Jules, looking off at her man in the distance helping her father and a young kid who sometimes worked stock at the grocery store come to volunteer load up the wedding gifts.

“Right. I’ve been saying that about Phil for almost thirty-three years now.” Before the women could laugh again, they were interrupted by a crash and a scene probably more common than expected at a wedding, but still out of place.

The young boy had dropped a box of tumblers, very nice crystal from one of Jules’ aunts, and Will would not have any of it. After angrily picking both the boy and his box up, he berated the poor kid, embarrassing him in front of the whole crowd. “What were you thinking? It was one box! One box, and it isn’t even particularly heavy! God! Pick those up over there, at least you can’t break it. And be sure to have your boss pay for this one when you talk to him. You had to go and ruin my wife’s wedding day. Why did you even bother showing up if you weren’t competent enough to carry one box of glass dishes? You must be a great stock boy, let me tell you.”

She had never seen him get this hot, and wouldn’t have expected it on a day he was supposed to be very happy. It was the first time that Jules had doubted her decision to marry Will. The first time she had wondered what she was getting herself into, and whether or not it was a good idea. That was a big deal to Jules, a woman who rarely doubted herself. If she made a decision, she did it with thought and precision, never leaving room for doubt. But now she did have doubt, just wondering if maybe it was a mistake, only after witnessing her new husband fly off at a slight, meaningless nudge. Jules’ father helped to calm him down, diverting everyone’s attention from the scene with a hearty laugh and a smile.

“And then there’s that,” Erin said, somewhat giving away her own embarrassment and a little shame for bringing any on the new daughter she loved so much. “But don’t worry, Jules, he’s really gentle. I’m sure you won’t have to see him get that way with too many people, and certainly not you ever. He used to get real mad at Nikki, just flying off and yelling and waving his arms, but she’d control him pretty well. She just gave him a look and put him right back in place,” Mrs. Baker added, gleaming back, thinking about her girl. “Well, I’ve taken enough of your time. Have a good evening, dear, and try to enjoy your honeymoon. The real world is back here waiting for you afterwards.”

Jules looked at the picture in her hand, wanting back the happy life she had that day, and the one she dreamed would be there for the rest of her years. After she said goodbye to the woman, the one who gave her a husband, Jules called the man who kept her alive. She still wasn’t sure what to think of Rob, whether she could trust him right now or not, but she knew well that he was the only one who could make her feel better tonight. So she stepped outside of the station, somewhere safe, to call the man she thought may have killed her husband, but she knew loved her very much.

“Hey, baby. Are you okay? Where are you? Do you need to stay with me tonight?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Down at the police station. I’m going to stay with my parents tonight, they’ll be here soon.”

“Jules, you can’t go back in that house. I won’t let you do that.”

“I know, I know, I won’t. I couldn’t sleep there again, not without him,” or you, she thought to herself. “I’ll be with my parents. That should help some.” They listened to each other breathe for a minute, reminiscent of those days in high school where they would talk for hours and sometimes not talk at all. “God! I just. I just wish I could wake up in your bed again. I wish I could just wake up and you be there looking at me like you do. I just wish you’d never gotten that phone call, that none of this had ever happened. I wish I could undo it all! God, I can’t do this anymore!” She screamed in anger, now thankful that she was outside where no one would hear what she said to Rob in passion, a secret passion she couldn’t afford to be careless with, or else take the lens of suspicion on herself and have the rest of the world feel about her like she does now.

“I know, babe, I know, but we’ve got to be careful, now. If anyone finds out about us, it’ll be real bad. They might think that I had something to do with it, or worse you. I know you loved your husband, and people won’t understand what happened with us, how we came together last night. They won’t, and they’ll think we killed him. Be strong, baby girl. Be strong.”

“You’re right, I know. I’m sorry, Rob. It’s hard. I miss him, Rob. I thought I could leave him. I thought I didn’t love him anymore, but I did. I do. What was I thinking, Rob?” She rambled on and on, losing control really for the first time all day, really doubting what she had done with Rob for the first time, really doubting a lot of things for the first time. She wandered back to that afternoon, thinking about waking up in his bed, wishing it were enough to make the evening go away. She remembered Rob’s smell on the pillows. She remembered Rob’s rough hands holding her when he told her. She remembered the sunshine coming in from the window. And she remembered what really woke her up.

Jules thought back as hard as she could, now, not letting any of the trauma hide her memory like it was prone to do. She couldn’t remember a phone call. It wasn’t a ringing phone that woke her up like she thought. It was the front door. It was the sound of Rob’s boots on the hardwood floors through the kitchen, the water running in the sink, and the sound of his feet running back to the bedroom. It was the sound of his bedroom door opening and it was the sunshine in her eyes. The phone never rang. And she knew now that she didn’t see Rob getting dressed. It seemed so small to her at the time, but she realized now, Rob was busy taking his shoes off so she wouldn’t see him dressed. But why would he hide that? What had he done that required him to hide?

“Rob,” her tone changing, becoming much more questioning and more or less certain of something. “Where did you go this afternoon?”

His answer, in stark contrast to her question, came slow and hard, testing his words before speaking them, unsure of what exactly she knew or suspected. “I was, I was out. I went to go get you something to eat, but I came back and heard the phone ringing. That’s when, that’s when they told me.”

“Right. Right, the phone,” added Jules, an expert at trying to get people off task, easily recognizing Rob’s cruel attempts at easy grief. “I don’t remember a phone, Rob. It never rang.”

“I meant my cell phone. It rang in the car and I was running in to tell you. It’s this day, this…day that’s got you so out of sorts. Are you sure you don’t want me to come up there?”

True, Jules could remember nothing from the time that Rob told her about Will to the time she was talking to police at her house, but she remembered the seconds before perfectly well. She remembered, now, the worried look on Rob’s face. She remembered the way he tried to hide his own fear. She remembered the drops of red on his shirt that had passed her notice earlier. “I don’t want you up here, and your phone didn’t ring. No, it didn’t. You killed him. Oh my…Rob. You killed him!”

“I swear to you, no, I didn’t! Let me come up there and talk to you. Tell you what happened, tell you what…” as she cut him off.

“No. It’s over, Rob. I’m telling them what I know! I’m telling the police that you killed my husband!” She screamed at him and threw the phone away, assuming it hung up, while she cried into her hands once more, this time with the different tears, the furious tears of someone who had been so bitterly deceived. She had killed her husband, in reality. She had made Rob think that she loved him, and he killed for that love.

About then, one of the officers on a smoke break came out back to find Jules in this horrible state. “Oh, Mrs. Baker, there you are. Come on in, they’ve been waiting for you,” and upon seeing her tear stained shirt, “…that is, unless you need a minute.”

“No, I’m coming.”

She walked slowly down the hall, finding herself whistling that same old tune that Will had sung time after time to her, and hummed around when he didn’t think she would be bothered by it. The sad tunes of Waylon Jennings weren’t so bad coming out as a whistle, but she knew the words just as well, and she knew the pain behind them even better now that he wasn’t there to whistle it for her.

In the sheriff’s office, where apparently the investigation into Will’s death was already going full steam, there was a board of evidence by the wall. A few men in suits, out of uniform she supposed, were wondering over it. She saw on the board what looked like were probably the contents of her husband’s pockets, with a few hundred dollar bills and a business card, presumably from one of his clients. She saw pictures of people she assumed were suspects all over the board. As soon as all the men in the room noticed her arrival, everyone looked back at the sheriff where he sat at his desk waiting for her.

“Mrs. Baker, first I just want to tell you that you have all of our condolences, and we’ll get you down to the coroner as soon as we can to claim your husband’s body. But, if you don’t mind, we want to ask you a few questions. We want to talk to you about some things. Now,” the stereotypical small-town sheriff, a comically large man with a typical handlebar mustache shuffled himself into the seat, looking back over at the men in suits as if for permission or a warning, “we have a few folks we want to ask you about, but I didn’t want to go too far without asking you. Can you think of anyone, and I mean anyone at all, who would want to hurt your husband? Does anyone come to mind?”

“Yes, sir.” She thought for a minute. She had to give him something, now, but it wasn’t too late to make up a name or blame some angry client at the bank she felt he spoke of. Did she have to condemn herself now, and did she have to sell the man she had loved into murder? It wasn’t too late to save them both, but it wasn’t too late to tell the truth for her husband’s sake. For her first love’s sake, even if it meant crucifying her second love. She knew this was right, and she knew what she had to say. “Yes, sir. I think it was Robert Evans, the fireman. I think Rob killed my husband, Will Baker.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: First of all, in case you didn't catch it, we're moving around on the timeline this week. This all happens in the evening, after the events of Episodes 2 and 3, immediately following Episode 1. Oddly enough, this was just supposed to be a filler episode to help transition from introducing the main storylines to getting into the next phase. However, I really enjoyed getting into the story behind it all here, so I hope y'all enjoyed the short detour. Next week, we'll be back on track with another character focus, starting early in the morning and leading up to the realization that something isn't right, and someone will probably utter the words, "Will Baker is dead." If you hadn't noticed it yet, that keeps happening. Who do you think it'll be next week? Which characters are you looking forward to seeing? I'm excited about it, and I hope y'all are, too. Let me know what you think! As always, you can comment on here, you can talk to me on Facebook (Adam Wynn; facebook.com/adam.wynn), Twitter (@42Cobras), or you can just send me a smoke signal. Seriously...I read all forms of fan mail.
Two more things and I'm done. First of all, I am SO sorry this is late. I had tried to get it on time, but it wasn't going to happen. I wasn't done writing yet, and I hadn't had a chance to check it, much less I had a doctor's appointment at 3:50, so publishing at 4pm wasn't happening. Lastly, don't forget to keep using the honorary 42Cobras Facebook Chat code, :42:. If you do, you get a cool icon in FB chat. And it's all for us here at 42Cobras publishing! I mean, what else could a red 42 be for? Which reminds me, (I know, this makes three things) I'm working on a logo and new layout for the blog. I'm hoping it'll be revealed soon, but not yet. Still working on some ideas. Have a great 4th of July weekend, and watch out for those aliens! If they can get the White House and the Empire State Building in the same night, they can surely get you. Let's just hope that Will Smith, Bill Pullman, and the whole ID4 crew will be there to save the day.

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 3 - "The Pain of Time"

2010-06-25T16:08:00.001-04:00

She blinked a few times, thinking back over her loss. The sun had not yet come up, yet she laid there awake. “What am I gonna do without you, baby? How am I gonna make it?” The woman felt her chest, a pain in her heart not unlike the one that claimed her husband all those years ago. As Veronica turned over in bed and looked at the picture on her mantle, the one next to her old, red digital clock flashing in the darkness, she sighed. Veronica had been without her husband over ten years now, and it was always nights like this when she missed him the most. Talking softly and slowly to her husband, though to speak above a whisper would give away the illusion, “I miss you, Archibald. I miss you, bad. Happy anniversary, love.”

The old lady had given over to the fact that she would never get back to sleep now. Even if it was just past 5am, the sun would start nosing over the horizon within the hour, and she could never sleep through that. Between the light skies and the birds, it would take a miracle for Veronica Davis to sleep past 7am these days. She spent the first hour getting herself ready for the day. She put the rollers in her hair first, because today was a special day. And it was going to be a tough day. It’s always best to look your best when the days are at their worst. Veronica had always told Archie Sr. that, and now she tried real hard to tell herself.

The house was as quiet as usual, but this morning Veronica had to work at keeping the volume down. Her grandson, Archie, was in town. That is to say, he was further in town. His parents, his dad being Veronica’s son, lived on the other side of town towards the more suburban parts of Horizon. The cynics called it “Metro Horizon,” since everything out that way seemed to revolve around the only other real city close enough to count. Her son, Archie Jr., had said that they wanted to stay close to her with his father gone, but not close enough to buy the then vacant, brand new house across the street. Now, a nice young couple lived across the street and occasionally looked in on Mrs. Davis to make sure she was taken care of, and her daughter-in-law would bring the grandson by to visit and to give her some alone time. She knew how the game worked, but Veronica didn’t mind. She’d been around long enough to see that you take opportunities when they’re given, no matter how ill-meant they are.

Now Archie (technically the Third, but he didn’t go by that) slept late in the summer, and Mrs. Davis didn’t want to wake him up. So she took her morning tea out to the front porch, rollers still in and all. By now, the dark blue sky had tints of orange, just peeking up over the tree line and the new houses across the street from her. Or at least newer.

Mrs. Davis and her husband had moved closer to town back in the late fifties after they married and after some problems had come up in the old neighborhood, but then the town caught up to them a good forty years later. By the time builders were asking to buy their home, Archie Sr. had been dead a few years, and she couldn’t stand to part with it, so Mrs. Davis stayed put where she was. This had been their home for so long that she couldn’t stand moving. Archie Jr. kept telling her to move in with them near Atlanta, but he wouldn’t be willing to buy the house across the street from them. They eventually compromised, but it took some work on her part.

So as he slept, Mrs. Davis sat on her porch and admired the waking neighborhood she found herself in. It was a nice place, full of beautiful gardens and well planned out sidewalks. Most of the driveways had cars no older than three or four years old, most of the houses had kids no older than a year. And here was Mrs. Davis with a ’78 Buick she couldn’t stand to part with and a twelve year old sleeping in the back room. Not to mention the fact that she was a good fifty years older than the average homeowner on the block. It made her laugh, usually, thinking about how little she really fit in the neighborhood she predated and had lived in for so long. Today, it just made her think about how much she missed the man who made her belong.

While the sky was still dark enough to dream, she slipped back in her mind to the day their lives were set. They’d dated a little while, the much coveted Veronica Wallace of Horizon and Archibald Davis, but they’d broken up because he lied to her about his job. Most importantly, he didn’t actually have one yet and had been spending all of his money from his last job on her. Well it happened that there was a barn dance that night a little ways out of town, and so Veronica wanted to go and dance off the blues that he’d given her. And as small as the town was, all the young men had heard of Archie’s bad fortune and made their way out, too.

About halfway through the evening, with Veronica dressed in the finest thing she could come up with, and about fifteen guys asking for a dance, Archie walked in with coveralls and a wrench. “Veronica! Veronica!” he called to her, hoping to find the beautiful lady who escaped him before someone else did. “Veronica, I need to talk to you.”

“What do you want from me, Jonah?”

Uncharacteristically ignoring her attempt at annoying him, “Veronica. I love you…don’t talk yet. I love you, and I’m not gonna let this go. I lost my job, and you’re right, I should’ve told you, but I thought that would send you away. I lost my job, I didn’t quit. They couldn’t pay me no more. And I got a new one. I spent all week looking for a new job just to get you back, and I told them I would do whatever they needed, at whatever price, and woman, I’ve got a job down at the mechanic’s. Is that better? I’ll work at whatever I have to. I will work at whatever it takes to get you back.”

“Well congratulations at being employed Mr. Davis,” in mocking tones, “but that isn’t enough. If you could go back and tell me the truth from the first, it might be enough, but this isn’t. I’m sorry, Archie, but it won’t work.”

“Come on, V. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to spend my money on you. I wanted to spend my time on you, and I knew you wouldn’t let me without a job. I could’ve gone another month on what I’d saved up, but I got a job and I’m trying to do it your way. Please, baby, give me another chance.”

“No. There’s nothing you could say or do, and that’s it.” Truth is, she wanted him just as bad as he wanted her. That’s why she hadn’t danced with a single one of the men, but she wouldn’t let on. It was about then that the perfect song came on for Archibald, as “Fats” Domino started wailing out “Ain’t That a Shame.” Without so much as asking, Archie walked over and picked that girl up in his arms. While the big man moaned over 78, Archie spun the little lady around on the floor and kept doing what he could to win her over, but it had already been done. By the end of the dance, he was forgiven, and by the end of the month, she was Mrs. Davis. And had been ever since.

She came back to herself in time to see the nice young couple across the street, Will and Jules Baker, kissing each other goodbye for the day. Veronica was especially fond of the young wife, Jules. Jules would often come by and talk about gardening with her, and Veronica didn’t mind dispensing a few tips ever since she’d been out of the game with her bad arthritis. In fact, she felt good about helping such a nice young woman grow such a beautiful garden, even if Jules did manage to overtake the longstanding record that Veronica held with such pride. They were a beautiful couple, and seeing them this particular morning made Veronica feel a little better about the state of the world.

After a while, she went in to replenish her morning tea and check on Archie, who still slept. Veronica carefully pulled the rollers out of her hair, keeping that perfect curl that she held on to with unflinching strength. As with most things in her life, it was how Archie Sr. had loved it, and so that’s exactly how she kept it. The rest of the morning went about like this, calm and smooth. Around 9am or so, Jules came over to just chat. They talked about husbands and love and what Mrs. Davis spied from her porch that morning. They talked about Archie and how he was growing up, seeing as how Mrs. Baker had really helped him out in her first year at the elementary school, getting him some help with these bigger boys that were picking on him. But mostly, they talked gardening.

The poor girl was fretting about moles in her garden, something that Mrs. Veronica knew nothing about. Veronica thought for a second, but she’d never dealt with them. In fact, Veronica had never heard of anyone who’d ever had to deal with them in Horizon, but she wouldn’t let that affect it. But she was not to let the girl who had done so much for her go without some help, even if it was made-up.

“Not usually, no, but one or two occasions I did. They lost me the ’83 Garden of the year, I don’t mind you knowing.” Actually, she lost the ’83 contest due to a fight between her and Archie Sr. which led to him tearing the garden up, but Jules didn’t need to know that. “But after a while, I learned to put a little pepper in my garden. Yes, black pepper,” trying to really sell the story. Veronica could tell that Jules wasn’t buying it. “Put a little black pepper in the soil around your plants and it’ll keep those bugs out of your garden for a whole season. It messes with their noses, and all those blind diggers have to see with their noses.”

She had thought for a minute about the most plausible thing she could make up to tell her, as Veronica had never dealt with wildlife of that size in her garden. That didn’t mean she’d never heard of solutions, but none of them were ever tested. She’d heard of certain flowers that warded off moles, but they were all ugly or smelled bad. She’d heard of other insects you could introduce to the environment that might prevent their taking up residence, but it was never advised to put extra bugs in the soil, because you never know when your flowers are their meal. After a few seconds of hesitant stalling, she finally settled on something that almost made sense, and that was mixing black pepper in the soil.

“I…guess I’ll give it a try. Thank you, Mrs. Davis.” Jules didn’t seem to believe it too well, but Veronica heard no complaints or protestations.

“Anytime, my dear. And don’t you forget what I was saying about your husband. That’s a good solid love you’ve got there. Hold on to him. One day he’ll be gone like my Jonah,” she added, still unable to get him off her mind. “And you know what they say. The men always die first.”

“I surely hope so, Mrs. Davis. Well you have a good rest of the morning, and I’ll see you later.”

Jules walked away with a smile, which came across about as odd as her answer to Mrs. Davis’ joke, but it was nothing to fret over. For another couple hours, Mrs. Davis sat on the porch and read the paper or just admired the kids who would run by from down the street and wave at her. Being the only older woman on the block, she became a surrogate grandma for the kids who could walk about freely, often making cookies for them. But today, she got to be MawMaw again while Archie was in town.

“MawMaw, what’s for breakfast?”

“I was thinking about making you some macaroni and cheese like you love so much. That sound good?”

“For breakfast?”

“Well when you’re breakfast isn’t until close to 12:30, then yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Mamma V. I didn’t mean to sleep so late,” he lied, perfectly accepting the habit he survived off of so well.

“Let’s go on in there and get you something fixed up. Then I’m gonna take you to town in a little bit. We’ve got some errands to run.”

After the two had lunch, Archie, or Jonah as he liked to go by now, with his macaroni that kids love so much and Mamma V with her simple sandwiches, they got ready for their trip to town. Making a big lunch for Jonah made MawMaw, or Mamma V, or whatever he felt like calling her, feel like old times when she’d make this big lunch for the whole family on Sunday afternoon, usually involving collards and corn and all sorts of tow from the garden. Today, some little plastic pasta and semi-fresh liquid cheese mix was her feast, and her favorite customer ate it all up. “Now, you go and finish getting dressed, put on some clean shorts, and we’ll go to town, okay?”

Jonah loved going to town with Mamma V. It was more fun with her than with his mom. They always went to the busy stores in the city where she would have to watch him with both eyes and keep him tied to her hip almost. Veronica would let him run in and do things for her and pick up something special for dinner all by himself. Horizon Groceries was a safe enough store to allow for what would pass as carelessness most anywhere else. “Jonah, son, can you run in and fill my prescription and pick up a roast for dinner? I’m gonna go over here to the bank and it may take a while. You’ll finish before me, so when you do, I want you to come on over to the bank. Do you think you could walk safely across the parking lot?”

“Yes, MawMaw. I’ll see you in a little bit!”

And as he ran off towards the store, she shouted back at him, “And make sure they don’t short change me this time on the medicine! They’ve come up about three days short going on a year now.” Unsure whether or not he heard her, Veronica Davis went on over and parked by the bank. It wouldn’t take her long. Just a few minutes to go in and put some money in savings from her social security check. She had already prepared her deposit slips and everything.

“Well hello there, Mrs. Davis. How’s my favorite neighbor today?”

“I’m doing real well, Mr. Baker. Saw that wife of yours this morning. She was looking real pretty in them gardening clothes. Makes me wonder what you’re doing here instead of being home.”

“Well someone’s gotta make money for her to buy gardening clothes, Mrs. Davis.” The two laughed, while he rang up her transaction. “I could set my watch by you, Mrs. Davis. Every week, right at lunchtime, I see you come in here with this check. You know you can do this online now, right?”

“Child, if I knew how, I might. Save my knees having to walk up here.”

“Still dealing with that, eh? How’re the pills working for you?”

“Oh, they help, alright. But it’s still there. Some things you just can’t fix, Mr. Baker, I tell you.”

“I know how it is. So is Archie staying with you this week?”

“Oh yeah, he’s over at the store picking up some…”

“Mr. Baker, I’ve got a man on the phone here, says he’s looking for a Bill Walker. I guess he means you?” The secretary in the back office came out and interrupted their cordial conversation. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, hi Mrs. Davis, but he said it was important.”

“Yeah, it’s for me.” Explaining it to Mrs. Davis, “A few of my clients keep getting the name wrong. It’s been happening since elementary school, back when your husband would come in and make lunch on occasion. In fact, I think he was the first to do it, and all the other kids picked up on it. Drove me mad,” he reminisced, turning back to the secretary, “Yes, let me finish with Mrs. Davis, and I’ll be right there.” He had the artful way of switching up his voice, speaking genially and almost like a Southern gentleman talking to Mrs. Davis, then with a professional starkness as he worked with the young lady from the back offices.

“Well I’ll get out of your way, then, and you can go take care of your work. Have a good afternoon, Will.”

“Thank you, ma’am. And here. Take a few lollipops for Archie. He’ll like these.”

She’d almost forgotten about him and where she had to go next. “Oh, he don’t need anything like that. Thank you, though.” On her way out, Mrs. Davis passed by Ames Laurence, the owner of Horizon Groceries, probably coming in to work on payroll for the next week. The two both lived on a pretty standard schedule, so this happened on occasion. “Ames, how good to see you again!”

“Good to see you, too, Mrs. Davis! How’s Jonah?”

“Oh, he’s good, he’s good. I’m on my way to pick him up now over at your store.”

“Well, I won’t keep you. Have a good evening. Come on in and see me some time. I’ve always got a special stash of pastrami waiting to make those sandwiches you do so well.”

“I will real soon, yessir.”

Veronica thought about walking to the grocery store, after all, it was only right across the parking lot. But with her arthritic knees, and her having been out of medicine for almost a week now, it just wasn’t going to work out this time. So, she drove on over to the other side of the lot, and parked right up front where she could. Now it was time to put her old self to work. Ever since she was younger, back when she first met her Archie, Veronica had a way of working men over. She always thought that she’d lose those feminine whiles as time wore on, but it only got better. She learned the old secret that no matter what age you are, a woman has a way of speaking to a man that can block his mind of whatever else he should be thinking. When she was young, it was her beauty that did it. As she got older, it was that subtle maternity that got men wanting to please her. Even if she got old, that never did.

She was certain that she’d given Jonah enough time to get her prescription and enough time to buy some roast, and he should be well in position now. For the last few months, Mamma V had had her suspicions, but now it was time to see what they came to. She walked slowly inside to the manager’s desk, just standing where she could see the cameras for the store. There was the stationery camera that covered aisles two through seven, the overhead that saw aisles six through thirteen, and the one over the deli. There was the stationary camera that watched the offices where the money was kept, and another stationary that watched the parking lot. Then there was the rotating camera that watched behind the store. That was the one that Veronica needed to see.

“Brannon James, how are you?” Veronica saw a young boy who used to bring her papers to the house. Or at least he was a young boy, then. Now he was a bit older, working as a manager and stock boy at the grocery store. “And how’s that brother of yours?”

“Mrs. Davis, how are you! I’m good, I’m good, just working here and making some money for the summer.”

“Well you’re doing a fine job, Brannon. You’re doing a fine job.”

“Well thank you. And Nick’s doing well. He’s getting ready for his senior season of football this year, hoping he can attract some school’s attention.”

This conversation went on and on for a few minutes, keeping up casually about school and friends. He even went so far as to mention a girl to Mrs. Davis, something she hadn’t planned to elicit from him during their façade of speech. All the while, she kept glancing up at the cameras. On the one she wanted, the rotating camera behind the store, she saw Jonah standing there for no apparent reason. She tried not to give away her real purpose, keeping up appearances with the boy. He talked on about where he wanted to go to school, ignoring the line of customers behind her. Ignoring his job, really. For a while, he almost asked her to go on, but Veronica started playing the helpless lady. “Now I came in here looking for my grandson, have you seen him?” And it worked like a charm. He called an associate to go look for him, keeping up conversation, letting the camera rotate back and forth. And after a good five more minutes, she had her answer.

There, on camera, Veronica’s heart broke. She’d known, but never seen. And now that she’d seen, she didn’t want to. There stood Jonah, talking to a large man, probably about 6’5” and very stocky, and he pulled the cap off of her pills. The camera rotated away, looking back to the loading dock, then back to Archie, folding up a few hundred dollar bills and putting them in his pocket. She tried to hold herself in, and she succeeded at least until she got to the car. She explained away herself to Brannon by remembering where she’d told Archie to meet her. As most old women do, she managed to hide her feelings until she made it away from the store. But when she got to the car, when she hid herself away, poor Veronica felt the disappointment of a failed child once more. She felt how it was when her own son had gone away and dropped out of school, only for her to force him back in a month later. She felt how it was when her oldest daughter shouted at her and promised never to call her again. She felt once more how it was when, all those years ago, her own husband died without saying goodbye or “I love you,” that day, and it was as fresh this day as it was then. Her heart was broken in only the way a loving mother’s could, and it was all her fault. It was her medicine, and her folly that let this boy become prey to the sins of the world, and she had to end it now.

After another hour, Archie came back to the car. She had tears on her face, but the heat let her pass them off merely as sweat. “Good timing, Jonah, good timing. I just finished up. You ready to go home?”

“Yes, MawMaw. Let’s go!” And so they did. With a smile on his face the size of a cow’s tale, and a box in his hands, the two slowly moved on back home. Jonah ran in real quick to put on some playing clothes, taking the box with him, and Veronica poured some tea to take out on the porch with her. Jonah carried the box out there with him, ready to join her for some tea, and ready to give her something special. “MawMaw! I want to show you something. I want to show you something!”

“Come sit down, Archibald.” She spoke in plain tones, bereft of emotion. It wasn’t the anger in her voice that made him feel uneasy, but rather the void of kindness so often found there.

“What’s. What’s wrong?”

“Just sit down, Archibald.” Her empty voice, giving way now to the beginnings of a heartbreak she had no intention of laying upon her young grandson, the boy too young to experience the depths of the world he had already witnessed and partaken in. “I need to talk to you.”

“What is it, MawMaw? What’s happened?”

“I saw you. I saw you, Jonah, I saw you.” She began to quiver, but had not yet fallen.

“What? What did you see, what did you see?” She could tell he knew, but wouldn’t give up himself so easily.

“I saw you with that man behind the store, Jonah. I saw you! What were you thinking, selling my pills? How could you do this? I thought I’d…I’d done better on you than them, Jonah. How could you do this to me?”

“MawMaw, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I…I have something I wanted to…”

“No. If it came from that money, I won’t take it. You leave now. You leave. Come back in a few hours, and your mom should be here by then. I’m calling her to take you home, then you’re telling her everything. I don’t want to see you, Jonah, so just go. I won’t watch for you.”

Jonah didn’t speak a word as he walked away, tears ready to come from his eyes. He walked down to the sidewalk and just left, soundlessly. When he was finally out of sight, after Veronica had watched him leave with each step, she cried and cried, the proverbial tears of blood staining her dress and weakening her tea. The old woman tried to stand and go inside, to keep the world from seeing her pain, so evident on the floor. As she stood, edging out of the chair she had stood from so many times before, the ground dropped out from underneath her. Poor Veronica, unable to see the steps before her, fell down the stairs and into the street, with not a soul nearby to help her up. The work crowd wouldn’t be coming home for another hour, and both of her neighbors across the street were gone.

She laid there for what could have been an eternity, and finally tried to pull herself up the stairs. No matter how hard she pulled, it was no use. Her rigid knees kept pushing coarse against the bone, and her split side, made worse by the frailty of age, no longer worked. She rolled in and out of the world, seeing her husband, her grandson, and her neighbors, not understanding where she stood or sat, not knowing what was wrong. In her head, she heard the voice of a man long gone, “Happy Anniversary, girl. Now get up, love. Get up.” She tried to stand, but couldn’t. She tried to move, but couldn’t.

“Help me, Archie. Help me, Archie. Oh, God, help me, Archie. I can’t move, help me, Archie.” And an arm came under her, helping the small lady to her feet, and putting her in a chair. “Oh, thank you, dear. Thank you, baby. Oh, I missed you, Archie, oh I missed you baby. Come here, let me kiss you again, let me kiss you.” She spoke out of her mind, and Jonah did what he could to calm her down, but she still wasn’t right.

“I’m here, MawMaw, I’m here. I called the ambulance, they should be coming here soon.”

“Oh thank you, Archie. Go get me some water. Go get me something, baby.” Eager to help his Mamma V, he ran in to the house and left her there in pain, even though she couldn’t feel it in her mind. The woman sat, looking out across the street, seeing the shadow of her house in the street, and a man she knew from his days at the grocery store coming out of Will and Jules’ house. She saw him and his hands, standing out against the plain white of his shirt, now stained in a dark red that anyone with eyes would know at sight. She called back for the boy, screaming for the phone. Calling out to him, now remembering who it was standing there with her, fully in mind due to the panic she realized and the urgency of the happenings at her door.

“Someone, please. Someone, come quick,” she cried at the phone in her hand as the operator picked it up.

“911, yes ma’am, we got your call, Mrs. Davis. An ambulance is on the way.”

“Forget the ambulance, you idiot, I can wait. I think someone’s dead!”

“Excuse me?”

“I just saw Robert Evans run out of the Baker house with blood on his hands. I think he,” taking stock of the cars that were home, “…I think he killed Will Baker!”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would love to hear what y'all think so far! Write me on Facebook, let me know, and please keep reading. I hope you're enjoying the story so far, and I hope you've started to develop your own ideas about what's going on in the town of Horizon. Next week, in Episode 4, I plan on showing you a little bit more of the aftermath in "Epilogue, Part I" (Title Pending). I know, the numbers and the timeline are getting difficult, but hang in there! And as always, if you don't already, follow me on Twitter at 42Cobras! And thanks for reading!

Will Baker is Dead, Episode 2 - "Compliance"

2010-06-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

The slow Summer sun rolled across her floor, softly climbing up the bed, until after a few minutes it landed gently on her troubled face. Jules had not slept well, but she was awoken by the morning sun and the consequential birds all the same. Her heart and mind were both very heavy from what occurred just the day before, and how permanently those occurrences would taint today and every day after. Blinking once or twice to put out the sun, Jules brushed her hair back off her face and turned in her bed. Her next lie was as strong as the words that backed it up, as she lovingly ran her fingers across the man in her bed and smiled, speaking sweetly and softly to him, “Good morning, William. What would you like for breakfast?”

She used to be one for sleeping in, but two years of teaching had finally pushed the habit out of her. Now, the sun was her alarm clock all summer long. It didn’t help that her husband was responsible for opening the bank sharply at 8am. She had to get up and ready so he could. Just as the sun was her alarm, so was she for her husband. The poor man was helpless when it came to mornings. As smart as he was, and as well as he did in college, she had gotten used to calling him every morning to make sure he was up and ready for class.

Jules sat at the mirror doing her make-up while Will took a shower. They say that when two people are married, it requires the sacrificing of habits and old ways of life. Jules preferred quiet mornings where she could get ready in peace with the sound of the day coming on her slowly. Will preferred the morning show on WHRZ, the usual country station giving way to a morning full of classic rock and weekend hits. At least at present it was playing some Tom Petty, so Jules had a little bit of a compromise with fate, it seemed. Even still, this was nothing like his habit of constantly whistling the same old sad bar songs, his favorite being “Wurlitzer Prize.” Jules married Will because he was smart, had talent, and showed few of the country habits of most of the men in Horizon. It would figure that he would wait until after the honeymoon to show the worst one off.

Still, as Jules looked in the mirror, it took all of her strength not to cry. There sat a beautiful young woman of 25, long blonde hair and perfect features, wanting nothing more than to smash the image ahead of her in judgment for who she had become. If not for the music and the shower, she very well might. In the last month or two, she had grown too used to the empty mornings and the empty house that came with Will travelling. She had grown too used to filling her time with other friends and falling back into her own habits that when he was home, she couldn’t stand to revert. The conflict of heart that she presently faced with the courage of a warrior would only last so long until one side won out. A good few minutes after she finished applying the make-up, Jules still sat looking ahead in silence at the person mocking her from the other side. The person she was destined to become, one way or another. It was either that or a future of half-living and half-loathing. The question was which half merited the loathing?

After she mustered the courage to stand, Jules donned her favorite white bathrobe, the one with the cotton fuzz texture to it, and made a light breakfast for her and Will, balancing the bacon with some fresh fruit. If they were planning to have a baby soon, Jules needed to work on her dietary skills. The bacon popped and sizzled, occasionally catching her on the hand or her bare feet. If anyone had managed to look in through the open window, it would seem like Jules was participating in a perfect, mid-summer morning. The aroma of bacon melded with the dissipating rain that washed away in the sunlight after last night’s storm, creating a unique atmosphere, perfect for conversation. It would be, the one morning that she had hoped to avoid such things.

“That smells delicious, baby. And what’s this? Honeydew? I am spoiling you with the grocery budget.”

“I have my own money I can buy exotic fruits with,” laughed Jules, attempting to live up to her usual playfulness. “Now sit down and eat before you leave, it’s gonna be a long evening before dinner.”

“Really? Which one of us has a late night commitment?” Will asked, somewhat genuinely as he had a tendency to forget appointments.

“Oh, uh…don’t you have to work late tonight?” Knowing full well that he would be off at 6pm as usual, “And I don’t want you going hungry in those late meetings, or gorging yourself at some expensive lunch with a client. Just you remember that we don’t have the money that your people do, and if we’re going to start a family soon.”

Will smiled in his own way, looking down at the melon and grapes. “That’s right, we can’t waste that eighty-thousand a year I bring in, of course coupled with the meager salary of a hard working, slave driven third-grade teacher. We’ll be in the poor house before you know it.”

By now he was up behind her, running a hand across her stomach, approximately where a baby would first show. His left hand held hers while she tried to finish the bacon, his head nuzzling hers out of the way to get a peek at it. Jules, already shaken from the talk of families and babies, grew quickly uncomfortable with the cheery demeanor of her husband. He had been notoriously sullen over the last two months, and now it was as if he had woken up on Christmas morning to find a new car with a free plasma screen inside. He was happy, and it bothered her.

Almost on the verge of tears, she eased him off with a nudge. “Oh, baby, come on. It’s early, and they don’t need me at the bank for another thirty minutes. It’s Monday morning, and honestly, who needs to go to the bank at 8am on Monday morning.”

“Small business owners and other hard working people at the foundation of America’s economy. That’s who,” again smiling, even though she spoke with tears just beneath her eyelids, somehow expressing the sentiment of a Fox News reporter. “But if you’re serious about some time apart, let’s go fishing this weekend. Forget the fish fry. You and me, we’ll go fishing up at the lake, or we’ll go down to County Line River. What do you say?” She hated herself for doing it, but Jules knew that talk of fishing would get him out the door and gone in a hurry. He hadn’t fished in years, not since his sister died, and she knew it. It was a horrible trick to pull, but she couldn’t stand the new, loving husband he was trying to be. If the charade were to work, she had to keep thinking of Will as cold and apart, and that wouldn’t happen when he was talking of hooky and soothing her robe.

Without a word, he went back to breakfast and finished his fruit quickly, not waiting for any bacon to add. The air grew thick between them, mostly due to the silence enforced by Will’s hard eyes and his forceful forking up of apple slices. “I’m sorry baby, I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to think of something we could do, and it…it just came out. Baby? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. If you plan on gardening this morning, be careful. The rain washed through it pretty hard, and everything’s awfully damp. The flowers oughta be in good shape this afternoon, but the ground is still pretty soft. Try not to ruin the grass.” He grabbed up his coat and pushed on to the door, it seemed intent on leaving without a goodbye. But at the touch of Jules’ hand, he tossed back a sincere and almost apologetic footnote on his warning. “Just…be careful, Julia. I love you, and I just want to watch out for you. You know that right?” He had turned back to look her in the eye, but had to lift her chin to get there. “You know that, right?”

“Right. I’ll see you this afternoon, baby. Be safe!” She shouted out to him as he walked to the car, like something out of a cliché, but still it was enough to elicit his return for a goodbye kiss. The long kiss goodbye reminded Jules of their wedding day, but now it was of a different subtlety. It was tainted by the seeming separation of the last little while, even though it seemed to Jules the image of sincerity and felt of nothing more than the longing of love.

“See you later.” He smiled back at her and stepped into his car and off to the bank. And just like that, the hardest morning of Jules’ life was over. She dropped the robe in the laundry like a bad mask, and put on her gardening clothes. She knew that you don’t win the Horizon Garden Club award a third straight year by slacking off, so she stepped on outside, tending to her garden in a therapeutic manner. The flowers had in fact perked up a bit as Will predicted they would, given the harsh summer storm that poured through town the night before. He would know, he had to drive in from the airport in it. She checked on her tomatoes and peppers, the only edible greenery that Jules grew, and thought how good they would be on a salad very soon. Truth be told, she only had enough to make one or two salads, but something about a garden with no produce really felt out of sorts to her. Often times people would comment on how it was indeed this artful blend of vegetation and flora that made her garden so unique and successful.

Everything was fine until she came to planting her new batch of azaleas in the side garden. The soil was moist and fertile from the rain, sure, but it was also very loose as if some small animal had been digging around in it and burrowing its way through her plants. As Jules knew, it was only so much you can do to fix up a garden right once moles or the like got in there, and if she needed one more thing right now, it wasn’t losing the garden that preserved her sanity.

That being the case, Jules stepped on up and walked over to her neighbor across the street, Mrs. Veronica Davis. Mrs. Davis was an old black lady who lived in Horizon, and one of the few who lived on the strip. She had first moved out there for her husband’s work before he retired, but when he died, she never had the strength to move back. Now, she spent most of her time sitting on the front porch and watching the world around her pass on by. This was especially true in the summer when she could sit out there in the warm sun and talk to the kids who would walk by and play in the street in front of her house. At one time, Mrs. Davis had been the best gardener in town. In fact, she won the Memorial Day Garden of the Year ten times, including the first four straight, a record that Jules planned on breaking. Now that Mrs. Davis was struck with a terrible arthritis, she couldn’t garden anymore. On an occasional afternoon, Jules would walk over on the precept of having tea with her neighbor and try to winnow out a few gardening tips from her.

“Good morning, ma’am. How are you today?” As expected, Jules found her neighbor sitting out on the front porch with her tea and medicine. “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but I saw that husband of yours leaving this morning, and I saw the kiss he planted on you as he left.” The old lady raised her eyebrow and gave a smile, knowing that she could only get away with speaking so honestly because of her age. “I sure am glad to see young couples like y’all getting on so well. Too many folks give up on love, marriage, and family. Makes me glad. Yes it does.”

Biting back, and hiding the pain, she passively agreed in kindness. “Well, thank you, Mrs. Davis. Is Archie by this week?”

“Oh yes, his mamma dropped him off last night while you were out. He’s still sleeping. That boy would sleep on through the day if I’d let him.”

“Will’s the same way. How is Archie? Is he liking middle school?”

“Oh, yeah. He loves it. He always hated walking in a line anywhere. That was his favorite part, finding out he didn’t have to walk in a line everywhere. But don’t let him catch you calling him Archie. He doesn’t go by that, anymore. He goes by his middle name now. It’s much cooler.”

“So, it’s…”

“It’s Jonah, now. Archibald Jonah Davis, just like his daddy. And his granddaddy. It’s funny, my Jonah never did like it, but it didn’t seem right to let him abandon a family name like that, so we named our son Jonah, and he named his Jonah, and now the crazy fool goes by Jonah. I tell you, his granddaddy would have a fit if anyone called him Jonah.” The two ladies shared a laugh and some tea, but then Veronica Davis, she knew what Jules was up to. “So tell me. Is something the matter with your garden, honey?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is. I was digging out in it this morning and I found what looked like a burrow. Did you ever have trouble with moles or anything?”

“Not usually, no, but one or two occasions I did. They lost me the ’83 Garden of the year, I don’t mind you knowing. But after a while, I learned to put a little pepper in my garden. Yes, black pepper,” she said, answering the doubting expression of Mrs. Baker. “Put a little black pepper in the soil around your plants and it’ll keep those bugs out of your garden for a whole season. It messes with their noses, and all those blind diggers have to see with their noses.”

“I…guess I’ll give it a try. Thank you, Mrs. Davis.”

“Anytime, my dear. And don’t you forget what I was saying about your husband. That’s a good solid love you’ve got there. Hold on to him. One day he’ll be gone like my Jonah,” she said with a twinkling in her eye that likely came from a tear just as much as her own happy memories. “And you know what they say. The men always die first.”

As the two laughed out a goodbye, Jules headed on back to the house, and then to the store to pick up some pepper, against her better judgment. If anyone in town had an idea of how to fix this problem, it was the original green thumb herself. So after Jules cleaned herself up and got ready, she went on down to the store and commenced shopping. She couldn’t help but think about Victoria’s parting words, though. How she should cherish the man in her life while she had him. Jules wondered what more she could do to cherish the man who had left her alone practically for the last two months? This morning aside, even when he was home, Will seemed to be across the world from her. And she couldn’t cherish Rob because it was just wrong.

Even being back here at his old store was difficult. Jules remembered the time that her and Rob stood in the backroom of the store avoiding the rain. He’d promised to drive her home after work, and she was soaked from head to toe. She wondered how different things would have been if she would have kissed him that night. Nothing had told her to, nothing had hinted to her that it was a good idea, but she just knew now that he had wanted it. He had wanted her. But she never gave in.

Jules moved down each and every aisle, looking to make sure she didn’t need anything else other than her mole deterrent. She knew right where the pepper was, but something about the domesticity in wandering a grocery store felt right to her. As Jules rounded aisle six, past the fresh seafood section, she spotted Mr. Laurence, the store owner. It was frightening because she had thought it was Will at first, as they were both of the same height and build, both fairly tall men with slim shoulders and appropriately thin brown hair, and she knew they had been mistaken for each other in school on occasion, so that made it a little easier on her. Oddly enough, her first thought wasn’t at how odd that Will wasn’t at the bank, but rather at the fact that he was wearing an apron.

Mr. Laurence’s wife had gone missing about a month back under strange circumstances. Police said there was “evidence of a struggle” and that she in all likelihood had been forced out of her home, but nothing further was ever found. Naturally, suspicion fell on Ames Laurence at first, but nothing could really ever be proven. Jules was good friends with Melissa, Ames’ wife, and never believed him capable of hurting his own lovely bride.

“Hi, Ames. How are you today?”

“I’m doing well enough, Mrs. Baker. How are you?” His response was full of the false cheer of a man in denial, mixed in with the false demeanor of a businessman addressing a friend between the hours of 9am to 5pm.

“I’m doing alright. Say, Will and I were planning on having a fish fry this weekend, would you like to come over?”

“I sure do appreciate it, and you know we’ll gladly sell you all the fish you could want back here behind aisle 6, but I can’t. I don’t think Will’s too happy with me right now.”

“He doesn’t blame you for what happened, Ames, you know that.”

“I think he really does, Mrs. Baker, he really does. You know how he felt about Melissa. They were close friends, once. But I didn’t hurt her, and I certainly didn’t kill her.” She had been referencing something else, trying at all costs to keep the conversation away from Melissa for the poor man’s benefit. Then again, thinking back to the girl you allegedly ran over while drunk back in high school wasn’t a much better memory. Either way, it was a rough road to hoe.

“I know, Ames, I know.” In an attempt to smooth the moment, Jules decided to change directions a bit. “Hey, you’ve been to the Caymans. How are they? I’ve been wanting to go ever since we got married, but Will’s been reluctant. How can I convince him to take me next Christmas, maybe?”

“It’s really nice. The water’s 80˚ all year and the locals are very friendly. And it’s tax free, so he should like that. Melissa and I went on our honeymoon a few years back and it was…it was nice.” And for the second time today, Jules had managed to bring a man to tears at a sad memory. The difference is, this one was an accident.

She put a calm hand on the man, growing smaller with each defense he was forced to give, and each moment he was forced to relive. Melissa’s disappearance hit him hard, but he had a business to run. Ames’ father opened the grocery store many years back, right after he moved to Horizon as a young man looking for a place to make a living. It made him quite a living, too. In all the years that Horizon grew, and in all the changes, no outside grocery store ever survived within earshot of Horizon Groceries. It did so well that when Ames inherited the business at an early age, he was able to buy up some land and build a shopping center around the grocery store. They had a small jewelry shop, some niche restaurants, and a Great Clips. Every small town has to have a Great Clips. Ames had even sold the land that Will’s bank was now occupying.

“But look at me, blubbering like a baby on the floor. I’ve gotta get back to work, but, uh, do you need help finding anything? Do you have everything ready for the fish fry?”

“No thank you, Ames, I have everything. I’m just looking for some pepper for my garden.”

“I can’t say that’s the most normal thing I’ve ever sold, but okay. If you need any help, ask. And if you see that friend of yours, Rob, tell him I really wish he’d come back and manage the stockroom for me. It never has run as well as when he managed the back.”

Putting out a civil smile, “I’ll certainly do that.” And that’s what made up her mind. Jules had been debating all day whether to go see Rob or not, after last night’s events. She found herself in his arms once out of fear in a storm, and out of loneliness from her husband’s missing touch, but it was wrong. It was sullen and soiled, and she couldn’t find herself in the same position again, but she had to let Rob know it was off before he did anything foolish.

Rob lived a little ways out of town, past the stores and neighborhoods into what was still old Horizon. He preferred the more spread-out part of town, and embraced every aspect of it. Jules used to love the barbecues he would hold for friends and family on the farm during the summer. She loved seeing the rows of corn and his hayfields, not to mention the goats and one cow. Rob was a born farmer, and now that he lived on his own small farm and was able to make a living as a fireman one day out of every three, it was no surprise to anyone that he chose this path.

Jules drove out to Rob’s farm, trying to remember if this was a B shift day or a C shift day. Rob had been C shift for about a year now, and since then Jules always seemed to know what day it was on the county firemen’s schedule. Rob was as much a born farmer as he was a fireman. He had the build of one, kinda tall and broad, with a good head on his shoulders. He did well enough at school to leave town for college, but he never did enjoy that world as much as his own back in Horizon, so he came back and became a fireman pretty quick. And he fit right in with those guys, many of them locals around town. Many of them were the same firemen that had carried him home after he woke up drunk in his truck back in high school, or who helped him get that motorcycle out of the lake so he wouldn’t have to call his Dad and explain what happened. And they were the same firemen who were there when the chaplain told him about his Dad’s wreck. It was the place where he belonged, and it was the place where Jules wanted to belong with him.

As she pulled up to the front of his house, a small one level with a farmer’s bell out front that used to belong to Mr. Evans, his father, Jules ran through the gameplan in her mind. She was to go in, tell him it was over…no, it would never happen again, because for it to be over meant that there was something going much longer than a few hours, and that wasn’t the case, so it would never happen again, then she would leave and go home and make her husband a big dinner, explain everything, and beg him for forgiveness. That was the plan.

Jules stepped out of her car and was immediately assaulted by the summer sun, high up in the sky now, signaling the hottest days of the year and the hottest part of the day. By the time she reached the front door and rang on the doorbell, she was already sweating a little around her sunglasses. She knew how Rob hated those gaudy sunglasses that covered most of her face, so she wore them intentionally to ward him off, hoping to avoid his unimaginable charms.

“Hey, baby, come on in, it’s burning up out here. If I’d known you were coming I might’ve cleaned up a little better.” Rob leaned in for a kiss from the married woman, but she pushed him back and just walked right on in, talking as fast as she could.

“Look, Robert, we can’t do this ever again. It’s over.” Crap, she said it. “It’s over between us, and this can’t happen. I love my husband very much, and I can’t let you do this to him. He’s a good man, and he doesn’t deserve this.”

“That’s not what you were telling me yesterday.”

It’s true. Before this morning’s show of affection from Will, poor Jules had spouted all of her deepest longings to the old friend over coffee the night before. They met up at a spot in town for drinks so she could vent, and they ended up behind the grocery store after the rain started to come down.

“I was wrong. He’s not a perfect man, but he is a good man, and I won’t have it anymore. You’ve always given me these, these sideways looks and winks, and I can’t resist you.” She didn’t mean to say that. “I can’t stop you, and I have to. You can’t let me do this to Will. I love him.”

“Are you trying to convince me or you of that fact?”

After a moment’s pause, “Stop it, Rob! If you’re really my friend, you’ll leave this alone!” It almost scared him a little to see her all fired up, as Jules was usually a more reserved woman, but he knew first hand the passion that she could unleash when she so desired. “Just stop. It’s done.”

“Do you remember that night a few years back when you were stuck out in the rain behind the grocery store? And I promised to give you a ride home, but you were all soaking wet and had to dry off in the back room? Do you remember that?” She did. “I think about that all the time. And I think you do, too. I wonder, what would’ve happened to us if we would’ve gotten together that night?”

Sheepishly, “I don’t think about it, and I don’t know.”

“I think you do, baby. I think you do.” He moved in ever closer, and whispered in her ears when he was finally close enough to do so. “I would do anything to keep you with me. I can’t let you go, Jules. I just can’t. It took me so many years to get you here, I can’t let you leave me.”

Deep down, Jules admitted the need she had felt for Rob, and the need she knew now would only be filled by what he could give her, but it was still wrong. What she wanted was wrong, but she wanted it nonetheless. “How do we do this, Robby? How do we do this? I have to be in your arms, but I can’t.” Jules finally crying, admitted to Rob what he already knew.

And in his own way, in his own soft and soothing way, he whispered back to her, “Sssh, sssh. It’s okay. The first time, the first time is passion. The second time is compliance.” She looked up with a strange sorrow in her eyes, analyzing his words, making sure she understood what he meant. Then she kissed him.

A little while later, she wasn’t sure how much later, Jules woke up to Rob standing on one leg fiddling with his shoe. The late afternoon sun played with her hair and danced in her eyes, as she lay on Rob’s bed facing the window. After a soft giggle and a flip of her hair, Jules asked, “Where do you think you’re going, Robert Evans?” Frightened at her being awake, the poor lecher lost his balance and fell. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry, are you okay? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” the fireman groaned out as he pulled himself up off the floor.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Robby. What time is it? Oh wow, I need to be going. I guess I fell asleep. See, this is how it’s supposed to work. You don’t leave me alone, it’s your house. I’m the one who leaves. I’ve gotta go home and get dinner ready Will.” And then she noticed the odd silence in the room, as Rob looked down at her and didn’t speak for a minute. “What’s wrong?” And still he wouldn’t speak. “Rob, what’s wrong?”

“You need to get dressed.”

“Rob. What is going on.”

He bit his lip, and then Rob told her the news. “Baby,” he said, taking her hand, “I just got a call from the station. They found him laying on the floor.”

“Be honest with me, Rob. What are you saying? Who’d they find? It’s not Will, it’s not Will.” She denied it, still not having heard the news in full yet.

“I’m sorry, baby, it is, it is.” He had to fight her to keep from hitting him. “You need to get dressed now, we have to go.”

“No! No! It’s not, it’s not!”

“I’m sorry, baby, but they found him beaten to death on the floor. It’s your husband. Will’s dead.”

Next Week: Episode 3, Friday at 4pm (or so)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I want to know what y'all think. Who's guilty? Who's responsible? Who is victim and who is villain? Feel free to leave comments on here, Facebook, or Twitter. And if you don't already follow me on Twitter, it's @42Cobras. Until next week, and thanks for reading!

Will Baker is Dead - "Prologue"

2010-06-11T16:10:00.000-04:00

Jules Baker, a lovely young woman of 25, stood outside the house with her friend Rob. Rob tried to comfort Jules as best he could on the front lawn of the two-bedroom home on the strip. Kids on bikes watched from the street corner three houses down. Veronica Davis sat on the front porch with her grandson, watching the house across the street. The first news crew stood watching the house from the curb, safely outside the police line. With the news crew, most of metro-Atlanta watched from wherever there was a TV. That aside, the world outside the house was moving on as so. But inside. Inside the house lay the mauled body that had been identified as Will Baker.

Jules and Will had been married for a little over three years now, having married right out of college, and had lived on the Main Strip of Horizon for almost the whole time. The strip was set-up like this. Everything East of the church was storefronts and little shops. Everything West of the church was houses, ever since they built the pastorum back in 1974. Most of these houses were small one-levels for old retirees or newlywed couples just getting started. A new “neighborhood,” most simply a section of houses, was added about every five years. By now, the neighborhoods on the strip stretched almost three miles out of town, only interrupted by the occasional school or gas-station that went up in-between phases, with one large section devoted to Horizon High School, built well out of town at first to avoid traffic complaints. But in all those years, through all these changes, there had never been a murder on the strip, especially not one that elicited terms like, “gross disfigurement,” from the police and media. The horrific murder of Will Baker was something the people of this town never expected to see. After the strange disappearance of Melissa Laurence, an old friend of the Baker’s, a month or so back, the people were on edge. But now, faced with the unimaginable murder of Will baker, they were terrified.

Will and Jules had a great life here. She taught at the elementary school when it was in session. Will was also a real academic type, working down at the new bank in town. He studied Physics and Finance in college, graduating in the top percent in both classes. They kept a clean house and, to everyone’s knowledge, had planned on having a baby soon. When Jules had time, she worked with her husband in the garden. For two straight years now, they’d won the Memorial Day Parade Garden of the Year. As the parade route wound through “downtown” Horizon and on through the strip, an inspector would ride one of the floats and judge each numbered garden along the way. Twice now, they’d come out on top. Jules had planted her rosemary and pansies, behind them fennel and columbines. The array of colors, as splendid as it was, spoke poetry as it craftily surrounded a single daisy. Jules could look now on all of these flowers in her garden, but could now only think of the ones that would adorn her husband’s grave.

As Jules ran her mind through all of her future worries and now ever current problems, she though on the most difficult one. Who could have killed her husband? Jules had trouble thinking of anyone who would want her husband dead. He’d had his problems, and had seemed worried about something that morning, but it couldn’t have lead to this. And she thought of the one possibility, but how could he have done it? It was impossible that he did it, because…well he just couldn’t have. But she couldn’t tell anyone. If anyone asked, especially the police, how could she tell them he was innocent without making him look even worse? All that Jules knew right now was that she could never let anyone know about her affair with Rob. She had just lost her husband, she couldn’t bear to lose the most important person in her life. But as afraid as she was to lose Rob, she was even more afraid to think he could have been involved with her husband’s murder.

She had known Rob her whole life. They were good friends, all throughout school, but only friends. That’s all they’d ever been. It wasn’t even really an affair to her. It had only happened twice. Will had been obviously troubled in the last month, spending more and more late nights at the bank or travelling for them. The new bank had some big clients out of town, and it was his job to keep them happy. With him gone, she felt vulnerable and in need.

Strange how she’d never seen Rob as anything more than her friend until her husband began distancing himself. In high school, they would spend afternoons together walking down the street, him to the grocery store for work and her to tutor at the elementary school where she now taught. They talked about the future and college, and when that future arrived, they would call each other on the weekends, seeing each other when they could. Rob even came up for a football game once, but the visits stopped when Will and Jules started dating. He said it didn’t seem right, though she never could tell why. Even after everything that had happened with them, and everything that Rob had said just that afternoon, there was no way that he’d killed Will Baker. How could he have when she was with him?

Jules asked Rob to leave, fearing the appearance of evil. Even the hint of that word, evil, convicted Jules of her complicit role in Will Baker’s death. Perhaps her straying from the path is what caused someone to kill her husband. As absurd as it is, she believed it. All around her, the world fell apart. The news crews filming her house, the police moving in and out the front door, all the neighbors politely avoiding her gaze. Jules Baker stood alone on the lawn, forgetting herself and her past, focused only on the fear at hand.

“Mrs. Walker?” No answer.

“Mrs. Walker?”

“It’s Baker, officer. Mrs. Will Baker.”

“My apologies, ma’am. Could you come with me? We need you to come down to the station to identify your husband’s body conclusively.”

The summer sun cast that dark blue and sky orange that only comes when it is light even late into the evening, as the evening turns to night and the fireflies come out. She followed Officer Rodriguez to the car, and as she glared back once more at the house, she saw them bringing out the covered stretcher. As the Coroner’s people carried him away, the evident truth pained Mrs. Baker. Her husband was gone, and she was obviously to blame. It was all because of her that Will Baker is dead.

Next Friday, Episode 2 featuring Jules Baker.

If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section. It's a little early for theories, but if you must, go right ahead. I hope y'all enjoy this, and I look forward to releasing episode 2 next week. Thanks!

Now Announcing "Will Baker is Dead"

2010-06-10T23:58:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow at 4pm, I intend to go live with the first chapter in a brand new project, a summer serial called "Will Baker is Dead." This serial will be an experiment on my part and a very exciting new project. The overarching story here is about a small town tragedy in my now established stand-in of Horizon, GA. The story begins with the discovery of a dead body at the home of Will and Jules Baker. The rest of the story is geared towards discovering what exactly happened. Each episode, after the prologue, is going to follow a different character and their experiences through the day we are first introduced to in the prologue, the day in which a murder occurs in the quiet town of Horizon, GA.

I know that I'm a few days past my self-imposed deadline of June 7th, but this project has been a long time coming. I first came up with the basic concept a few years back, but never really did anything with it. Now, I've finally got the story and the characters I want, and it will be coming to life in about 16 hours. I hope you all thoroughly enjoy the story, and please do not hesitate to let me know what you think. Thanks!

Adam W.
Phil. 3:12-14

PS. If you don't already, go follow me on Twitter as 42Cobras!

Without Further Adieu, I Present to You..."Have Souls, Will Travel"

2010-06-02T11:54:00.001-04:00

And finally, I deliver on my promise to post the long awaited short that I've been working on since November, "Have Souls, Will Travel." I've started some preliminary work on my serial that I'd like to do during the summer. To put it this way, if I don't post anything from that by June 7th, there probably won't be one, but I'm working on it. I'd like to make it weekly throughout the summer, so we'll see how well that works out. I look forward to seeing what y'all think of this one. Please leave comments, say something on Facebook (Adam Wynn) or Twitter (42Cobras) and let me know what you thought. Until we meet again, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!

PS. Just a warning, this one's a little long. It spans 13 pages on Word single-spaced, so good luck reading it. I didn't want to split it up just for ease's sake, so I hope the length doesn't become a problem. In a while, I may try to add a link to the GoogleDoc for it.

"Have Souls, Will Travel"

Back before the Depression, before the war in Europe, the older folks in Horizon know a story about a town that was deceived. It was 1910, and we were but a young village. The people had lived there for nearly twenty-years, but there wasn’t a formal, legal management in place until a few years prior to this. We weren’t official yet. The people were still trying to get a feel for how a proper city should be run. We were fifty-years into the reconstruction of the South, and it wouldn’t do to have some cotton-picker fresh out of the fields run the town.
            The first four years of municipality saw a council run the town’s affairs, but some started to believe that a singular decision making body would best serve Horizon, GA, so it came about in the autumn of 1910 that the council begrudgingly began to look for a mayor. A few names had appeared, from the council mostly, but none with weight enough to sway the city in a vote.
            Around the same time, there was another position in the town that needed filling. In the old Southern towns like Horizon, a good preacher can make all the difference. There was the oneBaptist Church on the main strip, but no one seemed to go. The old pastor skipped off with the offering from a month of Sundays a while back, and the old-people had lost their faith in the old place.
            Even when the revered Rev. Jacobs stepped in to fill that vacancy at the pulpit, his obviously temporary return did nothing to bring back the fold. Most distressed by this was the good reverend’s grandson, Young Jacobs. His parents were killed by the cold only a week after his birth, and before he could be named, so the reverend just knew him as Jacob. Because of his parents’ death, Jacob grew up in that little country church where his grandfather used to preach. His nights always ended with grandfather reading stories of scriptured past from the pulpit, Jacob playing the part of congregations on Sunday.
            At the time, Jacob enjoyed the solo sermons. It was time he could share with his grandfather, and he could hear from the Word that he loved deeply. Now, though, as Young Jacobs grew into a man of 15, he knew what the empty Sundays meant. He saw a city drifting down the wide path, and a grandfather getting even closer to his final homecoming.
            This particular Sunday found Rev. Jacobs preaching to an audience of two, between the Lord and his grandson, from Titus and James 2. The old man, as frail and tired as he was, still had the fire of a preacher to him, and with the most attentive audience he’d ever had, Reverend Jacobs brought the Spirit out to fight. But in the heat of his heart, his heart gave out.
            Even if Young Jacobs had been the back-row Baptist sort, the flight he took to be with his grandfather would still have been more than enough to keep the man from hitting the ground. Jacob took up a spot next to his falling hero in seconds, the moment his stance began to waiver, keeping old Phillip Jacobs firm at the pulpit.
            The young man carried this mountain of faith, this weighty one to bed and laid him down in comfort and rest.
            “Bring…bring me…” poor Jacobs, struggling through his words.
            “Here. Here is the water.”
            “No!” As Phillip Jacobs tossed it away with the momentary fervor of a traveling evangelist. “I don’t need that! Bring me that Bible, son.”
            Young Jacobs, now understanding, brought him the Word.
            Phillip held the Book to his chest, close and tight, half in prayer, half in warning to the child in tears before him. “Lord, take me on now. I have done my work, and I have run my race, and I have done it in Your Name. I pray, Lord, that you send someone to this town who will defend them from the evil one. Defend them!”
            He stopped to breathe, often forcing out this final prayer as one shutting the last wind out of a dry, cracked bellows to enflame the vital fire for the last time.
            “I will find someone to save this city, Father. I will find someone.”
            With a tear and a sigh, Phillip Jacobs gave up his spirit. He died on a Sunday and went on to join the great saints of the past. He was buried on a Wednesday, and hundreds came not to miss the Reverend’s final sermon. Young Jacobs stood at the graveside of the man he grew to model, the yellow-aged Bible in his hand, a blue-ember in his heart. The fury of the boy, growing out of the anger of a man, brought forth words from his chest that Young Jacobs knew not a second before they were spoken.
            “Here lies Phillip Jacobs, a man of God and preacher of the Word for sixty years. He stood at the side of dying soldiers, Union and Southern alike, as a young war chaplain those many years back. He helped some of you fix your farms with hands and prayer back in the floods of 1882. He buried your children and my parents in the deadly cold of 1895. He neglected all of his own needs to bring you the Word. He gave this place life and hope, and you all let him die! He was the last thing keeping this town from going to Hell, and you let him die!”
            The gravediggers were the only ones left with Jacob after a moment, when the crowds dispersed speaking of a young man’s folly and inexperience. Widow Lois assured everyone what a disappointment the young man would’ve been to his fine elder. Mr. Loews, progeny of the plantationers, and a frontrunner for the mayorship, mourned over the loss of such a great man and the ill replacement they were left with.
            Young Jacobs had decided he would try to take up the mantle left by his grandfather that coming Sunday. The sign out in front clearly stated that worship began promptly at 9am, but only one person arrived from then until lunch. Even that one, he was looking for the mayoral debates.
            “Lord. Your Word says that where one plus another is gathered in Your name, there you are, too. Well it’s just me! You here? You hear me, Lord?! Are you here?”
            He stepped out from behind the cross that adorned the pulpit and back into the pews, leaving his grandfather’s Bible behind. Young Jacobs then began to pray for one to defend this town from the Devil, just as Phillip Jacobs had a week prior.
            At that moment, as if sensing a call, the doors opened to reveal a tall and empty man, thin in frame as one who had not touched food in a decade, wearing a black flat-top hat to match a monochromatic suit of the same sable quality.
            “Hello? Is anyone here?”
            “None but I,” replied Young Jacobs. “Who are you?”
            “My name is Reverend Beels. Being a minister, I felt this an apt place to begin upon my arrival in town. You are?”
            “I’m Young Jacobs. My grandfather was used to preach the Word from this pulpit, but he’s died and left it to me, and no one here will listen. I fear this town will succumb to the fires of the evil one if I don’t manage to stop him myself.”
            “Well I’m here to do what I can. The name’s Ichabod Beels and I am a travelling preacher of sorts. I suppose you could call it fate or providence, or whatever you will, but I would very much like to aid you on this holy crusade.”
            Jacob could not believe the turn of events that befell him. Here stood a real and true minister at the time when the young town of Horizon would face its first true test against the Deceiver. The minister’s grandson wanted to show off to the town what he’d found. This was certainly an occasion to gloat.
            “Let me go grab my coat and I’ll introduce you to the town. They need to know who’s going to occupy this post come Sunday.”
            Now Ichabod had only been at this travelling preacher business for a short while, only about ten years or so. But it was certainly a young man’s game, and Ichabod Beels stood to be no more than thirty-three years of age. He travelled around to small towns primarily in the South where religion still took hold over reason. He had most recently hailed from the village Andover, which is no longer called Andover, where the people didn’t take too well to his preaching. The Reverend Beels felt that his little horse drawn cart may have just found a suitable home, but a trip through town would tell him just about all he needed to know.
            “Now, son. Don’t go tying me down just yet. A man of divine service has no home and no place to rest his head. I have to be certain this is where I am most effectively to do my work before I agree to stay.” It didn’t much matter what Beels said. Young Jacobs was determined to keep Ichabod and his tongue from leaving town, and Ichabod knew it.
            Even on this cool November afternoon, the town streets were bustling with Sunday noon traffic. People walked in and out of the shops in their as of yet unused Sunday best. The single restaurant in town prepared a feast of chicken and vegetables bought fresh from the country farmers inhabiting this corner of the world. Young mothers walked their children from store to store, each little one wondering which door held a toyshop. Sadly for them, no store-bought playthings could be found within ten-miles of Main St. Horizon.
            The mayoral campaign hit a stride, each viable candidate slapping his feet to the planks and flapping his jaws to the wind. Each man cast a vision for what would make this town the next capital of Georgia. After all, what did towns like Milledgeville and Terminus have when they started that separated them from the rest of the state?
            Mr. Loews was certain that the future of Horizon stood in progress, leaving the farmers the land that they already had cultivated, but using what remained untouched for industry and Reconstructionists. “If those Yankees want to throw some money at us to improve the once glorious South that they destroyed, I say we take it! The anxious crowds, eager for more fire from this modern-day Balaam. His words and wisdom drew them up into a voting frenzy, ready to elect Mr. Loews President.
            “Now, now listen, y’all. This is a farming community, and it should stay that way if we have any hope of surviving in this world.” Lukas Wages, another candidate for mayor, was also the progeny of plantationers. His family had owned half of the land that makes up everything just this side of Horizon, from County-Line River west into town. The only difference between Lukas Wages and Mr. Loews was that Lukas still farmed, and still owned all of that land west of the river into town. Though owning land meant owning power, it did not a public speaker make, and the people really had no desire to hear what this common country farmer had to say.
            “Joe, you and I have farmed this region for twenty years, and your family, like mine, was farming up the state of Georgia for almost a hundred or so years prior. What in God’s name could possibly change that?” He was quickly losing the solidly Mr. Loews crowd. “And…and…even if it did change, what makes you think that’s what this town really needs? Mr. Loews, here, he just wants to run all the farmers here out of business so he can buy up their land!”
            And there it was. Lukas Wages unwittingly made the one political move that scared the capitally minded Mr. Loews. Not only was it the bitter truth, but it was enough to scare the farmers back to Lukas. His only saving grace was that crowds are indeed fickle and easily swayed. In this case, all he needed to sway was their attention. “And behold, here comes the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. If it isn’t our resident fiery preacher, come once more to condemn us all to fire and brimstone.”
            “I condemn no one, Mr. Loews; it is you who condemn yourselves by ignoring what my grandfather tried to teach you for the last half-century! You condemn yourselves by abandoning God!” Young Jacobs once again found himself defending his grandfather’s church to these soulless creatures. They would mock and ridicule the memory of such a great man in his presence, and Young Jacobs wouldn’t stand for it.
            “Boy, none of us has abandoned God, so much as we have abandoned that God-forsaken box you so loosely call a church. That place died with your grandfather, and there is no way that you’d draw a flock in fit to lead half as well as he could,” Mr. Loews spoke, a gleeful certainty of victory tainting that velvety drawl.
            The quiet stranger figured that now would be the appropriate time to interrupt the failure that was his young friend’s tirade. “That is precisely why he has asked me to fill in for the late Reverend Jacobs for the time being. My name is Ichabod Beels, and I assure you that no man is condemned who enters the Lord’s church. Follow me, and I will show you the path to life. Follow me, and I will lead you to the promises found in the Book. Follow me, and I will bring you the truth, and it will change your life!”
            If there was one thing Mr. Loews was capable of, it was recognizing a worthy adversary, and his fears were buzzing all about this man. And since nothing benefits a Southern politician more than being aligned with the right preacher, “As mayor of Horizon, let me welcome you to our town, and let me be the first to sit in on your first Vesper service here in Horizon, tonight at the church down the street.”
            Burdened Young Jacobs feared that his friend would not be able to stand this obvious challenge by the now self-acclaimed mayor, but this changed when Rev. Beels answered the call. “It would be my honor to host yourself, and every other person in ear-shot this evening. Though it is quick, I am a preacher. As a preacher, I am in the business of collecting souls, and that is one business in which I can afford no delays. Tonight!” The crowd was in a roar, so they probably couldn’t hear him whisper to an eager Young Jacobs, “Come to my wagon immediately. We have work to do.”
            Once they left the fevered crowd. Young Jacobs saw a side of the Reverend he had not yet seen. This side was single-minded and quickly moving. He gathered books and supplies, grabbing things up for the evening worship. The man was asked to operate much quicker than he expected, and this night was to be flawless if his time in Horizon were to be met with any success.
            “Ichabod.”
            No answer. Clearing his throat and trying again…
            “Ichabod.”
            No answer. Jacob almost thought it best to sit and wait, but then he spoke.
            “Oh, yes. What can you do? Just help me prepare the building for this evening. Candles. We need many candles. Ah! Yes! And if you are to help me, you must be a duly appointed and appropriately recompensed layman. Here, take this pen and sign here.”
            As Ichabod handed the pen over, the wagon rattled as if kicked by the horses, and Jacobs’ hand slipped and painfully met the sharpened end of his writing utensil. He went to wipe the blood off, but was stopped by Ichabod. “Not that it would matter, you’ve already spilled some in the ink-well. Just sign so I can pay you from the offering legally and we’ll move on with it.”
            The Reverend’s grandson took a minute to absorb the imposing document. He’d never been exposed to such a legal document before, excepting when he witnessed his grandfathers will a week ago, and then his parents’ will before that. He was only used to the language of these grave documents. He had no idea how to take this thing now. Unable to read it, the boy placed his red-stained signature on the parchment in his sight.
Young Jacobs was so thankful for this answered prayer, as they headed on towards the evening. He just knew that his grandfather would be so proud of what he was doing for the church and who he had found to come in and save the city ofHorizon. And that made him smile.
            “Good. And now we can get started. Carry these things into the building and we’ll get a move on. We are going to need lots of candles.”
            The scene was set, the good reverend was ready, and the people were arriving. The young man had never doubted Beels’ ability to set a stage, prep a church, or deliver a sermon, though he had not yet in the meager eight hours of their acquaintance seen any evidence of this, but he was ashamed to admit some doubt in this most recent mentor’s ability to draw a crowd. If the reverend Ichabod Beels were capable of anything, it was drawing a crowd.
            The people flocked to see him. Not only did the vastest majority of Horizon arrive to witness the coming of a new voice from the dessert, but there was standing room only for the late arrivals from all over Myrtle, the Springs, Chinquapin Grove, even a few from the capital! Word spreads quickly, of that there is no doubt.
            Unlike any Southern preacher you’ve ever seen, Ichabod Beels started preaching fifteen minutes early, likely on account of the fact that even if anyone else were left to arrive, they’d have never got in. It was good for him to do this, because the crowd was most certainly getting restless, and his voice had a way of soothing the most vicious crowd like a farmer putting down a stampede with a flute. They eased into their seats, those punctual enough to have one, and prepared their ears for the golden speech that began to flow.
            The children who were there that day, the ones who inevitably grew into the old men who told the story, best remember the fiery tongue that Ichabod spoke with. That is what they spoke of, but Young Jacobs latched on to something else. While the conjured crowds heard a roaring revival, full of screaming and devil hatin’, Young Jacobs heard only what was not there.
            In all of his words and gesticulations, the good reverend never once prayed.
            To the casual observer, it may seem odd if noticed at all, but to a young Georgia boy raised in the ways of preaching and soul winning, well this was like going hunting with no shells. It was like going to farm, but never hooking the horses up to the plow, or sowing a field full of salt. To Young Jacobs, it was madness of the greatest degree. And this headstrong kid, all his pride in tact, knew good and well that he was gonna talk to the reverend about it.
            “That’s a keen eye you got there. Keen indeed! Most folks would’ve passed off on it as a …pure mistake! But no! Not this protégé of parables before me, no sir. It was indeed intentional, yes.” After the church meeting, the two soldiers of souls had a proverbial come-to-Jesus meeting.
            “But why, is what I don’t understand. You had all those people there. They were leaning on every word you had to say, and you never once prayed. Heck, I don’t think I ever heard you say the Lord’s name, not once!”
            They were both a deep red, Beels out of fury, and Jacobs out of shame. “Not to question your wisdom, sir,” as he tried to back-peddle his way into the mentor’s good graces, “but why would you do that? Teach me.”
            “Well, if that’s the case, then I most certainly shall. You obviously know the story. You know about the cross and all.”
            “Yes, yes, of course.”
            “And I am sure you pray frequently.”
            “Constantly.”
            “Then you’re familiar with how these things are viewed by outsiders. They are offensive in nature, and we must be careful to negatively affect people with these…these…”
            “Pillars?”
            “Symbols. After all, that is all they are is symbols. And we mustn’t scare away the flock with a poorly drawn wolf when we can bring them in with the image of food.”
            “No, I guess you’re right.” Young Jacobs was still less than certain, but he was willing to learn.
            “You will learn from me in time. You’re grown so used to this old-fashioned ministry, and you see what good it did you. Sometimes all I need is time to break old habits, or introduce new ones. Off to bed, now. We’ve got a long week ahead.” The reverend spoke of work with a confidence that his message was ready to take root.
            “Great. I’ve prepared the master bedroom for you, it is right above the church in the …”
            “No. No…thank you, no. I’ll be fine in the cart. This place belongs to you and your grandfather, and that is a place that I will only invade during my working hours.”
            Young Jacobs went on to his room, next to the one that used to belong to his grandfather. True, it seemed wrong to offer that man his grandfather’s bed, but Young Jacobs felt that any servant of the Lord was due his wage, and that was a clause that Ichabod Beels did not escape. Still, Young Jacobs went to bed dreaming on these things and considering them in his heart. When was it right to mention the Lord? When could he display that old cross that Ichabod had moved from the pulpit? Why would his grandfather steer him so wrong? Poor Jacobs tossed with these thoughts most of the night, only grabbing some sleep with the promise of hard work the next day, the first of many promises that Ichabod Beels would deliver on.
            Though a decade late for the start of the century clean sweep, a mess of changes came to Horizon that month. The potential mayors agreed to postpone the election. It seemed a new candidate was being discussed. For the church, Ichabod had made up his mind to replace every plank and board in that old place, starting with the pulpit. He and Young Jacobs worked night and day, and by Sunday, the pulpit was brand new. It looked great, and the people could feel a change in Ichabod. He took his old demeanor and stepped it up a bit. If his old sermons were fire, this was a blaze of holiness out to win Horizon’s souls. That was what he always told Young Jacobs. “You and me: We’re in a battle for the souls of Horizon’s people, and it’s gonna take all we’ve got to win.”
            But with all of the new boards and talk of political, even spiritual revolution in Horizon, one thing never changed. Ichabod wouldn’t pray. Ichabod wouldn’t read from the Bible, nor would he even touch one. Ichabod wouldn’t mention Jesus. And although he could speak fire up from the pulpit, according to Young Jacobs, Ichabod wouldn’t preach.
            Anytime he’d try to bring it up, Ichabod would just call him a foolish young man in need of training, a fact that the well-versed young fool took as an insult. And as with most impetuous young men, the Jacobs boy blew.
            It happened on the fourth Tuesday since Ichabod came in to town, and it was getting close to Christmas. While Young Jacobs stewed over the so-called sermon from two days prior, moving things that he assumed were moved to make room for the Nativity scene, Ichabod broke the camel’s back. He tried to make Young Jacobs remove the old cross from his grandfather’s church.
            Though he obviously was not there, Young Jacobs had countless times heard the story of how his father and grandfather built that cross together, first part of the church built, in-fact, from the wood that once stood on that very spot. He heard how the two, his father only about ten years-old, prayed about how best to serve the town, and wound up building a cross, then a church to put it in. And he would be damned before he let anyone remove it.
            “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
            “Excuse me?”
            “I can’t. This cross belongs here. In this church. It’s all that’s left of my father and grandfather. I can’t remove it.”
            “Listen, boy. You said you would do whatever it took to help me, and this is how you can help me. Remove that cross!”
            “I’m sorry, Ichabod, but…” as he searched for the right words, he at last spoke something that just never seemed possible when he said, “the hell I will!”
            Now anyone could attest to the fire in Ichabod Beels’ voice. Anyone could vouch for that who had heard him speak. But that day in Horizon, GA, Young Jacobs became the only person in the state who knew the fire in his eyes and in his grin.
            Opened wide, unwittingly showing the point of a tooth, Ichabod Beels spoke more truth than he ever had before. “The Hell you will.”
            There are a few moments in life when people begin to realize the first in a long string of bad decisions. It was here where Young Jacobs began to realize that he had made the worst of all when he invited this one in to what was once a great church.
            “You should really practice up on reading legal documents, or should have. Especially the ones you sign in blood.” All of the legends and rumors of souls wasted on his black schemes, none meant a thing to Young Jacobs now as the Beast passed sentencing on him. “You signed, and your mine: Mind, body, and soul,” adding some real bite to that last bit. “You’ve got no hope, no exit, and no rights. Well, that’s not true. You do have the right to determine when I take you. At any time, you can forfeit this life and join mine for eternity. Now, if I am so inclined to offer you mercy, and I never am, you will be free to live your life from that moment on, and I can’t touch you. Not ever.” Now abandoning the false civility in favor of the roar he is more used to, “This is binding! You have no way out of it, so you better just live by it. Now do as I say.”
            To say his burden was heavy would be to say that his cross was wooden. It was painfully obvious by the soreness on his face and the thorns in his palms. As Young Jacobs carried that cross out to the burn pile, then past that into the woods for safekeeping, he could feel the lost link to his sheltered past slipping away. It was all gone, or would be soon. What hurt the most was imagining the tears on his grandfather’s face as he died. Could he have known the fate that was to be dealt his last earthly treasure? Young Jacobs knew that he brought sorrow to his grandfather’s death, and for that alone, he wept.
            Young Jacobs did not remember falling asleep.
            But he surely remembered waking up.
            There stood Ichabod over him, now abandoning the fiery grin he previously held for nothing but the heat of his scowl. The cross was still where Jacobs had left it, leaning up against the most senior tree in this forested land, Ichabod’s eyes floating back and forth from the sleeping attendant to the wooden crucifix. “We must not cling to these relics of the past, Young Fool.”
            At the word of his voice and the flick of a finger, the ground seemed to sprout flames, pushing furiously up the cross in the woods. Nothing else in these woods that touched flame even bore a scorch, but the cross shone through like a star hitting the sky. It was like the flame protected it’s own, or simply touched none but what it was allowed. Young Jacobs fell asleep and drew this deceiver to his spot in the woods. He failed to conceal the cross’ location, and now it was to burn. Perhaps forever. Jacobs knew not what power his new boss held, but it was far more than was contained by the boy.
            He wanted to run, but his Master’s voice said, “Stop.” Not so much said it, but he felt the voice in him. He was told that this was important. This was something he had no choice but to watch.
            If nothing else, the Beast had him by the neck. Young Jacobs stared at the blaze until he saw nothing. The exhaustion of anguish and the lack of air returned him to a state of death-like sleep. After all, that is what he wanted. There is honor to a good death, because a good death only comes from a life of meaning. There is beauty in a good death. The death like his grandfather’s. Death like his father’s, intended to save the life of another. That is what Jacob wanted, for he felt it was the best he could now hope for.
            Young Jacobs returned to himself in the bed that his grandfather Slept in. Without fail, Ichabod Beels towered over him, eyes of flame and red anguish looking with death upon him. That man’s demeanor had changed, likely due to the fact that he no longer had reason to conceal his truth. As any good preacher should, Ichabod Beels wanted to win souls. Except he meant to win them for himself.
            The stricken boy rose slowly. His eyes were still fuzzy with sleep and his neck was still sore from the strangling. The headache he was sure that hadn’t been there before persisted with a vengeance. Whatever Ichabod had done to him, he did a real bang-up job.
            “Get up,” was the curt wake-up call. Something angered Beels. That, or he just wasn’t a morning person, Jacob surmised. When Jacob refused out of mere inability, the warning was returned, and make no mistake, it was certainly a warning. “Get up.”
            “I can’t move. You dang near choked the life out of me last night in the woods.”
            “Who says I didn’t try? Now get up. You’re mine until I say otherwise, but don’t worry. My assistants tend to have a short life span. We’ve got work to do.”
            Ichabod had heard the rumors of his potential mayoral candidacy, and he was not given to missing this monumental of an opportunity. It was but a week before elections, and Ichabod had work to do. He wasn’t planning on making an outright campaign, but rather arriving at the last public debate and trying to shame both candidates. One benefit of being in his position was that Ichabod knew what to say to and about anyone. If he wanted to catch a man off-guard, it wasn’t difficult.
            Beels had the little subservient one hook up the team and ready themselves a trip to town. Though they could have just as easily walked, he wanted the carriage to be visible when he made his bid for mayor. Making Young Jacobs do a little extra work wasn’t a bad little perk, either. When Jacobs had finally gotten everything together, they made their way into town.
            It was as if the two were marshals in some sort of grand parade as the streets waved in excitement at the sight. “How’ya doin’ today, Preacher?” one man would shout out. The kind lady up on the sidewalk would toss up a, “Can’t wait to hear your preachin’ on Sunday, Beels,” with a salacious smile, holding juniors hand while her husband was inside picking up the weekly supplies. The world had noticed their arrival and wanted to celebrate the occasion.
            Mr. Loews was down at the end of the street talking to his wife, sharing glances with our kind, young blonde from before. Lukas Wages was on his way, but he had to sell the crops from his farm to the grocer. This late in the season, he really couldn’t afford to let them sit around for long. The last debate was to start at 1:05pm, and the town clock just chimed the hour. Everyone started to move downtown towards the wooden platform that once nearly hosted the Horizon public gallows. Today would almost certainly determine the future mayor of Horizon, and perhaps just a little bit more.
            As Lukas walked up, a minute to spare, Mr. Loews took his chance to start the pot shots early. “Welcome to our debate, Lukas. I’m so glad that this important position didn’t interfere with your farming too much. Why don’t you join us when you’ve got a minute, okay?” The people thought about it, and they saw the problem. Just like Joe Loews wanted to happen, the people slowly gave up their trusting of Lukas. If he would be (almost) late to a debate this important, what else might be impeded by his occupation? The obvious choice would then be to go with someone who had more time. Someone who sold his farm. Mr. Loews, perhaps?
            The debate went smoothly for a while. There were no real surprises. When they talked about farming and land use, it was always Lukas for farming and Loews for selling to business. When they talked about the future of Horizon, Lukas went farms and Loews went factories. Obviously, they had to, seeing as how there were only one or two issues in which they actually differed.
            The moment finally came, however, when someone broke open the debate, just like Ichabod had hoped for. Looking for another voice to speak in his favor, Mr. Loews called on Beels. “Do you have any questions for us, Reverend?”
            Ichabod grinned, relishing this moment where he could improve his own stock and play the political system.
            “For you, Mr. Loews, tell me. How do you feel about adultery?”
            The shocked silence that followed for Mr. Loews was not due just to the question he had been asked, but also in the revelation that the preacher’s red eyes stared through the soul inside him. He could see through the veneer of flesh into the heart beating within his ribs. To the crowd below, it was obvious that he was stunned. No matter the answer he managed to salvage at this point, the crowd could tell that this question bothered him, and they all could tell why. His wife almost laughed audibly. Mr. Loews finally managed to get something about sin and how the future of the city did not include such filth. They all saw past it. Even Young Jacobs enjoyed it, knowing good and well what the man was doing.
            As much as he enjoyed seeing Mr. Loews brought down to level, Young Jacobs feared the turn of Ichabod’s gaze. It only took an insistence by the Reverend to turn the crowd on Loews, but Lukas was a good man. There was no telling what tools Ichabod would call on to bring down the best man in Horizon. And Young Jacobs knew this. He knew what was coming, and he knew it would be ugly. Although the boy was as of yet unsure how to act, he was led to believe that action was in fact inevitable. Jacobs would have to stand against the Devil to save this man and this town, even though doing so would bring certain damnation. It would be a sacrifice of the gravest kind, but it would be a sacrifice of the most dire kind.
            “And for you, Mr. Lukas. I have a few questions.” Honestly, Ichabod Beels was reaching here. He knew that the stunt with Loews made this farmhouse American look to be a bonified saint in their eyes, and that was hardly an easy force to work against. When he finally found the right half-truth, Ichabod Beels burned the air with his words. “Is it true that your grandfather gave sanctuary to Northern soldiers during the war? That he hid them and supplied them?”
            Each and every eye and ear fell on the farmer Lukas as he was caught pants down at the question. For all he knew, that family rumor had died with Mr. Lindsay, his grandfather, ten years ago. “Aren’t you going to explain yourself, Lukas?” Ichabod’s accent from the Deep South…real deep…etched another level to the question. The crowd started calling for crucifixion, it felt like to the farmer, unused to the fickle nature of the political scene.
            “Well, Lukas?” they shouted, “Tell us!” One particularly vulgar farmhand added, “Are you a blue baby, Lukas?” At least that’s how the more polite people tell the story.
            “It was…It was…We had a…There was a…my cousin. He lived up in Union, Georgia. He fought for them, yes, but he was born here! He was from here! They would’ve killed him, and he was hurt! He would’ve been lynched!”
            The mob was at him. Even Loews started shouting at this Yankee lover. Strange enough, he hadn’t even been born yet when this happened. Lukas was only about forty. But his family was guilty, so he was guilty.
            “And that same cousin, that Yank, was he not found shot a few years later heading over to his neighbor’s wife? And did your own father not have a tendency to spend his nights and earnings down at the bar?”
            Lukas had been beat. Through his schemes and lies, and sideways defamations, Ichabod Beels had vilified the most righteous man in the county. Nobody in town wondered at how this newcomer already knew so much about everyone. They just took it all in. The crowds were shouting, preparing to run the poor man out of town before he could even catch his breath, he’d been flipped so fast. Yet the reverend caught them back quick when he spoke up. “Is there anyone else we can rely on? Is there no man in this town worthy to lead? Is there none righteous enough to reclaim the spirit of this place?”
            His speech was lacking for a cheer, but this was only as the people thought through what he was saying. As always, his impassioned plea inspired them to thought, and it was exactly the thought he wanted. “Why don’t…why don’t you do it?” Scott Stone, the storeowner, was the first to sound the death knell. Slowly, his utterance brought the murmurs which in turn grew to conversations which erupted into cheers.
            Young Jacobs, horrified, watched as the plan rolled out perfectly and naturally like raindrops off the tree leaves. It was beautiful to watch, but impossible in its consequences.
            “STOP!”
            They did.
            Every pair of eyes was on Young Jacobs. Even Phrank, the one-eyed beggar who slept in the alleys, was watching.
            “Can’t you people see what’s happening? This man is…” Jacob, trying to see if now was the right time to unveil his master, “he’s playing you! That’s what he does! He tricked you today, and he tricked you at the dawn of time. He’s the Devil in the truest sense, and all of you are just eating him up! He is going to steal the souls of this town, and you won’t know until it’s too late, just like he did to me. He wants to steal your soul while you want to make him mayor! And I know he’s gonna send me to Hell for saying this, but I had to do it. In fact, I’d rather you just take me now, Devil! Beelzebub, take me now. Send me to the Pit like you promised. Come on! Not like it matters anymore, anyhow, seeing as how you’ve got this fool town eating out of your hand!”
            It was at this exact moment when a human had managed to outwit the Devil. Ichabod was trapped, and Young Jacobs had trapped him. The look of surprise on Beels’ face told the boy all he needed to know. You see, the deal was that whenever Jacobs wanted, he could ask the Devil to take him and, if he refused, whatever hold was on the boy’s soul would be forfeit. Beels couldn’t take him now, or else the whole town would see that he was telling the truth. Otherwise, he would lose this soul, and Beels knew that he couldn’t afford to lose this soul.
            “That – that power lies elsewhere.” But the boy would not fall for those word games, no matter how hard he tried.
            “So does that mean you won’t send me to Hell?”
            “I am no devil,” he laughed, trying to convince himself and the sorely confused crowds.
            “So does that mean you won’t send me to Hell,” he asked again, each syllable emphasized in a solidly stern manner.
            “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever! I will not send you to Hell, Young Jacobs!” And right then, the Reverend knew that somewhere, a contract was consumed in its own unholy flames. And Jacobs knew that, somehow, his burden had been removed. He was free.
            Just when he started to relish the moment, that Trickster figured out another way to play. “But I tell you what I will do. I will take up the burden of mayorship, and retain my church, so that I can preach truth and protect this town from people like you who would seek to ruin it. Those who would seek to destroy the souls of Horizon, the souls of these fine people. And I shall run them out of town with the furious vengeance of all the power that is granted me. You call me a devil, but I offer this proof to the contrary. A house against itself cannot stand, and I most assuredly now stand against whatever devil is prompting you to act. Evil like yours will not be tolerated, and it will not be suffered to rest as we pursue to force it out. We, as a city, burgeoning and bursting into this century, will root out all evil from this pure town. We will burn you!”
            And as the people cheered, as the Reverend roared, the boy ran. He ran for miles, out of town, past the church, into the woods. He ran past the fear, and he ran past the anger, knowing that his own salvation spelled doom for Horizon. Though his bloodstained signature was gone, their blood was on his hands. Young Jacobs ran from his God, and his grandfather, and his father, knowing that his foolish stunt had delivered them all into the hands of the Evil One. He ran and he ran until he no longer heard the celebrations in the street and until he no longer felt the cold November air burn at his lungs. He ran and he ran until he no longer could run. He fell asleep somewhere in the woods, many miles outside of Horizon.
            While he slept, Jacobs dreamed of the words he had heard some time ago, it seemed, when his grandfather passed away. He saw him there again, lying as one already dead on the bed before him, the old-wood church still surrounding. His words played in the boy’s dream, “I pray, Lord, that you will send someone to this town who will defend them from the Evil One. Defend them!”
            In the dream, once more, the boy spoke to his grandfather, but now the words were different. “I’m sorry, Father. I have tried, and I have failed. I couldn’t find the one you sought, and now he has them.”
            Again, the final tears of a dying man were seen on Phillip’s face, but his head turned towards Young Jacobs and he screamed with a voice no longer belonging to the dead and frail; “Defend them!”
            These unearthly screams woke the boy who had slept well past time, for it was no longer night, but early Sunday morning. He recognized this place, for it was where he learned that his captor was in fact the Devil. It was where he burned the old wooden cross. Yet, even though Jacobs had seen the cross burn, there it stood. It was not gone, and nor was it charred. The ground around it, having been slain of hellfire, would never grow again, but this cross itself stood untouched by the flame.
            It was then that he realized the truth. All this time, Phillip had been talking about him. Phillip had been talking about his grandson. This was who he saw saving the town, and this who he had expectantly prayed for. And for as long as someone stood up and preached the Truth in Horizon, no man could ever take this city. No man, no devil, no one.
            It was early Sunday, and Ichabod began again to preach. He spoke to the people about hard work, and about giving of your self to his service. The new pulpit, adorned with two gold candlesticks at each side, fit Ichabod well. He was readying the altar call, shouting fire and brimstone, calling people forward to service to his church when the back doors flew open with the force of a hurricane wind, sending the full house of would be worshippers to their feet.
            “Submit yourselves to God! Resist the Devil!”
            “What are you doing here, boy?” Ichabod was not a fan of interruptions. Or surprises. And here stood both, a dirty and unkempt young man carrying some great bundle of wood that Beels did not yet recognize. As Young Jacobs marched towards the front of the church, one foot forward at a time, with a greater purpose in each step than he had ever moved with, the old hand-carved cross came into focus.
            “Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners,” this line echoing with conviction throughout the Church, “And purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.” As he dropped the cross at the front, before every soul in Horizon, directly speaking to each heart with ears to hear in that room, he found the voice that once belonged to Phillip Jacobs, the voice that could speak the Devil out of the room. “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up.”
            Ichabod wanted to speak, but could not. He wanted to refute this show, but he could not.
            “And I will resist you, Beels. I will resist you.”
            The boy spoke with a newfound power, rivaling and even surpassing that of his short-term mentor. Even still, Ichabod had to try.
            “Do you think that any of these people believe this insane display? Leave, boy, before I have you arrested for trespassing on my property.”
            “This church is the property of God, it is my home, and you should be leaving. I own this building, Ichabod. Now go!”
            “Yours? You signed a contract that, if I do say so myself, supersedes that will.”
            “Show me.”
            And again, he had been beat. There was no contract. It had burned away with the boy’s release. So there stood Ichabod powerless once more. He had no choice but to leave and take the flock with him. As the people followed Ichabod out, Jacobs replaced that heathen pulpit with his grandfather’s cross, the one that he had triumphantly lifted up and carried down the streets of Horizon.
            Then, he picked up right where Phillip had left off: preaching to an empty room. It went that way for most of the next year, except when a hapless drifter would settle into the back pews of Horizon’s oldest church for a comforting sermon from the ever-faithful Rev. Jacobs. It wasn’t until that next November when he recaptured his first parishioner. Farmer Lukas decided that he belonged in a church in Horizon after all, and he felt that he belonged with Rev. Jacobs.
            Ichabod would often try to incite a war with the young man, but it never worked. He could not trap the Young Jacobs, who just kept on preaching. He preached and he preached, slowly regaining the sheep who had come to notice something wrong with their chosen shepherd.
            After he had lost all but a few wandering souls, the day finally came when Ichabod Beels moved out of town, abandoning the post of preacher and politician. Though he cited work in another town, everyone else knew it to be health related. He was growing weaker and weaker in the Shadow of Jacobs’ church, falling further and further from his former glory due to Rev. Jacobs and his thriving flock.
            It was almost five years to the day when he finally left Horizon. Phillip’s grandson had succeeded. He had resisted the Devil, and he fled. For the next sixty years, Rev. Young Jacobs served the growing and changing community of Horizon, always sleeping in that room behind the church. He married well over one-thousand couples, including about two-hundred second-generation weddings and another fifty third-generation weddings. He advised the politicians of the county, on one case even three governors and the President. He counseled people through loss and grief, enduring four major wars, and the sons of Horizon leaving, never to return. He became the life of that town, right up until the day he died.
            It was late November of 1975 when he passed away, surrounded by family and friends. They say he died smiling, looking over to his sons and grandsons, along with Rev. Shills, the succeeding pastor of what was now Horizon Baptist Church. He said to each of them just this: “Defend them,” at which point he sent his soul on home.
            People would cry, and some laugh, thinking back on what he had done for them. They all talked of that time in the 50’s when he helped talk a drifter down from the roof of a local warehouse. They laughed at when he said the prayer at a Horizon football game, calling the coach out on benching the best player they had just because of his color. Indirectly, of course. They marveled at how he kept the town from imploding during the near race riot of 1954. And the oldest ones of them remember when he opened the church late one Sunday with word of the attack on Pearl Harbor to pray for our country, and again when word of the atomic bomb dropped in Japan so we could pray for theirs.
            All told, over twenty-thousand people came to Horizon in November of 1975 to bury the loved and the late Rev. Jacobs. They talked of many incidents and laughed at many stories, but the one that only a few would ever dare breath word of was the time when a young boy from backwoods Georgia stood toe-to-toe with the Devil and won. Though it was perhaps the greatest thing ever to happen in this town, few people dare mention how Young Jacobs saved the city of Horizon, and that’s just how he would like it. After all, who wants to admit when they’ve been deceived?
   The story is but a rumor now, the tale of old men out on gas station rocking chairs, most of them having only heard it from their fathers, but there is an oft remembered headstone in the long-lived church cemetery, one belonging to Phillip and Young Jacobs, along with his parents, that reads, “So long as a man of the Word preaches Truth in the city of Horizon, it shall be safe.” And there is a spot in the woods surrounding Horizon that, for as long as anyone can remember, has never grown. And no matter how old it gets, no one will dare to throw out the old hand-carved cross of Horizon Baptist Church. Even so, these are all just old relics of an old tale that only the old men tell.

"It's Four in the Morning..." and I'm not Lying in Bed

2010-05-20T04:08:00.000-04:00

Yes, it is Four AM, and I'm wide awake. That is partially due to the fact that I've had nothing official to do for the last few weeks. I graduated from UGA, as you probably know, on May 8th. Now, I'm at home simply helping around the house and doing what I can while I can.
I finished the long-awaited short story "Have Souls, Will Travel," the other night, and I can't WAIT to post it VERY soon. I'd like to put it up within 48 hours if I get all the editing done. If you want a synopsis, here you go. The story follows this kid whose grandfather dies. His grandfather is the only preacher in Horizon, GA circa. 1910. So the poor kid (I say kid, he's 15) is left with his grandfather's church and a whole town that wants nothing to do with it. Someone then comes into his life, like an answered prayer, and offers his services. Ichabod Beels, the travelling preacher, promises the boy, Young Jacobs (that's his name, long story, you'll figure it out), that he will help get the people back in his grandfather's church in time. Along the way, Young Jacobs starts to notice something less than normal about his new friend, and thus drives the plot of "Have Souls, Will Travel." I really hope y'all enjoy it, I'm pretty proud of it.
The main reason I am posting this update, sort of, is because I've been wondering about a few things. I really want to utilize this blog more than I have been and I want to run an idea past y'all. I thought tonight about starting a serial. What if I had a serial story that followed a certain plot for a few weeks, introducing one new portion a week? Would that interest some of y'all, my faithful readers? Let me know what you think. I'd very much like to do this, and would like to see if y'all would enjoy it. If I decide to start this project, it may take a couple weeks to start. I've got another idea I want to write, first, another little short that I've been thinking about. It's called, "Black Sock Day," and that's all you get for now. I only tell you because I want you to know why I'm not rushing immediately into the serial idea. You'll have to wait for any more on "Black Sock Day," but it hopefully won't take NEARLY as long as "Have Souls..." did. I've been working on it since November at a very slow pace.
So yeah. That's all for now. I also will soon be posting about the Practical God, but I'm not there yet. That's still an idea I've been struggling with, but the basic point is that God does not do things out of whim. He has practical purposes and reasons. He does not ask us to do things because He can. He asks things of us because they will either benefit us or because He will use them to work in someone else's life. Either way. So yeah. This is another pseudo-devotional I'll be putting up after a while, as soon as I've really thought through it. I look forward to talking to y'all soon, and I really hope y'all will leave some comments or something, let me know you read.
Most importantly, tell me if you think you'd read a serial updated weekly. I'd do my best to make it interesting, and I think I've already got the play figured out. And if I go with what I'm thinking right now, you'll all enjoy it very much. But until then...time to maybe go to bed. I've gotta be up at 7:15ish.

Adam W.
Phil. 3:12-14