An Ordinary Account of he Evil

An Ordinary Account of the Evil
(Introduction to the New Suspense Stories)

It has seemed to me, often, perhaps too often, war is paralleled with evil, the ultimate of evil, and all the other evil that surrounds man, is omitted as natural observations of the ordinary. We have many accounts of war by Civil War writers, WWI poets, WWII, historians, Vietnam Veterans; coming home mentally disturbed soldiers from Iraq, and Afghanistan. CNN news, and BBC news, and for that matter, all the news media have written of the horrors of war most interestingly and intensely, whereas, the account of the evil men do outside of war, gets a day’s headlines, and then thrown to the wolves to eat and digest, and never to be seen again. Can we not hope to see the real, if not interesting facts about evil lurking out there in our backyards, down the street, wherever we walk nowadays, for more than a day? And punished accordingly?
When a young lad was taking a bus ride across Canada recently, an ordinary traveler for the most part, was at one period of his course sleeping and a man, surrounded by people, alone, pulled out a knife and cut his head off, considering this evil, it got one or two days in the paper at most, and over the internet, and on television. And thereafter, nothing appearing to remain in the news he existed, thus lie down and die, and make the most of it, the beauty of this evil did not catch the eye of the news broadcasters for very long.
I could not contemplate the evil this man did.
Shortly after this, in Argentina, without the blink of an eye, another human being, with admiration for evil to be done, did it, planted, and watered his plan, to perfection in the obscure part of the world; this evil was quickly hushed up, which appears to be because of tourism, and the evil done was a man in a jealous rage who killed his pry, and cut the victim up, put the person into a suitcase of all things, and the media and its world looked to more interesting things after the first day, with unconcern eyes for the Argentina evil, even the news media in Buenos Aires, where it took place… evidently, the situation and suffering of creatures formed after God’s own image, must somehow produce a more lasting despair to keep the publics interest.
There was a man in Austria, most recently, who had kept his daughter in his basement for twenty-years, having sexual intercourse with her, and producing a number of children by her. His wife and family living upstairs, and oblivious to all this; when he was found out, put into jail, and observed like a rat in a cage by the media, psychologists, and criminal officials, for two weeks, for some reason kept the attention of the media, he protested being called a beast, or alike, and folks looked at him and treated him as inhuman. This beats all of course, here is man who deserves to die, and can’t stand the shame of his own evil, and when looked upon for his evil, as a beast, wants his rights as a civil human being. That’s our society though.
It is a shame we need such misery to moll over, showing disregard, and hunger for disappointed evil, evil man wants to digest, and if it is not tasty enough, then it is not worthy the journey to the movies, or reading the second days issue on the subject. (Why then do I write suspense stories you may ask? To reminded people in the future, the past was black!)
In war the dead are dead and forgotten, like animals, we become a frequently overlooked species, but interest holds because war too often has a certain opportunity to observe, it is in the raw, it is ongoing like a movie, civil life is destroyed around the war, as recently in the war with Palestine, or Hamas, and Israel, it got headlines for 21-days, and even the United Nations cursed the Jews, for killing so many Palestinians, they even started to entertain thoughts, of what really is moral and not moral for the Jewish nation to do, to allow them to do to secure their people, on rare occasions they do that, yet for six months prior to this, the United Nations approved the ongoing rocketing that Hamas did on Israel, and to my understanding, Hamas at times shot 300-rockets a day into the land of Israel (perhaps 10,000-in that six month period), and during the war, it weaned down to 50 or 10 a day. It seemed to the world, and news media, and the UN, a fitting enough sight to watch from the accustomed distance they usually give to Israel, and looked less incongruous there than they would by stepping in and condemning Hamas.
Speaking literally, one can hardly say they really wanted to stop evil, per se, rather they wanted to stop Israel from acquiring a lasting peace, had they continued, they would have destroyed the enemy, as we normally do in a war; now, long dead is this peace that could have been.
Regarding another case, most recently, in a small village in Peru, a sister, took a hammer—over sexual jealousy, and pounded her over the head with it until she was dead. Again the news media, and the officials involved, accustomed to the sight of the dead, shocking as it was when it was, it was soon forgotten.
I remember, when I was fifteen years old, a boy of nineteen I hung round with, just started to hang around with, this person I quite thoroughly thought was of whole mind, killed his two nieces, one eighteen months old and one six years old, in a rampage, it was in the paper for one day. Perhaps the discussing occurrence did not agree with the reader’s reality of horror, it was a quality of unreality, yet fact. It had been so immediate and the event was perhaps unpleasant to write, that was back in 1961, nowadays, it would be in a different category, they would send an expert to obtain accuracy of the observation, to confine himself nearby to get unlimited access to the slayer, and then try to sell the greatest number of papers, withdraw from the project and go onto the next. They do this now so fast; it is bagged and completed before the dead are buried.
As time goes by, decade to decade for me, each day, the races of the world allows more evil to grow unabated, and the dead grow larger, I am waiting for the earth to burst open her guts and vomit out the stink. We’ll have to send them in balloons up to the moon soon, they are scattered about like dead maggots all over the place.

A Dark, Dim-lighted Corner (a short , true, story of how the old die)

A Dark, Dim-lighted Corner

It was evening and everyone on the upper three floors of the old folks farm (an old building structure that once was a large farmhouse, a barn somewhat attached to the back of it, on the four acres of land that surrounded the premises) were either receiving visitors, or being attended to by nurses, some of the male patients were down on the first floor, in the pool room, talking, playing pool, spitting in the spittoons, some sitting on the stairways to the second and third floors, selling their leather goods, Ariel Shapiro, a young lad of twelve, went down into the cellar, a dim electric light guided the way down the old wooden cracking noisy stairs. The old lady that in the far corner way in the back of the large cellar, was rocking in her rocking chair by the red hot furnace.
He didn’t remember why he went down those stairs that first time, several months ago, but he did, that is when he met her, and now he’d visit her every time he came to the farm, near North St. Paul, off White Bear Avenue, in Minnesota. It was fall, November of 1959, and it was cold, and Ariel could see the red hot furnace glow from the far-off distance.
You could hear the wheels of the cars racing down White Bear Avenue from deep in the cellar; the road was perhaps a hundred feet from the front of the Farm House. It was always busy near twilight.
Far-off in the corner of the cellar, was the old lady rocking in her chair, a fairly small, thin old woman, with tinted greyish hair, lively little eyes, a turned up nose, pale white skin, a glimmer to her, a serious look on her forehead, her voice not high or low, just the right tone, as if she was used to conversations; there she was rocking away, said,
“Is that you Ariel?”
“Yes ma’am…” he said.
“Then it is best you get on over here and warm up by this old furnace its getting colder by the day, going to get colder come December’s, right around the corner!”

He stood against the wall now, the furnace to her other side,
“Sit down on the stood there, did I ever tell you about Ike and me?”
“Kind of,” the boy said.
The boy told himself: she’s talkative tonight, almost tipsy, been drinking that half-pint she keeps hidden behind the brick I bet, to the right side of her; he then noticed she had her pipe lit, barely lit, so the basement wouldn’t fill up with smoke, and she’d be found out, and the nurses would force her to return to her bedroom. She hated going to bed early.
She never seemed in despair, thought the boy, like so many of the old folks in the home, she was almost above that.
There they sat, like two old pals, in a book clamshell.
“Ike, oh I mean President Dwight D. Eisenhower, you know the president, I met him when he was just a general, the Commanding General of Europe, in WWII, I did a small interview, oh just a few answers and questions, I was a reporter back then, back in ’44.”
The boy knew she was not kidding, he had learned better, she didn’t fool a person to make herself look big, she had a picture of her and Harry S. Truman, together, it was in May, 1945, when they had met, and he had his arm around her, he had just become president of the United States a month before. She had told the boy, how he had created NATO, and used the first atomic bomb on Japan, and how people forgot who she was, but at one time she was somebody, a known reporter, and a female reporter at that.
The boy looked about the place, her corner, it was dusty, and it seemed to settle all around her,
“This place is so dusty,” yelled the boy, knowing she was half-deaf, “I could come on in, say Saturday, and wipe this corner down for you?”
“Oh no, no, leave it as it is, it’s fine. I’m not afraid of the bugs, spiders, and dust; I’m too old to be afraid of anything. This year (1959) I’ll be 69-years old.” She commented.
The boy admitted to himself, it was quiet, and tranquil, peaceful, and as he was pondering these thoughts, she said in kind of a slur of words, “I’d commit suicide if I could find an easy way to do it,” and smiled, not looking at the boy right away, then from the side of her right eye, she caught a glimpse of him, then added, “but I’m never quite up to it.”
The boy did not respond to that, wasn’t sure how to, and had he, what would he have said anyhow, he just looked blank, and listened. Then he stood up, started to walk towards the stairs, some fifty-feet away, he turned to see her, and saw her shadow bobbing back and forth as she rocked in her rocker, saw her reflection as she rocked side to side of the furnace, a glimpse each time she got to each side of the old furnace.

(She was once a young girl reporter, met many important people of her day, it was hard for her to lay down and die, hard for her, that to have anyone remembered her, that if she had living family folks, they never came to visit her, the boy never asked many questions into her personal life, did more listening, and therefore never knew.)

He heard the old lady’s rapping of her pipe on the furnace; he stopped to see if she wanted something, he knew sometimes she just wanted to be alone, especially when she started reflecting on her younger years. She meant no disrespect for the boy, by not talking to him, she just zoned off, and so he simply got out of her way. He looked back, he was almost about to walk up the stairs, and he heard her say,
“Come on back here if you got a minute!”
Then Ariel turned about and walked back to her, said, “What is it?”
“Get me my half-pint of whiskey out from behind the brick if you will, I’m very tired and weak, can you?”
“Of course,” said the boy, and quickly removed the brick. She had a glass hidden in her dress pocket, and pulled it out, wiped it with the cuff of her blouse, then gave Ariel a big smile, “Pour,” she commanded, adding, “it helps me sleep, it’s really just medicine, they often used it in the old days, the bible reads, for sleeping.”
The boy just smiled back, there was perhaps some half-truth in what she said, he figured, and he wasn’t going to argue with her, she was too ahead of him, and she most likely knew it.
Several minutes passed, as she rocked back and forth, drank the double shot down. She stopped rocking, put the glass back into her pocket, and had to boy return the half empty pint back to its abode.

It was now 9:00 p.m., and visiting time was over at 9:30 p.m., and bed check for the old folks was at 10:00 p.m., if not in bed, the nurses went on a hunt for them.
“I should have killed myself last week,” the old lady said, opening up her eyes wider than normal, she had shut them for a few minutes, adding, “this is no way to live.”
The boy sat back down, “Thank you,” said the old lady to the boy.
“I have a few shots of whisky every night, almost every night,” she said, in an explanatory tone.
“Why do you want to kill yourself?” asked the boy.
“I suppose, I did all I’m really going to do, worth doing, I have no one really, life is boring, I get sad, and if it wasn’t for my little corner here, I perhaps would have did it long ago. But here I can think.”
“How would you do it?” asked the boy:
“I guess by a rope, tie it around one of those big beams, stand on the stool your sitting on there, and that would be that.”
“You should go now, not listen to such talk of an old lady, and I wish you’d just go.”
“You should get back to your bed before they come looking for you,” said the boy.
“Oh, I never leave before midnight, I told them I’d kill myself unless they’d allow me this little gift; sometimes they find me sleeping and leave me sleep, wake me up for breakfast.”

“How is it,” asked the boy, “to be old?”
“I’m not lonely, if that is what you mean. I have memories, but my dear boy it is nasty.”
“Why is that?” asked the boy.
“You ask so many questions, and you’re so very young. You see, you drop things, and people look at you, and you drop them again. You pay your bills on time, and people take advantage of you, tell you this and that, and build your hopes up, and rob you when they can, because they can. They threaten you if you don’t do what they say. You forget this and that, only remember things when you were young. You know if you don’t give your things away, they’ll take them before you die by force, have you sign this and that, or not feed you.”
The old woman stood up, pulled out an old quarter from her pocket purse, said, “This is the date I was born,” she gave it to the boy, he looked, it read, ‘1891’ it was the same year his grandfather was born, he then gave it back to her, as she sat back down in her rocker.
It was now half-past nine, “Your friends must be waiting for you, you should go home and go to bed.” said the old woman.
“How about you,” said the boy?
“It’s not the same,” she commented.
“What do you mean,” asked the boy.
She didn’t want to be impolite, she was simply in a hurry to get the boy out before someone came looking for him, and discovered her hideaway, other than her personal nurse.
“Youth needs its sleep,” she said pleasantly, “in time you will have everything I had, and more. I want to rest now, so go!
The boy seemed a little reluctant, but he did stand back up and leave,
“Good night,” he told her as he walked away.
“Good night,” she commented back, then she turned off her radio, pulled the string attached to the light bulb, turned it off, and it was dark, real dark, except for the light that shinned down the steps.
The boy looked back, he couldn’t see her, but he heard the rocking chair go back and forth, and he knew she was alright, and somehow he knew he’d not see her again, a sense, intuition, premonition.
The boy smiled climbing up the stairs, met his friend, Jerome, “What you doing down there?” he asked, “you know you can get in trouble.”
He never answered Jerome, they just whizzed off to Jerome’s mother’s car in the parking lot waiting for her to come down from the third floor, she was visiting someone up there, and all was forgotten, until the following week, when he went to see her again, and she wasn’t there: matter of fact, he went down to her corner, and the rocker was gone, the half pint of whisky, was empty but still behind the brick, and it was like, no one had ever been there.

2-12-2009 (Written while in my library in Lima, Peru, this evening)

Buying Days (A short story on prolonging your life)

Buying Days
(A short story on prolonging your life)

Alabaster Rightfield was getting old, he was 61-years old, in 1940 that was next to old age, perhaps he had a few more years, but not many to live, and he was an advocate, and something of an activist on the concept of: live and let live, and don’t interfere with God’s plan. He was a journalist for a big newspaper in Minnesota, and he wrote a weekly column called “Be as it May!”
Eddie Kindstein, on the other hand, was well known and to some, a great scientist. He was known the world over in his fields of studies: of genetic reconstruction, cell-delay techniques, and the cascade effect for chromosomes, which prolonged age, and rebuilt weak of not broken chromosomes. All in all, he had several PhDs, one in zoology, anthropology, biology, psychology, gynecology, genetics, and was a doctor in medicine, and a few other things I can’t remember.
It all sounds so above the normal, and he was above the normal, so much so, they used his photograph on many of their products, his name likewise, but they hid him so no one could find him, or kidnap him. Oh he had his rights, but the world thought, as did his company, he also had his responsibilities, to them. He was a young man, of only 28-years old, next to middle age, but not quite there yet.
The company he worked for was called “Buying Days!”
They came out with a product in 1933, and the Company was selling days, like wildfire, and Alabaster Rightfield, was a strict advocate against this unethical product.

Narrator’s Interlude

Note: Before I can continue with the story, I must first explain the rudimentary of the product.
It was a chemical, very easy to use, in pill form, no bigger than an aspirin. It didn’t have magical powers or anything like that, but it was assured to its customers, it would allow them to buy more days to their life, providing they purchased the item before any kind of illness occurred.
Let me stretch this out a little further. It didn’t stop the illness; it only prolonged it, giving you more days to life. An example would be, Mr. William Filmier, purchased six pills of Dr. Eddie Kindstein’s product, on October 1, 1939, and he became ill with cancer on December 20th of that year. The pills cost $100-dollars per pill. The doctor gave him twenty-days to live; he died exactly, 26-days later.
If this is not convincing enough to the reader, his wife who pestered him to buy the six pills, bought for herself, five-hundred pills to take, and took them (yes indeed they had a few bucks to spend, isn’t that always the case, the rich get over like fat cats, and us poor folk, go along for the joy ride and observe how they do it). In any case, after her husband died, she got ill over the whole thing, and was diagnosed with pneumonia and would die within a few days, well, she didn’t, matter of fact, rather, she up and died, five-hundred and 7-days later.
Well, I could go on and on with testimony after testimony, but the fact is, no company makes $300-billion dollars in ten-years, from a company that prior to Kindstein coming into the group, was only making $300,000-dollars with pharmaceuticals, unless they got a good product, or a good scheme convincing the public their product is good. The only other one I know that has fooled the public for a generation or two, and made billions in the process, is the cigarette manufactures. So this was the real deal.
So now back to the story.

•

Alabaster Rightfield was a rich man, not filthy rich, but well off. And he had a lovely young wife, and he had five children, and he was kind to them, and all that kind of good stuff, almost a perfect husband and father, and known as a moralist thinker of his time. And on July 15, 1940, he went to the doctor, and the doctor said he had a tumor, a brain tumor, that they were not sure if it was fixable or not, it would have to be extracted, or somehow reduced in size to a residue form and then extracted or perhaps left in a state of inactivity. Well, Mrs. Rightfield went to see the CEO, Mr. Greedland, of “Buying Days” and asked him for pills…to either reduce the tumor in size, or to buy more days.
Mr. Greedland, was sympathetic, and said,
“It would be a shame for your husband to part this world, when he could live other ten-years. You could buy the days for him if you want to,” and he went on to say in essence: that he’d actually give the pills to her free, should he decide to shut his mouth a little on his so called moral and righteous grounds. This being for the most part, an attitude adjustment on his part; thus, he’d give her 3500-bills, free of charge.
On the other hand, Mr. Greedland said, we could do an operation, the good doctor, Kindstein, would even perform it, and it would be an almost guarantee, that he would survive the operation, but for him to take the pills incase something went wrong, it was all going to be free of charge.

Fine, thought Mrs. Rightfield, and she went home to beg her husband to do the deal. But he told her this,
“How can I, after preaching against such devises to keep one alive beyond God’s chosen date, I would be among the class of: hypocrites. I could only do such a thing if I could bring down the company, and force them to walk the straight line, to help people for the sake of health reasons”
“But a live hypocrite,” she murmured with tears running down those white soft cheeks of hers.
So by and by, Mr. Rightfield insisted he could not. And he got ill, very ill, and he was hospitalized, and up to the last minute, his wife begged him, even Mr. Greedland, agreed to do the operation free, and give him the pills free, without any promises to be forthcoming.
Then came a secret from the mouth of Mr. Greedland to Mr. Rightfield—told behind closed doors—of course, he whispered to Alabaster: “My pills work in either case, meaning, if the person was sick the day he bought the pills, or anytime, it doesn’t matter, it was just a gimmick to get the public to deliver the money early on, although the product is as good as gold. The reason we lied to the public was for our company stockholders, and so other pharmaceutical companies would not go out of business. I repeat Alabaster, it was all for an immediate effect: money, money, and more money.”
When Mr. Rightfield heard this, he agreed to the operation and the pills, free of charge, and no promises, and knowing his reputation was as good as their pills, he devised his plan.
Therefore, and thereafter, he was cured, and subsequently in a few months was back on his weekly column, he spread the news, the pills were good even after you got sick; and thus, something strange happened, several worldwide pharmaceutical companies got together and bought the company out, and lost the recipe to the product “Buying Days,” lest they go out of business, and the company soon after that, closed its doors once and for all.


2-9-2009

The Morning Rain (a Mystery story in Villa Rica, Peru)

That Morning Rain
(The Mountain Girl from Villa Rica)



In the Valley of Villa Rica, there is a small Hamlet, a township of some 10,000-inhabitants, located in the Andes of Peru, the central region, on the edge of a Jungle. It is Coffee country, and there are a lot of plantations there. Mercedes, lives in the hill area, with her husband, Adelmo, they have a small adobe house, perhaps no more than three-hundred square feet. It rains there a lot, and the township is surrounded by mountains, and the mountains are green, full of foliage. The town has only one paved road, Main Street, all the rest are dirt roads, and Mercedes works for a plantation owner by the name of Herbert Sandoval, in the outer part of town by a stream, he lives with his wife Sara: the town’s priest is Father Sarmiento. Mercedes works in the household of Herbert, and sometimes accompanies him to the hillsides where his plantation is. There they also have a cottage for the caretaker.
Herbert, has three children, the oldest is twelve, Enrique, whom often seems to put self-interest before, compassion. The girl, Claudia, she is ten-years old, thinking and acting as if she’s going on fifteen; she is a tomboy, spoiled, and a little reckless. The younger child, is Daniel, a typical young squirt, always wanting his way, but perhaps the more tranquil of the three, the one who listens the most, and blackmails the other two older siblings, by threatening to tell their parents, this or that, if indeed he does not get his way, he gathers all the typical gossip kids like, and don’t know what to do with, because it is normally misunderstood.


(August, 2008) Mercedes, she is working in the yard, at the plantation’s cottage, Daniel is there, she’s watching him, babysitting in a way, for Sara; Mercedes husband is in Huancayo, and if she could have her way, that is where he’d have him stay—Oh, she loves him beyond reproach, beyond good senses, and he is abusive to her, perhaps because she drinks a lot, as he does, and when they are together, it is like two fires blowing in the wind, at each other.

She was just released from jail, for disorderly conduct, and was seen hanging around with the only black man in town, Patrick Lopez, a mixture of black, Mexican, and Peruvian blood.
They had painted the town red—as the old expression goes, and after her yelling and laughing and making all kinds of noise, Herbert Sandoval, came to her rescue, and bailed her out of jail, as he often has, matter-of-fact, Herbert’s wife, Sara, is a little upset because he seems to give her more consideration than her, and for a thirty-year old drunk, shapely and vicious, it is not appealing to her.
But as I was saying, Mercedes is at the cottage, with Daniel, she is a little tipsy, at the moment, had a bottle of whisky hidden in her underclothes, and every so often has went behind the cottage to have a snort.
“Mercedes,” calls Daniel, “a car is coming up the road, it looks like Father Sarmiento, and he’s with that poet and journalist, Apolinario,” but she simply continues drinking as if she didn’t hear but of course she did, Daniel is but a few feet away from here, Daniel adds, “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Of course I heard you,” says Mercedes, “can’t you see I’m busy?” (she takes the bottle of whisky, and swallows a big swallow, then grabs Daniel by the hand) “Ok boy, let’s go see what they want!”
A red truck pulls up to the edge of the road, the house is about three hundred feet from the dirt road, and Father Sarmiento can see Mercedes swaying in the morning wind, he knows she’s drunk, and he sees Daniel.
“You just never learn, do you Mercedes,” says the priest, then pushes her away from Daniel, as if to protect him from her drunken behavior, and she pushes him back, and he kicks her, and she falls down, and he kicks her in the face, and three teeth are broken, “I don’t know if it’s drugs or alcohol, or both, but you are a vegetable in the making, and you shouldn’t be in care of that young boy in your condition.” (He goes to kick her again, but Apolinario grabs the angry priest, says, “I think she got the message Father!”)
Life has not been fair with her, and she has up to now, tried three suicide attempts: once she tried to drawn herself in a lake, but it wasn’t deep enough, Wetland Lake, it was almost all dried up. The second attempt, she tried to hang herself on a banner tree, up in Herbert’s coffee plantation, on the upper plateau area, the branch was too weak to hold her, it broke, only to break the branch, and come tumbling back down, she did although have a headache for a spell. The third attempt, she ran in front of a car, it stopped in time, to be quite honest, not many folks have cars in Villa Rica, and most all streets are gravel roads, as I mentioned before, and to get the car over twenty-five miles an hour on any given street, is a task in itself.

♦

It is now September, 2008, and it is raining cats and dogs, and Mercedes’ belly is getting larger, everyone thinks it’s the black man, who got her pregnant, or at least that is the gossip in Villa Rica. She is at the household of her employer at this very moment, helping Sara with the dishes.
“Mrs. Sara,” says Mercedes, “have you heard anything about Adelmo being back in town, I heard he was this morning when I was cleaning up the backyard, your neighbor said he saw him at the bar last night?”
“I don’t drink, Mercedes, so I wouldn’t know.”
“But if he is, and me having this belly he’ll cut my throat!”
“Well,” said Sara, looking at her boy Daniel “we couldn’t have that, can we!” (Giving her a smirk.)
“Yaw mama, who’ll do all the work then, I hope not me!” says Daniel and runs out into the backroom.


(Evening) “I’ll take Mercedes home, Sara,” said Herbert.
“I suppose it’s because Adelmo might be in town?” replied Sara.
“Yes, that’s it in a nutshell, and he is in town, I saw him myself today walking aimlessly, half drunk down the sidewalks of town,” answered Herbert (Mercedes now trembling, thinking he’ll be lurking someplace around the house, come 3:00 a.m., with a butcher’ knife.
Now Sara had finished her dishes, and Herbert, left with Mercedes, taking her home. The rain was coming down lightly now, fog dropping in the township, and covering the nearby hills. It cooled the hot day making the evening comfortable for sleeping.

The Children want to go with their father, and so they at the last minute jump in the back of his truck, and now Mercedes and Herbert are in the front seat, says Mercedes to Herbert, “You best just drop me off, and get out of sight, I’m afraid once he sees my belly, and I suppose, gossip has told him it was Patrick Lopez, he’ll be coming to cut my throat for sure.
Herbert couldn’t control his tongue, his curiosity, said with a hoarse throat, “Is he the father?”
“I wish he was,” she said then looked out the window, “I suppose it’ll rain all night, and in the morning again, your coffee plants are getting it’s full of rainwater.” She commented.

“I don’t think Adelmo ever cheated on you, did he?” asked Herbert.
“No, and if he did I’d cut his throat, so I can’t blame him any, can I?” replied Mercedes.
Herbert didn’t know what to say, matter-of-fact, he wished he had never said what he did say, he never expected such an answer, then said; I mean, she was near, if not almost ready for him to do her in.
By the time they got to Mercedes’ shack, it was dark, and she quickly went into the hut, lit a kerosene lamp, started to cook hot water for coffee, she knew Herbert like coffee hot, black and with lots of sugar, especially his coffee beans from his coffee plants, and she had some.


“I hope Adelmo don’t kill her,” said Daniel to his brother and sister, I mean, I like her, and whose going to watch me when…” before he could finish his statement, Claudia spoke, “Who wants to raise a black child anyway?”
Said Enrique, indifferent, “Does it really matter, I mean, we all just goin’ to do what we normally do with or without her.”
There wasn’t an ounce of anxiety, in the children, perhaps some ignorance, in what was happening, taking place.
“It’s kind of dark here Enrique, isn’t it,” says Claudia, a tinge scared, a foggy gibbous moon overhead, as she walked by the side of the shanty, and Enrique and Daniel behind her.

Mercedes has left the door open, and Claudia can hear her talking to her father, she’s drinking down shot after shot of whisky, as Herbert listens to her yell about how she’d kill the child of any woman whoever would dare to give birth to a child of her husband’s, and kill him likewise, because he got her pregnant in the first place. Perhaps justifying what she was feeling would happen to her once Herbert left and Adelmo come to the house. At this point, Herbert is unsure of what to do or say, it is out of his hands he feels, as she feels also.
Herbert and the children leave, and in the morning rain, Mercedes walks to work, and as time goes by, several days, Herbert drives her home each night, and Sara is forming some hidden anger on this matter.

On and about the tenth day, that Adelmo has been in town, Mercedes at about 3: 00 a.m., hears sounds outside her hut, and she goes to investigate, she is never seen of again, thereafter. Three days passes and Adelmo is spotted walking the streets of Villa Rica, and is picked up for questioning on the disappearance of his wife.
The following morning, during a light rain—the forth day—Adelmo is picked up for the second time, now for suspicion of murder, Herbert assuming it was a dirty deed, evil he did, and thus called the police and was jailed.
Adelmo agrees he has been out to the hut each night, ready to kill her but he didn’t and although he might have, she wasn’t there the evening before, for him to kill her anyhow. But no one believes him, until his lawyer, Joseph Dudley, an American-Peruvian living in Villa Rica, brings up the question, “Where is Father Sarmiento?” indicating he and Mercedes must have ran off, that she was his mistress. True or not he found the needle in the haystack that cleared Adelmo’s name.


Several months later, Father Sarmiento, was found dead, and buried in a small town called Huacrapuquio, buried in a shallow grave, alongside a new street the townsfolk’s were excavating, Adelmo’s hometown matter-of-fact, of 3600-inhabitants, a township where at one time, it was a terrorist haven, but Adelmo was no where to be found to answer the police inquire into this mysterious investigation. Incidentally, they never found Mercedes, but they found her shoe, it was alongside Sarmiento, in his gravesite.

Written 12-28-2008 (Written in Lima, Peru)