Lost Here and Beyond

Soggy Bottoms

2012-01-26T16:28:00.003-05:00

Wow , that was a long pee.
I hope you feel better?
At any rate I’m glad to see you back.
I would have been back sooner and I had a hell of a post more than half finished but the computer’s being the cocksucker they can be and decided to have four of my posts swallowed up and who the hell knows where it crapped them out.
I searched and just can’t find them so now I am sitting here all pissed off and can’t find the same zone I was in to write a batch of new ones for my blogs.

It’s been the whole story with everything I have been doing lately.
I start off this way and somehow meander my way back to the freakin beginning again.
“Hello, am I chasing my tail”?

Like that damn fan.
The guy selling it says he lives in a new development twenty miles out of town on a street named Miller’s Crossing .
Miller’s Crossing?
Wasn’t that the name of some movie about the Irish mob where they took people out in the woods to shoot them in the head?

So I go next door to tell my parents I am off and what general direction.
My mother, always the cautious one says, “You always go off to meet strange people you don’t know and one day someone ‘s going to shoot you”.
“Where are you going anyway”?
“A place called Miller’s Crossing”.

My brother who was there looked over and said “Didn’t they make a movie with that name”?
“Um, no”.
“Yes they did, Irish mafia movie where they took people out in the woods to shoot them in the head”.

“What”?!
“See what I told you, you are not going to go get shot in the head for a fan”.

The instructions said to drive down River road for about twenty miles then turn right on Riverdale avenue.
From there take the first right on Riverview and the next left onto Rivermount.
Go for about three blokes and turn right on River’s Edge drive and the next left will be Riverside which turns into Miller’s Crossing at the end.

Half way there I am thinking I’m going down the river without a paddle and when River road ended at the 401 heading to Toronto I pretty much knew I was actually up a shit creek without a paddle.
Where the fuck was Riverdale?
I looked at every damn sign on the way up.
I turn the car around and head back in the direction I came from and other than farm land and forest there was nothing from the 401 to civilization.
I blew about an hour before I pulled out my cellphone and called this guy and he tells me it’s a new development.
Yeah yeah I got that the first call.
He tells me there is no sign just a stick with a numbered tag on it because the city hasn’t gotten around to putting up street names yet.

Great I thought, now I have to go out there an look for a fucken stick in the mud to find this place.
I turn around and once again I head off into cow country.
I am driving slow so as not to miss the stick and the people behind me, well they were not that happy but I realty didn’t give a shit to be honest with you.
At that point I would have been happy to pull over and beat the crap out of all of them.

About fifteen minutes later I see this four foot post with a numbered tag om the top so I pull over.
It was infront of this dirt road that lead up about four hundred yards before it disappeared into the woods.
What the fuck did I get myself into this time I am thinking.
AS I put the car in drive my cellphone went off so I put it back in park to answer the phonew.

“Hello”?
“You went there didn’t you”?
“What the hell do you want”?
“I told you not to go but you still went”.
“Jesus fucken h christ”.
“Don’t you swear at me you little bastard”.
“What the hell you talking about you just swore at yourself”.
“Come home now”.
“Yeah yeah” fucken parents.

I put the car in drive and take off down the road.
If she is right, a bullet in the head might be better than going home to listen to my mother.
It was a short drive through the woods when a whole new world opened up infront of me.
I felt like Alice falling through a hole and coming out to something totally different.
There had to be thousands of houses out here being built and just as many that were already occupied.

I read the instructions and go off to find not a street name but another stick in the mud with yet another number.
So all I could do is the ‘rights’ and ‘lefts’ without the names for a reference. What could go wrong….

Well, at least I found out one thing.
There is an actual river around here…..

Have a nice day

Walker

2012: Almost Like The Movie

2012-01-09T12:03:00.004-05:00

I’m tired.
Really fucken tired.
Happy New Year.
New my ass, looks like the old one if you ask me.
The last one ended with a bittersweet feel too it.
For instance, on Christmas Eve I said goodbye to Inia and the boys because I had to go back home.
Yes I picked up D1 along the way and I always love seeing my girls but Christmas fucken eve is when I want to be all together but circumstances this year screwed up all our holidays.
Yeah, yeah you still got to spend time together
Yeah I know that and yes yes yes there are people in the world who can’t see their loved ones because they are someplace else doing important work.

Inia’s youngest had a plan.
Cute little fucker. who will one day defeat James Bond 007, probably with a quantum nerf cannon which he will most likely build with a gazillion legos and become the Mighty Zombie Slayer.
Oh come on, James Bond’s a freakin zombie or a fucken time lord like Dr Who.
He never dies.
Gets all the women and every couple of years changes his body and face into someone else.
The only time my face changes is when I shave and it’s still scary.
One likes it shaken in a tall glass and the other likes shaking it in a police booth.

Any way he came up to me one night while we were alone in the TV room.
“I can fit in your container over there you know”.
“All you have to do is make some holes so I could breath”.
“I will need some juice boxes and chips because I would get hungry”.
“OH YEAH, apples to”.
“ Maybe a pull-up, better make it two it might get bumpy”.
He’s six.

I was there for ten days so I shouldn’t complain but it doesn’t feel right.
Christmas doesn’t feel like it’s complete yet.
Yes I know the original Christmas, according to the Orthodox Christians is January 7th but I’m not seeing them then either.
I can’t take the tree down with presents still under it now can I.
OK the eggnog I drank but I was afraid it would go bad.
It is after all the 5th and I made it on the 15th.

I arrived home on the midnight bus loaded down with 120 pounds of things I picked up.
No, I left the kid but the offer was tempting.
D1 had her own load to haul, not as far as I had come but she went to the bus station right after doing a shift at work and she was tired as we both stood there at the bus station me after ten hours on the road.
I hate fucken buses.
It was midnight on the button
Christmas day
.
We grabbed a cab home and came home to 11 happy critters and D2, so that’s actually 12 happy critters.

Oh and the stove hood fan that broke.
Actually that’s what this post is all about.
The other stuff was eggnog flashbacks.

My hood fan broke and I needed to get a new one.
Coincidentally a week before I took my father to buy one and it cost $400.
There was no way in hell I was forking that out after the money I spent on the holidays on my trip and the 50 inch TV Santa forgot to bring me.
$400 for a fan and it doesn’t come with a remote or build in blue ray player?

I decided I would pick one up online and I did.
Today I called someone who had a brand new fan for $60 and it was like my father’s but black, a different model and made by a different manufacturer but it was new.
It just didn’t come in a box and later I found that it was missing a major part.
But it was new.
Had a littler, lot of dust on it.
It was kind of huge too.
About the size of a B52 bomber wing.
But it was new.

Did I tell you where I had to go for the fan.
No?
Oh let me tell you.
Go for a pee, it might take a while.

Have a nice ~~pee~~ day

Walker

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T12:54:00.006-05:00

Well, it looks like another year has poured away into the annals of time.
Was it a special year?
Not particularly.
They are all starting to look the same one after other.
There is always war.
Always money problems.
Prices go up as does the cost of government.
We are still blamers instead of solvers in fact even more so now.

Of course the Americans are to blame for everything still and terrorists are the voice of Muslims just as Oral Roberts spoke to god and had his credit extended.
NUTS

Bin Laden finally got laid by an American and the Teflon dictator Gaddafi has finally shut the fuck, up.

North Korea lost their “Dear Leader” .
We saw the throngs of people lining the street waling when they heard their yearly income of $4.99 was being cut in half for the next fifty years to pay for the “Dear Leader's” funeral.

Steve Jobs passed away this year.
Brilliant man.
Real cock sucker I hear.

There was a nuclear meltdown in Japan causing sushi prices to soar higher than the big mac.
Coke offered to replace all the heavy water with Sprite.

The Middle East found freedom through revolution and Egypt found a pyramid of shit when the smoke cleared.

We hit 7 billion people none of which I can get blamed for.

Elizabeth Taylor left us as elegantly as she lived

Floods, famine and Charlie Sheen ravaged the world just as the survivors of disaster gave us hope.

The last shuttle took off
Did it come back?

The war in Iraq is over.
For now

The war in Afghanistan, well, it’s not really a war.
More like a pain in the ass.
That’s still going on
For now

Greece is still begging for free money
Spain has finally gone to the bulls or are they just full of bull?

Jesus, Allah, Buddha and God were playing 5 card stud.
Jesus looked at his hand and went all in.
Allah scratched his head for a bit then shoved his stack of chips into the fray.
Buddha picked little grains of rice out of his bowl shuttling each one to his mouth as he pondered the possibilities before he to called himself in.

God without any thought opened up his cards showing a pair of deuces then reached over and pulled all the chips to his side of the table.
The three wise men rose in protest.
Jesus showed a straight beating God’s deuces.
Allah laughed at both of them as he exposed a full house.
All Buddha had was two pair.
Tens, and tens but he was sure he beat someone.

God just looked at them and said, ”How many times have I told you, God helps those who helps themselves, so piss off, I’m God”.
You get to keep what you give yourself out of life.

And finally, Andy Rooney had his last say this year.
I will miss his commentaries as he spoke with a voice we understood

Tonight I won’t be where I want to be this New Years Eve but I will have a couple of friends here helping me kill a bottle of expensive scotch.
I hope 2011 was kind to all of you out there and that 2012 brings your dreams and wishes to life.

Happy New Year

CHEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Walker

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T00:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Chrismas to all of my blog friends throughtout the universe

Walker

Walker's Home Shopping Channel

2011-12-17T12:18:00.002-05:00

Ti’s the season to be jolly fa la la la laaaaaaaaa la la laaa laaa “choke” “cough couch cough”
I really got to find a way to quit smoking.

Sooooo I am down in the frozen American tundra, New York and I am sitting here doing my thing at Inia’s place when the phone rings.
Everyone is out doing things and I am home along with the critters and the TV to keep me company until everyone gets back home

I answer the phone and it’s some dickhead selling cruises.
What the fuck, I am thinking these bastards must have a gps tracking device somewhere on me to be able to find me even when I am in another country.

“Good day sir, I have an offer today you can’t refuse”
“Wanna bet”.
“We have discounts on cruises to Caribbean for you and your family”
“It’s ok man I don’t live here”.
“Ah, well can I speak to someone ho lives there”.
“No one is here at the moment”?
“I see, well can you tell them I will call back later”?
“I don’t think I can, I’m only here doing some last minute Christmas shopping and got do get out before they get back home but I can leave a note on the T.V………. hmmm that’s a nice LED television, I’ll leave it on the fridge”.
“Merry Christmas, bye”.

4 hours later

“Ah Inia, if the police show up ummm I am not here”.

Have a nice day

Peter

Friggin Fridge

2011-12-09T21:58:00.003-05:00

“Sigh”
Why does everything happen when the last thing you want is more fucken bullshit smacking you in the face?
I mean pull out a set of 44 DDs and whip my face black and blue but don’t kill my fridge just before Christmas.

Ghah

But wait

What’s that?

The sister in law has a relatively new side-by-side fridge with an ice and water dispenser she bought two years ago that doesn’t fit in her house with its custom kitchen.
How much?
$300 ……….SOLD!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok loosing 300 this time of year isn’t good but the fridge is a good deal and I do need one now.
So I run down and measure the fridge to see iof it will fit in my kitchen and as luck would have it no, it didn’t.
Half an inch to tall but that was ok; I was going to tear down the cupboards.
All I needed to do is make them an inch higher for the fridge to slide under.
SOLD, mine.

Hmmmm, this is weird.

“HEY”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“How the fuck did you get the fridge into the basement”?
“Really, through that door over there”?
“I see……….what the hell have you been feeding the fridge because its bigger than the hallway and the door now”?

“Listen, I measured the fucken thing three times and with the damn doors off to and it’s still to wide for the hallway”?
“Listen SIL, I believe you that they brought it through there”.
“What I am saying is that it fucken grew in the last six months because its to big to go down that hallway now”.
“How the hell do I know how that is possible”.
“It either fucken grew or the house is shrinking around it because it’s not going down that hallway”.
“What do you mean my brother gutted the basement and rebuild it”?

You know…………. FUCK!!!!!!!!
“Who the fuck build walls without fucken measuring and creating a plan?
Oh yeah, my brother.
“I wanted to make the garage bigger”?
“DUHHHHH do you think it was that size for a reason like maybe so that you can get shit in and out of the basement”?
Guess what, that fridge just became pat of he house.

Oh well, I guess Santa will just have to stuff a new one down the chimney.
Hmmm, I better hurry and build a chimney before Christmas.

Have a nice weekend

Peter

Bo Bo Boo Boob

2011-11-27T10:57:00.005-05:00

“Walker I am telling you, women are sluts today”.
“Uh huh”.

Pulls up shirt to her chin.
“What do you think of the new bra the last guy I dumped bought me”.
“He paid fifty bucks for it”.

I never have to go to a strip club

“I see, literally, I see”.
“It’s a nice one for sure, does it have rebar built into it”?

The Ex stopped in to see D2 but didn’t know on Fridays D2 goes to work after school so she decided to visit me instead for three hours.
My Ex, for lack of a better word is a bit of an airhead.
Not stupid, just not to swift in the thinking department.
Her morals are dyslexic at the best of times, totally fucked most of the time.
.
D2 came running down the other day.
“OMG, mom dumped what’s his name and said she met this great guy who is dieing of colon cancer so if I want to see her she will be at this address...”.

“I was going on a date tonight but he called and said he had to put it off until tomorrow because something came up”.
“Is this the colon cancer guy”.
“No, I ended that yesterday”.
“Killed him already eh”?

“No, he lied to me”?
“Oh, big surprise, you meet these guys on dating sites, they are not all going to tell you the truth”.
“So what, he didn’t have colon cancer”?
“No, it wasn’t that, he still had a girlfriend”.
“Ah I see, but he is still dieing”?
“Oh yeah, he’s a goner”.

“You know, ummm , it’s not really any of my business but you complain about women being sluts and all but ummmm you have been with four different guys in the last, I don’t know, say about ten months”.
“Not that I see anything wrong with it but I am just pointing something out to you”.

“OH I don’t sleep with them”.
“ I see”.
“You just lay there naked and do nothing”?
“Yup, like the last guy”
“He worked in the fields all day and stunk”.
“I told him no sex unless he got clean”.
“So why didn’t he take a shower and fuck you”.
“He didn’t have one in the country”.
“I see, and how long were you up there with umm stinky before he got to a shower".
"3 months".
" I see".
"So I guess you dumped him as soon as he found a shower"
"Yup".
" I figured".

3 months in the heat of summer living in a trailer with no shower, stink is not the word.

“He was, nice to me, he bought me this nice bra”, then reached for her shirt again”.
“Yeah, yeah I saw it already, blue one, got it”.
“I love it”.
“In the summer on the farm I would ride the lawnmower with just my bra on and shorts”.
“No underwear, I shave my pussy now except for a little I leave on the top like a crown”.

I wanted to burst out laughing but then something popped into my head…….

“DON’T SHOW IT TO ME”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“It’s better than that afro I had between my legs”.
“You mean Michael Jackson’s head”.
“Yeah”.

Explains why I used to get a hardon every time I saw a Michael Jackson video.
He looked a lot like a pussy.

I looked at the clock on the wall and she had been there for three hours and decided she had to go and told her I had eight cakes to bake which was true.
I am making cherry bombs for Christmas but that’s another story.
She got up and asked me to tell D2 she was by and loved her as I closed the door behind her then went back to the couch where I had a nice laugh.
I asked myself why I went out with her but then again she isn’t the same person I knew from back them.

At around 8:30 pm D2 came home from work and I told her mother had been by.

“Yeah, she showed me her new bra”.
“Blue one”?
“Yup that’s the one”.
“OMG, Mom, D1 and I were at the mall and right there in the middle of a crowd she lifts up her shirt over her head to show us her new bra”.
“She wasn’t even embarrassed”.
“D1 and I took off in different directions”.
" I see, did she show you her crown".
"No, what's that"?
"I'll tell you about it later".

Yup, that’s my Ex.

Have I mentioned I don’t go out to avoid this kind of shit?
Yeah, how’s that working out for you Walker?

Have a nice day

Walker

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T13:10:00.001-05:00

I want to wish all my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving Day.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Buckle Up

2011-11-22T11:46:00.000-05:00

You know when you walk into a room and it goes silent they were either talking about you or your zipper is down and seeing as I was wearing joggies I don’t think it was my zipper.
In fact I know they were talking about me because I was listening to it before I walked into my parent’s kitchen through the back door.

My mother was reciting something that happened a month ago when we had gone grocery shopping together.
Something always happens when we go out together.
I don’t know what it is.
Maybe it always happens but I never notice it because I am going to fast and only see it when I slow down to shop with my mother.
I don’t know?
Maybe

My mother is standing in the middle of the kitchen, her 85 year old brother by the table and my father in his recliner and she is telling them the story.
“We were standing in line at the cashier, he shoved me ahead to be out of his way”
“He’s always shoving me aside”.
“So he’s standing in line behind this woman who just finished paying for her things when Walker takes something out of the shopping cart to put on the moving carpet”.
“As he put it down his belt buckle popped off of his fat belly and whacks the lady in front of him in the ass as she was bending over to pick up her bags”.

I can hear all three of them laughing a diaper full.

“NOOOOOO no that’s not all, his pants fell down and the lady who was standing behind him grabbed them and was holding them up from behind”.

I could hear my father choking on his dentures.

“Then the cashier looked at him and asked if he needed any bags, they were five cents each”.

I wish I were wearing my joggies that day.
Weirdest thing, the back of the buckle snapped and the heavy brass buckle flew off smacking the woman in front of me.
The only thing keeping them from completely falling to the floor was the lady behind me holding them up from the back and the cashier’s cleavage holding them up from the front.
I am going to need a new belt buckle before I go Christmas shopping.

Have a nice day

Walker

Knock Knock Knock, Anyone Home

2011-11-17T18:18:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while since I have posted anything.
I wonder if anyone still bothers to drop by?
Where have you been Walker?
Nowhere really, mostly locked up at home working on the house or laying on the couch battling the demons in my head.
The demons are manifestations of other people’s problems and mine jumbled up in a small salad bowl.
It’s so full that when you stab a something to tackle something use you are not ready to deal with falls off the other side of the bowl and over filling your plate.
And, I know it’s not only me, many of you have suddenly found yourselves going the doggie in shit you’re not used to dealing with.

The economy, money is the main culprit.
The people who have been controlling the purse strings, the same people who speculated in the future by racing ahead of the bottom line to be there first are the reason we are where we are.
I am not saying progress is bad but if we can’t afford it right now why should we get it?
Our economy is getting worse and it’s tricking all the way down to us, the ones who in the end suffer for it.

Somewhere somehow we have to find an equality for all our good.
Europe is sinking with the big fat Euro sagging with Greece and Italy sucking it dry.
We are here fighting bill collectors and banks while in countries like Greece, they don’t have income tax, property tax or a multitude of fees that we are extorted into paying or we loose these services and these people are complaining.
They get 1000 euro gift for Christmas.
What do we get?
I credit card bill or stale fruitcake from the person you gave it to last year.
They get another cash gift for Easter.
I’m lucky to have money left to buy a Cadbury egg after paying my property tax.

I walk through the malls searching for Christmas gifts and as I do I also check to see where the items are made.
Almost everything is made in China which is fine in our capitalistic society but I am curious to know if I went to China and walked through The gang Of Four shopping mall would I find rows upon rows of products, made in Canada?
If not, why not?

Unemployment is up, something has to happen.
If we are going to have trade with other countries then our exports and imports should be equal.
I mean, we will buy 40 billion dollars of good from China but they should at least buy 40 billion dollars worth of beaver tail from us.
That’s fair.
It keeps both of our economies churning along together but no, we instead allow Canadian companies do wither away against the tide from the East and fill the void by allowing more to come in than goes out.
All this has been doing is creating potholes in our economy and its reached the point where now we are falling in these holes and being buried way over our heads.

It’s frustrating to try and maneuver through life as everyone else tries to do the same thing.
I don’t blame the prices of the people selling the items I blame those who have allowed our economy to be invaded without a fight.
Remember free trade in North America?
Mexico United States and Canada against the world.
What idiot thought that up?
The second we all signed on the companies closed down their operations and went to make their shit in other countries with miniscule wage costs by using child labor.
How do we compete with that?
We can’t but we take in their products for our shelves.

For the last month I have been working on my and my mother’s kitchen cupboards.
I had someone give me a quote last year and the4y came back with $15,000 and that wasn’t a fancy kitchen.
$15,000?
That’s a lot of coin to me especially in this.
I know people have to make money to pay employees but that’s a lot of money for fake wood.
The granite top was nice and I wouldn’t have taken it but it was only 3000 so the fake wood was 12,000.

My father went to buy some recycled cabinets.
We are into green methods.
They wanted 1500 for the used ones and 1000 to install them and that’s without the countertop.
So we opted, did I say we, they opted to make me do all the work.
So off I went to home depot.
While I was there I walked around looking and listening to what others were buying and it was evident there were a lot of people like me out there doing the work on our own.
After a couple of hours I came back with 200 dollars in wood and other supplies.
I have a ton of tools so it was time to see how well I remembered using them.
After a week of sawing, sanding and nailing my mother’s cupboards were finished and the top section of mine were done.
All I built with wood, not melamine or what every they use today.
Not only are they nicer to look at but they are lighter.
200 bucks is what it all cost.
Not 15000 or 15000.

Could a carpenter done a better job?
Damn right he could have but I can’t afford one and there was no way I was going to get a mortgage to do it.
Should we pay a carpenter 75 an hour or a car mechanic, plumber or electrician for that matter?
I’d pay 30 but for 75 I will try and figure it out on my own and be happy with what I end up.

I don’t want someone services for free and they do deserve to get paid well but what is well and what is gouging?
Most of the people I know make between 14000 and 24000.
The economy is so lopsided its not going to get any better unless we find a balance.
The lack of work for these professionals makes them jack up their prices out of our range or work under the table robbing the government coffers of needed taxes.

What’s the cure for the economy?
I think it’s responsible government, something we all lack.
To many politicians have to many outside interests and fix things for themselves.
Why else would someone give up a five hundred thousand dollar a year job for a hundred thousand instead?

If the scales were balanced, the economy would be better.
People would have jobs and I would be here bitching about the new 6000 dollar furnace they just installed next door.
OK
There are some things even I wouldn’t try to install.

That’s one demon down I guess, now to go poke at that salad and see what falls out this time.
I hope all of you out there are doing well and still swimming above the waves.

Have a nice day

Walker

Ageless

2011-09-17T12:49:00.000-04:00

The other day I had to take my uncle to the doctors to get some blood work done.
He is in his mid eighties and doesn’t drive any more and with his kids working I was asked to take him down.
That and the regular lab they go to was being renovated and I was the only one in the family who knew where the next closest one was.

Since my aunt passed away my mother has him over almost every night and if he needs a chauffeur she doesn’t think twice in volunteering me.
Not that I mind but I would like to be asked once in a while.
In fact my mother loans me out to all her siblings and cousin.
“Oh don’t worry Walker won’t mind he can fix it for you for free”.

This is when you tell her you don’t have money for gas to drive twenty miles to change a light bulb.
That’s when she pulls out a ten from her purse and tells me I can pay her back when I get paid.
See how it is around here.
I am at the bottom of the pile.

That’s fine, I take my uncle to the lab and we find no less than sixty people ahead of us which meant it was going to be a LOOOOOOOONG morning.
There were so many people my uncle and I had to stand by the door.

An hour went by and it seemed like we weren’t getting any closer to our goal.
This is when an old man well into his nineties came around the corner after going for his blood test and as he got closer to the door my uncle reached out and opened it for him.
The old man stopped, looked at my uncle who is eighty-five himself and said, “Thank you sonny” then stepped out of the office.

I thought it was funny hearing the old man call my uncle sonny but I guess age wise, he was right.
That little episode made the rest of the wait move much faster.

Have a nice weekend

Walker

The End Of My Summer

2011-09-15T13:49:00.000-04:00

I’m going to bitch.
Summer was damn to short.
What I wanted to do I didn’t do because I was to busy trying to keep from melting away.
What the hell was that all about?
I am in the shower trying to cool down and my ass was still sweating.
I don’t have AC but I do have eleven fans going at the same time, which turns my house into a giant wind tunnel if I get a breeze coming through the front door.
Frick can usually be found surfing the upstairs hall carpet from the washroom to the master bedroom.

I was supposed to work on my kitchen but my mother insisted I do hers first and by the time I finished hers I had to deal with my annual BBQ which went off without a hitch….almost….well there was no blood spilled.
Everyone had a good time and there was way too much food and booze like usual.
Even with forty people in attendance I still had to send food back to the freezers because they were already overwhelmed with what was out there.

It wasn’t without drama or nostalgia.
This was the first BBQ since my aunt past away and the older generation sat around remembering her as did her kids.

The drama comes in the form of my ex partners and or lovers.
They all know I have an annual Bbq and try to get invited to it; some even crash the party.
I usually try and disguise the date or tell them it’s for family only but it doesn’t always work.
This year I had one ex move back to the country and another one moved in 2 blocks from my house with a friend of mine who was invited and guess who his guest was going to be?
Yeah, great.
The one who moved back to the country called me and said she knew I was having the bbq and might drop by to meet Inia.
Last time she met one of my partners she asked her if she could still fuck me on Wednesdays.
Then there is always the kid’s mother who pops in and acts surprised when she does.

I act cool but usually I am in a panic when these prospects pop up.
Inia on the other hand loves it especially teasing me about them still wanted to jump my bones and I keep telling her, naw they don’t but I know for a couple of cases she is probably right.
Not that it matters because in the end it my business to deal with these people.
Those who know me know that once I am with someone I am with someone.
Doesn’t mean I stop looking or if I can get someone to show me her tits I wouldn’t take a peek.
It means I still love candy I just don’t taste it unless it’s the candy I already have in the sack.

BUT

That’s how I think and I had to hear the “I told you so last night from Inia”.
Yeah, yeah like I hadn’t known.

I am making dinner at home for me a D2 when the phone rings and it’s the lady up the street calling to say that she is going to the corner store for smokes and would like to stop in.
So I tell her I am making dinner for me and the kid but she could stop in for a bit.
I hadn’t hung up the phone and the doorbell goes off.
It was her.
WTF, did she call from the porch?
I let her in and she sits on my couch while I head back to the kitchen to shut down dinner for a bit while I dealt with her.
She was pissed drunk.

She starts telling me how much she is in love with her boyfriend and how she misses him now that he is out of the country on contract.
Then out of the blue she jumps me.
I mean she did this ninja move that I didn’t even see coming and before I knew it she was an octopus and wrapped around me in the corner.
For about a second that is because she went flying back to the other end of the couch before she could say wee Willy Wonka’s weenie and told her she wasn’t be appropriate.

WTF happened to I love my boyfriend?
It’s like me saying here suck my cock while I tell you how much I love Inia.
I am not saying I am an angel because I am not.
I have screwed more than a dozen married women and I guarantee you I didn’t loose any sleep over it but I was single and how other people choose to live their life is their business.

She got all insulted about being rejected and stood up to leave then fell backwards on the couch again.
She looked at me and asked if I thought she was pretty.
What the hell does that have to do with it.
I have someone in my life and I don’t cheat.

She looked at me and asked if Bo Derek or any woman who was a 10 walked through the door and stripped down and said fuck me I wouldn’t.
I told her than if the 10 I was interested in did, I would but after 6 hours of driving she would probably strip down naked walk over to the couch and pass out.

Then she looked away and I heard her say it’s hard for a 55 year old to compete with a 40 year old.
Now that got me mad.
It’s not about age and at that moment she was talking like a 14 year old.
Before Inia I was seeing a 25 year old and before her someone in her 30s.
My first girlfriend was 28.
I was 13.
Age playing little part in love.

She turns to me and says, “I’m dieing”.
Huh?
She says she has a problem with her cervix.
So now we are going for the pity fuck?
Throwing yourself at me didn’t work so we go down another path?
Unfucken believable.

She says she loves her bf but tries to fuck me.
I am flattered, yes I am but life’s a bitch.
Five minutes later she got up to leave.
She walked out the door and fell face first in the street.
Great I though.
I locked up the house and walked her home.
The whole way there she was telling me how she hoped her boyfriend thought like I did and that Inia must be special.
Yes she is I told her.
Opened her front door and dropped her in, turned then left.
I heard the thump on the other side of the door as I walked down the steps.

Was it the booze?
Was she lonely and singing the blues?
Did she have an itch that needed scratching?
I don’t know, maybe a combination of all of them but what I do know is we all have to make choices not excuses and I choose to live as I do not look for an excuse to get Willy wet.
That’s why they invented the cold shower.

As you can see summer is over and everything is back to normal, OH and the kid’s mother did show up and yes she was surprised, again, but that’s another story from Walkerville.

Have a nice day

Walker.

What Happened To Summer?

2011-09-09T12:10:00.002-04:00

Not for much longer.

FUCK FUCK FUCK !!!!

Hope your summer was a good one.

Have a nice day

Walker

What Century Am I In?

2011-08-05T14:38:00.001-04:00

You know, life always has its surprises
At times I think I have seen it all then something blows me away and I wonder what’s next.
Over the years I have come across people in compromising positions, most of which didn’t surprised me but some stopped me dead in my tracks.

I have walked in on high ranking politicians doing their assistants, one on the carpeted floor and another has his bent over across his office desk.

I know a former nun who became a hooker and a hooker who became a nun.
Gives real meaning to the term “Holy Fuck”.
Two nuns who feel in love and left the convent at the age of 70 to get married.
What would they call a gay nun, “a Gnu” or a “Lesbinun”?

I have known cops who bought drugs to trade for sex.
There are more.
I traveled in circles that put me in the middle of a lot of this kind of crap.
So for the most part, thanks to my past, nothing really surprises me, much.
Much anymore but sometimes…..eeeyeahhhh, sometimes I get caught flat-footed for a split second but being a man of action and highly fond of his non existent butt that I want to keep safe, I tend to recover pretty fast.
Well fast enough to get the hell out of Dodge if I have too at the blink of an eye before a Buick runs over me.

Friday was a pretty hectic day what with my mother and D2 wanted to go shopping early in the morning the day before a long weekend and I have my own things going on.
I am one of those people who plans everything so that I can maximize my day for the usually twelve hour shopping spree I take at the end of each month.
Twelve hours of high speed shopping with an eighty some odd year old grandmother tit hooked to the handle bar of the shopping cart while surfing the aisles like a blind heroin addict while the semi adult peels off in the other direction battling her childish urges against her new found desire to eat healthier.

I just make sure my feet aren’t in the way and go around apologizing to all the people my mother runs over with the cart.
After four hours of this I get them home and prepare to take off to do my errands when I find an email from one of the people I had to see postponing our business for a few hours.
I hate when people change the schedule but shit does happen so I look at my afternoon and decide to move a couple of things up.
I had a stop not far from home so I called buddy up and said I would be there two hours sooner.

Well, he wasn’t happy to hear that.
Normally he would give me a headache so that things could be done faster but today he was finding every fucken excuse for me not to go there.
In fact he wanted to see me at 4pm.
That wasn’t possible because I had the other idiot to see that changed things all around causing all this shit.

I told him it wasn’t possible and that I was busy all the next day.
I told him I would get back to him and hung up.
Usually I have everything set up to go smoothly but that day everything seemed to be falling apart.

Stuck in limbo I decided to do some shopping close by to get that put of the way and after it was done it was only 2:30pm.
I still had an hour and a half to kill so I said fuck it and drove off to buddy’s without calling him.
If I called he would have only given me the run around anyway and what was that important that I couldn’t go by.

You know, you have walked through the fires of hell in life.
You take no shit from anyone, except maybe MOM.
Just go over there and take care of business then get the fuck to the next stop to you can get back home for dinner with D2.
Yup, I talked myself into it so off I went.

I should have called first.
Really, I should have.

Over the years I have walked in a room and surprised people and myself on occasion.
One day I walked into a room and found one of my business partners getting a blowjob from one of my aunts for a couple of lines of coke.
That was awkward.
It was my coke.

Another time I was so drunk I decided to sleep in the back seat of my car outside a friend’s place until I sobered up.
In the middle of the night was woken up by two large breasted black chicks making their way into buddy’s place.
Buddy was a biker and their club had this rule about not fucking colored chicks.
If you were caught it meant a sever beating before you were tossed from the club.

Still drunk I passed out again until morning when the same two chicks woke me up as they were leaving buddy’s place.
That’s when I spilled out of the car in front of him and the girls.
You should have seen his face..
Sheets can’t get that white.

He rudely shoved them down the street and said they stopped by a few minutes earlier to pick up some dope.
Yeah, a few minutes ago.
Me, I didn’t say shit, I never do.
It’s none of my business.
Personally it’s just all that, B.S.and the only way you get it off of you is not to stick your finger in it.
But sometime the finger has to stick out and push the buzzer.

“Hello”
“It’s Walker, let me in”.
“What, FUCK”?!!!!

BZZZZZZZZZZ

Hmm, he didn’t sound to excited.
I walk through the hallway and give the camera on the ceiling the finger as I know he is watching me through it.
Stepping into the elevator o head up to the eighth floor then halfway down the hallway to his apartment where I found the door slightly ajar.

Pushing the door open I step in and see buddy in the living room wearing a robe open wide and a pair of bikini briefs.
I take one step into the room and from my left come, “Hi Walker”.
I look over to the kitchen and I swear it was buddy in his open robe and bikini briefs but looking towards the living room I saw him sitting there in his chair but he was in the kitchen too.
My brain was quickly spinning and in no time determined that buddy was in the living room and there was another guy who looked like him wearing the exact same robe and underwear making eggs in the kitchen.
Yeah, I should have called first.

I didn’t want to know nothing, I mean nothing.
I have known this guy for a LONG time and it’s none of my business.
All I am going to saw is I wish I knew this last year so I could have talked him out of that vasectomy.
He wasn’t going to be knocking anyone up but the turd that comes between him and the pleasure he’s seeking at the end of his dick.

Great, one more thing to lock up in the vault, like there isn’t enough in there already.
Hmmm, times sure are changing.
Better watch my ass HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a nice weekend

Walker

Tripping Through Time

2011-06-17T22:19:00.001-04:00

Work, work, work, seems that’s what I’m always doing.
Mostly it’s cleaning the damn house.
When I am not cleaning I am updating or repairing the parts that are falling apart.

The main project for me this summer is the kitchen.
I had a couple of people give me some quotes and the average was about fifteen thousand.
That’s dollars.
Canadian dollars…….
No wonder people are loosing their homes with prices like that.
Well I for one am not paying that to renovate mine.
I figure most can be salvaged.
The countertop and whole base has to go.
New floor and cabinet doors should give the cabinets new life.
I figure if I did the work myself it will cost me a thousand and that’s with a granite countertop and back splash.

The plumber has already told me he will cost me 400 to run new lines and remove the lead and galvanized pipes between the walls.
Yes I live in an older house but it has good bones and I live in the heart of the city, within walking distance to anything I might need.

Every year when the snow melts I find out what I will be doing for the summer and fall as the white blanket recedes taking it of the house with it, it seems..
A lot of it is minor but this year I have to finish painting the balcony and porch we put in last fall
Sometime in the next couple of months I will be having an electrician in to replace the knob and tube wiring I currently have with new electrical which also mean this fall I will be painting the house, yet again.

I have to do all of this while still juggling life and living next door to my parents who seem to have one thing after another going wrong.
Like the other day, their stove died, specifically, the oven.
It just stopped working so whom are they going to call?
My brother who doesn’t answer his phone or the person who lives next door and if HE doesn’t pick up the phone they can use their key and come right upstairs to the bedroom to interrupt a well needed blowjob to get “their” problem dealt with.
My throbbing problem doesn’t matter as long as their world is kop acetic.
OK I was daydreaming while jerking off but it’s still the same, right?
But the “like father like son” crack from my mother was uncalled for.

So I go next door to see what’s wrong with the stove.
They were both sitting there, my mother one the small love seat and my father in his lazy boy.
They have turned the kitchen into a living room this way snakes aren’t to far to go for.

I look the stove over and the top elements all work fine as did everything else but the oven.
The oven is HUGE in my parent’s house.
It keeps my mother busy so that my father can take off to do his playing around in the garden but if she isn’t inside baking he has to stay there to or he will hear her wrath and let me tell you, a four foot four 82 year old Greek woman can wield some mean wrath when she wants too.

My father thinks it the oven elements but I doubted it because it would be highly unlikely that both would go at the same time.
I knew it had to be electrical like a transformer but he insisted so I took the stove apart and gave him one of the elements to have checked at the parts dealer while I sat there and with my meter looked for the problem.
By the time he came back with the news that the element was fine I had traced the problem to the transformer.
Simple fix.
Well it would be if they hadn’t attached the fucken thing to the module control of the stove.
Cocksuckers, they did that on purpose.
It’s a four dollar part that could have been put on its own somewhere on the back of the stove but by incorporating it into the module you now were forced to buy the whole freakin thing.
.
I pick up the phone and call the parts dealer and give him the part number and five minutes later comes on and says he can get the part but it will take a couple of days and $350.
WHAT?!!
I don’t fucken think so.

This stove was a pain in the ass from the day my parents bought it.
I told them that it wasn’t worth the $1700 they paid for it because it had a convection oven they NEVER used in the five years they had it
Five year old, that’s all it was and I had to fix it half a dozen times before the other days.
IO said don’t buy it but they listen to my brother who always tells them what to get and it always is shit.
He sold them a washer dryer once and they didn’t fit downstairs so he knocked down a wall and it still didn’t fit.
Then he phones me and says the old lady wants to see me and leaves.
I get there to find my parents house trashed and the washer dryer sitting in the hallway.
I have no idea why they listen to him.

I told my father we had to buy a new stove and if he ever wanted to see his garden again we would have to do it today.
That’s all it took and we were in the car on our way to buy a new stove.

Long story short, I got them a Frigidaire stove with a ceramic top and the elements in the oven are behind the bottom and top plates making it easy to clean.
My mother feel in love with it and it was sold before you can say beefsteak tomato.
Well and $800 of course but my mother will have her new stove on Friday, which by some coincidence is today.

Yes today at 8 am in the morning the delivered the stove to my parents place and by 8:01am my phone was ringing off the hook.
My parents needed to see m e right at that minute.
8 am, what the fuck, it couldn’t wait.

I get next door and my father was walking out to go to Canadian Tire to buy a plug for the stove.
I was to call an electrician to get it installed.
Huh, why I asked him?!
He said because the stove came without a stove.
I told him that was impossible and leaned over the back of the stove and could clearly see a plug.
I told him there was a plug there but he vehemently said there wasn’t
Grabbing him by the arm and forced him to look and as he did he saw the plug.

“It wasn’t there before, I swear it”.
My mother jumped in and said, ”It’s true I looked too”.
“Uh huh, maybe I should have gotten you an easy bake oven instead of a real one”.

Have a nice weekend

Walker

Yellow Light District

2011-05-31T12:46:00.003-04:00

“Hello”
“Yeah, that’s me”.
“Yeah…..really”?
“Yeah well he’s a lying little fucker and if I see him again I’m giving in a lucky slap hard enough to bounce his eyeballs off the wall across the room because he’s lucky he’s alive especially after he almost killed me and D2 and the others there”.

“Don’t fucken tell me what I can get charged for you dipstick”.
“ If you bothered to look up my name before you called you would know better than to say something stupid like that to me”.
“Besides I think he’s fucked as it is, what with him breaking all those laws and causing all that carnage”
“Yellow light my ass”.
“He’s lucky no one ended up dead”.

“So is that enough for your report”?
“Cool”.
“Don’t call back”.

Have a nice day

Walker

Culture Shock

2011-05-19T13:52:00.001-04:00

People never learn.
I mean they understand but they refuse to learn.
For instance they forget that the world is different depending on where you come from and think that what was is ok here is ok there and when they find out otherwise they freak out.
Usually when it’s to late and they are in jail and crying foul.
They didn’t know it was different here.
Well what can I say; ignorance of the law is not a defense unless you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger and plain fucken ignorant.

I guess he figured it was ok since his wife comes from a family whose men all fucked around.
Arnold, Arnold, fuck around not knock up.
Stupid……….what am I saying?
It’s Arnold.
He’s so stupid there are only two things he can be, a bad actor and a bad politician.

Everyone around the world quickly condemned his actions and rallied behind his wife including Martin Sheen who was heard telling her that she was a goddess and passed her his phone number but this post isn’t about Arnold.
This is about how we confuse our way of life with some of the places we visit or see on television.

I’ve done some traveling around the world and have learned that marijuana is illegal almost everywhere but readily available.
It’s still illegal and I would be taking a risk if I bought some.
If I did and got caught I can’t say I didn’t know because I did but it doesn’t matter because it’s illegal there anyway.

Like in France who just passed a law saying that it’s illegal for Muslim women to wear a burka.
That’s a sheet over your head with a hole to see through.
Scratch dressing up as a ghost for Halloween in France.

Personally I don’t agree with that law and think it’s discriminatory but then again they are French and in France they decide.
I don’t see what the problem is when they are walking around among the general public but if they are stopped and ordered to show identification they must show the face to match the picture on the ID.

You know if they wear a surgical mask and scarf around their head they were achieve the same result as a burka and it would be legal until the French ban all hats, masks and scarves.
You know, the French would, they’re weird.
Look at that big-shot banker who got arrested in the States on suspicion of rape.
They showed pictures of him handcuffed and being led away.
In France criminals aren’t handcuffed if they have a good job and can afford a large bribe.
People in France are appalled that he was handcuffed in public and led away.

See this is another clash of culture.
In the States if you run out of the bathroom naked then drag the maid to the floor and try to fuck her that’s considered attempted rape not foreplay.
You see in France rape is called a one-night stand.
See the problem here is he thought he was in France but that’s not a real excuse.
Welcome to the other side of abnormal buddy.
Just be happy you are in a country that practices due process and not chopping your pecker off.

Have a nice day

Walker

Rain Drops Keep Falling

2011-05-17T10:16:00.001-04:00

Where have you been, meaning me?
Not here that’s for sure or at home.
I just spent some time down in the States.
I was there when the old Binster was taken out and witnessed the joy and confusion of it all but in the end we are all happily dysfunctional with it.
Does this mean I can bring my toothbrush on a plane now?

You know they make you take your shoes and socks of now before you get on a plane right?
I hate that and now just to get a little payback if I know I am going through U.S. customs I take a new pair of socks and bury them in Frick’s litter box a week before and the day you are to take off dig them out and put the on over your socks then out on a freezer bag, large one for me, over the sock and put your shoe on.
The freezer bags so you don’t stink up your shoes but with mine it might be an improvement.

So when they ask you to remove your shoes and put them in the tray just stand back and watch.
Everyone in line ahead of you including customs people will gag and run for the doors as they slowly make their way up on the treadmill.
This is when you sneak back the 250 ml tube of toothpaste they took out of your bag back in it.

Have you been watching the flooding in the news down along the Mississippi?
I’m watching CNN and the weatherman there says rise more than another four inches.
Who the fucks worrying, these people stopped worrying when it passed six feet high.
What’s another four inches when the big cock shoved up your ass in already dangling out of your mouth and pissing on your feet?

ZILLIONS of dollars are spent on the war machines of many countries when the money could be spent on other things like maybe engineering ways to prevent this kind of catastrophe.
Like in Australia.
While half the country is burning the other half is drowning.
I know I am a simpleton on these matters but wouldn’t a huge sewer, a canal maybe created to send all this water where it could be used instead of left to destroy where its not needed.

We read in the history books about people 4000 fucken years ago creating these engineering marvels that still exist for us to gawk at while scratching our head in wonder on how they did this without the monster trucks we have now at our disposal.

We can dig up huge pits to mine out minerals but we can’t create a safe environment for people to live in?
You can’t control the rain but you can create ways to move it along faster before it becomes a problem.
It costs money.
Yes it does but it will create jobs so you save from paying out on welfare or unemployment insurance and generate tax income from these workers while solving major problems.
It’s all a win, win situation, but that’s work.
Maybe to much work for our politicians and the fact that it’s much easier to pay the welfare and suck the life out of the rest who by the way are getting smaller compared to the one’s needing.
Imagine, people we consider primitive were more imaginative and constructive.
I guess that would make us destructive.
They saw a problem and dealt with it.
We blow it up then drown the evidence.

Over in Manitoba there is flooding or will be.
Seems the levies are holding but there is a problem, the people down river aren’t as safe so the plan is to open the levy on one side to they can flood the people who were safe because there is less of them.
You see, the people who are safe are only 110 houses and farms but in town there are 360 homes so it better to sacrifice the few for the many even if they were safe and help pay for the levy that was built to save them from this very catastrophe.
Now you know why the government imposes gun control in this country because you can’t overthrow them with a slingshot and a beaver tail.

Some solutions are way to easy and costly.
When will they start thinking ahead to prevent this from happening so we don’t have to ruin other people’s lives to patch shit up?
Great, I see I line of water running out of the kitchen along the hallway floor water hates me.
Where’s the duct tape?

Have a nice day

Walker

Taking Out The Garbage

2011-05-03T23:24:00.003-04:00

So, how's your week been?
Big week eh?
Bin Laden, dead.

Maybe?

I for one would have preferred a slight different outcome like, alive to face the families of his victims before standing trial for his crimes then punished in accordance to his sentence but he chose to go down as he had stated, fighting to the end.
You got to give him some credit for that, the man did what he said he would do and never EVER denied it.
That's very important because it negates the need for a trial.
I mean he commits mass murder then goes on file admitting it to the world and that it was only the beginning and backs that up with more murderous attacks.
He wasn't shy so if there was a terrorist act that they suspected his doing and he called to say it wasn't him, i"d believe him because he was real nut, a MEGALOMANIAC nut.
We've had a few bananas through history like Papa Doc Duvalier, Baby Doc, Idi Amin, Mussolini, Franco, the guy in Libya, Ghaddafi khadafi or however they spell it and others like them who inflict their brutality on their own people as opposed to the nuts who try and destroy the whole world for their own selfish reasons like Hitler, Mao, Rome (Pick a salad any salad) and others over the centuries.
We will always have nuts and bananas fucking the sheep until we become wolves to hunt them down to satisfy our sense of security and our right for justise for a crime.
Crime and Justice is a marriage forged in hell and Bin Laden walked down that aisle with a dark shadow as his bride while under a veil of religion to hide the truths he didn't want anyone to know about.

He may have been a murdering mother fucker but he kept to his beliefs and in the end wasn't found hiding in the bottom of some hole in the middle of a desert like a scared rodent but safe in the bosom of one of our ALLIES for five years while our soldiers were being killed looking for him.
This guy is responsible for the killing of thousands of Pakistani soldiers and moves within a fart's reach of their capital and no one noticed.
Uh huh
I know I smell something, sniff sniff.
I don't think when the Americans gave them 9 billion dollars to look the other way when they crossed into Pakistan to strike at terrorists they meant foer them to stop looking under their noses too.
Un fucken believable.

Personally I am happy he has been taken out of commission and take my hat off to the bravery of the units sent to secure their target which they did within the parameters set by their superiors but i won't believe he is dead.

I don't care what they say, buried at sea my ass.
I want to see the body because if you can't produce the corpse then it tells me you are hiding something and frankly i don't trust the government, any government.
It wouldn't be the first time they lied to us and or the last.
They say they don't want his grave to become a shrine.
Like this won't make him bigger than he was.

I say he's alive and held captive someplace secure to interrogate and will never see freedom again.
I can no more prove that, than they can now prove he is dead since they destroyed the evidence at sea.
Producing DNA without a corpse isn't proof either, it doesn't tell you if the person was dead or alive when it was taken and pictures can be doctored.

I am mad that we will never have complete closure as we did with Sadam when we saw him tried then executed by his own people, his victims.
I am saddened that the families of his victims won't have the opportunity to face this bastard.
I am happy, dead or alive, he will not be able to see the light of day again to cause more pain and grief but it's not the end and it will never be until the world finds a united way to live together.

Have a nice day

Walker

In Hot Water

2011-04-19T22:27:00.002-04:00

14 days later and I just got hot water, FINALLY!!!!!!
Off to the showers for me

Have a nice day

Walker

Hot Water

2011-04-14T21:43:00.000-04:00

Sigh, where do I begin?
Do you really care?
Let’s see.
Nine days ago I am sitting here watching the news when the doorbell goes off.
I’m thinking, Jehovah Witnesses.
I go over and it’s these guys going around taking advantage of the governments rebate plan for going green and asking home owners if they want to switch over to gas or maybe upgrade to a better unit.
Me, I have been itching at the bit to get a deal on switching to gas from electricity because I am tired of opening my bill and seeing over $300 electric bill.

They come in and inspect the current tank and then do some measuring before we go upstairs where they crunch the numbers.
They said they can do it at no cost to me.
Perfect I say so lets do it.
They call in the shop and talk to the lady then they pass the phone to me.
She says they can install it the next day but because its electric there will be a $169+tax to disconnect it from the board.

I tell her fine but then said if they come the next day I will have it disconnected.
I can get it done for free.
She said great, we hung up I shook hands with flip and flop and out the door they went.

I pick up the phone and my brother’s friend who is an electrician was coming over to disconnect the water heater.
Perfect, I hung up the phone turned and the door bell went off.
I walk over and there she was.
A 80 year old lady from the Jehovah Witness.

The next day when they came to install the water heater the old one was disconnected and the wires completely removed.
Thirty minutes in, they come and say that the water heater is to tall and the can’t put in a 50 gallon tank but a 40 should fit.
Perfect, put it in.
Ah you don’t have one in the truck but you can bring one the next day.
I say go for it…..what?
I got to move the plumbing to the other side of the basement.
I see.
Yeah go ahead and call it in and find out how much.

Say what, $400, uh huh ok, I will get it done by tomorrow.
I have a friend who is a plumber who will do it cheap for me.
So they left and the next day they will be back to do the installation.
I went out to buy the supplies and in the morning my friend showed up and moved all the plumbing across the room.
Perfect.

Around 5pm that evening two new guys, a skinny little Asian and a skinner nerdy one showed up from the same company with a new tank and went down to the basement each armed with a pad and calculator.
They measured everything and said the 40 gallon wouldn’t fit either but they were 100% sure a 30 would.
I’m thinking pretty soon I will be bathing in a teacup.
They said they would be in the next day.
Perfect.

I need a shower
The next day around noon the phone rings and there is this Indian guy based in New Deli telling me there are no 30 gallon tanks left in the warehouse.
Huh.
How the hell do you know?
Great they farm the shipping and receiving to India to now.
He tells me not to worry that they were going to get me one the next day.
Perfect, it’s always perfect.

The next day comes and goes with no one showing up of phoning as did the one before.
On the sixth day I called them and they said they were still looking for a water heater.
I told them I haven’t had hot water for seven days now.
They asked me why I had no hot water.
Perfect.

Right there I knew I was in trouble
I told them that they had asked me to cut the old one off and to move the plumbing for the new one.

It’s day nine and still no hot water heater.
I can see how this is helping the environment.
Perfect

Go green but invest in nose plugs, sniff sniff whoa……

Have a nice day

Walker

BD 2011 Part 2

2011-04-03T02:25:00.003-04:00

D2 was sitting in the kitchen drawing a picture of a three-tear cake for her boss when one of my brother’s friends wives staggered over and looked at what she was doing.
“What are you doing” she asked.
D2 told her that her boss wanted everyone to submit a cake design that they could make for a display.
Her drawing was a three-tier cake with four section all connected with ladders gong up to the next section from either direction until they all reach the top.
I guess it depicts the union of two families.
It looks more like the Viking storming the castle.

Then the drunk woman tells us about the wedding cake at her wedding.
She said she went to buy one at the pastry shop and they wanted $1500 but a friend that had gone with her said she could do it for about $200.
Liking the sound of that she decided to let her friend bake the cake instead of ordering one from the pastry shop.

Leaving the cake in her friend’s capable hands if left her to do other things to prepare for the wedding.
Her friend, a true friend, one who steps up to help a friend in need had only baked a cake once and that was an out of the box cake but from what she remembered it was easy peazy.
All she had to do was buy more than one box and she did.
She bought 20 boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix and 30 cans of icing.
That was the easy part.
The hard part came later when all she had was 2 pans, one 4-quart mixer and one electric stove to work with.

To make sure she would have it finished on time she started baking the cakes 5 days beforehand and after twelve hours of mixing and baking on the first day she had 10 round cakes and ten square cakes.
Pleased with herself she turned and realized, she had no place to put the cakes now that they were baked, her fridge was too small

After thinking on it for a bit she decided there wouldn’t be a problem leaving them out until the wedding.
After all, they leave those cup cakes out for longer period of time at the corner store and they last for weeks but she did manage to stuff the ten round cakes in the fridge.

She had gone out and bought a book on making cakes and was slowly piling cakes one on top of the other and carving out the wedding cake into her vision which was four tiers; three round tiers and a large square sheet cake on the bottom.
Using a recipe she found online she made a cream to fill between the five layers of cake then spread the Betty Crocker icing all over it.
When she was done she started decorating it with some different colored sugar roses she had bought from the dollar store.

On the third day she stepped back and saw her vision in front of her and she was proud of her work.
That night she called the bride and told her her cake was done.
The bride said she would be over after work the day before the wedding to have a look at it

The next day the bride showed up to see the cake, she was carrying in a bottle of wine to share with her friend.
When she saw the cake she was shocked so see all the work.
She had doubts that her friend would be able to pull it off but looking at her cake she quickly pushed all those thoughts out of her mind.
She walked around the table in aw of it’s size.
She was more than happy and it only cost $240 in the end.

The ladies sat back for some wine and talked about the wedding that was happening the next day.
After a couple of glasses of wine the bride got up and walked over to the cake again and stared at it again when something caught her eyes and she bent down for a look.
It was a small green speck.
She told her friend who came over to have a look.
Odd she thought then went to the kitchen and returned with a knife.
She scraped at the green dot but it only got bigger as more icing was removed.
They looked at each other, mold.
There are no preservatives in the cake mix she used to make the cake.
The wedding was the next day and there was no time to make another cake.

As crazy as this drove the bride it wasn’t going to fuck up her wedding they would just have too deal with it.
More icing.
Her friend went and grabbed a couple of the spare cans of icing that were left over and they both started spreading fresh icing over the spot where they had seen the mold.

Satisfied they had fixed the cake they each had another drink before the bride went back home to rest for the next day.
Her friend took another look at the cake to make sure it was still good before she went up to bed.

In the morning she woke up to the scent of fresh brewed coffee.
She loved her automatic coffee maker.
Walking downstairs her body fell into its usual routine grabbing a cup from the cupboard then strolling across to the kitchen floor to the coffee machine to fill her cup.
She then turned for the fridge and the French vanilla crème on the inside of the door.
As she pulled at the handle her head rotated a little more and looted at the cake.
The fridge door swung open and slammed against the stove.

Leaving the fridge wide open she walked towards the dinning room table where the wedding dress sat.
A third of the sheet cake was now turning green from the outside corners and creeping towards the center.

What to do, what to do she thought?
She grabbed the phone and called the bride in a panic.
The bride told her to do what she can; she had no time to help her.
She hung up the phone and thought about it for an hour then she went to work.

After the church ceremony the bride and groom made their way to the reception hall.
The bride was nervous about the wedding cake.
When they got to the Hall her friend was waiting at the door for them smiling.
The bride felt a little relieved by the smile on her face.
“Congratulations to the both of your” she told them.
“Thank you”, the bride returned to her friend.
In a low voice the bride asked about the cake.
“I fixed it” she said.

The bride and groom walked in and at the front table was the cake.
Three tall round tiers.
The round cakes had been in the fridge for a couple of days before she pulled them out and were in better shape that the square sheet cake that had been out the longest.
Better than nothing thought the bride and the rest of the night went off without a hitch.
Well beside the bride and groom getting hitched that is but in the morning she said when they got up the top of the cake which she brought home after the wedding to save in the freezer had completely turned green.
D2 sat there listening with the rest of us to this story laughing and gagging at the same time.

It was here my sister in law came back with the death of her aunt.
My SIL needs to be the focus of a room and usually does it with the used of bad tidings.
She gave us the long winded version of her aunt (Father’s sister) passing away a few days earlier and how she had no one/so she, the SIL was going to take care of everything and pay for it.
One of the ladies asked her how she could afford it and she said it wasn’t much just cremation and then she will keep her on the mantle with the rest.
Yes, my SIL collects dead relatives, hers to be exact.

When her uncle died she had him cremated and put on the mantle and when her father passed away a couple of years ago she had the same thing done to him and now the aunt is destined to join her brothers.
I told my brother his house was becoming a mausoleum.

As grave as the situation was with 3 totally pissed women choking on their grief I found myself in a different frame of mine.
“I am sorry for you loss” I said to the SIL.
“Thank you, I think she would be happy on the mantle with her brother’s”.
“I don’t see how she has much of a choice but on the bright side, family reunions will be easy, just go into the dinning room and half of you will already be there”.
The boss’s wife snickered and quickly turned around so the SIL would see her laugh.

“But you got to be careful when you’re dusting because one bad swipe and all three will be broken and spilled all over the floor”.
“Then you won’t know who’s dust is whose and end up mixing them all up together”>
“That would be incest, you know”.

Just then a loud choking gargle comes from the boss’s wife.
Rum and coke started shooting out of her mouth and nose as she couldn’t contain herself anymore and started laughing out loud before running off to the living room to escape.
I could here her in the other room talking to her husband, I can’t believe he said that”.

Pahleeeeezee, what is she freaking about, I am the guy who put his mother in the back seat of my car with a dead man.
She flipped out at first but I eased her fears when I showed her he had his seat belt on.

So that’s how I spend my birthday this year.

Have a nice weekend

Peter

oops

Walker

BD 2011

2011-03-30T01:00:00.002-04:00

So, how was your weekend?
Mine was relatively usual.
I mean with my relatives and friends how could it not be, like Saturday for instance or should I say the earlier hours of Saturday.
Specifically 5 AM!!!!!!!.

I hate those early morning calls.
You know, the ones that wake you up with bad news.
No one calls to say “Hey man, you just one a million bucks”
The other day the phone rang at 1:30am.
I look and it’s my mother.
She never calls this late.
My blood went cold as I picked up the phone.

“Hello”?
“It’s your mother, it’s your father”.
OMG….!!!!
The worse flashes in my mind.
“What’s wrong”?
“His stomach hurts”.
“What”?
“WHAT”!!!!!
“WHAT”!!!!!!!!!!!

“Why are you yelling”.
“What”?
“You call at 1:30 am and say, “It’s you father” like a scene from some Greek tragedy and you ask why I am yelling”?
“Your father said I shouldn't have called “.
“Of course he did”.
“He ate two pounds of fucken hot Italian sausages and now his gut hurts''.
”Wait until tomorrow when his ass feels like it swallowed a flamethrower”.
“Give him some Pepto and the tube of Preparation H for the morning”.
I love my parents but they drive me crazy.

The phone rings at 5 am.
What the hell now?
“Hello”?
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY”!!!!!!!
“Harry Belafonte”?
“No, no you got the wrong number”.
“Happy birthday”.
Huh, I look at the clock
“It’s 5am, the only happy I am at 5 am is waking up with Inia’s lips around my dick and I don’t see them down there”.

“Happy Birthday Walker”?
“Is that you Frank”?
“Yeah”.
“Thanks, I’m just telling your wife to blow me”>
“I thought she already did that”.
“That’s not all she did”.
“What”?
“Nothing”.
"Giggle"

“It’s 5 am”.
“It’s noon here”.
“Yeah well I am not in Liverpool England”.
“I’m surprised you even picked up the phone”.
“So am I”.
"You must be alone".
"Shudup".

Thirty minutes later I’m punching the pillows back into shape to try and salvage some sleep then curl up next to my rolled up Inia simulating comforter and pass out.

9 am the phone is ringing.
WTF

“hell oh”
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY”!!!!!
“Huh….. oh yeah, yeah Thanks, I think”.
“Were you sleeping”?
“No, I was jerking off to see if it still worked”.
“Of course I was sleeping”.
"I am surprised you answered the phone".
"Isn't Inia there"?

"Shu " “Happy Birthday Walker”.
“Thanks Paul”.
“You know Paul, if you lay on your ol’lady a little longer in the morning she wouldn’t be waking me up at 9 am”.
“He does the laying all right it’s the moving he needs work on”.
“I told you I was getting a vibrating bed for that”.

It was 9:30am when they finally hung up.
I don’t get it.
They call me up so they can talk to each other on the extensions while sitting in the same room.

There was no hope in my going back to sleep now so I slowly got up and made my way to the washroom.
I needed a shave, a haircut, basically I still looked like I did a year ago.

Finishing in the bathroom a made my way downstairs where I found D2 cleaning up the kitchen.
We have arguments about the kitchen.
She is now full tilt into baking and has decided she wants to be a pastry chef.
She is doing her co-op at a pastry shop and works there on the weekend when not in school.
She is waiting for them to approve her apprenticeship application and if accepted she will have her wish by the time she turns 23.
But in the mean time she is making shit loads of pastries and cake.
I have gained fifteen damn pounds because of it.
She comes home with four boxes of rich creme filled cannolies or pastries.
The other day one girl made a mistake and made 5 of the wrong cakes so the boss gave her one to bring me.

WTF!!!!!

NO NO NO this can’t go on I told her and what’s worse.
She doesn’t clean up when she bakes.
She just leaves and when I get in I am left dumbfounded by what I see.
Today she was cleaning up the mess she made two days earlier.

I dropped at the computer while she cleaned up and looked at my emails, fourteen of them.
All were for my birthday and ten from Facebook.
You know, I have no idea how to use it.
I don’t really care for it, I still prefer msn but that’s me.
I don’t even know what to do with them.
They are on my “wall”.
Do I straighten them out or wallpaper over them?
At any rate I thank all of you who have sent me the best wishes.
I still think getting panties in the mail is more entertaining than Facebook HA HA HA

After spending the afternoon dealing with more phone calls and stopovers from friends I finally got some peace and quiet around 6.
That’s when I decided to shave and take a shower.
As I was walking to the washroom the phone rang and it was my brother inviting me over for his birthday party that he was having.
His was a week earlier so I said fine not wanting to be anti social and told D2 she was coming along and will want to go home by 10 pm.
And they say you can’t plan for the future.

Around 8pm D2 and I headed four houses up to my brother’s house where we were greeted by the sister-in-law with her tits hanging almost completely out of her shirt.
The SIL loves her boobs and enjoys having them out on display.
Walking past her there were some of my brother’s friends with their wives who all knew me.

I sat in the living room with the guys while D2 went to the kitchen with her sketch book as she had to design a wedding cake for her boss.
After shooting the shit with the guys I got up and went to the kitchen to get myself a drink and talk with the wives who were all pissed drunk when I walked in.
Last time I saw my brother's boss's wife she was naked.

To Be Continued….

Have a nice day

Walker

Pulling My Gunn

2011-03-26T13:12:00.001-04:00

Midnight, another year gone by.
Where the fuck does time fly.
WHEN does it fly by?
I mean most times I am so busy I don’t notice it but there are times I am so fucken bored , I can’t wait for it to go by.

I poured me the last shot of Ardbegs into the glass.
I have been saving it for months now.
At $130 a bottle, (cheaper in the States, fucken taxes).I make it last and this last shot turned two today.
Well, 13 if you count the ten years in the casket and the year on the shelf where Inia grabbed it for me two years ago.

1959, t’was an interesting year.
Mack the knife was the number one song.
The Battle of New Orleans was number two.

Talk about two polar opposites styles finishing that close.
I guess you could say it was a transition point in the history of man at that stage.
We reached the peak of the 50’s and were on the home stretch to the very top so we could tumble over into the 60’s.
No one remembers the 60’s.
The Hippies were to stoned to remember and those that weren’t, don’t want too.

Venus was number 3 by Frankie Avalon, I wonder if he was thinking of Connie Francis

Lonely Boy by Paul Anka was number 7.
Did I tell you when he was a teen he worked as a dishwasher at the restaurant my father worked in.
The old man said he was a smart ass and more then once found himself upside down being dunked in the dirty dish sink.

Donna was number 18 by Ritchie Valens
Sea of Love was 20th by Phil Philips but the Honey Drippers did a better job of it I think.
Totally my opinion.
Some people love listening to chicken scratch.

Dream Lover was number 25, Bobby Darin trying to explain why he masturbates in his sleep.

Connie Francis was 45th with Lipstick on your collar.
I think after 52 years we can finally admit the truth Connie.
The lipstick really wasn’t on the color now was it?
Bad Frankie.

Peter Gunn theme by Ray Anthony was 67th , hmmm maybe I should make it my theme but the Henri Mancini version.
Walker pulling his gun theme.

Number 100 was This Friendly World by Fabian.
Where the fuck do you live buddy?
Explains why its 100.

There were many more.
Elvis, Jan and Dean, Fats Domino and more.
It was a battle ground of different types of music vying for our hearts and imagination and when the smoke cleared we had Cheech and Chong, works for me.

I wish all our battles could be as sweet or bitter even bittersweet and entertaining as the words from the lips of our troubadours.

Have a nice weekend

Walker

Who's The Saint?

2011-03-17T00:07:00.006-04:00

The Irish are holding me prisoner south of the border until the weekend so until I get uncuffed from the headboard and back up north I wish you all the luck of the Irish on this St. Patty's Day.

Happy St. Patty's Day

Walker

Poo What?

2011-03-03T23:36:00.002-05:00

Can you hear that?
Wow, my hair is flopping up and down.
I’m going to be deaf in a month.
I finally got a new set of speakers to replace the ones I melted and I tell you, it feels good having six speakers pointed at me head.
Without music playing I can’t do anything.
It’ sets the rhythm to life.

It’s the weirdest thing too.
They are the ones I wanted but I didn’t get them from the electronics store but rather online for a fraction of the cost.
Actually they were so cheap, I felt bad that the guy was going to drive twenty miles out of his way to deliver them so I offered to meet him closer to his place.
I mean 25 bucks for something he paid 170 for a month ago is worth a little drive.

So I told D2 I was going to meet a priest at a parking lot to make a deal.
Did I mention the seller was a priest?
Yeah
She gave me a look.
I don’t know what it is with my family but when they see me talking with a member of the clergy they think the whole family will be going to hell.
I have had some great conversations with many priests and some interesting ones with a couple of nuns.
OK, I may go to hell but surely not the whole family.
Sister Margaret wasn’t really keen on the idea.
I mean god was warming her heart but the fire in her loins was hotter than hell.

So what have I been up to besides watching the Middle East on the news.
Actually, the Middle East has been on the news for so long everyone is bored of it now.
Yeah, I noticed it the other day.
I’m sure the producer of CNN finally said, “This shit is getting boring”.
“Let’s look for something that doesn’t involve protesters”.
“What’s happening in Wisconsin…….”?

The weather has been freaky lately.
It can’t decide if it’s winter or the lead up to spring.
One day it’s -30 the next 8 then –30 again.
What the hell is that?
Then it’s 10 right after.

Inia, the boys and I went out the other day taking advantage of the weather when we could.
We went to the market to do a little shopping and just get some fresh are away from the TVs and video games.
AS we walked down the boys spotted Sugar Mountain, the store that has all the candy you remember from the past and sweets you had only heard of for sale.
Yeah, real evil place.
In fact, Inia would say it put the devil in me.

We let the kids go in as we stood outside.
We know.
You go in, you’re fucked.
Your ass will begin expanding the moment your fingers touch the door handle.
Not to mention if you go in with kids, might as well mortgage the house.
You’re already weak at the knees at the sight of sweets from your youth and vulnerable to their suggestions just to get them to go away and leave you drooling over PEZZ collection on the wall.
So we stood outside and stared in through the window to avoid all of that but it left us vulnerable to the elements of society.

As we stood there two chicks strolled up.
They were in their early twenties.
One was slim with a petite frame and the other had a larger frame with some extra meat on her that looked like she had desperately tried to compact into a pair of jeans that cried to be put to death rather than suffer her fat butt.
Hey don’t get me wrong.
I love me lots of booty but if a seam snapped on her jeans it would be a catastrophe to anyone within twenty feet.

They walked right up to us and one asks Inia if she would take their picture in front of Sugar Mountain.
Now you have to understand, Walker does shit on impulse and Inia knows this.
I am pretty sure she knew what was coming next as she squeezed the button on the camera while her head turned towards me.
I could see her lips moving but it was to late.
Inia’s good but I’m fast.

“So is that the before picture to compare your …”? says I
“Shit” says Inia.
Oh well.
I never said I was shy.

They opened the door and walked in.
We stood there watching the kids inside freaking out on the thousands of types of candy to choose from when a woman with a baby carriage was trying to get out.
Inia reached over and opened to the door open to make it easier for her.
The woman came out and turned to look at who opened the door and saw it was another woman.

She gave me a look.
I said nothing, Nada.
I know a crazy bitch when I sees one and this one had crazy written all over her face.
She thanked Inia in a cold hard voice.
“You got to watch out for the fucken perverts”.

Yeah, yeah, they can spot me a mile away.

“Last week I was in a mall and this guy was following me around trying to look at my “poonani” so I whacked him in the face, fucken pervert”.

WTF is a “Poonani”?!!!

“This is my fifth kid”.
She looks over at me.
I didn’t do it so don’t look at me like that.

The boys came out and we got the hell out of there.
On the way to the van I asked Inia WTF a "Poonani" was and she said it’s slang for “Pussy”.

Poonani, I don’t know, with the poo in the front of the word I would think it would refer to something else but if she’s been bouncing babies on her lap for all these years her nani might smell like Poo.

Have a nice day

Walker.

The Color Of Freedom

2011-02-25T02:02:00.000-05:00

I sit here this night wanting to write something funny or at least try to but I find my mind wandering to world events and loose the humor in life that I have strived to find each and every day.

I wanted to tell you about a couple of women I met who wanted to have their picture taken in front of a candy store or about a cashier who’s nipples perked up when she heard me growl at Inia as she passed close to me.
There is a lot I have to write about but the words fade from my fingertips as I watch the world in chaos.

Between the troubles Australia has had to the Middle East and the topping of this bloody sundae is the earthquake that just struck New Zealand.
Where do I find the words to bring a smile on your faces when all I see is a river of tears drowning the earth?
All I have is questions without any smart-ass puns.

I can understand Mother Nature’s fury and accept it with the sorrow it brings to our souls but when I watch the happenings going on in the Middle East I am saddened because it’s the work of man.
I watch and hear the pleading voices beneath the rubble as rescuers drag a trapped earthquake victim from beneath a collapsed building to the cheers of those around.
I watch as a man pleads for his life before being shot dead but a hired gunman.
I hear the silent ones screaming for justice as they lay motionless in the middle of the street.
I see the look in the eyes of a man as he finds out he will never see a loved one again.

I’m confused.
We have a body comprised of most of the countries in the world who have sworn to protect the weak as we, as a species search for peace and freedom for all on this planet, yet we watch those who hear us die helplessly in the street.

I don’t think we should be interfering in the politics of a free nation or imposing our beliefs on them but when the majority of the population is mercilessly being slaughtered should we be standing on the sidelines watching?
In most of the Middle Eastern countries there is a political structure even if it isn’t a democratic one so when something like what happened in Egypt happens, the country still has the framework to move forward and evolve but not in a country such as Libya.

In Egypt peaceful protests won the people their freedom but in Libya peaceful protests has only brought thousands of dead protesters as we all watch it going down on TV.
I watched at men with anti aircraft guns ripped through a crowd of people holding placards asking for their freedom.

Libya is ruled by a tyrannical chieftain who in the past has threatened all our lives and yet for all that he has done to us we have punished him by rewarded him for it.
A quarter of the population of this country rules the remainder with an iron fist and endless supply of bullets.
Today the vast majority of the people of Libya armed with only the dream of freedom as their sword, their flesh and blood as their shield charge the mechanical monsters of death bought and paid for with our money in a quest for freedom only to be slaughtered like sheep on the streets.

I listened to a woman locked in her house asking if we see what’s happening and if we do, why we are not helping.
Good question.

I hate the Middle East.
Yeah I know hate is a strong word but I do.
I don’t hate the people I hate the mentality.
Fucken mule headed bastards.
In the past I have said we should just nuke the motherfuckers.
All of them.
Wipe them off the face of the fucken earth and be done with their god bull fucken shit.
Them and their fucken religious rhetoric.

Now it’s to fucken late to blow the fuckers up.
Now the bastards have fucken faces and they look like ours.
Ordinary people trying to escape the grip of oppression and the lies that have been fed to them for the last century.
Most gained their freedom from colonialism only to fall prey to a gang of well armed hooligans like Khadafi, or Ghadafi or however that spawn of Satan spells it.
The man is so fucked in the head he doesn’t know which end to piss from.

He has gone out and hired mercenaries to come into the country to put down the uprising because this own armed forces refuse to fire on the people.
If fact he has executed many of them for not obeying his orders.
This is not the actions of a leader.
These are the acts of a terrorist.
So I ask myself what is the rest of the world doing?

We’re watching and hurling words of disapproval.
Isn’t this what the United Nations was formed for?
Aren’t they supposed to be looking at this and planning some sort of intervention or at least send forces in to protect those who have liberated themselves from this man’s grip?
This is the war against terrorism.
This is where the final battle will be fought.
The question is, will be wade in to help put an end to decades of fear at the hands of this murderous lot of people?

For years we have sacrificed the lives of our troops trying to stop terrorism and we are now presented with the chance to do just that.
We can finally get rid of the major supporters of terror and probably save future lives by rallying around these people.
The majority of the people before its to late and the only thing left will be the graves of the dead.

I think it’s time we pulled out of where we shouldn’t be and concentrated on what the right thing to do is.
How long should he have to sit here watching people who could be us in different time lay down and die for nothing but a dream with no hope without us.
When do we stop watching the bully and step in to throw the bastard out?

The future can only exist if we are all on the same page.
Fractured we can only be a mirror image of what we despise.
I salute the brave people who have reached for their freedom with only the hand of peace as their weapon.
I weep for their sacrifice when they are struck down by our greed.

Have a nice day

Walker

A Walker Valentine

2011-02-17T03:03:00.000-05:00

So, how was your Valentine’s Day?
I know I didn’t put up a post for it but Inia and I don’t really celebrate it.
We figure it’s something we should be doing all the time and February 14th is just a ploy to get more of our money.
I mean if you feel the need to wait all year for that one special pre set day to show you love, well then that’s cool.
I would rather do things my way and be spontaneous.
With that I also forgo the panic shopping people do trying to find that special gift that will surly get their pecker wet or at least one hell of a good pussy licking.
Hell I get that now without fighting a hoard of desperate men at the mall.
You think women are bad during a shoe sale.
You should see what a herd of men with no clue are like at the mall but my beliefs on the day didn’t save me from having to go out to the mall today.
My mother picked Valentine’s Day to make a payment on her credit card so off I went to the department store.

As soon as I walked in you could tell what day it was.
Hearts and chocolate all over the place.
Racks of perfumes and other bath baskets.
There were cards and flowers and chocolates and chocolates and chocolates.
Did I mention chocolate?
There was fucken MOUNTAINS of boxes of chocolate and as I looked past all that what did I see?
Men walking around blindly looking.

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s all at the front door where you came in.
They must have been blinded by the sea of red when they walked in and didn’t see anything with their hands shielding their eyes.

As I walked towards customer service I passed a rack of chocolate boxes and one of them caught my eye.
I walked over and picked it up.
“Wow”, I thought “Now this is cool” so I grabbed the box.
Yeah I know what I said but I am not buying this for Valentine’s Day but because it’s cool and perfect for her.
It just happens I found it on this day.
If they made cool shit like this all year they would make more money without a special day for it.

I go to the customer service and make the payment then head off to the cashier to pay for the box of chocolates.
At the cash there was a guy in front of me and he had 4 small tiny boxes of candy.
I mean they were small.
Ok I don’t do Valentine’s but buddy if I did, I wouldn’t be showing up at home with only that because whoo hoooo you going to get banging but not like you want too.

He looks down at my box of chocolates and asks me whom they were for.
I told him, “ They’re for my ol’ lady”.
“Really, man are you going to get it”.
I look down at the four one ounce packages of heresy kisses and tell him, “When she sees this, she’s going to fuck me twice as hard because of it”.
“Really”?
“Fuck yeah, I know women and I know mine and when I put these in her hands, she will be on her knees thanking little Buddha until Easter”.
The cashier’s eyes bulged as she listened to our conversation.

“Wow”.
“Damn straight and they’re 50% OFF TODAY”.
“You’re kidding”?
“Nope, everything over there that says VD on it is 50% off”.

He turned, looked where I showed him just as the cashier picked up his chocolates to scan and he stopped her.
He grabbed the chocolates from the cashier and headed towards the rack.
I stepped up to the cashier and passed her the heart shaped football box of chocolates.
“The girlfriend just loves football”, I told her.
I nodded in the direction that guy took off in to find a box like mine and said ”He’s fucked”.
She just nodded and started laughing.

Have a nice day

Walker

Bus Stop

2011-02-15T23:32:00.001-05:00

I am going to be a bit of a hypocrite in this post.
When I was younger.
25 years younger to be exact I was living a different life.
Lots of sex, drugs and the mayhem that went with it.
I drove fast cars, luxury cars; 17 cars to be exact.
I played hard, drank hard, drove drunk.
Things were different back then.
There weren’t that many cars on the streets and we we knew how to hold our liquor.
Actually we were never sober so drunk was normal.
I am not by any means saying what I did was right.
In fact I know and knew back then it was wrong but times were a little different back then.

As the population grew we all became aware that certain things needed to stop.
With me it was waking up one New Years Day and looking out the window to see if my car was out there because I couldn’t remember driving home.
Yup, it was and that was scary.
Ever since I don’t drive drunk or stoned.
And you know, it’s not because drunk people can’t drive it’s because the idiots can’t and find themselves in the path of a drunk driver.

Society has deemed this kind of behavior dangerous and has passed strict laws here on drunk driving with stiff fines and suspensions that could last ten, twenty years if not forever and I totally understand.

When I was in my twenties I got pulled over by a drunk cop and he asked me if I had been drinking.
No word of a lie.
He dragged me out of the car and walk the line and touch my nose.
He was so fucken drunk I failed and then took me in to blow in the breathalyzer which I passed.

Over the years things have changed for the best.
Ok the government has gone a little overboard with the fines I think.
12,000 is a little fucken steep if you ask me.
Just think.
You have one beer and thirty minutes later you leave for home and you get pulled over.
Are you drunk?
Probably not but you are over and that twelve grand you’re out and a year suspension

Personally, I think if you give someone that big of a fine making it almost impossible to pay it would only lead the person to break other laws like driving without a license.
That’s just me thinking aloud.

We have some really strict driving laws here that are vehemently enforced, especially for young and new drivers.
It takes almost five years now to get your full license as opposed to when I went.
I walked in, took the test and walked out with my license.
We took tests for friends and got them licenses and some had never driven a car.
Today, HA, you need 47 pieces of identification to get an application.

Like I said times are different today especially with the population density being what it is.
We have to be more mindful of the idiot drivers and not dink then drive and to teach our kids and others to respect that.
I think for the most part parents do a pretty good job of it but there are a few that make me shake my head.

I have told my kids I want to know everything they do.
I don’t care what they do as long as they are careful for themselves and others.
They want to drink and smoke pot, fine.
Anything else….. well, then Walker is going to be really mad and trust me when my brain clicks and goes into that mode the room gets fucken cold and they know it’s bad.
.
They know my rules and they know that I respect their freedoms even into the gray but past that.
We don’t want to go there.
They want to go out and drink and smoke pot, have a good time.
Well I’ll drive.
I drove D1 to a rock bar once and left her with her friends but stayed to watch the band and I think I had more fun that they did.
All that sweaty boob flesh bouncing around the dance floor was more than enough to get the juices flowing especially with the loud music pounding out of the speakers.

I had one beer in 2 hours and then drove D1 home.
Easy as pie.
Had another beer at home.
Even if I didn’t drive.
It’s ten buck to cab it.
$3.50 on the bus but if you have three friends chip in and cab it.
It’s all simple.
To simple it seems for some.

The other night the sister in laws nineteen year old daughter plowed through at bus shelter.
It’s a good thing it was 1 am because there was shit left of it after she was done.
There was fuck all left of her car too.
My brother who got there first said she was pissed.
Three shots and a beer in one hour then got behind the wheel.
He grabbed her out of the car and put her in his then called the cops.
I don’t know how he managed it but they blamed it on black ice.
Black ice my ass and even if there was, she barreled through the bus shelter she didn’t slide into it.

Today I find out they are trying to find ways to get money from the insurance company to get her a new car.
This kid drives drunk all the time but then again her mother is no better.
.
I would be kicking her ass all over the fucken place, it’s not child abuse any more, it’s one adult beating the shit out of another adult’s brain.
Probably rotting crap left over from the abdicable cord.

When do people wake up, when it’s to fucken late?
Ok the kid is a shit-head so don’t give her tools she can kill someone else’s kid with.
I think the problem here is that she never had to earn something.
She was given everything she wanted including the car.
Maybe if she had to find a fucken job then save up the money to buy a car she would be old enough or mature enough to have one.
What am I talking about?
Her mother’s in her forties and does the same shit.

I’m telling you, I have driven drunk so many times I can’t remember how many times or doing it but back then there wasn’t a car in sight at 2 am not like now and yes, I was wrong even if it wasn’t as dangerous as it is today.
I just hope one day it’s not worse.

Have a nice day

Walker

Silence

2011-02-12T17:40:00.001-05:00

Thump thump thump
Whacking my head against the keyboard doesn’t help I still don’t know what to write or have the will to write.
I want to, but I can’t.
I need loud music.
I used to have lots of it until my speakers went tits up like a Halle Berry movie.
.
It’s been suggested I use earphones and I have but they’re just not loud enough.
I’m old school, child of the 70s and 80s when the music was so loud the decibels blew you so hard you came right there in the middle of the dance floor along with all the others in one orgasmic soup of sound waves.
Now, I go to a club and the music isn’t loud enough to pop an escaping fart from a fiber rich old man.

This is how loud I play my music when I am alone in the house.
A couple of summers ago my mother phoned to tell me to put the music down because it was attracting a crowd.
I had no idea what the hell she was talking about so I walked out the front door and there were about 30 people from the skateboard arena across the street dancing in front of my house.
Some chick asked me if I could leave the front door open so they could hear it a little better.

Loud, that’s how I like it.
I want not to only hear the music but feel the sound waves crashing against my body.
Of course it helps to have a couple of brews and a lungful of wacky tobbacci fermenting your smoked and pickled brain.

Then I could just lay back and let the music wash in and out of my body and soul as I swim through the oceans of my mind until I found a wave to ride back down to earth to tell you about.

My old speakers, I would crank the mothers up so loud, the dust and crumbs on the desk would gather in groups for a wild orgy as they vibrated around in circles out of control like square dancers on crack.
Now I couldn’t get belly button lint to twitch.
The only sound coming out of them at the moment is that same crackling sound my body makes when I get up from the couch.
It’s not the soothing sounds that inspire me to want to write a post.
The only thoughts that sound gives me are the memories of the annoying fuckers who used to scratch the blackboard with their fingernails at school.
Way back when they didn’t have metal detectors at each entrance.

So without music I can’t think straight to write or smoke pot and drink beer.
The music helps me focus.
Without the music if I get stoned the only thing I want is sex and lots of it, which is a problem when your ol lady is not around.
Yeah, yeah I can go jerk off but you can only do that so many times before even you start getting appalled with your own lack of self control.
“For god sake man, give it a fucken rest, use the other hand”.
Sheesh

So you can see how bad it is for me when my speakers go and croak but it won’t be for long.
I went to Future Shop the other day to have a look at some and the first ones I came across were amazing.
For 500 bucks they better be but for that price they will have to be amazing in someone else’s house.
The ones next to them were a little cheaper but still too much for me to spend on computer speakers.
I mean, I can buy a new computer for what these speakers bloody cost.

I am actually torn between two sets of speakers.
One looks cool

The other looks loud

One looks sterile the other kinda grungy if you want to call them that.
I think loud may end up beating cool but who knows, I may get them both HA HA HA!!!!!!
I will decide that at the end of the month.
Until then, I guess its going to have to be my singing and Frick's meowing.
He’s a little muffled lately.
Must be a fur ball

Have a nice weekend

Walker

Brain Dead

2011-02-01T14:06:00.000-05:00

My brain is asleep.
It seems I can’t focus enough to really write a post so I will probably wing a couple and see if I can make myself so sick on this crap I will inspire myself to write semi decent crap instead.

Let’s see.
Have you been watching the news lately and the new troubles happening in the Middle East?
I am beginning to think that’s that place over there where all the senile old people go to live?

I don’t swim much into politics because we all have our distinct opinions and usually heated arguments erupt so I keep it to myself.
My personal views are all over the fucken place thanks to the social hypocrisy we all live in.

I’m an incumbent politician’s nightmare because I’m neither a conservative or a liberal.
I believe in legalizing pot and passing a law in where you have to give you partner three orgasms a day or you’re exiled to the Middle East.

Politicians drive me crazy.
I’m a survivalist; I do what I can to survive and to keep those around me safe.
That’s what I am loyal too and I am not alone but these politicians are using me, us for target practice.
Look at the world out there.
People are hungry, sick, homeless, tired of war, tired of being afraid all the time, just plain fucken tired.
Does that sound familiar.
Aren’t you tired?

Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are in turmoil.
People want free election.
They want to survive.
Greece is expelling illegals because they can’t support them.
The country they came from can’t either, they’re struggling to feed their own as is Greece.

There is a tsunami of humans fleeing their native countries for ours because they see a better life but like any herd that runs across the prairie, they’re going to stomp and destroy what they come seeking just by their shear numbers.
Tell me I’m wrong.

Once our countries were young and empty.
People were paid to move here so we can expand and hold our borders as a country.
It’s the same with most western countries but there are limits to how much the bottle can hold before the lid pops off.

Western leaders are worried that Muslims may take power in these countries in the Middle East.
Do politicians watch the news?
I know they are in it enough but do they watch the news when they are not, the news?
You can see people running through the streets in pitched battles with riots cops and soldiers screaming that they want free elections.
Isn’t that what we all want, free elections?

Does it matter if the majority votes for a Muslim based government?
For the last 30 years Egypt has basically been a dictatorship and no one said nothing.
Wasn’t Hitler and Mussolini dictators?
Don’t we despise tyrants or these don’t count because they are our dictators like Pinochet was down in Chile.

We spend too much time in other people’s business and not spending enough time on ours.
We compromise ourselves into giving money to bullies and when the shit hits the fan we find ourselves floundering in the water whilst trying to figure out what the fuck to do next.
This is the shit our politicians get us into.
.
I think if we looked at the world through our beliefs and rules we would be able to make decisions much better but we have people in power that rather be puppet masters.
Why are we making friends with people whose way of life insults ours?
I mean some small things can be overseen and religion is a personal choice but we believe in freedom and having rights to believe in whatever you want as long as you don’t try to impose you will on others.
Isn’t this what is happening right now in the Middle East?
Has been happening for years.

With the Internet spreading all over the world and giving everyone the ability to look into the way others around the world live has woken some people up.
They begin to taste something in their mouth and have this feeling growing in their chest.
These people have been isolated from the rest of the world until recently and only knew what they were told about the world but with the Internet, all that has changed.
Most of these people are poor, sick and hungry.
They watch their leaders living well and they see others around the world eating well and have access to medicine and they want that too.
It’s what those before us struggled for.
They want this.
We all do.

Many of our roots go back to countries that were like this.
The Irish, Italians, Polish, Germans, Lebanese, Greeks, Chinese...the list goes on , immigrants that left to get away from that shit.
Our politicians come from similar ancestries but they have forgotten this.

I watched the news and saw people asking for fair democratic elections.
Damn right.
The want the dictator OUT.
Fucken “A”.
CLAP CLAP CLAP!!!!!!!!!!

What do we do to help them?

NOTHIN

This is their time.
Their coming of age and its been thousands of fucken years in the coming.
These are our people, people who can be traced back to the beginning living in what may at one time been humanity’s birthplace.
Where it all started tens of thousands of years ago and they still live and think that same fucken way.
It’s their time to evolve.

Now the hunger pains in the pit of their stomachs is making them open their eyes to the rest of the world and how we live and they want it.
They want to decide how they want to live not have one person tell them all how to live.

Our leaders are scared to say to much as not to offend other dictators they are supporting.
Fuck em too.
We should be picking our friends based on how we live and doing business with people who think like we do for the most part.
We give money to these people and all they do is use it to tighten the noose around the necks of their people.
Would we impose this on ourselves?

I say its time we stepped back and let them untie the rope that binds them and know they earned it on their own without outside interference.
When all the smoke clears we can decide if they are the right people to be friends with.

And while they are dealing with their government I think we should have a little talk with ours.
There are thousands of our people stuck in Egypt trying to get out.
The Canadian government has chartered a couple of planes and is sending them to Egypt to get all the Canadian who can afford to pay for a ticket.

Come again?
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
What did you say, if they can pay?
You got to be fucken kidding me?
I want to smack the prime minister so hard his head will spin like Linda Blair on crack.
How much money does the government waste on shit.
Billions.
This is a crises not a free bone, get our people out of there and pay for the fucken thing.
It’s my fucken money.

Then I hear that the Americans have chartered a couple of planes and borrowed one from the Canadians because money was scarce among the people stranded at the airport and had a spare.
Unlike the Canadian government the American government showed true patriotism and are bringing home all the Americans there.
They said they’d bill them later.
Fuck you too.
You give Egypt two billion dollars for free but won’t swallow the 2.5 million dollars it will cost to bring home the people who helped give you that 2.5 billion you so generously gave away.

Fucken politicians.

Lawyers, politician…… it’s the fucken suits isn’t it.
They get power crazy when in a suit.
If all soldiers wore pink I bet there would be no wars.

The only help we should be giving people is humanitarian help, showing them ways to employ and feed their people instead of throwing money at them.

The Middle East is changing and we have to step back and let them deal it out amongst themselves or we may find ourselves in the middle of a world war.
They all posses the means to totally annihilate themselves forever if they so choose, if they are that stupid.

We learned the hard way, so do they have to now.
We have been used for to long to settle their shit and paid for it in the blood of our kids.
They may put no value on their lives but we do.
Live or die, it’s their choice to make not ours
That’s why we have borders with our own rules.

Fucken politicians

Have a nice day

Someone pass me the remote…

Walker

Who Are We?

2011-01-28T13:01:00.001-05:00

Who am I?
I don’t know.
Does anyone really know we are?
Who are you?
Do you really know?

We live by a set of views.
Not rules.
We call them rules but in reality it’s what we want to see or at least the majority of the population.

I see myself like this…
You see me as that…
My mother sees me in dress pants 7 days a week, which is never going to happen.

If people went to your place of work and asked those there who you were, would what their description of you match the ones given by your best friends and those of your immediate family or would they all be different?
If they’re all different, who the fuck are we?

If we follow trends, not only in fashion but in thought as they come up does that not also effect who we are?
We blend social values along with religion and conscious into one big shake then drunk it all down to drown in.
It’s no wonder most of us walk around in a daze.

I like to think I am who I am for the most part.
I have been called a rebel by some but I don’t see that.
If I don’t agree with something I don’t think I am a rebel.
I just don’t agree.
I don’t want to bring the house down but don’t push it either.

I’m watching TV the other day and there is this show where two people, a man and a woman take a person, usually a woman, then tell her she has no taste and doesn’t know how to dress herself.
After being humiliated on TV they toss her clothes out and teach her how she should dress then make her buy clothes they think she would be suited to wear.
I’m not saying she didn’t look nice in the new clothes because she did but is it who she is or is this the way she should look as perceived by the times.

By the time I was sixteen I knew who I was and what I liked.
Yeah I did the peacock thing in the 70s but that was on the weekends only, the rest of the time I was who I was.
It’s who I was comfortable being with not what I should be like.

Today my mother looked at me and said, you’re getting older you should dress differently.
What?!
What’s wrong with how I dress?
This is who I am.
She says I look like a gangster.
This is my comfort zone.
Black leather jacket, jean jacket, jeans and my black Nikes.
At home it’s my joggies and hoodie
If I want to wear socks with my sandals I will.
My closet is full of dress clothes and all sorts of facade coverings we have been made to think is required dress.

I ask her how should I dress?
She says like my father.
I look over and he’s stretched out on his lazy boy wearing beige wool pants pulled all the way up to his armpits with a light blue shirt that was tucked up to his chest.
Looks like an old Steve Urkel.
I don’t think so.

In many ways I am lucky to have some of the friends I have.
It’s an eclectic bunch.
Some of them wear suits.
One dresses like a wizard.
Most look like bikers.
I don’t think it’s the generation I come from because I see pockets of young people today being who they want to be instead of conforming to the majority.

It’s been said that if you go with the flow life is much easier but going with the flow is being in the same rut as everyone else.
I think a person’s individuality defines who he or she is.

If you sit back and think of it, the people you remember most were the ones who didn’t conform to the whole.
I’m not saying you have to act and dress like a clown so you will be remembered, most likely as the nut the cops drag off to the loony bin

When you walk down the sidewalk you always walk on the right.
Why?
You ever see all those people walking into lampposts or parking meters and you think to yourself, “Must be a drunk or stoned”.
Nope, left handed people trying to go with the flow.

Most people at work dress like everyone else.
In many cases its part of the job.
It’s not a choice.
You’re just being assimilated into someone else’s perception of how they want you to be.

I go into a bar and I see people still in their work clothes.
Still wearing the uniform of who they are not and will go home after to undress and go to bed only to dress the same way in the morning.

Who are we if we never get to be who we are?
I’m not going to dress like my father.
It might work for him but not me.
If I look like a gangster then that’s someone else’s perception.
I dress according to what pleases me.

So who are you?
Does anyone really know?

Have a nice weekend

Walker

Faggots Or Nothing

2011-01-18T16:22:00.005-05:00

See, what did I tell you?
They are trying to take away what rights we have.

I love history.
I have read about almost everything and I still find bits of history to grab my attention.
My favorite bits is where people fight for what is right and for most, that’s the right to be free, think free and freedom of speech.

In the beginning there was “One Person”.
That person was free to live as he/she wished but there was a problem.
In order to have the right to be free you have to fight to keep it.
Let’s face it, I don’t care who you are, you can’t win if you’re alone so we banded into families and then tribes to counter those who would want to take away our rights to our freedoms.

As we grew we became regions and later countries under a banner of constitutions spelling out our rights.
The reasons we have joined this large family.

Over the centuries amendments are put in place to help our rights adjust to the times as they evolve.
These amendments are to help the future move smoothly and not to change the past.
How do you change history?
You can’t.
How do you hide the past?
With lies and deceit?
Should we hide it because that’s not how we are thinking right now?
There are people out there stealing a piece of my past and yours by rewriting it because they are offended by our history and have found idiot bureaucrats to listen to them.

History is a record of our evolution.
We go back in history to analyze what we did to better ourselves to get to the present but if we go back now and change what we done in the past to get here, what will those in the future think when they visit my past and see what these idiots did today to change my past?
That’s not who we were.
It’s a fucken lie.

Here in Canada, the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has banned the song “Money for nothing” by Dire Straits because it has the word “faggot” in it.
"See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup”, it's a lyric in a song.
It’s a portrayal of a blue collar worker’s description of how hard he has to work for a little money while some guy with a guitar, dresses like a flaming “Fag” (which by the way in not a banned word and could be used in the song) makes millions.

Flaming fag is an accepted term in gay lifestyle.
What’s the fucken problem?
There is none except for a very small few individuals (One woman) who some how got heard by a fucken moron who is easily dragged around by the fucken nose.

They think that by banning “Faggot” from the airwaves is a good thing?
They just opened a huge can of worms.
They just increased the power of that word by giving it more weight that it deserves.
Shit like this only throws fuel on hate.

You know, we work hard to accept people for who they are and leave them to their own vices and devices.
It’s part of our freedoms.
It’s what the majority of us want.
We want to express our opinions and if they change then we have to adjust for it but you don’t go back twenty five fucken years and change something to suit you today.
What are you, fucken stupid?
You can’t change history like that.
It’s done accept it for what it is, a piece of art that you don’t like so don’t go running around with your little chisel and try to knock off the offending pecker.

You know, when I was a kid I thought faggots were a pack of cigarettes.
Well come on, a fag was a smoke then gay people showed up and stole the word for their own use.
Now I am scared to bum a fag without worrying about getting it in the ass.
HA HA HA!!!
Yeah, yeah I know, you can email me hate mail I don’t care.

I emailed a gay friend of mine today and asked what she thought and her reply was:
“HA HA HA, stupid FAGGOTS”.
There are a lot of songs out there that are more offending than this, I just think the that woman don’t like Dire Straits.
Maybe if they changed faggots to dykes she will feel better?
Who knows.

It‘s not only just this song, down in the States they are redoing Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and changing the word “Nigger” to slave.
Hello…?
Did you ask Mark if that was OK?
I mean the man wrote the books the way he wanted to and for generations this is what we read so who are you to put words in another mans mouth.
These books express the times in Mark Twain’s life.
Who the hell are you to decide to make it look different.
You trying to hide the truth?
Back them a black person was a nigger.
Today he is an African American.
He is an African American because some nigger busted his fucken ass and in many cases died to earn the right for his children and those after them to be free African Americas.

Changing history like this spits on their efforts and the talent of a man who saw things as they were not as you wish they were today.
You can’t run from the past if it’s the truth.
Teaching our kids lies doesn’t make us better it makes them stupid and bound to make the same mistakes again.

It’s a shame we even take peoples color into consideration when we first see them.
It appalls me to see people judged because of how they think.
I don’t care who you are, what you like, what you believe in.
I don’t care where you come from or how you choose to live as long as I get to live how I wish too.
You have the same rights as I do and if they say otherwise I will go down there with you and demand why we are not equal.

This is how we are supposed to live in this country according to the constitution and charter or rights that we have drafted.
Rights that many people have struggled to get for us.
All we have to do is hold on to them and make sure they are NOT taken away from us by stupid people even if they think it’s the right thing to do.
.
What’s next, ban the words: God, Free, Love, and replace them with hunger, hate and taxes.
Hunger will bless you
Hate will love you
And taxes will free you from your money

Have a nice day

Walker

Nuts

2011-01-13T23:35:00.004-05:00

It’s a crazy, crazy world and I am stuck in the middle of it.

My daughter’s walking down the street listening to her Ipod with one earpiece hanging and the other one in her ear.
Her eyes constantly scanning around at any person walking down the street, ready to jump and run if they made any sudden moves.

It seems there is this guy out there in this city who is stalking women in their 20’s that are walking down the street listening to their MP3 players.
As the unsuspecting woman walks down the street listening to the latest Lady Gaga hit, he runs up behind her and whacks her in the head with a hammer then runs off.
He doesn’t steal nothing, or sexually assault them.
He just whacks them over the head and runs away.

What the fuck is that?
A human with rabies and instead of water that makes him go crazy it’s young women listening to music?
And this isn’t an isolated incident.
He’s a serial whacker.
I thought this shit only happened in figure skating competitions.
For three days in a row this guy, in broad daylight right down town took a weapon out and clobbered a chick and got away.

Three days and the cops don’t get this guy.
I go downtown once every 4 months or so and I get a fucken ticket.
They find me alright, so why can’t they find him?

You spend a good part of your life worrying your kids with all the murders and rapists out there and not we have nuts running around playing Maxwell’s silver hammer goes ding dong on your noggin.
Fucken world is becoming a damn asylum.

We do our best to protect our kids.
Why shouldn’t we, they are part of us.
Our flesh and blood.
The nine months the poor mother had to carry around that ten-pound sperm growing between her legs.

The horror of giving birth.
I know I was there.
The blood and umbilical cord lashing out wrapping itself around the pretty blonde nurse’s throat then squeezing until her bra popped open exposing her big tits.
Yup, only my kid pops out hungry and doesn’t care whose food she’s eating.

All the diapers and clothes.
Baby furniture and fuck, shit load of stuff.
Thousands of dollars of stuff you buy to keep you offspring healthy and safe.
But it’s not really your offspring.
Well that’s what some people are trying to do now.
They are saying your don’t own your kids.
This all came about from spankings.

You see you are not allowed to spank your kids anymore because that assault and you can go to jail for that.
Now using the assault thing they are trying to take title away of your kids.
So if we don’t own our kids then who does because I have one hell of a fucken bill for them.
Oh, some one owes me a couple of million bucks at least.
I won’t even try to add up what you owe me for the heartache alone.

I don’t believe in corporal punishment.
I never spanked my kids but if some whack their kids in the butt to get it's attention I don’t see nothing wrong with it.
I don’t think you should pull out a bull whip and carve up the little bastard for playing tic tac toe with the Ginsu knife on the brand new couch but a swat on the ass so say look what you did.
You always start in the middle you little fucker.

Your kid breaks a window and the cops are hauling your ass off to pay for it but if you spank him after, you go to jail because, well, you just can’t go around spanking someone else’s kid right?

Should move down to Texas, I think you’re allowed to shoot your kids there?
My father never spanked me.
He beat the fuck out of me with whatever he could get his hands on.
In the beginning it used to be easy for me because I was young and naïve.

He’d go, “Hey Walker, be a good little boy and go get me my belt from the bedroom”, Like a good little boy I ran off to get him the belt and when I gave it to him he’d beat the shit out of me for something I did hours earlier.
After one or two more times of sending me into the bedroom to get his belt I got smart and refused to go.
He’d give me an angry look and say” Fine, go to the kitchen and bring me the broom”.
Off I would run.
By the time I hit sixteen I had learned to think on my own and when he said, ”Walker, go get me the gun from the closet”, I moved.

Speaking of Texas, did you hear some schools down there are giving tickets to students?
Really.
Fuck I laughed my ass off until I kept on reading.
I thought it was a joke but no, it’s not.
I mean 6 year old's are getting tickets for not behaving.
WTF is that
Someone has been smoking the peyote “Wink” “Wink”.
Imagine you sitting at home and your six year old comes home and hands you a ticket for 80 bucks because he had a temper tantrum.
Heaven forbid if the kid shits his pants.
Probably get the death penalty and with their current governor, having the sentence commuted to 4 years in time out would be slim to none.

Sounds like a cash grab to me but the ramification could be bad.
I mean this could actually land some kids in juvenile court and be part of their permanent record.
Can you imagine an eight year old with three strikes already?

Who thinks this shit up?
I thought that with time the human race would be getting smarter not dumber.

The world’s gone nuts and we are stuck in the middle of it.

My heart cried today as I watched Christina Taylor Green’s casket being carried to the Hearst.
Born on 9/11 amidst a time of blood, smoke and carnage.
A Phoenix rising out of the ashes to mark a new beginning for her and her family only to be silenced by a fucken nut who will live longer in life and in infamy because of his actions.
I don’t know his name and I refuse to look it up.
I only want to remember the name, Christina Taylor Green.
She is and always be important
The little girl who marked a new beginning, yesterday and today.

I will never relinquish my rights to my kids and if we let the state do something like that then we are all fucked.
They will own your stones the second you are born.

Have a nice day

Walker

Twitchy

2011-01-06T03:38:00.002-05:00

So today after many years of constant phone calls I succumbed and accepted a date.
I know, I know, these one night stands lead to nothing more than being a pain in the ass but I just can’t take the fucken phone calls no more.
I mean the phoning and begging.
Why?
Why should I when I know that you just want to fuck me for money?

I don’t know why. I was bored I guess so I said, yeah okay just name the time and place and off I went today.
Well, first I showered and shaved, a little chocolate flavored antiperspirant.
There’s nothing sexier than a fifty-year-old Greek who smells like a Mars bar.

I look at my watch….oh yeah Inia got me this cool watch for Christmas.
It’s one of those ECO watches that runs on sunlight and movement.
None of us know how to use it of course so we just site there pushing buttons to see if we can make it move.
It tells time but it has been running out of juice because we never really let it charge up to capacity and when I looked at it again today it was stopped at 8pm so I took it off and all day was strapped to my bearded dragon and it basked under the UV light for eight hours and when it went out I wrapped it around Inia's vibrator for the night.
Should be fully charged by morning.

Anyway, I took off to my date getting there ten minutes early.
To early it seems because the door was still locked.
She said to be there at 1:15 and she wasn’t kidding.
That’s when she opened the door.
I slipped in and we walked across the room to large leather couch where she asked me to rest while she got me something to drink.

I sank back into the couch and as I sat there this tall black woman wearing a black dress walked up to me and smiled.
She had a big set of tits on her and a butt begging to be slapped and from the look on her face she was asking.
I smiled back and wondered where the other one was with my drink.

I know body language and the way her thighs were contracting under that tight dress to make her pussy twitch the way it was made me wish I hadn’t asked for only water when a drink was offered.

The other woman came in and told the black woman I wasn’t her client today.
She frowned at the news and walked away but not before giving me one last pussy twitch.
The first one asked me to follow her to the next room I told her I would be right with her giving me a few seconds more to relax my pants.

I carefully stood up and followed her to the next room where she introduced me to this young guy and she told me that he would be taking care of me today and left us alone to get acquainted.

He’s about thirty, looked like he was in decent shape.
I asked him how long he was doing this and he said he had been there for a year and liked it.
Paid the bills.

He asked me what I was interested in and I told him everything and anything that caught my eye.
Just then I looked out of the room to the adjacent one and there was that same black woman staring at me still twitching her.
No wonder she had a booty on her with all that twitching going on.
I don’t know if she was getting wet just looking ate me or was craving a Mars bar.

I pulled my eyes away from her and Fred; we’ll call the guy Fred.
Or Bill.
He looked like a Paul though.
Barney.
We’ll call him Barney.
So Barney tells me he was going to take me to the media room to watch a movie first so off we went to the media room where there were already a half dozen other people along with another hostess.

We all sat in the front row.
There was only one row of chairs.
For forty-five minutes we watched a movie about the benefits of being there and how happy we will be by the time we leave.
The hostess after the movie asked if we had any questions.
No one did.
Almost all of us were stunned for one reason or another.

She talked to us for another thirty minutes before she led us back out to our escorts who were waiting just outside the door.
Barney just happened to be standing next to the Black woman; we’ll call her ummmm Thunder Thighs.
Barney waved me over; Thunder Thighs twitched in delight.

I shook my head and slowly walked over doing my best not to look in her direction.
He took me back to the room we were in and pulled out a stack of papers and laid them in front of me.
There was a lost of questions on them which he preceded to ask.

“So how did you hear about this place”?
“Ah well, for the last five years you have been calling and harassing me to come”.
.”So you didn’t see the commercial on TV”?
“Would it matter, this is by invite only”?
“Do you think you will become a member today”.
“I would like to think about it first”.
“You can’t, you have to decide now and if you decline you will never be asked to come back or will you be accepting, ever”
“ I don’t make rash decisions like that without thinking about them first unless someone has a gun pointed at my head and all you got is that pen in your hand and a Twitching Black woman outside that door and its not even the seventy dollar a year fee”.
“It’s not seventy a year. it’s seventy a month”.
“Say what”?!
“It’s seventy a month for the first three years and then it goes up to a hundred up to three hundred depending on what type of member you want to be”.
“Three hundred a month”!!!!!!
“Thunder Thighs better be able to spin like a helicopter for that”.
“And what do I get for paying that money”?
“The opportunity to do business with us and save lots of money”
“Save what money, I have to pay you just to be able to come here I am loosing already”.
“But when you shop you save money”.
“How”?
“Well, say you want to buy a couch like this one here”.
“The price is $4000, we can get it for you from the same manufacturer for $2800 or these blinds that cost $5000, we can get them for you for $2200”.

I look around the room and let my mind soak this in.
$4000 for a couch, $5000 for blinds.
Who the fuck buys $5000 blinds?
A $4000 microfibre couch.

“You know Barney, I wouldn’t pay $2200 for that couch and the blinds, don’t let me get started on that”.

“You charge shipping for anything you buy and you pay a monthly membership fee”.
“The only way you can make this work is if you are constantly buying stuff because if I save $500 on a TV and the TV is the only thing I buy for the year with the membership fees I would actually be loosing money”.

Barney sat there looking at me with this look on his face you get when you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar.
They say you will save because the big box stores have an overhead they have to pay for and they don’t which isn’t true.
They have to pay Barney, the other staff and the twitchy woman.
This was a big building so this had to cost them.
Where does this all come from.
We pay for it.

They showed us some over inflated products and them compared their prices to it which I must say were a lot lower but BUT I could get a better deal if I shopped around and save the membership fees.

“Barney, I don’t think this is for me”.
“ I respect that”, he said.
“I’ll show you out the door but before you go you can scratch ticket you got for coming here and see if you won anything”.

Everyone before me had gotten a “sorry” so I wasn’t expecting anything and used a key to scratch the paint away to reveal a number which he took to the reception area and checked it against a list of prizes there.
He looked at my number them back to the list and back to me>
”You won $500”.
“Really”?
“Yeah, the odds of that happening are 30,000-1”.
“Cool,.... I’m still not joining”.
I took my certificate for $500 bucks and walked out the door to the car.
As I drove off I looked back and I swear I saw Thunder Thighs pressed up against the front door still twitching.

Have a nice day, I did

Walker

Happy New Year

2011-01-04T15:05:00.002-05:00

It’s what?
2011
Ah man, just when I finally got used to writing 2010 I got to remember to make it 2011 now when I am writing down the date on almost everything you have to sign now a days.

First off

Happy New Year to everyone out there.
I hope you all had a fantastic time.
I know I haven’t been around but I actually, haven’t been around.

So, how were your holidays?
Mine………….were typically Walkerish.
It doesn’t matter where the fuck I go something will happen.
It’s the way it is.
It’s not like I look for weird shit to happen.
It just does.

This year I started the New Year in the States and D2 came along for the ride as long as she could take one of my laptops along to do some of her homework while we were in New York.
She says homework me thinks she wanted to keep in touch with her boyfriend besides I could use it to do a little blogging myself.
.
The problem is when I did go use it it was either jammed up with her homework and took forever to load or hung like an elephant with a palm tree rammed up its butt.
I couldn’t understand what the fuck was happening.
It’s one of my best and most reliable laptops.
I mean I never really used it but when I bought it off some friend of a friend for practically nothing because it was supposedly broken it was one of the best units out there.

After figuring out what was wrong I cleaned it up the best I could and put it away for a spare when and if it ever came up that I needed a good computer.
So to see it running like a dieing dog it puzzled me.
Then it said it was running out of space.
WTF?
I know it only has 30 gigs but there was nothing really on it but windows XP and MS Office so there should have been heaps of space so what the hell was D2 loading to fill up the rest?
I call her over to find out.

She comes over and I ask her what she was downloading and she says some Adobe software to use for a school project, something to do with making a movie.
I look at the download and its one gig.
ONE GIG!!!
Fuck, why is everything so damn big?
But still, it wasn’t enough to fill the rest of the hard drive so I went in to look for what was one there.

I open up documents and look at the folder in there.
By passing the cursor over each one it tells me how big it is and the bigger the more I want to know why.
D2 was sitting right there next to me as Inia was five feet away in the kitchen.
There’s this one folder called Home that was fifteen gigs.
I asked D2 what was in that file and she said she didn’t know.
So I opened it to see what was in there and as it sprung open we looked and both of us sat straight up.

I look at her, “What kind of fucken movies are you making”?
“OMG, that’s not mine I don’t use that folder I use the Walker folder”!!!!!!!
“What the fuck do you mean you only use the Walker, you are the only one that has been using this computer since I got it”.
"What the hell have you been downloading”?

Inside the folder were a bunch of movies.
One was gay porn with two black guys screwing on the thumbnail.
The one next to it was a thumbnail showing a dog fucking some ugly fat broad.
I quickly closed the folder and looked at her shocked face.

“Well, explain this”?
“I told you it’s not mine”.
“Maybe it’s your, it is you computer”.
“WTF DO YOU MEAN IT’S MINE”!!!!!!!
"Well it is your computer".
Inia is in the living room rolling around the floor in laughter.

I told D2 to go sit on the other side while I took care of the file.
I looked into the properties and it showed that it was created five years ago well before I had gotten it so I must have missed that file when I was cleaning it up thinking it might have been part of the windows because of its name.

Later it was all funny thinking about it but at the time, I think we were both more shocked than laughing.
Well I am back home now.
Inia’s at work and all the kids at school and me, just sitting here quietly typing this as I watch the laptop format.
Fuck that, I’m not taking any more chances and wait when I see they guy I bought this from.

Have a nice day

Walker

Tis The Season

2010-12-23T14:11:00.013-05:00

Or putting it simply

I wish you all a safe and happy time during this time of year.

Walker

How Much?

2010-12-20T13:17:00.011-05:00

Jingle Bells
Santa smells
A million miles away.

Oh what fun
It is to throw
All this money away.

That’s what happens when you follow a herd of reindeer all over the place.
How’s the shopping going?
Bloody hell, it’s getting fucken expensive.
Everything you want to buy you have to mortgage next year to afford it

I remember stories about how people used to get an orange for Christmas

now it’s an apple.

For the orange all you had to do was reach up and pull one down as opposed to cutting the tree down to sell for wood to buy an Apple.
The orange represents the thought.
The Apple represents, not thinking, unless you’re getting the Apple then thumbs up, you scored large.
The question is do you feel like Santa or Saint Nick?

What’s wrong with making gifts like they used to before Mattel and Barbie showed up?
They would probably last longer than the crap they sell today in stores in fact I would rather someone knit me a scarf than buying me one.
For one it means more and it would probably be warmer.
D1 is building a toy box for her cousin at school.
I couldn’t believe she took wood shop this year and decided to make everyone’s gift this Christmas.

I think that’s great.
I told her she can make Inia a back scratchier like this.

Inia will go bonkers over it as she scratches her inch when I’m not around.

It’s cheaper to make things than to go into debt trying to buy what you can’t afford.
Why spend $700

when with a little sweat and a saw you can bring this cheaper version home.

and with a little handy work you can get it to squat too

Ipods, playstations, TVs, laptops….the lists are long and expensive.
I’m not shy to say I can’t afford to drop five grand on gifts for sixteen people.
I don’t know how some people do it but this boy can’t and won’t.

Over the years I have learned ways to circumvent some of the cost of the big ticket items.
Sales are great for some things but for some it still isn’t worth it like TVs.
I wouldn’t buy a used TV especially the new LCD or Plasma TVs.
They don’t have a great life span so buying them new is the best way to go but for things like games I prefer to buy from places like KIJIJI.
You get great deals from parents whose kids have no more use for their game consoles.
It’s recycling without throwing money to the big box stores.

I have done most of my shopping this year except for a few last minute items I need to pick up.
Even with careful shopping a lot was spent but I must admit for what I spent I got a lot for my money.
The kids will be happy as will everyone else.

Giving is supposed to make you feel good.
I know it makes me feel good but when you are pressured to give more than you can, then it’s not what you should be doing.
I was given a list of possible gifts.
I was given a list but no one asked me for one.
Funny how that works eh?

My advice to anyone who may want it is to shop how you feel and in the end you will feel good.
I know I do.
It’s all apples and oranges in the end anyway.

Have a nice day

Walker

The Haunted Throne

2010-12-14T00:38:00.003-05:00

So you walk into your parent’s house and find them huddle in the corner.
I’m thinking someone farted and they were hiding from the smell but no it wasn’t, it was the haunted toilet that had them freaked out.

What?
Haunted toilet?
What, what the fuck is a haunted toilet?
What toilet is haunted?
Can toilets be haunted?

I mean I can see the benefits in haunting a toilet, all that sweet pussy sitting on your face.
That would be something until the diarrhea hits you between the eyes that is or some fat guy sits down and drops a log in your eye.
That’d hurt.

So I ask them, what haunted toilet?
My mother says the toilet in the basement is haunted, it flushes by its self.

Huh?

She says she sits on the toilet and when she is done and goes to flush it does it before she has a chance too.
I look at her thinking COO COO
I look at my father next to her and he is nodding his head telling me it does it to him too
He went for a piss and when he was done it flushed itself without him doing anything.
I’m thinking I need to check their prescriptions.
How much wine did you have with lunch?

My parents got this old toilet in the basement that must be at least thirty years old so it nothing fancy like some of the new ones out there that flushes it’s self.
The only thing new on it was the valve on the inside I changed last year.
Fucken thing is so old I am scared to put my hand in it so I didn’t catch whatever lives in it.

My mother says my brother is down there now trying to get rid of the problem.
Yeah, probably down there peeing on the seat.
I start towards the basement to see this possessed toilet when my brother came up and tells me it’s the weirdest thing he ever seen, the toilet flushes it’s self.

What the hell is wrong with these people?
I go down there and like an idiot I stand in front of the toilet and wait for it to flush.
Fifteen minutes I stood there staring at this ancient porcelain bowl waiting for it to open bowels of hell and swallow a gulp of water.
Nothing.

I pull the top off and look in.
What was I looking for?
I have no idea.
A Poltergeist maybe?

There was nothing there but water and the valve.
So, what now?
I flushed it and it did its thing.

Now what?
I stand there watching the tank fill.
Exciting….

It fills to where it’s supposed to and stops.
I wait
I listen
I don’t hear anything

I nudge the tank just in case the ghost of past shits has fallen asleep.
Nope, nothing
Nada

I put the lid back on and stand back to watch it for about ten minutes.
Sort of giving it one more chance to prove me wrong but it was a silent ten minutes.
“Fuck this”,
I turn to go out of the washroom and stop.

Maybe I got to piss in it?
This is ridiculous and walk out to the stairs then go back to the washroom and close the door behind me.
I’m an idiot

I stand in front of the toilet but don’t have to go.
So I turn the tap on and in about five minutes I’m making ripples in the center of the bowl.
When I’m done I pull up my fly and the toilet flushed.

Wtf

I stood there watching the bowl empty then refill.
This isn’t possible.
You got to do something bad to be made to haunt a toilet bowl I'm thinking then cursed to get stuck in a Greek’s house that loves eating lentils regularly.

Not satisfied with the possessed toilet theory I pull the top off the tank again and look in.
Water and the valve.
I’m looking at the valve and thinking about when I installed it.
It’s one of these fancy things that you can adjust to make it fill less water in the tank.
Up until recently it worked perfectly.
I look closely and there is a button on it and it was pushed down so I flipped it up.
I didn’t know what it was for but it was a button so I got to flip it up.
Nothing happened so it didn’t really matter.

My father, he who never throws anything away brought me the paperwork for the valve and after ten minutes of reading I learned that the switch enables the toilet to refreshes itself if you so choose.

I find that funny.
Something designed to help conserve gives you the option to waste more that a normal toilet.
I look at my father and ask him if he has been playing inside the toilet tank.
He said no.
He lied.
I know when he lies.

My mother told me he was tinkering with it a few weeks earlier and he said he only changed the flex pipe.
Uh huh and why was he in the tank?

When my father sees something he doesn’t understand he has to touch it.

I waited an hour in the kitchen and we didn’t hear the toilet flush again on its own so the mystery of the haunted toilet is solved.
After that I went home having a little chuckle to myself all the way up to the washroom and onto toilet when it rose up and bit my ass.
The toilet seat snapped as I sat on it and bit my butt.

Why not.

Have a nice day

Walker

Hello, It's Me

2010-12-09T03:53:00.003-05:00

Well that’s done, I hope those of you who read the Red Clay posts enjoyed them and if I ever decide to write another 21 post story just shoot me.
But, I did owe many of you an ending since I had abruptly stopped writing them so now that is done.
My head hurts.
I will leave them up until the end of December and archive them after that.

So what have I been up to for the last um three weeks?
Well, the porch is done and paid for.
That was fun.
Paying, what an adventure.
To avoid paying double taxes we paid for materials cash and the labor by cheque so that meant we had to go to the bank to get some money.
This is where the fun starts.

We needed seven grand and my parents didn’t feel it was safe for my father to walk out of the bank with that much cash on him so they wanted me to go along for protection; after all I am the gangster in the family according to my mother.
I look at my mother and enlighten her a little.
That was 25 years ago when I was younger and more flexible or at least didn’t creak and crack when I moved.
At my current age I’m scared the next fart might spit out a vital organ.

So off to the bank we went.
Over the years the area has changed a lot.
The branch my parents have been using for the last forty years is now in what is called China Town, an area that once was mostly inhabited by Italians and other southern Europeans.
Most have of them have moved out to the suburbs but some diehards like us have stayed and more or less blended in.
That’s what been North Americans should be like.

That’s what we are right?
Descendants of a bunch of interlopers who came over the oceans to impose ourselves on the native population by either killing them or cheating them out of what is, was rightfully theirs.
We got them drunk and stoned then empties their pockets.
But you got to give the natives credit, they learn real quick.
Today they're killing us back with cheap smokes after they give us free booze at their casinos as we loose our houses at the crap tables.
That’s one way to get the land back.

So we walk into the bank and there isn’t one person in there that isn’t Asian.
Not even the token teller.
Me I don’t give a shit but my father he’s like.
“They’re all Chinese”.
Me I say, “No, some are Vietnamese, Korean, yeah some are Chinese”.
He looks around and says, “They’re all Chinese to me”.
I tell him, “The teller on your right, she’s Vietnamese, and the one over at the other end, now she’s Chinese”.
“How do you know that”? he asks.
“Well it’s obvious”, I tell him ”The Chinese chicks have bigger tits”.
He gave me a dirty look ”You’re a Malaka, that’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard”.

We stood there in line for about five minutes waiting and he says ”How do you know she’s not Korean”?
“They have fatter nipples”.
He turned his head towards me and shot me this sharp look, I thought his eye was going to pop out, it’s a good thing a teller opened up before he could say anything.

At the booth the teller asks him to slide his card in the slider but my father doesn’t have a bankcard.
He refuses to own one.
He doesn’t trust computers so, no card.
The teller punches in his account number and brings up his info.
My father passes him a paper showing how much money he wants.
The teller looks at the computer and turns to my father and says he has to fill in a request for this amount and it would take two working days.

My father asked me what he said and I told him in Greek. “She said you can’t have your money”.
“What”!!!!
“Why”?
“It’s my money”.

I explained to him that the bank didn’t keep umm $7000 in the bank any more.
My father stood there in a trance for about thirty seconds.
“No money”?
The teller shakes her head at him.

He looked over at me and in Greek says, “The Chinese took my money to China”.
I told him “No they didn’t, this is the Bank Of Nova Scotia, they just bought the province and moved your money over there and invested it in golf courses”.

Imagine that, once you could go to the bank and draw out ten, twenty grand, now you have to make an appointment two days in advance to visit it.
I told her to put the request in and we’ll be bake in two working days.
As she is filling in the form she looks at us and apologizes first but says she has to ask by law, “What do you need the $7000”.
I translate to my father and we talk for a second then turn to her and say,”There’s a sale on chicken” and I made her write it down.
It’s our fucken money so the government could go screw themselves.

It’s bad enough they are in our pockets as deep as they are, they have no business how we spend the pennies we’ve managed save over the years.
They’re probably pissed off they didn’t get it all I guess.

With the paper work done the old man and I headed for the car.
On the way he says, “She was half Korean and half Chinese”.
“Yeah, that she was”.

Have a nice day

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Twenty One

2010-12-02T00:00:00.002-05:00

The smoke drifted up into the night sky dispersing as all dreams do in the morning light.
Thilivhali looked up through the smoke at the witchdoctor and asked the old man if this is what awaits him in the future.
To loose everything he loves, to die alone on some strange soil.

Was this his destiny or was there a way to change his future?
The old man look down at the boy and told him that you can’t run away from your destiny and history is what you make of it.
What is meant to be will be and in the end what is meant to happen will or there would never be a balance in the universe.

It doesn’t matter what path you take into the jungle they will all lead to the other side just that some will take longer, some shorter; others are perilous but in the end you will always find the other side.
What path you take the witchdoctor said, will determine how hard it will be.
The old man left the boy sitting in the night by the dieing fire to absorb his words and think on the events of this evening.
The future was his to dwell on, to create and make his own destiny.

As Jonas watched he saw a young couple get up and walk off towards a cluster of huts.
The woman was beautiful; she would fetch a nice price if he didn’t keep her for himselfhe thought or maybe he would just keep her for the trip across the ocean and then sell her when he was done with her.

Putting the looking glass away he sat down to wait for dawn’s early light before they strike.
They will go in before they could get a chance to fully wake up and their wits together to put up any resistance.
The idea would be to limit the casualties and increase the profits, it’s all about the profits.

Just before dawn as a fog drifted into the village from the jungle and with no one stirring, the slavers snuck out of their hiding places, stealthily moving out of the forest and into the village.
This trip had yet to produce any slaves or ivory.
Jonas was loosing money by the day with Smith less than a week away from picking them up on the coast.

A hundred slavers charged through the centre of the village letting out loud frightening screams all at once to startle the inhabitants just before they hit the huts to paralyse their victims as they barged into their lives throughout the village.
Hut to hut they entered and found nothing, not a soul was to be found anywhere in any of the huts.

Jonas stood in the centre of the village pistol in hand watching everything unfold before him.
It was the same story village after village that they had raided.
Nothing, no one, all were empty and had been for days.
His lieutenants reported to him that they had found no one in the whole village just the burning embers from celebrations of the night before.
Yes, the night before the village was full of people dancing around, and that young woman he saw through his spy glass was here but where were they now, where was she.

Jonas went from hut to hut to look for himself and true enough they were all empty of people but their belongings were still there.
He was starting to feel a little uneasy.
For some reason his senses told him that he was in trouble but just couldn’t put his finger on what it might be.
Jonas called his men in and they started gathering at the centre of the village to get new orders from their leader.

He was looking at a map of the area to see if there was some place they could go and find where the villagers had gone too.
Just then a baboon’s scream filled the morning air.
The trees of the jungle reached out with long fingers and even longer nails to touch them as spears rained down on the slavers while they all stood around in the open at the centre of the village.

Many fell in the first volley as the rest scattered looking for cover from the deadly rain.
Jonas barely survived a spear that went by his face.
He pressed up behind a hut for protection.
He had to gather his forces and get them to hold their fire because right now, they were only wasting powder shooting at shadows.

He stuck his head around the side of the hut and called for one of his lieutenants to come over, then watched the man get halfway to him before a spear downed him.
Cowering behind the hut he called out into the air for everyone to hold their fire.
As silence slowly fell across the village, an eerie silence that was interrupted by a loud roar that came from the jungle, a prelude to the next chapter of this history.

Destiny was being created as hundreds of warriors poured out of the edge of the jungle shaking shields and spears at the slavers in their village showing their courage and fierceness just before as one they all rushed out like a pride of wild lions.

Jonas looked at the mass of warriors wondering who they were and where they all had come from.
From what he had heard there was no other tribe in the area and none of this size.
Looking up to the other end of the village a warrior stood tall wrapped in a lion skin flanked by two other tall warriors, one older one younger.

Thilivhali looked down towards his enemy, and enemy who he had never met but one he had known so well for the last ten years of his life and leading up to this day.
Ten years he dreamt of this moment, this man, the thinking and planning for this, his wedding day, a day of rebirth for him and his people.
This is the day the shed any innocence they may have had left but not for glory but the right to live.
For the right to be free and exist to live as they wish.

The witchdoctor had said that destiny was written in history and it couldn’t be changed but each path was different to get to one’s destiny and it didn’t matter which he chose the end result would be the same.
For years he had been planning for this very day.
His whole existence so far in life was for this moment and its outcome will determine how his, they’re future will unfold.

They laughed at him when he first went to the chief and the elders with his story and explained what had to be done.
He told them his story and what was needed to be done, to prevent his dream from becoming reality but it fell on deaf ears so he had to win them over.
First his family who like the rest didn’t believe him either and then by gaining the respect of his elders.

As he grew in the years leading up to manhood, his many deeds for the tribe and by caring for them he gained the respect of the elders and they began to listen to him.
They had grown to trust his judgment over the years and the witchdoctor respected him also, so they decided it would do no harm in being cautious thus agreeing to his plan and the defences he proposed.

After convincing his elders he spent years talking to other villages and trying to bring then into his final plan.
He knew it was not enough for just them alone to fight, the more they were the better their chances were of succeeding.
At first they started thinking him insane as those who first heard him at his village thought until stories filtered back to them that whole villages had disappeared without a trace.

After hearing the stories from the survivors milling around in the jungle they were willing to listen to him and give their support.
The hardest thing was convincing the other villages to move all their people here to his village and prepare for this battle.
It’s hard to get people to leave their homes and belonging but it was essential that they were all close for their protection.
It took him almost another year to train the warriors and to prepare this trap for the slavers, a fitting wedding gift for his wife and their future he thought.

Now the time was here and he had to carve out his future but to do that he had to win or they were doomed along with everyone else as was their way of life, as it would vanish as does the spilled blood into the ground.
Like a general he stood at the top of the village and watched as his warriors charge the flaming sticks of the slavers, some falling but the rest rushing in fearlessly until both clashed against each other in the centre of the village.

Hali woke up in the morning and went down to the post office to mail his package then returned to the hotel before Ada had awakened.
They went for breakfast and then returned to get their luggage to take off for the African coast and their new future together.

Thilivhali started running towards the white man followed by his father and brother, side by side they charged towoards their future and that of their village as destiny beckoned them forward into time.
Three slavers jumped out at Thilivhali with a swords but Thilivhali blocked the blow of one with his shield and impaled him with the spear in his other hand as his brother lashed out at the other two killing one but was cut by the third before Thilivhali’s point silenced him forever.

His father had run past them and went onward towards the white man.
He remembered the stories his son had told him.
This was the demon he had to kill to save his children’s future.
Thilivhali and his brother turned and raced off behind their father when they saw their father stumble but then regained his step and kept on charging towards the white man.

Holding up his brother they ran together when they saw their father’s club come down on the white man hitting him on top of the shoulder and sending him back against the hut but before Thilivhali’s father could raise up the club once more to deliver the finishing blow he collapsed backwards to the ground.

The battle raged all around Jonas as it was now hand to hand combat with spears and swords.
He looked at the other end of the village and could see the three warriors coming towards him and he grabbed the pistol in his waistband, his sword in the other he waited for them to get closer.

Halfway to him his men jumped out and engaged the two of them but the old one pressed on until he was within range but gave him a little more so that he was sure before he raised the pistol and shot him in the chest, but he kept on coming.
Before he could grab the other pistol the warrior was upon him and coming down with a club hitting him in the shoulder sending him back against a hut before the old man fell at his feet.

A sharp pain shot through his shoulder as he lay back on the side of the hut.
He knew his collar bone was broken.
Looking back up the path he could see the other two now running towards him, he knew he was the focus of their attention but why?

Thilivhali’s brother fell to the ground, leaving him there he kept on until he got close to the man when he saw him raise his weapon.
Side stepping the thunder went past him as he move in for the kill and certain victory.
Stabbing out with the spear the white man knocked it away with his long knife and came at Thilivhali with a fury, hacking and slashing left and right at him.

With pain shooting through his left shoulder, Jonas regained his feet and stood up to meet the charging men.
The young one fell but the big warrior still came on.
Grabbing his gun with his good hand he pulled it out and took aim but his shot missed when the warrior dodged left.
Now it would be his skills with a blade that would be put to the test.

He parred the thrust of the spear and lashed out at him but the warrior was quick on his feet or had his wound slowed him down.
He charged in and started slashing and stabbing at the warrior but to now end until the man slipped on a stone and fell to the ground leaving him to the mercy of his blade.
Seeing his chance Jonas rushed in and stabbed down but the warrior got his shied up in time and deflected the attack.
Jonas stomped down with his boot on the shield and tried to hack off the others head but he couldn’t get a clean shot at it.

Even wounded the white man fought like a crazed beast refusing to give up and had put Thilivhali down to the ground.
He needed to get on his feet before he was cut badly by one of these wild blows that were raining down on him.
Pushing up with his shield he made an attempted to get up from the ground but the white man’s long knife came violently down cutting off the top of his shield.
Then with a back swing of his blade it was knocked from Thilivhali hands leaving him on the ground on his back defenceless and at this man’s mercy.

All around him the slavers were once again getting the upper hand on the villagers.
Their long knives overpowered the spears they used by cutting the heads off of them leaving his warriors with just the shafts to fight with.
Slowly the slavers pushed the warriors back towards the jungle.

Ada watched from the jungle at the battle unfolding before them and could see that the villagers were loosing.
She was looking at the beginning of the end of everyone she loved and cared for.
Her whole world was slowly being slaughtered.
Turning she looked at the other around her, old men, women and children.
She looked at her mother her sisters…

Ada leaped out of the jungle with a fury, screaming at the top of her lungs and holding a spear with both hands charging at he main body of combatants.
Behind her came hundreds of women, children and old people, all armed with anything they can use to fight with.
They followed Ada into the fray to fight along side their loved ones.

Ada stormed in ramming her spear into the throat of an unsuspecting slaver then watched as he crumpled to the ground blood gurgling from the gaping wound like a slaughtered goat.
Her father looked to his side and smiled at his daughter, her brother was next to him fighting with his life shining brightly through his eyes like the proud warrior that he was.
It was a vicious battle with everyone’s lives on the line.
People pressed up together, friend and foe, this was hand to hand combat with survival on the line for all of them, villagers and slavers included.

The slavers were pushed back by the weight of the new force that joined in the fight, turning the battle back in favor of the villagers.
Bodies piled up while the earth soaked up the river of blood as it flowed amidst the heat of battle.

Jonas looked down on this warrior and had to admire his strength and fighting skill but it wasn’t enough to beat him so now he will have his life spill out at the end of his sword.
Raising it over his head with his good arm he paused for a second to smile down at Thilivhali and was bringing it down when something pushed out the front of his shirt.
Jonas looked down in bewilderment as he saw the tip of a spear slowly emerging out the front of his shirt.

Jonas Beacham III was sitting in his study reading the newspaper when his butler walked in with the mail for the day and handed it to his master.
He told him to put the mail on his desk and he would look at it as soon as he was done with the newspaper.
He was going through the national section when something caught his eye.
There was a small piece about a shootout that happened at a desert bar in Nevada two months earlier.
It seems that a man shot it out with two bikers and was killed along with the bartender and the two bikers.
There were two survivors and they were both cleared of any wrong doing.
One was an old man who has never been seen since that day and the other a young black man on his way back to California for his final semester in medical school.

It seems that one of the dead men had given a satchel to one of the survivors and told him he could have it.
The police have decided to let him keep it along with the other contents that were in it since there was no one willing to stake claim to it or dispute the boy’s claim.

Jonas smiled and sank back into his leather chair.
He had finally shaken the family curse and he could sleep better at night knowing that he didn’t have to worry about what bad thing was to befall him next.
His whole family’s history has been nothing but blood and money with murder being the main tool.
They were cursed by someone for some thing his great great grandfather had done and all suffered for it since but now it was over.
He finally got rid of the cursed statue that bond him to the curse.
It wouldn’t let him throw it away like it did to his predecessors and he couldn’t give it away either but it could be stolen.
The $500,000 was the sum for the profits made by his ansestor that brought this curse on them.
He didn’t know if it would make a difference by repaying the curse back but he didn’t want anything connecting him personally or his family to the past or the curse and thought this would balance it out.

With a sigh of relief Jonas call his butler and told him to bring him a brandy, it was a good day to celebrate then got up and walked to his desk and started looking at the days mail when the butler came in and handed him his brandy, that’s when he saw a package sitting in front of him.
Picking up the brandy he took a sip from his glass and was wondering about that package, he wasn’t expecting anything from any one.
Drinking the rest of the brandy he put the glass down and began opening the package, inside he found a small object wrapped up in paper.
Unwrapping it he suddenly froze, it was in his hands again…but how?

He recoiled in fear and tried to toss it away but his hand held a tight grip around it and it was now starting to feel warmer.
Grabbing it with both hands to try and dislodge it only trapped the other hand and was now holding onto it just as tight as the other was and it was getting hotter.

He tried to pry his hands apart but they didn’t seem to want to let go, struggling only made his grip tighter around the statue.
The statue was beginning to glow red like a hot coal in his hands sending searing pain through his brain.
His clothes began to emit smoke when they burst in flames engulfing his whole body.
His screams went unanswered as he fell to the floor trying to put out the flames by rolling around to no avail as the flames rose to the ceiling.
Then as suddenly as it started it was over.

Thirty minutes later the butler walked into the study and found his master laying on the floor dead with a clay statue laying next to his right hand.
He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a blood stained handkerchief and tossed it next to the old man on the floor.
Mary Smith’s great grandson turned and walked out the door.
With every step John took down the street time ceased to exist as did Jonas Beacham III existence slowly dissolved into the the neverever as did the generation before him.

Thilivhali braced himself for the blow the white man was preparing to bring down on him when he saw him stop, his eyes frozen in a state of shock.
A spear emerged out of the man’s chest and he fell to his knees at his feet dropping the long knife next to him and grasped at the spear’s head.

Thilivhali pushed back to a safer distance and stood up just before the white man fell over on his face.
Standing there behind where the man was standing stood Ada, a scared look on her face.

She looked up at Thilivhali and he went to her, taking her in his arms while his eyes scanned the immediate area around them.

His brother had come up to them now and were joined by a handful of warriors.
Most of the slavers were killed but some got away into the jungle, Thilivhali stopped the warriors from chasing them.
Her wanted to let them go to tell others that there is a price to pay if they ever come back.
He told them to take the dead slavers and lay them out on the plain for the veltures to feast on and to let their bleached bones be a warning to others who don’t come in peace.

That night it was decided that they would move deep into the jungle and away from this new danger that had come upon them.
During the meeting of elders the other tribes decided to join them as it was also decided that Thilivhali would be the new Chief of all their people.

In the morning light 1000 men women and children lined the outskirts on the village waiting for their new chief to give the order to move on to their new home, a safer one they hoped.
Thilivhali signaled them to start and they moved into the jungle and out of sight as he stayed back until the last person had dusappeared into the bosom of their world.

Turning he stood there staring as the fire engulfed the main hut, his father laying at the entrance wrapped in his lionskin gaurding the entrance for eternity.
A small hand took his.and he looked over to Ada standing next to him smiling.
It took them a month to get to what was to become their new home before they started to building a new village.

Ada curled up to him when they lay down in their new hut and whispered to him that she was with child.
Smiling at his wife Thilivhali kissed her forhead and told her they would call him Hali Diego.
Ada gave him a strange look then laughed and asked him how did he know it was going to be a son, it might be a daughter.
Thilivhali smiled wrapped his arm around his wife and went to sleep.

Dalton Henry II was watching his son Dalton Henry III run up and down the long hallway of their Tripp St. home in Chicogo, while his wife was helping their daughter Annabelle get ready for the trip down to Georgia and their family reunion.
It was supposed to be a huge shindig with thousands of people.
His great grandfather Dalton Henry a banker before the civil war had married Annabelle Baker in 1856 and help save her father’s plantation.
Her brother had married Rebecca Baker and their children had later married into the Butler family creating one of the largest families in the south.

The end or is it just the beginning of another dream to a different tomorrow?
Life’s struggle is not the path taken but the choice to take it.

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Twenty

2010-12-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hali was deep in his hole hugging the ground tightly to his breast anticipating that at any moment January 1 1968 was to be his last day on this earth.
The ground all around him was being violently torn up by mortars.
They had been warned that the Vietcong might do something on their New Year but being as it was an important holiday to all Vietnamese and they had agreed to a three-day ceasefire.

The atmosphere at camp was relaxed on that New Years Eve, up until the early morning of New Years day, when they came.
They came like a dark wave out of nowhere and everywhere causing death and destruction to everything and everyone like a hoard of locusts swarming across a wheat field.

They had been camped on the south bank of the Perfume River when the attack came.
First the mortars then rockets stabbed into their fortifications before they came out of the darkness like ghosts riding the smoke belching death with every step.
They came by the thousands.
Eyes bulging and screaming like demons from the deepest pits of hell they came.
They came at them with their AK47s showering down death from every direction.

Ten months earlier he had been in Louisiana wandering the bayou either collecting herbs or fishing for catfish or crawfish.
At night he would sit out on the porch with his son in his arms while his mother rocked nearby in her chair.
The boy’s mother, Manon...she had died after childbirth from fever so it was just he and his mother to raised the boy now but his unit was ordered to Vietnam.
Now he was far from home.

It seemed his life was just beginning a year earlier when Manon told him she was pregnant.
It was right after entering boot camp.
Now, he might never see his son again, his only comfort was in knowing his mother would care for the boy if something were to happen and he didn’t come back again.

There were only a couple of hundred men in camp and they were spread out really thin with large gaps between them.
Like lunatics from an insane asylum the enemy ran towards them.
Hali and his comrades poured a wall of death into them but they just kept coming.
With the burning fires all around them now to light up the night their exposed positions were being fired on more accurately than before as the rockets and mortars come down from overhead.

Hali looked to his left and could see Zawolski and Henderson shooting into the oncoming enemy.
To his right he could hear the chatter of the M-60 manned by O’Rieley and Moses “Eagle Feather” Jones.
His partner Frank Enriques was three feet away from him picking and choosing his targets as fast as he could but they were still getting closer and closer to their position.

Lt. Col. J. Beecham III sat at his desk two miles from where the battle was taking place busily trying to find a way out of there before they were overrun and he was killed.
He had too much at stake to be killed here in this shit hole he thought to himself.
Just yesterday he got his leave approved to return home for his father’s funeral.
His father never approved of him joining the military but he joined just to spite his father whom he despised more than anyone he knew.

When he was a boy he watched his father push his mother to drink herself to death then put him in military school for the next twelve years.
Twelve years passed without a word from his father.
He wasn’t even at his graduation when he finally finished school.
It wasn’t until he found out that he’d joined the Marine Corps did his father Jonas Beecham II speak to his son and that was only to belittle him in front of his commanding officer.

Now he was dead.
Fuck him and good riddance he thought to himself as he stuffed papers into his attaché case.
The only time his father ever sat him down to speak to him was right after his mother died.
He was drunk, his breath reeking of brandy.
He said his mother was a whore he fucked in some back room then mumbled about some kind of family curse.

The only curse he ever saw was his father and now he wouldn’t have to bare that demon with him gone.
That’s if he could get out of this hellhole.

He had been in the Corps now for twenty years and had climbed through the ranks safely until Vietnam but it all wasn’t that bad.
In fact, until now Vietnam had been very profitable for him and had amassed a fortune that he had hidden in various foreign banks waiting for the day he could leave this army of fools and live a life of leisure.
If he got anything from his father it was his business sense and maybe a little of his cruelty.

Over the last five years he along with some acquaintances from school back in the United States had a lucrative business going back and forth shipping cash and drugs by using military planes.
This allowed them to bypass customs by landing safely on air force bases back home and abroad all at Uncle Sam’s expense.
So many planes were coming and gong there was no time to check them all and his friends had people working on the receiving end thus avoiding any detection of the goings on behind their backs.

As he closed the case there was a knock at the door.
Picking up his 45 he asked who it was, Corporal Smith, his driver was there to drive him to the airfield to catch his helicopter.
He told him he would be with him shortly then grabbed his coat from the coat rack and his case.
He was going to miss the money he made here and the women but with what money he had along with his father’s estate, he should be able to keep him in the lifestyle he craved.
Besides, he would think of ways to make more.

“You will never amount to anything in the military” Jonas Beecham II, his father said to him twenty years earlier.
With this last shipment he would have twelve million dollars put away but the old fucker went and die before he could choke him with it.

Hali grabbed the radio and called Headquarters for flairs to be put up.
Less than a minute later the night sky lit up and they could see, a sea of Vietcong moving on them.
He knew there was no way to stop this many.
There were hundreds just in front of him alone, as an ocean of flesh running across the field pouring waves of death down upon him and his comrades.

Picking up the radio again he sent in the coordinates for some heavy gun support just a hundred yard ahead of their position then yelled to Enriques to get ready to pull back towards H.Q.
They could hear the shells coming in overhead before erupting on the ground showering everything, everyone with dirt, blood and scorched flesh everywhere.

Standing up he call to his left at Zawolski and Henderson to pull back then he looked to the right and could already see the others falling back with them.
It was a mad dash falling back a hundred yards to their secondary positions where they dug in once more to wait for the enemy to occupy their old positions.
They didn’t have long to wait.
Despite the merciless pounding they took in the open, there was still a swarm of screaming bodies crawling over their old parapets.

Reaching down Hali picked up a plunger and twisted the handle time and time again setting off the explosives that they had planted in their old foxholes sending bodies and parts sailing through the air.
They had anticipated this might happen and had prepared this little trap.
As the fireworks were going off they poured clip after clip into the smoke and dust but the enemy was still advancing on their new positions.
This was suicide.

Hali reached down to his belt and pulled out his last clip.
He yelled over at Enriques for ammo and Enriques said he was on his last one too.
This was it.
Each shot had to count and then run for it or fight hand to hand with an empty gun.
Zawolski and Henderson ran over both looking for more ammunition.
He told him there was none and to prepare to pull out but to look out for any weapons from those who were killed.

There was nothing left to do.
They had enough ammunition to cover their retreat and with any luck maybe find some along the way back and maybe make a stand but to stay now would only bring on their own death in a short time.

Taking all the smoke grenades they still had left they pulled then tossed them along the route they were heading to, to cover their retreat.
They pulled up to Moses, the big black man stood there legs planted into the ground cursing, swearing down at the enemy as he poured hot lead into the darkness with the M60 in his arms.
O’Rieley was leaning up against a tree with his face blown off.
Hali told Moses they were pulling out then yanked O’Rieley’s tags from around him neck.

As they turned to bug out between the sandbagged walls behind them, a group of Vietcong burst out of the smoke and upon Moses.
Moses cut into them with the big gun mowing six down with his first sweep but was hit repeatedly as he swung around to face a new group.
Enriques stumbled, tripping Hali.
Zawolski and Henderson went to their knees picking off the enemy as they swarmed around Moses.
Moses raised the big gun and fired into them until the big gun went silent then used it as a club to beat down the enemy as their bayonets pierced his body.

More and more poured out of the smoke until ten stood over Moses continuously stabbing him in the chest.
Hali crawled over to Enriques to see how he was.
He was hit inside the thigh and bleeding profusely.
Doing his best to tie it up under these condition he help him to his feet and they all fell back together.

They had gone half way back when they had to stop to rest.
Henderson had found a shotgun along the way and Hali picked up a 45 from a dead officer.
Enriques was in bad shape and needed a medic as soon as possible before he went into shock.

Lt. Col. J. Beecham III with Corp Smith following behind with his bags made their way to the airstrip for a ride out to safety by helicopter but when he got to the hanger there was no helicopter.
The only helicopters were ferrying out wounded and was told it was only for wounded and he would have to wait for his to arrive if it was coming at all.

He could hear the battle getting close and knew he wouldn’t make it if he didn’t get out now.
He told the Corporal to watch his bags until he got back and took off towards the communications tent to see if there was another helicopter coming to get him.

Jonas ran through the dust and smoke until he got to the tent only to find it blown up.
Stepping back out to look for someone to help him mortar shells exploded all around knocking him to the ground.
A continuous barrage rained around him for what seemed like an eternity before it stopped as quickly as it had started.
Jonas lay there in a daze.
Deaf from the concussion that had knock him to the ground he stared around in terror before he started pushing himself off the ground.
As he got to his feet two men stumbled out of the smoke running towards him.
Quickly he pulled out his gun and took aim at the nearest one then shot him through the body.
He then turned it towards the second man but before he could shoot they both fell to the ground in a heap.

Hali help Enriques to his feet again as Zawolski and Henderson covered their retreat.
As they reached the outskirts on the HQ bunker it started raining mortars.
They stumble through the exploding ground trying to get to the safety of the bunker but didn’t make it.
A mortar landed under Zawolski ripping him to pieces.
Henderson stood there staring blankly, Zawolski femur sticking out of his chest with Zawolski’s boot still on the foot.

Hali carrying Enriques moved into the HD compound when something punched him in the side spinning him around and to the ground.
Both he and Enriques lay on the ground side by side now helpless.
He rolled over on his back and stared up at the night sky.
The sky was clear and the stars twinkled as they did back on the Bayou.
He remembered the nights they sat on the porch staring out at the stars together.

Jonas walked over to the two men on the ground and looked down at them.
These were two of his own men and not enemy combatants.
He looked around to see if anyone saw anything then bent down to see how they were.
One was shot in the leg and in a bad way.
The other one was shot in the side and would probably survive with immediate help but if he did that, they would find out it was he who shot him and could be used against him.
But on the other hand he could use these men as a ticket out of here.
Jonas stood up and thought for second.
Enriques looked up at Jonas as Jonas raised the gun then pulling the trigger once, then again.

Jonas made his way to the medical helicopter with Corporal Smith on his heels carrying his gear.
Jonas told him he found a wounded man needing evacuating immediately and told the pilot he and the Corporal were coming along as they all pilled into the last helicopter and flew off.
Hali opened his eyes and looked up at Jonas.
It was the last time he ever opened his eyes.
The pilot came around after landing to check on the wounded man but he had died before reaching safety.
Looking at the body the pilot noticed the bruises around his throat then looked at Jonas.
Jonas stared back at him saying nothing.
The pilot though he wouldn’t want to mess with that man as he slowly backed away.

Hali sat on the edge of the bed looking at the two tags.
They were his father’s.

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Ninteen

2010-11-30T00:00:00.003-05:00

The banging on the door woke up Hali with a start; his heart raced his lungs gasped for a breath of air.
The pounding sounded like the beat of the drums from his dream.
Maybe that’s what it all was all along, a freaky dream.

He rolled out of bed and opened the door to find Adalia standing there with a worried look on her face.
She asked him where he had been, she was calling his phone and there was no answer then she said she got worried so she came down to see if he was ok.

Hali looked at the table next to the bed and could see the phone flashing, indicating that there were messages waiting to be heard.
He told her that after he left her he came straight home and passed out on the bed then had this crazy dream about being in Africa and there were warriors and lions chasing him.

She gave him a puzzled stare then asked him what had happened to his shirt.
Hali looked down at his shirt and it was torn, actually it looked more like it was slashed and there were five rips that went from left to right like someone or something struck out at him in his sleep.
Pulling the shirt off he could see five red lines across his chest underneath where the shirt had been torn.
They didn’t hurt and the skin wasn’t broken but there was something definitely there.

Adalia reached out and touched his chest where the red marks were and told him maybe he did it himself in his sleep.
He told her it wasn’t possible, there wasn’t anything in the bed sharp enough and he didn’t have any nails to speak of let alone sharp enough to tear his shirt in this manner.
His roommate was out of town at his parent’s place for another two days so someone else couldn’t have done it, the door was locked from the inside.
This was quite the mystery.

Adalia stepped closer passing her hand over his chest and around his neck then asked him why he didn’t tell her that his roommate was out of town.
He was fumbling with an answer when she bent closer and kissed his lips.

Jonas sat in his leather chair at the club drinking a brandy when Leonard Cohn walked in and sat across from him.
Leonard called a server over and asked Jonas if he needed a refill to which Jonas declined.

Seeing Leonard here made him uneasy, especially after recent events and was beginning to dislike his company more and more since the day his son was born.
Rumour had it that Prohibition was coming to an end so his partnership with Cohn will not be necessary anymore and he relished that thought of not having to deal with him or being in the same room with this man.

Leonard sat in his leather chair cradling his drink telling an idea to Jonas about expanding the business with the club by opening a number of them throughout Chicago and maximizing their profits.
Go where the rich customers were instead of waiting for them to come to down to the rough side of town.
With his connection and Jonas’ buildings throughout the business sector of the city they could get more wealthy clients.

This was not acceptable to Jonas and told Leonard he had to think about it especially with the end of Prohibition eminent.
A venture like that would be a big risk.
Leonard told him he had a point but that they could still make a lot of money with the gambling and the women they employed.

Leonard’s persistence was beginning to irritate Jonas so much he told his partner he didn’t feel well all of a sudden and not in the proper frame of mind but he would think about it then got up telling the other he was going home.

Leonard had sensed Jonas’ uneasiness when he arrived at the club and joined Jonas.
This is what he was hoping for.
Leonard likes having the upper hand with the people he does business with and recent events gave him something to hold Jonas’ attention and use to get his support down the road when he needed it.
Leonard stood up and told Jonas to go home and take care of himself, especially now that he had another mouth to feed.
He asked how his son was doing.

Jonas stared at Leonard regretting ever meeting and doing business with this man.
He told him the baby was fine as was his wife.
Leonard smiled and told him that was good news, he didn’t want his partner to be unhappy, especially right now that they will be expanding and needing his full attention and support.
As Leonard was turning to go back to his seat he stopped to hand Jonas a rolled up newspaper and told him there was a story on the front page that might interest him.
Leonard bid him a good evening and went back to his drink.

Jonas took the newspaper and walked out of the club to his car.
He sat in the front seat and unrolled the newspaper.
Right there on the front page the headline said, “Woman Found Murdered”.
The story went on to describe the body of a woman found floating in Lake Michigan.
The article stated that at first she was thought to have drowned but the lack of water in her lungs and the presence of ligature marks around her neck suggests she was strangled then tossed into the water to make it look like a suicide.

The article also said there was also evidence suggesting that she had recently given birth and the police were looking into what has happened to the child.
The police are asking the public’s help with any information that may lead to the identity of this woman or the circumstances of her death to contact police immediately.
Jonas read the article a couple of times before he rolled the paper up and put it on the seat next to him then started the car and drove off towards home.
All the way home Jonas was trying to think of a solution to his dilemma.
There had to be an easy solution to his problem and a way to sever his connection to Leonard.

A hundred yards before the edge of the swamp Hali passed the reins to Jeb then told him to keep pushing them all the way to the swamp and to keep going until they were safe.
He will try and catch up later then jumped from the wagon with a rifle and took up position behind some brush to try and slow down their pursuers.

He could see the riders in the distance coming quickly, there must have been a dozen riders, to many to stop but if he could slow them down enough for the others to get away then that would be enough.
Using an old poplar for cover he took aim and shot out the horse from under the lead rider causing the others to scatter in every direction.
Picking up the slack on the trigger he shot out the heel from one man’s boot and the ear off another before they all managed to get behind some cover.

Crouching as low as he could he moved off fifty back back and to his left changing his position so they wouldn’t be able to center in on his last position.
If he could keep them at bay until darkness came then he may have a chance to run off into the swamp and find the others.

He crouched behind a bush watching them slowly weave their way towards him.
Hali was doing his best to avoid any unnecessary violence but if he had to he would kill, he has before when threatened.
Slowly he moved back some more trying to stay ahead of them to make sure no one got behind him to cut him off from their retreat.

The sound of a breaking twig stopped him in his tracks squatting down low while listening for another sounds.
It was faint but he could hear it, it was like a soft displacement of sound close.
He remained there motionless for what seemed like and eternity until he saw what he was waiting for, a tall man moving towards him.
Gripping the rifle tightly in his hand he waited until the man was almost on top of him before he stepped up bringing the stock of the rifle up to the side of the man’s head knocking him to the ground.

A bullet sprayed bark from a tree next to him stinging his face before he turned to where the sound of the gun had come from.
He let go a shot doubling over another man who had been following the first one.
Hali took a quick look to make sure there wasn’t a third man before turning and running towards the swamp.

No sooner had he gone half way to his goal when four horsemen burst out from the woods on the side of where he was running too.
They were bearing down on him quickly and had no placer to run as he could also hear the other moving in from behind him.
This was it then,. no where to run or hide so he might as well make his last stand here.

The riders coming from the woods will get to him before the ones behind him so he should brace them first and then see what’s left after that for the others.
Throwing the gun to his shoulder he stepped towards his attackers and opened up on them just as their guns came up.
Dirt kicked up around his feet but he kept walking towards them firing with each step that he took.

He saw one man get knocked back into his saddle before a bullet burned Hali’s shoulder.
The riders were fifty yards away from him before a barrage of guns burst from the shore of the swamp knocking two men from their horses and killing one horse, leaving it’s rider motionless on the ground.

Hali ran towards his friends who were now laying down cover fire for him until he reached their position.
Falling to his belly with the others we took aim at one rider and emptied the saddle before turning to take a shot at another rider.

Hali ordered the others to get in the boat while he covered them.
Jeb picked up Dakarai and carried him to the boat.
Betty stayed with Hali laying down cover for the others despite Hali’s demand for her to move out.
When the riders broke and fell back to regroup, Hali and Betty took advantage of that moment to run to the boat with the others.
Along with Jeb, they each grabbed a pole and started moving out into the swamp before the riders could reach them.

The deeper the boat moved into the swamp the darker it got.
Not the kind of dark when the sun goes down but the kind of dark where death lurks.
The water was black with the smell of rot and decay emitting from it.
Trees towered up above them with some of their bony branches clawing at the sky other reaching down to pluck them from the boat.

For hours the pushed deeper into the swamps until Jeb told then that they were close to his cabin.
Pushing to a small island in the dark the boat thumped against a dead tree while Jeb jumped out to tie the boat tether to the dead log.
Together with Hali the both carried Dakarai into a crudely build cabin, Betty followed behind carrying their supplies.

They put Dakarai on a cot and Jeb lit a lantern for some light.
Hali looked at it and Jeb told him not to worry.
No one could find the cabin where it was and no one was going to go into the swamp at night; that’s when all the gators come out he said.
Hali went over to where Dakarai lay and knelt by his side.
Dakarai looked up at him and smiled before he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He’ll be fine Hali thought to himself then stood up and walked over to Jeb and Betty sat.

Hali asked them what they were going to do now.
Jeb said they should stay there until Dakarai gets his strength back and then they could go to Baton Rouge.
Jeb had friends there and they would help them find a place to stay.
Hali thought about that for a few minutes and agreed.
Dakarai did need time to mend before the tried to leave and they couldn’t stay out here in the swamps forever either.

A noise woke Hali up one morning and got out of bed then outside to find Jeb pulling some sort of traps out of the boat.
Jeb told Hali he got up early and went out to check some of the traps he had set up a week earlier and said that they were lucky.
Jeb pour the contents of a bucket on a makeshift table and a small mountain of crab like creatures were crawling around.
Jeb said the were called craw fish and were delicious.
Hali looked at them and thought that there wasn’t much meat on them but if they ate enough of them they may suffice.

A few dat later Dakarai was beginning to look better with the help of Betty.
Hali was beginning to think it was more Betty’s presence that was helping rather than the medicine he was giving him.
While Betty took care of Dakarai, Hali got up in the early mornings with Jeb then went out in search of foods and to learn a little about the swamps.
They were filled with plant life that he had never seen before and wanted to learn about their uses if he was going to be living here.

They pushed the boat along with long poles even over stumps that were hidden below the water surface making their way to where Jeb had placed his traps to capture more craw fish.
He also brought along bate to catch catfish, Jeb said it was the best fish anyone can eat out in these parts.
Jeb had warned Hali that there were alligators here and to always be on the look out as they could come out of no where and drag you under.

Hali had never seen an alligator but from what Jeb had told him about them, he didn’t want to either.
After checking the traps and collecting what little they had Jeb took them to a spot where they were going to set for awhile and hope to catch a couple of catfish for supper.
They sat there for a couple of hours without any luck.
Jeb said he couldn’t understand it, there was always fish here to be caught.
It was like all the fish had gone.

They decided to stay for a little bit longer hoping their luck would change when a movement caught Jeb’s attention.
Slowly he touched Hali’s leg and pointed with his eyes silently in the direction he had thought he saw something then reached for his rifle that was leaning up at the bow of the boat.
Just then Hali saw something move also and slowly picked up his rifle moving it into position.
They both sat there staring at the spot where they had seen something then in a swift movement Hali threw the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

The silence was interrupted by the thunder erupting from the gun waking up the swamp.
Putting the rifle down Jeb and Hali grabbed their poles then swiftly pushed themselves to where Hali had taken his shot.
When they got there they found a deer laying on a bank dead from a broken neck.
Jeb slapped Hali on the back and told him that it wasn’t catfish but it would do.
You didn’t find deer that much in the swamps any more so this was going to be a treat.

Hali hopped out of the boat into the water stepping out on the bank then picked up the deer to bring into the boat when out of the bushes a monster shot out with large snapping jaws grabbing at Hali’s legs.
The alligator must have been stalking the deer when Hali shot it, then found himself with a potential second meal in Hali.

Hali jumped back dropping the deer on the ground but he tripped over a dead stump landing flat on his back.
Seeing his chance while he was on the ground the alligator pounced at him but Hali got his feet up and kick at the massive head aside, barely escaping having the beast on top of him.
Pushing back he tried to stand but slipped on the wet ground and landed on his side this time.
The alligator turned its head grabbing the deer before slipping into the water.

Hali got up and watched as the alligator took off with their supper but he wasn’t going to let that happened then grabbed his knife from the boat and wadded in after the alligator.
Jeb was yelling at him to forget it but Hali told him that the deer was theirs and they needed it desperately then took off under the water to catch up the the alligator before it got to far to catch.

They lay in bed in each others arms.
Adalia fingers tracing the red marks on Hali’s chest.
Hali looked down on her hands and the marks then told her it was like a family crest.
She gave him a blank look and he told her that most of the men in his family were scared up mostly in the chest.
He said his grandmother said it was a sign of bravery because all his forefathers faced danger head on and never ran from it.

There was a story about his great grandfather in the Louisiana swamps where he swam out after an alligator because it stole a deer his great grandfather had killed and wanted it back so he went after it.
They say that he caught up to it under the water then wrestled for the deer and after a one hour battle it was over.

Adalia looked at him and asked what happened.
Hali looked at her and said they had a feast that night.
The alligator ate the deer and grandfather ate the gator.
Grandma got a new pair of shoes.

Jonas sat in his office at home sipping the hot coffee the servant had just brought in to him along with the morning newspaper.
The headline read “PROHIBITION OVER”.
There were pictures of people; politicians, judges and regular people alike holding up a glass filled with their choice of nectar having their first taste of legal alcohol in over ten years.
Jonas took another sip from his cup and turned page after page on his way to the business section but something caught his eye the seventh page in.

Leonard Cohen finished his dinner and ordered a brandy to aid him in the digestion of his meal.
He sat there staring at the drink in his hand.
Soon this will be legal and he will loose the main attraction to his clubs so it was essential he plan now to find to replace the loss of its allure and find ways to keep his customers flowing through the door.

Jonas was going to become a problem he thought to himself and he will have to be dealt with soon but for now he still needed him.
As long as he held something over Jonas’ head he could keep him in line until he could find a way to make him disappear and stake claim to all his properties.
Leonard asked the waiter for another brandy and his bill, it was getting late and he ought be heading on home he thought.

He collected his coat and hat at the cloak room then stepped outside onto the sidewalk.
The night air was cold and sharp as it burned his lungs when he breathed it in.
Looking left then right before stepping onto the street Leonard lowered his head to shield him from the cold wind and sprinted across the street to his car.
He opened the door and closed it quickly behind him then fumbled in his pockets for the key.
After starting the car he sat back in the seat to allow the engine to heat up then reached forward to wipe the condensation from the windshield.

That was funny he thought as he reached up with his handkerchief to wipe the condensation from the rear view mirror.
After the condensation was gone from the mirror sat back once more and stared through it but he couldn’t see anything because of the fogged back window.
As he looked through the mirror a shadow moved from the corner of the seat and into view.

“What are you doing here”?

Jonas put down his coffee cup and held the paper with both hands as he read the story below the headline “Man Found Shot In Car”.

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Eighteen

2010-11-29T00:00:00.003-05:00

Hali was having lunch with Adalia when Harmon came over and asked if he could sit with them.
Harmon was one of Hali’s friends and worked in the university lab, Hali had given him the scrapings off of the statue and asked him to test it for him.
Harmon settled into his chair and asked Hali where he had gotten the sample he had given him.
Hali told him it was scrapings off of an African statue that had come into his possession and he was trying to find out what it was made of.

Harold told him that the computer at the lab said it had various minerals found in the soil from the part of Africa it came from and there was evidence of human blood.
There were a couple of organic substances that the computer couldn’t identify as well.

Hali sat there thinking as Harmon was reporting his findings to him.
So there was human blood in the clay, it could also be transfer from someone with a cut finger picking it up.
Maybe even some of the blood from the gas bar had gotten on it.
His mind drifted back to the gas bar, the blood was everywhere and the bodies were lying around like shattered jars.

Adalia’s touch brought him out of his trance.
Hali looked at her and smiled, he told her he was ok, just thinking.
He then thanked Harmon for checking out the sample for him and offered to buy him lunch but Harmon said he couldn’t stay because he had more things to do at the lab; he just came by to tell him about his findings.

Hali thanked him and told Harmon he owed him a lunch just the same next time he was free.
After Harmon had left, Hali and Adalia sat around talking about the weekend coming up.
They were planning a trip to see Hali’s grandmother in four months, right after he graduates and two months after that they were heading off to Africa and their calling, to help the children there.

After lunch Adalia had to get back to the store so Hali walked her to the commissary and headed of home.
His roommate wasn’t there so he turned on the TV and lay on the bed blankly staring at the set.
He looked to the night table and saw the statue sitting there and reached out for it.

His eyes opened to the sound of a distant noise.
It was dark as he looked around, he must have passed out.
Hali went to push up and his fingers touched the dry grass under him, he rose to the sitting position quickly and found himself staring out in a dark wilderness.
The sound of the drums was coming from his left so he slowly got up and looked around what should have been his room but was now somewhere outside he didn’t recognize, yet part of him did.

He started walking slowly in the direction of the sound but constantly alert to the sounds around him.
But for the moon in the sky there was no light anywhere.
There should be thousands of blinking lights from the houses and stores in his neighbourhood but this didn’t feel like home, yet it did.

He walked to the edge of some thick brush that looked like a tropical jungle in the dark and waded in towards the sound of the beating drums.
Onward he pushed through making a path where one had not existed before.
For thirty minutes he was whipped for his efforts before he came upon a clearing.
In the center was a crowd of people around a huge bonfire chanting and dancing around the pillar of flames licking at the night sky.

Trying to stay as quiet as he could, Hali moved along the clearing while still staying hidden in the brush so he could get a better look at what was happening.
As he got closer the sound of the drums grew louder and he could almost feel their beat in his chest as the sound rebounded off of him.
Getting within fifty yards of the crowd around the fire, knelt down and watched what looked like a village of African natives of one kind.
He didn’t understand what they were chanting.
Just then an old man walked out from the darkness to a stone platform and the crowd went silent then made their way to the alter.
The old man dressed in dark skins accented with feathers and bird claws looked like a witchdoctor.

The witchdoctor raised a hand to the night sky and the moon seemed to get brighter lighting up the whole area with its warmth.
He then began speaking to the sky, calling out loud with conviction as if he was summoning the gods themselves.
Two hands he now held high to the sky, fingers stretched out, straining to reach farther to the gods, begging for an audience.

The wind rustled the jungle around Hali as it blew past him and through the crowd to the witchdoctor then straight up to the night sky drawing the clouds together above them.
Thunder clapped the night sky as a streak of lighting shot down striking a large boulder blinding all that witnessed it temporarily.
Even Hali had to look away from its brilliance.

When his eyes readjusted to the darkness he looked back towards the village and the people were kneeling at the base of the boulder.
Hali looked at the boulder and on top stood a tall warrior draped in a lion skin with the main around his shoulders.
He stood up there straight and ridged like a statue holding a long spear in his fight hand anchored to the ground, staring out towards Hali.

The warrior looked to the people before him then began speaking to the people and they slowly began to rise to their feet once more.
Hali couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Even though he didn’t understand the language these people spoke he had a compulsion to get closer to hear this man speak so he slowly moved out from the confines of the jungle and moved closer to the village only concealed by the darkness of night.

As Hali got closer he hear the villagers chanting “Thilivhali” over and over again.
Hali figured it was the warrior’s name.
The crowd stopped the chanting when he spoke.
The warriors words were gentle yet powerful which gave you a sense of comfort and pride.
Hali stood there listening to his words and ……. He understood what he was saying as if he spoke English… but how?

He told them that one day they would be free once more to run with the wind and the antelope.
Free to hunt with the lions and swim with the hippopotamuses.
Free to live in peace with the ones they loved.
One day soon all the suffering over the centuries will be put right and their souls will be free to wander.

Hali sat out in the darkness on his haunches absorbing what was being said by this warrior, Thilivhali.
That’s when he spoke to him.
The crowd turned and looked into the darkness right at Hali.

The warrior jumped to the ground from the boulder and started walking out towards Hali as he spoke to him.
“You are the one who is to set us free” he told Hali.
“You are of my blood, of our land”
“We are your forefathers”.
“We are of the lion”.
The warrior started to walk faster towards Hali.
Hali didn’t know what to do, should he run or stay there and try to explain his presence here?

Every second that passed was a step the warrior took closer to him.
Hali stood up on shaky legs and stared at the warrior and he closed the distance between then.
Thunder crashed in the sky above as lightning lit up the sky.
Hali looked at he warrior and saw something was happening to him.
With every step he took closer to him he leaned farther forward until he was within twenty yards of Hali and then he saw that the warrior was now not as a man but a giant majestic lion with a long flowing golden mane baring down on him.

Hali didn’t know what to do, a thousand thoughts rushed through his head.
How did he get to be here he thought and just them the lion lunged at him.
Hali stood there looking up in the air as he watched the lion stretched out in the night sky as it came down on top of him.

Jonas walked through the door of the North Side Social Club and was immediately met by a large man in a dark suit.
He was definitely sure that this was not an ordinary doorman but a gangster guarding the front door, that he was sure of.
The man told him that this was a private club for members only.

Jonas told the man that he was the landlord and was only stopping by to see how his tenants were and if there was anything they needed.
Jonas’ heart was racing as fast as his brain.
Just then the office door opened and a man in a tailored suit walked out followed by Leonard Cohn.

When Leonard saw Jonas he smiled and introduced him to the man, Mr Ross.
Mr Ross said that he had heard of Mr Beacham and all of it was good talk.
Mr Ross shook hands with Leonard Cohn then bid them both goodbye and walked out followed by the big mountain of a man.

Leonard invited Jonas into his office offering him a drink of whiskey.
Prohibition may be law but everyone had and sold whiskey at a huge profit.
Jonas tasted his drink and he could tell this was not any of that watered down whiskey everyone else sold but the best scotch that could be found.

Leonard asked Jonas what had brought him to his place of business on this fine day.
Jonas decided to tell him the truth and told Leonard he came by to see what he had done to the place.
Leonard thought about what Jonas said for a little bit then got out of his chair and picked up the bottlle of scotch from the bar and walked back to Jonas.
Looking at Jonas for a second he then reached out with the bottle and refilled Joans’ glass and told him that he had a proposition for him but he didn’t have to give him an answer today and only after he showed him around the place first.

Leonard put the bottle back in the bar then sat back in his seat behind the desk.
He then proceeded to tell Jonas that this was a private club for members only and that they only let in a select few that could afford to pay the thousand dollar a year member fee.
For that money all they got was the opportunity to walk through the door, what every they wanted was extra.
The club provided all sorts of liquor and women, of the best quality, not that cheap stuff you find in the speakeasies.

Jonas sat back and listened with intrigue as Leonard listed the available services supplied for the club’s membership.
He was sure that Leonard was going to ask him to become a member before he left and the thought was becoming appealing to him.

After their glasses were empty Leonard took Jonas for a tour of the club.
He had spared no expense to make this place look like a club you would find in a well to do part of town and not along the waterfront.
Leonard assured Jonas that it was safe for anyone coming here, in fact his silent partner guaranteed everyone’s safety.
To that, Jonas had no doubt especially after see the doorman.

As they walked around, Jonas couldn’t help but notice the new walls that had been built separating the open warehouse into sections of private rooms and open lounges with bookcases filled with books.
A bar stood in the corner of the lounge with male servers standing around waiting to be summoned by a patron.

Next Leonard took Jonas to the lower level where Turkish style baths had been installed for members to go and relax and next to the baths was a room where one can go and get a massage after a hot bath.

From there they went back up to the main floor where Leonard walked through another door that opened up into a area that had gambling tables scattered around the room.
Another bar was at the back but here the servers were scantly clad women who were also entertained on stage when not serving members.

The more Jonas saw the more he liked what he saw, especially the women.
There were a couple that caught his eye and excited him.
He still loved his wife Maggie but there was things he wanted to do that she wouldn’t let him.
She wasn’t making him happy lately either because she unable to give him an heir as of yet and he wanted to have children, a son to leave him this legacy.

Leonard led Jonas back to his office and re-filled Jonas’ glass once more then asked him what he thought of the business.
Jonas told him that it looked lucrative but wasn’t he worried about the authorities?
Leonard laughed and told Jonas that there were 5 judges and the chief of police himself was a member of the club so there was nothing to worry about.

Jonas told him that he was impressed and would like to become a member.
Leonard smiled at him and told him that he had a better offer for him.
Leonard told Jonas that he was looking for a partner in the business and he had some other business propositions for him to if he didn’t mind getting a little dirty.
Leonard told him that he understood that Jonas had property in Canada. on the Lake of the Woods to be exact.
Jonas nodded indicating that he did.

Leonard sat back in his chair and offered Jonas a partnership in this business and in the whiskey smuggling business if he let them use his property in Canada to smuggle in the whiskey from the lake there.
With all its inlets coming into the United States it would be ideal for smuggling in boats filled with whiskey.

Jonas thought about the proposition.
Up to now he stayed relatively safe by staying within the law to make his profits but he also knew that he could increase his profits ten fold if he took advantage of the situation.
Jonas asked Leonard what would happen if they were caught?
Leonard told him not to worry and if anything ever did happen to just say you didn’t know what was going on up there because you only go there in the summer months and the last time you were there everything was fine.

Jonas told him he would like a little time to think about it as it was a big decision and Leonard told him he fully understood and to take a week if he needed but for now he would like Jonas to be his guest at the club and he could have anything he wanted including a five thousand dollar marker at the casino, on him.

Jonas thanked him for his generosity and Leonard pushed a button on a panel at the side of his desk and a man walked into the office.
He told him to take Jonas to the back and to give him anything he wanted on the club’s bill.
Jonas got up, thanked Leonard Cohn and shook hands with him before he was led out to the back.
Leonard Cohn sat back in his leather chair taking out a cigar and lit it before he got lost in his thoughts.

In the casino, the man took Jonas to the cashiers booth and got him five thousand dollars in chips and told Jonas to enjoy himself.
He told him that if there was anything he needed, anything at all, he was to ask him personally and he would get it for him.

Jonas took the chips and went to the craps table.
He wasn’t much of a gambler outside of business and to him that wasn’t even a gamble, he was shrewd in his business deals and knew how to make his own luck.
He stood around watching at first and placed a couple of bets on a few tosses before it was his turn to take up the dice and to start throwing.

He tossed the dice and rolled a seven now he had to throw them again and try to catch them again and when the dice stopped spinning they showed a 2-5, he won.
For hours this went on and a crowd was now gathering around cheering him on.
A few were trying to ride his coat tail by betting along with him
Many had lost believing his luck would run out in the next turn only to loose their money instead.

A soft hand touched his shoulder causing him to turn and look into the deep blue eyes of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life.
She smiled and his heart skipped a beat, then asked him if she could get something for him to drink.
His tongue seemed paralysed in his mouth but he manage to cough out that he would like a whiskey then watched her walk away.
She look just as beautiful from behind as she did from the front.
While she was gone Jonas played a few more hands until she returned with his drink and that’s when he decided he wanted to take a break for a little bit.

He asked her what her name was and she said it was Veronica.
He then asked if she would join him at the table for a drink but she declined saying that she had to serve the other members.
Jonas nodded his understanding with a disappointing look on his face.
A look that the Nick, the man who brought him to the casino noticed from the back of the room.

Before Veronica could leave Nick was there asking Jonas if everything was OK.
Jonas said everything was fine and thanked him.
Nick looked at Veronica and asked her if she would like to sit with Jonas while he was here and he would find someone else to do her section for her.
She looked at Nick with a smile and said yes, she would like to sit there and talk to Jonas.
Nick told them to have a fun time then headed off back to his perch in the casino.

Jonas and Veronica spent the next few hours playing the various games in the casino, periodically stopping for a drink and a chat.
Jonas was enjoying her company, more than any other females company ever since he met Maggie.

As the evening progressed Jonas found himself leaving the casino with Veronica then down to one of the private rooms on the other side of the building.
Inside the room was decorated in the latest style and was kept very clean with clean sheets on the bed.
Veronica held the door open as Jonas walked in past her then heard the lock slip into place.
He turned to face her as she walked towards him wrapping her arms around his neck then kissing him full on the lips.

Taking her in his arms he kissed her back and as their burning lips heated up the beast inside him began to grow like it never had before.
In his forties now his hunger for women and sex only grew as the years went by and right now he wanted nothing more that to tear Veronica’s clothes off and ravage her body.
He grabbed the front of her dress and tore it apart then bit into her neck with a hungry mouth as she grabbed at the back of his head swimming in pain and pleasure.
Pulling the dress of her shoulders revealed her breasts to his mouth and he took each nipple between his lips biting and sucking each.

Her moans filled the room adding fuel to the madness building up inside him when he turned her around, bending her over the foot of the bed.
He raised her dress up then pulled her undergarments down then pushing his way in her from behind thrusting himself deep inside her with the first push.
She gasped against his initial invasion of her body sinking her fingernails into the bedding deeper with every thrust of his hard shaft.
Insane with lust Jonas pounded away at her against her moans and gasps that recoiled off the walls until he couldn’t hold himself any more and released his all filling her up until it flowed out and down her thighs.

There was a knock on the door as Leonard sat there in his chair.
He told who ever it was to enter and Nick walked in then sat in front of him to give Leonard his report on the night’s business but Jonas wasn’t as interested in the nights business as he was about Jonas Beacham II’s night.
He told him Jonas had won another ten thousand on top of the five thousand he had given him
Right now Jonas was in one of the rooms with one of the whores.

Leonard smiled at the news, it was a fair trade as far as he was concerned.
The profits will out weigh the cost but what impressed him the most was how easy it was for Jonas to get hooked into his scheme.
There was no chance for Jonas to refuse his proposition now, especially after tonight’s events.
If he did refuse, he could always blackmail him for his support but something told him he wouldn’t have to resort to that level.
At least not yet.

Before him stood the same doctor that had refused to help fix up Domingo until he was ordered by the general when they were in Cuba.
Hali told the docotr he was needed up the ways and to get his bag to come with them.
The doctor looked past Hali and could now see Betty standing behind him in the distance.

Doctor Wilks looked at Hali it was to late for him to be going out and he didn’t administer medicine to Negroes.
Hali remembered this man’s hate for him and Dakarai after he was ordered to help Domingo in Cuba.

Hali took a step towards Doctor Wilks and pulled out the gun from his pocket and pointed it towards Dr. Wilks.
He had no time to waste arguing with this man while Dakarai lay dieing back at Jeb's house.

The doctor looked at the pistol in Hali’s hand then back at him as he thought of his next move.
He told Hali he needed to get his bag and started moving back into the house with his hand still on the door when he suddenly moved to close it but Hali got his foot in the way and forced himself into the house.
A woman screamed from the other room and Hali looked to see a woman with her arms wrapped around two children.
Hali told her to be calm and that he was only there to get the doctor to help him with a wounded man.
He then turned to the doctor and told him to get his bag and this time, no tricks or he would be the one needing a doctor.

The doctor picked up his bag and led the way back out the door where Betty was waiting for both of them with the doctor’s buggy ready to take them back to the farmhouse.
On the ride back the doctor commented that Hali looked familiar to him but didn’t recognize him from the area.
The doctor didn’t remember their first meeting in Cuba and Hali wasn’t sure he should tell him now.
It took the about forty-five minutes to get back to the farm and inside they found Dakarai unconscious but alive.
He had lost a lot of blood.

Hali pointed to Dakarai and told the doctor to get to work and fix him up.
The doctor went to the bed then took off the bandages to get a better look at the wound.
A poultice of some kind had been put on the wound to stave off infection.
He had seen this before among the natives and in Cuba when he was there during the Spanish American war.

He asked for some hot water and a clean sheet if they had one to be torn into strips.
He then went to open his bag but Hali reached down first and opened it for him.
Inside Hali found the doctors tools and a small pistol in a pocket at the side of the medical bag.
Hali took the gun and passed the bag to the doctor after it was safe for him to have it, Hali could see the venom in the doctor’s eyes as he passed him the bag.

First the doctor cleaned around the wound with clean hot water and some of the strips of clean cloth then he took out a blunt knifelike tool from his bag and slowly pushed in into the wound in search of the bullet.
When he felt the bullet he started pushing it out of the hole in Dakarai’s chest.
Grabbing the bullet with his finders he passed it to Hali then cleaned around the wound again before he started wrapping the bandage around Dakarai’s chest.

After he had finished bandaging Dakarai he got up and asked Hali what was to happen to him now.
Hali looked at him thinking for a little while then told him that he could leave in the morning but for now he would have to wait and keep an eye on his brother.

Hali moved to the table but in constant view of the doctor where he sat with Jeb.
Jeb told Hali if he let the doctor go, he would only go and get the authorities then come back and most definitely hang all of them.

Hali had already surmised that might be the situation but he was not prepared to murder a man, even one of the doctor’s moral fibre.
A man who swore to save lives should not be looking at the color of others skin.
He then asked Jeb if there was a place they could go and be safe.
Jeb said he had a hunting cabin back in the swamps of Louisiana that was well hidden and hard to find.
The only way to get there was by boat and he had one out there they could use but he said he wasn’t sure if Dakarai would survive the move in his condition
It was also a dangerous place to go to with alligators, snakes and other creatures that lived to kill.

Hali didn’t see any other choice.
Even if he killed the doctor it was only a delay because his wife must have gone for help already and they would be out looking for them even now.
He told Jeb they would just have to risk it and in the morning they would head out for the cabin.

In the morning Hali went to the doctor and asked him how Dakarai was.
The Dr. Wilks told him that if the wound didn’t get infected he would have a good chance to survive and should be on his feet by the time he was to be hanged with the rest of them.
Hali pulled his gun out and pointed it at the doctor’s head and told him to stand up and head off for the door.
He lead him outside with Jeb following behind them then told the doctor he was free to go but when the doctor went for his buggy, Hali told him he was to walk back home.

As soon as the doctor was out of sight Hali ran back into the house and started getting Dakarai ready to go.
They would use the doctor’s buggy until they got to the swamp and then the boat to go deep into it to Jeb’s hunting cabin.
Using the buggy would get them quicker and hopefully avoid any more trouble with the locals.
As soon as Dakarai was better they could leave and explore this new land, but first Dakarai must get better.

They bounced along the road for about and hour trying to go as fast as they could but not to fast as to jar their patient too much.
They could now see the tree line where the swamp started and relief started to come over them until they heard a noise from behind them.
Hali looked back and could see riders racing towards them in the distance.
They had to be not more than a mile back and would more than likely over take them before they reached the swamp at this speed so he gave the horses their heads and raced off down the path towards freedom or death.

Jonas sat in his office blankly staring at the figures infront of him.
His partnership with Leonard Cohn had been a very profitable venture, he was making ten times more now than he used to but his good fortunes was not what was on his mind.
Over the last two years his profits might have increased, as had his family fortune.
Maggie was now pregnant and due at any moment but to make matters worse, he had managed to get Veronica pregnant as well and both were due about the same time.
He didn’t; know what he was going to do.

Someone knocked on the door and a servant from his house came in and told him the doctor was at the house and wanted him to get home as quickly as possible because Maggie was giving birth.
Jonas grabbed all the papers returning them to the safe right next to the leather satchel.
He then grabbed his coat and rushed out the door for home.

No sooner had he walked through the front door the doctor met him with a worried look on his face.
He informed Jonas that there was something wrong with the baby and his wife.
She had lost a lot of blood so far and the baby had not come out yet.
That’s when the midwife came out and called the doctor back into the room, closing the door behind them.
Jonas paced up and down the hallway for an hour before the door opened once more and the doctor came out.

The doctor told him he had bad news for him.
He told Jonas his son was dead and his wife was barely holding on, she had lost a lot of blood and was going through a lot of pain.
He said he gave her something for the pain and she would probably be going in and out of consciousness for the next few days with fever.

Jonas walked passed the doctor and into the bedroom.
Maggie was lying on the bed with her eyes half open and looking like she was lost to the world.
As he sat on the side of the bed, he saw the small bundle wrapped on the table, a son, his son.

Maggie tilted her head up as he took her hand and asked him how the baby was.
He told her the baby was fine and she should just get some rest for now while he took care of everything.
She lay back on the pillow and went to sleep.
Jonas got up and went to the door, pausing for a second to take one final look at his son before exiting.
In the hallway Jonas told the doctor to send him his bill for his services.
The doctor told Jonas that he will call the coroner to have the infants body picked up if he liked.
Jonas told him he needn’t worry about that that he will just call the undertaker to make arraignments.

The doctor nodded, expressing his condolences one more time and told Jonas he will be back to check on his wife.
Jonas told him told him he didn’t have to but if he liked he could send a nurse over to stay for a couple of days with his wife until she got better.

The doctor thought for a few seconds then said he knew who to send and that he would be by in the next week to check on her himself and would bring his bill in at that time.
Jonas told him that would be just fine and asked one of the servants to walk the doctor to the door.

Jonas walked to his study and sat there sipping on a brandy while thinking about this night’s events.
That’s when his servant came in to tell him that there was someone at the door asking for him.
Jonas went to the door and Nick was there waiting for him to tell him he was needed back at the club.

Jonas told him he couldn’t go anywhere now as his wife was still ill and his baby had ..he was to busy at the moment.
Nick told him he understood but said it was important and it might even make him happy if he came with him, it was Veronica; she was going into labour.

This was the last thing Jonas wanted to hear on this night.
His mind was racing as he slowly got to his feet, taking his coat of the rack to follow Nick.
Just then his eyes lit up as if a light had been switched on in his head.
He told Nick to go without him and he would drive himself there in a short time, then turned to the butler and told him he was going out.
He said he would back later then walked back to the bedroom where his wife lay passed out on the bed.
He quickly went out the door without anyone seeing him and into a cab that had waiting along the road.

Before going to the men’s club Jonas told the driver to take him to one of the foundries he owned.
When he got there he told the driver to wait a few minutes while he ran in.
Inside he went to the back where the kilns were where he tossed something into one of the large blast furnaces then walked back out to the cab.

The whole drive to the club was eerily silent.
As soon as he got to the club Leonard was there waiting for him holding a box of fat cigars and offered Jonas one congratulating him on the birth of his son.
Jonas just stared at him blankly and told Leonard his son was dead.

Leonard looked puzzled and told Jonas that his son was not only alive, but loud from the moment her was born and Veronica was in fine shape to.
Jonas realized what he now meant and walked off into the back where the private rooms were.
Nick stepped next to Leonard and whispered something in his ear; understanding came across Leonard as he watched Jonas walk into the back.
Leonard asked Nick if he was sure?
Nick told him the doctor was upstairs in one of the rooms with one of the girls and could go ask him himself if he liked.
Leonard smiled; it wouldn’t be necessary.

Leonard walked into the room where Veronica lay and she smiled as soon as she saw him come in.
He grinned a little at her.
Then he heard a baby’s cry in the corner and walked over to the crib to meet his son for the first time.

Veronica told him that the baby looked just like him, he had to agree with her.
She then said that he would need to find a place for them to live because she couldn’t raise his child in this place, a brothel.

His child he thought.
He wasn’t going to leave his son in this place and he wasn’t going to have this woman raise his son.
All she was to him was entertainment.

Jonas went to Veronica and told her that she had nothing to worry about and his son, his son would be raised in the proper environment with everything made available to him.
Veronica smiled at his words and told Jonas that they would make a great family together.
Jonas told her that they would be a family then told her to rest before he walked out to talk to Leonard, his partner.

Maggie woke up with a fright and called out for Jonas.
Jonas was by her side immediately as she begged him for her baby.
Jonas calmed his wife down and told her everything was fine then got up and went off to the corner of the room then came back holding a baby gently putting it in her arms.
“Here is your son” he told her.

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Seventeen

2010-11-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Bonjour grand-mère

I hope this letter finds you well.
I write to tell you about school and my life since I left you four months ago.
After leaving Louisiana heading for school I found myself at a crossroad.
One lead back top California the other went onto the desert leading to Las Vegas Nevada.
As you know, I am not one to gamble or waste my money but it was as if I was meant to turn right.

In the desert I stopped at a place to get some gas, something to drink and it looked like the dust storm was picking up and I thought it would have been better stopping to let it settle down instead of risking it and maybe having an accident so I opted for what I thought would be the safest choice.
.
From the moment I stepped into the gas bar my life changed, I was reborn into a world that was more nightmare than dream.
While at the gas bar a horrible gun battle ensued and many people were killed.
I am fine so you don’t have to worry.
They were violent men, such violence I had never seen in real life.
I think it wasn’t the ferocity of the violence that scared me it was the fact that these people welcomed it so easily and didn’t care if they lived or died.
They seemed drugged in their lust for violence.

One man on his dieing breath gave me a satchel filled with money and a small statue, then I ran away from that macabre hell.
I did the right thing and went to the police and reported all that happened just in case there was still someone alive, which I doubted from what I could tell.

A couple of months later I received a package containing a cheque for the money that was in the bag and the small statue.
I have since deposited the money in the bank and I still have the statue here.

The other day I took the statue to one of my professors and showed it to him to see if there was anything he could tell me about it, like where it came from.
He was shocked to see it at first and didn’t want to touch it.
He told me some story about curses and warriors but I don’t believe stuff like that as you well know.

In other news, I have met someone special, Adalia.
I have never felt this good about some before.
Yes I know you heard me say that with the last one but this is different.
We both like almost the same things or we are heading in the same direction.
She is thinking about coming to Africa with me when I go there.
I know you will love her when you meet her in person.

School is going well and I can’t wait until it’s done so I can come home to see you after graduation.
I wish you would come and see me graduate but I know how you feel about leaving dad’s and grand pere’s graves alone.

Take care
Je t’aime

Hali

Bonjour Mon petite garcon

I was happy to receive your letter and pleased to hear you are well even after your ordeal in the desert.
I am also happy you have finally found someone that you believe is the one to walk into the future with side by side.
Through the years our family has survived because of the strong men and woman that came together to keep you name alive, a proud and honoured name.
I can’t wait for you to bring her here for me to meet when school is over.
I wish I could be there to watch you graduate but as you know I am to old now to travel around the country and yes, I can’t leave those I so love behind.

Your adventure in the desert though frightening was also intriguing as is the information you learned though your professor.
Your grandfather told me of a similar story that happened to your family a hundred or so years ago about a curse that was put onto a slaver who attacked their village killing many and taking the rest to be sold into slavery, as you know, you are a descendant from slaves

It is said that Thilivhali, the one you are named after was given a small statue that was made with the blood of a dieing witchdoctor mixed with the clay from the village your great great great grandfather came from to give to the man who did them wrong so that he could suffer the same aggonizing pain that he had inflicted on the and to burn is the fires of hell slowly, forever.

That story was said to have been passed down from person to person originating from Thilivhali’s mother who was told this by Thilivhali himself when he found her and his sisters in the jungle after the raid on their village.
Thilivhali was killed in the battle against the slavers while trying to free his wife whom was taken by the leader of the slavers and no one ever saw the statue agains.

I don’t know if the statue you have is the same one but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
From what you have said, it seems you were destined to go into the desert and retreive the statue to complete the task that it was sent on.
That may be your destiny.

I have to let you go now, your nephew, Jebedia brought me a bucket of crawfish today and I have to prepare dinner.

I can’t wait for you to finish and come back with your lady so I could see you.

Au revoir

Je t’aime, votre mère grande Mary

Hali read his grandmother’s letter a couple of times and thought about the story that has been passed down all these years.
He wasn’t a superstitious person but weirder things had happened and what would the odds that the statue he had was the same one as the one in the stories.

Honestly, a statue made of blood and clay by a dieing witchdoctor, how much more dramatic could it get.
He sat there thinking for a bit when an idea came to him.
Hali went and got the statue and set it on the table and then got his medical kit out of the closet and using the scalpel he shaved some of the clay off of the statue and put in into a sandwich bag.
He was going to take it to the lab at the university and have it analyzed to see if there was any blood in the clay.
That should put an end to any guessing about the statue.

Jonas was in the club when a business associate of his found him sitting and reading the business section of the paper in one of the large leather armchairs.
Many of his friends were investing all their money in companies, speculating that they would make lots of money if the company took off and with the way industry was taking off in this time and age they were raking it in then reinvesting in the same companies.

Jonas wasn’t fond of investing all his money on one thing just in case something went wrong and he lost everything.
He didn’t like taking the risks his friends did and always wanted to control his money not leaving it for someone else to control.
Up to now his approach had rewarded him very well, true it wasn’t as much as his friends were making but he was safe from loosing his capital.

Leonard Cohn asked if he could join him and Jonas welcomed him to the chair next to his.
Mr. Cohn was a businessman whom Jonas has had some dealings with in real estate.
There was a rumor that he also dealt with the local mobsters in some illegal business but those were only rumors and most of those we whispered by the competition.
They were discussing the current state in the world when a man ran in calling out that WAR had been declared in Europe.
Someone walked over to the mantle and turned on the radio and sure enough, they were saying war was declared in Europe against the Germans.

Within an hour of everyone hearing the news the club was empty but for a few people.
Jonas and Leonard being two of them.
Leonard told Jonas that this was an opportunity to make a lot of money from the war.
Jonas was thinking the same thing.
He had a lot of money invested into the iron works foundries and they would be needed if the United States entered the war driving the price of the stocks sky high.

Leonard changed the subject and told Jonas that he had come to sit with him because he had a proposition for him from one of his friends.
Jonas looked at Leonard and remembered how shrewd this man was in their previous dealings.
Jonas told him that he was open for business as long as there was a profit to be made.

Leonard told Jonas that he had a friend who was looking to rent some warehouses and some businesses that were in building owned by Jonas.
Leonard took out a piece of paper from the inside of his pocket and passed it to Jonas.
Jonas looked at the paper and recognized some of the addresses written on it as properties he owned along the waterfront.

Jonas’ brain was quickly thinking of what to say and how to approach this proposition.
He told Leonard that yes these were his properties and some were empty and for rent if anyone was interested but he would need to know the nature of the business going into his property before hand.

Leonard smiled at him and told Jonas that his friend was willing to pay double the asking rent.
Jonas looked at him and knew right then that whatever Leonard and his friend were up to, it was illegal and probably very profitable.
Double the rent was probably not enough but pushing for more might bring him more trouble at this moment but letting them get in and established would be more to his advantage.
He told Leonard that he could tell his friend that he just rented some properties and could stop by his office to sign the leases and put down the first six months rent.

Leonard smiled at him again and reached into his inside pocket and pulled out an envelope.
Laying it down on the small side table by Jonas he told him that there was a years worth of rent in the envelope and there was no need for a lease or for him to meet his friend.
He would be running the businesses for his friend and if Jonas had any concerns he could discuss it with him any time.

Jonas was hoping to meet up with Leonard’s friend; it never hurt to make new acquaintances, especially in the business world but that could wait to.
He asked Leonard when they planned on moving in and Leonard told him that they will be sending in workers to look at the place next week and to move in what was needed to make that place ready for their needs.
Jonas nodded his head acknowledging what he heard and told Leonard that he could stop by and get the keys from his office any time he was ready.
Leonard stood up, shook hands with Jonas and left the club.

Hali shot out of the bushes without making a sound and raced off toward the group of men at a dead run with Dakarai on his heels.
Even from this distance he could see Jeb’s eyes bulging from the rope around his neck squeezing the life out of him.
His would be executioners didn’t see Hali and Dakarai coming on them like two missiles in the dark.

Hali swept past the man standing over the woman and without breaking stride struck out with his hand hitting the man in the throat then plowed into the men holding Jeb knocking them down and releasing their grip on the rope holding Jeb suspended in the air by his neck.

Hali was back on his feet and was striking down on the men he had just knocked down.
He quickly ran to Jeb and cut his bonds with his knife before turning on the men once more that were stunned by the sudden attack but now beginning to get off the ground.

Dakarai was following in behind cleaning up in Hali’s wake.
He began by clubbing the man Hali struck in the throat by breaking the man’s neck with one powerful blow of his walking staff.
Then stepped into the crowd gathering around Hali and swung the stick with deadly accuracy.

A man ran up behind Hali poised to stab him in the back with his blade when Dakarai’s staff came out of nowhere breaking the man’s arm before coming around once more to reunite the attacker with his ancestors.

Just then a shot rang out and Hali turned to see Dakarai stager back against the same tree that just a few minutes earlier had Jeb as a decoration.
A man holding a pistol then swung the gun around to take aim at Hali but by then Hali had slipped his hand under his shirt and was now brandishing the new pistol Domingo had given him.

The gun leaped in his hand once, twice and the man stumbled back a few steps dancing on his toes before he fell flat on his back.
Hali swung the gun around stopping the rest of the men dead in their tracks like frozen statues in the night.

One man made a move towards Hali and he shot him through the stomach dropping him on the ground at their feet, the rest begun raising their hands not wanting any part of the fight now that they were on the loosing end.

Hali told them to pick up their dead and wounded then to get off of this place and never come back because if they did, he would follow them back to the homes and kill them in their sleep.
The men moved around picking up their dead and wounded before running off into the night.

When Hali was sure they were safe he ran to his brother Dakarai as he lay next to the tree.
Tearing open the tunic he could see that Dakarai was hit in the chest above the heart.
Hali quickly took off his shirt and began tearing it in strips.
At the same time his eyes scanned the area to make sure none of them were still in any danger and also looked to see where Jeb was.
The woman had crawled over to Jeb and was helping him to his feet.

Jeb came over and knelt by Hali’s side and asked him how bad Dakarai was, Hali told him it was bad.
Jeb told him that they should take him inside the house and try to fix him up there.

Hali asked Jeb where the doctor was.
Jeb looked down a little and told him that the doctor didn’t call on the Negroes even for double the money.
Hali held a look of shock at Jeb’s words before he went back to working on Dakarai’s wound making sure it was bandaged up with some herbs to hold back infection
When he was satisfied he looked at Jeb and asked him if he could have his wife watch Dakarai while Jeb took Hali to the doctor’s house.

Jeb told Hali Betty wasn’t his wife, she was his sister and that the doctor wouldn’t treat a black man.
Hali dismissed what Jeb said except the part of Betty being his sister.
Betty was a beautiful woman, tall and slender with bright brown eyes.

It only took seconds for Hali to come to a decision he didn’t have much time to think. Dakarai was hit hard and needed medical attention.
His herbs would keep him from infection and fever but the bleeding needed to be stopped and for that he needed the skill of a doctor.

Betty led the way through the dense swamp.
It was dark, even with the moon high above in was dark here, the darkest place he had ever been.
The air smelled of things long dead and the sounds that reached him were of creatures that could only bring death to live in such a place.
Hali had to stay close to Betty so that he wouldn’t loose her because it was so dark.

After about an hour they came out of the swamp and Betty told Hali that the doctor’s house was just across the meadow and pointed towards the distant glow of a light.
They walked across the meadow and stopped behind a bush where Hali told Betty that this was as far as she could go, he would go to the doctor’s house from here.

Hali moved from behind the bush and quietly made his way to the front door of the house
He could hear voices from the inside and one was getting louder as he got closer to the door.
The door swung open and there standing before Hali was a familiar face.

Jonas was sitting at his desk tallying the books for the year when he came across rental properties and saw the address of the properties he had rented out to Leonard.
Six months had passed since Jonas had rented his properties to Leonard and his silent partner and started wondering how or what business they were running out from there.
He didn’t really care as long as he got his rent money, so why was it bothering him right now.
He let it go from his mind and continued his book keeping until he had finished; it had been a good year for his investments.

When he was done he walked to the safe and opened the door and placed the ledger next to the satchel.
He stood there looking at it and then reached in and took out that hideous statue he hated so much.
He couldn’t understand what compelled him to keep it but he couldn’t throw it away for some reason.
He put it back in the safe and closed the door.

Jonas looked at the clock on the wall and saw it was 5 pm and decided he would stop by the club for a few brandies before going home to Maggie.
Things at home were not what they used to be of late either; Maggie had become more distant in the last couple of years.
When he was home they didn’t talk much unless she was asking for money to buy one thing or the other.
Maggie had expensive tastes, especially when it came to jewelry, always wanting to look as good if not better than some of the new high society wives she has been spending time with lately.

There was more, they weren’t having as much sex as they used to and Jonas was beginning to wonder what was wrong.
He was also starting to think about children, he would want to have an heir to leave all of this to but he wasn’t sure that Maggie could give him children.
She hadn’t gotten pregnant as of yet and they have been together for ten years now.

Jonas walked out of his office and to his car.
He started driving towards the club when the properties he had leased to Leonard came to mind and he decided to take a little detour then drove off towards the waterfront district.
Jonas pulled in front of one of his buildings and saw that they had given the outside a fresh coat of paint and a sign above the door said North Side Social Club, members only.

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Sixteen

2010-11-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hali walked out of the bank and stood on the sidewalk staring at the balance in his bankbook barely believing his eyes.
He had never seen that much money before in one place at one time and to think that it was all his to do with as he pleased.
The first thing he needed to do was relaxed and gather his thoughts before he let his excitement get the better of him.

Back at his room he sat by his desk with a piece of paper writing down what his debts were so he could pay them.
His plan was to leave the money in the bank for now and use the monthly interest to pay off any debts he had, this way he doesn’t spend any of the money he was gifted.

He picked up the satchel and was putting it in the closet when he remembered the statue.
Hali opened the bag and took out the little box with the statue and then put the satchel in the closet for now.
He took out the statue and stared at it once more and then decided he will go see the professor and see if he could tell him anything about the statue.

On the way to see the professor his cell phone rang and it was Adalia asking what he was up to for lunch.
He told her he had a date with a lady from the commissary but he could try and get out of it for her.
She laughed at him and said she would see him at the cafeteria.
Hali told her that he would meet her at her work and that they were going to eat somewhere else for a change, his treat.

At the university he made his way to Professor Jones’ class office, he knocked on the door and entered but there was no one there.
Walking around the room Hali looked at the pictures on the wall, they were of a man with various tribesman of Africa.

Just then Professor Jones came in carrying a coffee in one hand and a bundle of papers in the other.
Professor Jones was surprised to see Hali since he hadn’t seen him in over a year, not since he finished his course.
They shook hands and the professor indicated towards the pictures with a nod and told him they were taken thee years earlier in Kenya.

He told Hali that next year he was going to the Ivory Coast to look into the history of the slave trade.
Hali told him that he would be going to Gabon next year as well to work with the Peace Corps; they might see each other there.
The professor told him that would indeed be a surprise bumping into a familiar face where there are none.

Then the professor asked him what brought him to his office, surely not his exploits in Africa.
Hali told him that he had an African statue given to him and wanted to know if there was anything that he could tell him about it.
The professor told him that he would be more than happy to help him out and asked to see the statue.
Hali took the small box out of his backpack and passed it to the professor.

The professor took the box from Hali and took the lid off of it and looked at the statue.
The second his eyes fell upon it and its recognition registered in his head he quickly put it on his desk and pushed back away from it.

The professor was obviously scared of the statue and Hali saw it in his eyes.
Hali asked him what was the matter.
The professor looked at him and asked where he got the statue.
Hali told him it was a long story but a dieing man on his way back to school gave it to him.
Hali asked him why the statue scared him; it was only clay.

The professor moved a little closer to his desk and told Hali that this was not just any clay statue you find at a souvenir shop, this was the real thing and not only was it real but it was made by a witchdoctor.
He told him that he has done a lot of reading into various tribal cultures and he seen sketches of such a statue.
It was supposedly molded out of clay and the blood of the artist and supposedly to carried a curse with it.

Hali was surprised with the professor and told him as much.
He didn’t think that the professor would be superstitious.
The professor told Hali that he wasn’t but he had seen some things in his time over there that he couldn’t explain and the same in Haiti when he had gone to visit there.
He pointed out the color of the clay to Hali and told him that there is no red clay like that in Africa, that’s blood in the clay and probably the witchdoctor’s blood.
Hali looked at the statue and its color, could it be blood?

The professor then told Hali about a story he heard when in Kenya about such a statue.
It was said that a witchdoctor made a statue such as this one with his own blood as he lay dieing and gave it to his young apprentice to give it to the one he wanted cursed.
Legend has it that the apprentice crossed all of Africa chasing this man and to make matters worse he had stolen the apprentice’s wife.

Hali asked the professor if the apprentice caught the man that took his wife?
Yes he did but he was killed and the woman lost to him but he managed to free all the other prisoners with his selfless act.
The people of Africa still tell the story about the young lion who fought the devil until his death so his people could live free.

Hali told him that was an intriguing story but still just a story and didn’t think that a statue can be cursed to kill a man.
He reached over and put the cover back on the small box then placed the statue back in his backpack.
He thanked the professor for the information on the statue and the story.

The professor told him that he was happy to help but not to be to quick and laugh at some of the old ways because he might be surprised one day when he sees something he believed not possible.
They shook hands and Hali told him that he will remember what he said and maybe see him in Africa if not sooner then left the university to go pick up Adalia for lunch.

Hali wasn’t superstitious but had heard stories from back home in Louisiana about voodoo and other strange happenings.
Some said that witch doctors had the capability to take possession of a person’s soul and make his body do what the witch doctor wanted him to do.
His grandmother knew the old ways to; she was good with herbs and extracts from different plants and had taught him that there were potions that could be created to put a person in a trance for as long as that person took the potion.
Curses and the like are just exaggerated stories and fates of luck, usually bad luck.

Hali found Ada sitting in the garden next to Diego’s grave.
He walked over and sat next to her with his arm around his mother and the both sat there quietly remembering the good times they had together in Hispaniola when he was a child and there was only the four of them.

“You’re leaving,” she said.
He told her that they were leaving in a couple of days and heading for America to see what it was like there.

They were silent for a few minutes, Ada knew this would be the last time she saw her son.
Once he got to this new land he would get lost in it as his father used to get lost in the jungle behind their little village.
The Village, that was a long time ago, a lifetime had passed since then but she remembers it like it was yesterday.
As a little girl she used to lie down on the grass and stare at the stars and wonder if that was all the sky that there was?
Was there more someplace else?

Since then she had learned that there is more sky and stars but not all stars lead to happy times but some shine brighter than others, her eyes drifted over to Diego’s headstone.
Now she was going to loose her son, the last connection to the past but it was his destiny and future.
Taking his hand she asked him to go for a walk through the garden with her and they both walked down the path together.

Hali stood on the deck of the ship looking at a place called New Orleans, he had never heard of this place before but it was the closest he could get to where Jeb lived.
Domingo secured them passage on this vessel; they were friends of Diego’s family and had a ship they used to bring trade goods to Mexico.

It was hard leaving his mother and the others behind, he doesn’t know when he will see them again, if ever but this is something he had to do.
There was a yearning in him to go out and see the world and help those along the way who needed help.
Besides, he wasn’t alone, Dakarai was with him.
Dakarai looked upon this new land and could almost see his future out there over the horizon.
He was glad to be here with Hali to see this new world and what it had to offer.

As they walked down the muddy street they looked around their surroundings and the people, lots of people all running around in a hurry to be somewhere.
Neither one of them spoke English very well but they were surprised that French was a popular language here and they managed to find a place where the could hire a coach to take them to Baton Rouge where Jeb lived.

When they found the place they needed to go to get tickets for the stage, they walked in and up to the counter.
Hali smiled at him and asked him if there was a stage going to Baton Rouge.
The clerk told him that there was one leaving in two hours.
Hali asked him how much and paid for two tickets.
Before he had left Spain, Domingo had given them some American money he had acquired.
He thought that it would be easier for Hali if he didn’t have foreign currency.

They walked out front and waited for the stage with a couple of other people.
They were not used to this many people around, even in Spain they lived in the country so there weren’t that many people but here, the streets and sidewalks were bustling with people and wagons.
Just then the stagecoach pulled up in front of the office.

People gathered at the door and were let in one at a time until Hali and Dakarai got to the door.
Their tickets were taken and were told they had to ride on top on the coach.
Hali looked into the coach and could see two open seats and told the driver that there was room in the coach but the driver told him that his kind rode on top not in the coach.
Hali looked at Dakarai and slowly started climbing to the top of the coach.
He didn’t want any trouble so he opted to avoid it for now and climb up to the top of the coach even though they did pay the same fare as those sitting inside.

Jonas walked through the mansion, it was big and will be the biggest place he had ever lived in and it was all his now.
When he opened the safe in his father’s office he found papers for all his legal holdings and some not so legal.
Inside there was also a satchel filled with money, gold from various countries and a small statue, ugly little thing.

With all this money he could now live the life of leisure and get away from New York, it was to big for his liking.
As soon as his father’s will was settled he packed up what little he had and moved.
He had bought this mansion in Chicago to get away from any connection to his father and any shady business he was involved in, fearing any backlash because of his father’s sudden demise.
All he wanted was someplace to be with Maggie and spend his father’s money carelessly in peace.

Over the next few years they made a name of themselves by fixing up their new home and inviting the right people over for parties and elaborate dinners.
They also attended many of the Balls and events hosted by many of the city’s well to do people.
The rich and famous knew how to spend their money and did it often.

Desperately wanted to be in the same group as some of his new friends were in and spent his money are blindly as the other but he lacked one thing they had and that was a steady income.
His inheritance was quickly being depleted and he had to find a way to replenish what he was spending.
He started looking into the real estate business and decided to buy properties around the city for a cheap price and rent out accommodations for high rents to get a quick return on his investments.

He started with one housing unit and then another.
Since the great fire 30 years earlier a lot of construction had happened and there were many buildings that were quickly falling upon receivership and Jonas took advantage of this.
He bought many properties for the money which was owed and in most cases well below its worth.
As time went on Maggie showed to be an asset with her past background.
Her ability to get city officials in precarious positions opened many doors and eliminated much of the red tape that would otherwise had impeded some of Jonas’ endeavors.
Maggie was just as hungry for the high life as her husband was and she didn’t mind a little scandalous behavior to get it.

As the years went by he kept and eye on the world around him and he noticed the buildup of weapons in Europe and followed his fathers footsteps and invested in some of the foundries that were involved in the manufacture of steel and a couple of weapons manufactures.

When he wasn’t looking for ways to make money Jonas spent his time in some of the various men's clubs in the city while Maggie tours the shops with the wives of some of the same people Jonas was with at the clubs Jonas did business with.
They used this as a way to gain information of what was happening in the business world.

Germany was making significant advances in weapons development and war was in the air according to many people.
This posed an opportunity for many businessmen to make money investing in weapons development and sales.

That summer Jonas bought a house in Canada at the Lake of the Woods area where many of his friends had bought lavish houses to summer in.
This will turn out to be one of the best investments Jonas had ever made.
Life for Jonas and Maggie was all coming up roses but dark clouds were gathering in the distance that might one day bring their house of cards crashing down by the weight of their manipulating.

Jonas was straightening up his home office when he opened up the satchel before he put it back in the safe.
The satchel was the only thing he owned that was personally his father’s from even before he was born.
Taking out the small statue he looked at it more carefully, it was crude in its shaping, like the artist had rushed the job.
He didn’t know its significance but he couldn’t throw it away either for some reason, it’s like it was always meant to be his.
Walking over to the mantle, he placed it on top then returned the satchel to the safe and locked it up.

After making sure his desk was cleared off of any papers showing is business affairs he walked towards the door but as he walked he looked at the mantle and the statue looked as if it was watching his every move.
He walked downstairs where Maggie was waiting for him so they could go out to dinner and maybe to take in a show at the theater.

The coach rumbled through the wilderness as it headed towards their destination, Baton Rouge.
They had not seen Jeb since Cuba and that was a little over a year now and Hali hoped he was doing well.
With what he had seen so far, blacks where not treated the same as white people, even the foreigners were treated better than the ex slaves of this country.

It was a two-day drive with two stops to change horses.
They arrived in Baton Rouge on the evening of the second day and went about trying to find out where Jeb lived.
Any white person they asked ignored their inquiries and kept on walking but they managed to find a white youth who said he knew who Jeb was and where he lived.
He even offered to take them there because it was outside of town and a little tricky to find it at nighttime.
Hali thanked him and followed the boy as he led the way out of town and into the dark countryside.

They were about five miles out of town when the boy stopped and sat down saying that he was tired to rest for a bit.
He asked Hali where they were from and if they were related to Jeb.

Hali told him that they were not related with Jeb but were friends and they fought together in Cuba.
He told him that they were from Hispaniola originally but had just arrived from Spain.

While he was talking to the boy, Hali heard noises coming from the bushes behind them.
He had casually while talking to the boy turned and looked at Dakarai but he could see in his brother’s eyes that he had been alerted by the noise from behind them.
Just then six men burst out from the bushes.
The boy jumped back amongst them and told the men that Hali and his traveling companion were unarmed, assuring the highwaymen of an easy victory and rushed in on Hali and Dakarai all at once.

Hali was well trained in the art of fighting by some of the best teachers Diego could find and some of them were pirates.
There was even a man from the orient that spent a year with them showing him how to use his hands as weapons.
Dakarai had his staff and had proven lethal with it in the past.

It was Dakarai that was first to react meeting the attackers head on; he let go with a battle scream that shocked their assailants putting them off guard long enough for him to strike the biggest one in the head with his staff then spun around on one foot swinging the staff in a wide arc over his head then coming down shattering the stunned man’s shoulder.

Hali brushed off a blow with an open palm then swiftly sliding his hand up the arm of his attacker until he got to his mans chin and twisted it ‘back and up until he heard the neck snap.
Hali was kicking a second man in the groin before the first one had hit the ground, then rained hard punches on the side of his head until he collapsed on the ground next to the first one unconscious.

Dakarai had broken another man’s leg and was bearing down on a third one when the man put up his hands and started to back away.
The last robber pulled out a knife and faced Hali with it in his hand.
Hali produced his own blade from under his shirt and they both slowly moved in at each other.

The man moved like a cat and swiftly shot in and out slashing at Hali with his razor sharp blade.
They circled around each other, looking for an opening or a mistake, anything that would give them an edge for a killing blow.

Dakarai stood there watching when he saw the boy off to the side and rushed him.
He didn’t put up much of a fight and Dakarai held him there on the ground as the other two battled.

The robber feigned a rush causing Hali to shift his guard then he moved in and carved a line across Hali’s chest.
A smile grew on his face when he saw the blood seep through Hali’s shirt.

Hali looked down at his chest then back at the other man.
This wasn't just some street ruffian, he knew how to fight with skill not brute force like the others and had to fight him the same if he was going to survive this.
Now that he has tasted blood Hali knew he would move soon to finish the kill or to inflict a little more damage.
The chances were that he would try the same trick again since it was so effective the first time and that’s when he will have his chance.

They circled some more and his attacker feigned another rush and Hali shifted his guard once more but this time he moved to his left and forward just as his opponent rushed in past him.
Hali’s knife shot up and into the others armpit to the hilt.
They both stood there for what seemed and eternity before Hali withdrew the knife from the man and stepped back away from him.

Blood was gushing out of the wound as the man stood there teetering on his feet before he collapsed to his knees then the ground rushed up to his face.
Hali stuck his knife into the ground a couple of times to clean the blade before he put it away then walked over to Dakarai and his prisoner.

Hali could see the fear in the boy’s eyes as he walked towards him; a sure thing turned bad for him and his friends and was now probably wondering how long he had to live himself.
How many unsuspecting people had he lured here for these men robbed and murder?

Hali coolly walked over to him and told the boy to stand up.
As soon as he was on his feet Hali punched him in the face hard sending the boy reeling to the ground.
Blood gushed out of his broken nose as he lay there on the ground.
Hali told him to get up but the boy hesitated and anger grew in Hali and snarled at him to get up and as soon as the boy was on his feet again, Hali hit him again sending the boy once more to the ground.

Hali stood over him and asked the boy if he knew where Jeb lived?
The boy nodded his answer and Hali reached down and pushed him down the road towards where he said Jeb lived.

About a mile down the road they left it to walk into the forest.
The boy said that Jeb lived in the woods and there was no road to his place just this small path.
As they walked down the path something caught Hali’s attention and they all stopped to listen.
They could hear faint screaming voices in the distance.
Hali pushed the boy onward at a faster pace towards the noises they had heard.

The reached the edge of a clearing where they saw a group of people standing around holding torches lighting up the night.
The boy said they were the clan, a group that hated Negroes.
Just then two more came out of the house dragging Jeb between them, a woman ran out of the house and attacked the men holding Jeb but one of the others went over and beat her to the ground.

They took Jeb to a tree and the boy said they were going to hang him by the neck from there.
Hali wasn’t going to let this happen.
The boy wished him luck and started to walk away but Hali grabbed him by the shirt and told him that he wasn’t going to leave that way but he was doing to run across the front of them and into the woods on the other side.
The boy protested saying that they would kill him if he were caught.
Hali told him that if he ran fast enough they wouldn’t catch him shoved him out.
The boy looked at where he had to run and crept as close as he could without being seen before he burst out at a full sprint for the other side of the clearing.

He could hear men yelling at him to stop and a bullet went whizzing by about three feet to his left but that only made him run faster.
He could here them chasing him as he entered the woods on the other side, crashing through the thick brush as it whipped his body, punishment for his past deeds.

Two men ran after the boy leaving about eight to deal with between the two of them and Jeb as soon as he was freed of his bonds.
They moved out of their cover and crept slowly towards the group of men standing by the tree.
Hali knew it would be hard for them to be seen because the men would be blinded by the torches they held in their hands and they were busy with Jeb at that moment.

Jeb stood there with his hands tied knowing that life as he knew it was over.
He had fought for his freedom, had fought for his country and now he was going to die because he was black.

A rope was thrown over the limb of the tree as its noose came down and dangled infront of Jeb's face before it was slipped over his head a pulled tight
Its rough fibers burned the skin around his neck as a group of men started hoisting him upward.
He felt his feet leave the ground, desperately his legs thrashed around searching for solid ground to stand on as his brain became a burning inferno of pain and fear.

The woman ran up from the ground and crawled under Jeb’s legs trying to give him something to stand on but one of the hooded men kicked her in the stomach then dragged her off to the side where her tore her dress open.

As the noose grew tighter around his neck Jeb looked over and could see Betty laying on the ground, her dressed ripped open with a man standing above her opening his pants.

Walker

THe Red Clay: Part Fifteen

2010-11-26T00:00:00.002-05:00

Jeb saw Hali running back from the field of battle carrying what looked like a body from this distance and he began walking faster towards him.
Jeb met Hali half way back where Hali said something to Jeb and they both started running towards the hospital tent.

Hali walked into the tent and took the wounded man to the first open bed he saw and grabbed the doctor by the arm and brought him to his patient.
When the doctor saw it was an enemy soldier he refused saying his priority was the American wounded not those of the enemy then turned and started walking away.
He grabbed the doctor’s arm and insisted that he help but the doctor pulled his arm away refusing his request..

As the doctor walked away the colonel with Jeb by his side walked up to them.
He told the doctor to shut his mouth and to tend to the wounded man if he knew what was good for his health and when he was done he will tend to any other enemy soldiers that may need his assistance.

The doctor didn’t waste any time and went to the man on the bed then opened his shirt to see what the damage was.
His side had been torn open by shrapnel and the shirt was what was keeping his insides from being on the outside.

Another doctor came to help him and they managed to adjust the wound before they could look to see if there was internal damage.
He was lucky and had no serious internal damage so they sowed him up and wrapped up the wound with clean bandages.
The doctor reported back to Hali about the wound and that they had patched it up but he had lost a lot of blood and may die from that or the infection that was setting in.
Hali thanked him and then turned to the colonel and thanked him for his intervention.
The colonel told him that it was least he could do for him, after all he was one of them now and they take care of their own.

Hali thanked Jeb to for running to get the colonel and Jeb told him it’s what friends do for friends.
Hali turned and walked back into the hospital to look in on his brother.

Domingo was in a bad way, infection had set in and he was running a fever.
Hali opened his medicine bag then took out some of the herbs and extracts he had brought with him from Haiti.
He knew if he could keep the fever down he would have a better chance, for eight days Hali sat by his brother’s side caring for him.
On the ninth day Domingo opened his eyes and smiled at his big brother.

Over the next few weeks while Domingo got better they did some catching up on things back home, real life not this nightmare they were currently sharing.
Hali learned that he was an uncle and that Isabella is going to have another soon.
Their mother spends a lot of time in the garden tending a jungle of different flowers she has acquired from all over the world.

Hali asked how he came to be here in Cuba.
Domingo told him that he had just graduated from the military academy and he was shipped out a month before formal graduation ceremonies because Spain declared war on America.
The rest, well, he knew the rest.

Now Domingo wanted to know how Hali came to be here himself.
Hali told Domingo about how they came to get the hacienda after Diego was gone and threw him in irons as a slave.
If it wasn’t for Baba and Dakarai he may still be a prisoner or worse.
He told him about the hacienda being burned to the ground and the works put back to slave like conditions.

Domingo said when he got back to Spain he will talk to people he knew there and they would get justice.
Hali told him that the only justice needed was for the workers.

Just then Jeb walked into the hospital.
Hali hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks because he had been sent off on military business.
The war was almost over now and they were beginning to ship back the wounded first and then of the troops that saw the worse of it and replacing them with fresh men.

Jeb came over and shook hands with his friend and introduced himself to Domingo, it was the first time they have met since Domingo woke up from his fever.
Jeb told them he had a surprise for the both of them and waved towards the door and Dakarai walked in.
All three brothers were now together again in almost ten years.
Jeb had gone back to Haiti to help close down the operation there and he met Dakarai and told him about Hali then after asked to come along when he heard Jeb was returning to Cuba.
Dakarai had asked Baba if he would like to come along also but Baba told him that his place was here but it was his time to do look beyond the horizon.
Dakarai told them for some strange reason he felt just then that that was going to be the last time he will see his mentor and their friend.

After embracing Hali, Dakarai walked to Domingo embraced him as well then wanted to see his wound.
Domingo told Dakarai that Hali was taking good care of him while he was sick and Dakarai told Domingo he was lucky Hali hadn’t poison him
This started a series of verbal jabs in jest between the Hali and Dakarai.
When Dakarai had finished examining the wound he told Hali that he had done an excellent job on Domingo’s wound and they would not have to amputate his tadpole.
Hali thanked him for the compliment but Domingo hurled a couple of counter insults in defence of his manhood.

They spent the next week getting to know each other again while Domingo got stronger and would soon be able to leave the hospital.
Hali told him that he was going to go back to Spain with him to make sure he didn’t get to bored and go join another war.
This way he could also see his mother and the others as well.
Dakarai told them that he would come along also to keep the both of them out of trouble and to see Ada as well.
It was settled then, they were all going to Spain.

Over the next few days they made arraignments to go back to Haiti and take a ship to Spain from there.
With Jeb’s help and the help of the colonel they got a ride to Haiti on a supply ship.
They all stood at the dock saying their goodbyes.
Jeb passed a piece of paper to Hali and told him that if they came to America to come to Louisiana and see him, his address was on the paper.
Hali told him he would and they shook hands one last time before he boarded the ship following Dakarai as he helped Domingo up the gangplank.

Jonas and Maggie had moved into the best hotel they could find since they had no place to go because of the house burning down.
The police had come by to see him a couple of times to question him about the butler who tried to kill him.
They had come to the conclusion that the butler had killed his father then burned down the house to cover up his crime.
Jonas had told them he saw him running away from the house and had tried to kill Jonas also to keep the police from finding out the truth.

Jonas praised them for their astute deduction of the crime and managing to get their man before he shot him dead and saving his life.
It shows how safe they are by having them around.

Over the next few weeks Joanas acquainted himself with his father business while going through all his files and looking at what his investments were.
He still was waiting for the courts to clear the estate for him to have access the bank accounts.

While looking through his father’s cabinets he came across hidden cabinet that had a large safe in it that opened with a large key by the looks of it.
He started going through the drawers looking to find the key but there wasn’t anything around the office and the house was burned to the ground so if it was there it was lost forever.
There had to be a way to open the safe and see whats inside.
There were no hinges on the outside so he would have to find a way to break in with hammer and chisel.
He didn’t want anyone to know what he was up to though so he couldn’t hire someone to come and break into it for him.

All day he had the contents of the safe on his mind.
What did his father keep in it he wondered?
At the end of the day he started getting up to head back to the hotel and Maggie when the police showed up at the office looking for him.
They told Jonas that they found a body in the rubble of the house but it was burned beyond recognition.
They did find something on it that maybe he could identify for them if he could and one officer held out a chain with a key on the end of it.
They said it was around his neck.

Jonas stared at the key, could it be the one that opened the safe?
He quickly told the police that it was his father’s key to the box that held the letters his mother had sent him during the war.
She was now dead as was his father and the letters probably perished in the fire and the only thing that remained now was that key that once kept the love of his parents together.
Jonas held the key tightly in his hand.

The officer told him that he could keep the key as a keepsake to remind him of his parents, they had no use for in now that they know it was his father’s and it identified him as his father.
Jonas thanked them for the key and walked them out of the office and locked the door.
He went back to the safe and with a shaky hand he slipped the key into the lock and turned.

Hali was laying back in his bed smiling at the ceiling as the early morning sunlight poured through the window bathing him with new energy.
Everything was going in the right direction for a change.
School was going well and his relationship with Adalia was getting stronger with each passing day.
He knew his grandmother would approve of her.

Just then there was a knock at his door.
His roommate was out so he got up and opened the door.
There was a courier at the door with a package for him.
He signed for the box and went back to his bed to see what it was.
He wasn’t expecting anything from anybody, the return address said Nevada State Police.
What was this all about now, he had stopped thinking about that nightmare and now this comes is just as another reminder of what he was trying to forget.

He began tearing the wrapping off when the phone rang so he had to stop and go see who was calling him.
It was Adalia calling to see if he wanted to go for breakfast before she went to work.
He told he he would love to and quickly ran to take a shower before he got dressed.
It took him ten minutes to wash and get dressed, his hair would be dry by the time he met her and started to leave when the box caught his eye once more.
He walked over to in and picked the box up.
He shook it once then slipped it under his bed and took off to meet Adalia at the restaurant for breakfast.

While at breakfast they talked about what they were going to do after they were out of school.
Hali said he was beginning to have a change of heart.
He wanted to go to Africa but now was thinking about staying and being with her.
Adalia smiled at him and told Hali that she was thinking of quitting her job and going to Africa with him.
They both started laughing and began to discuss their future together until Adalia had to go to work.
She kissed him and took off for the commissary.

Hali took the long way back home so he could think a little bit more of what they talked about.
If he waited for her to finish school he would need to find work for six months until she was done and then they could head off to Africa together.
When he got home he grabbed a biology book and lay back on his bed to do some reading when he remembered the box he got.

Putting the book down he reached under tha bed and pulled out the box.
He read the front once more to make sure it was for him and then started to tear off the brown wrapping paper.
When the paper was off he opened the box and inside was the satchel the dead man gave him from the Gas Bar.

He pulled it out and tossed the box on the floor.
With his back propped up against the wall he stared at the satchel.
It was beautifully tooled with silver rivets decorating it and it looked old.
There were some brown stains on parts of the metal, dried blood, his, he could still see his bloody hands as he passed him the satchel in the bar just before he died.

He opened the satchel and looked inside, there was a large envelope and a small box.
Opening the envelope he took out a check for five hundred and forty five thousand dollars and thirty two cents.
A letter with it said that since no claimed the satchel and its contents then it became rightfully his.
He was stunned, he kept looking from the cheque to the letter then out the window.
What was he going to do now?
He looked back into the satchel and took out the small box and opened that up and it was the red statue.

He held it closer and took a good look at it, it was African that he was sure but he couldn’t tell from which part.
It was the figure of a man sitting on the ground staring at you.
His eyes felt like they were looking into your soul.

Hali put the statue on the bed and looked back into the satchel but there was nothing else, so he took the statue and put it back into the satchel again.
He will go to the African studies professor and ask him if he could tell him anything about the statue but for now he was going to the bank and deposit this cheque.
Things were definitely looking good for a change.

They waited for almost a month before they found a ship going to Spain from Haiti and it took another month and a half before they saw the shores of home, but was it home?
He yearned for the wilds of the world and not the life that others craved in the cities and villages.

They got off the ship in Valencia and went through customs.
All Spanish citizens had to show their papers before they were allowed to disembark any vessel
From here they had to hire a carriage to take them to Madrid where they lived.
They decided to stay in Valencia for a couple of days before they started off but Domingo said they should notify them of their arrival and went to the post masters office and sent a letter on ahead to Madrid.

Domingo was getting stronger and looked a lot healthier to since being wounded.
He showed Hali and Dakarai around Valencia.
There was much that they had never seen before and even though they all spoke Spanish it was not the same.
Hali had never seen a big city like this before and Domingo said that this was small compared to Madrid.

Four days later they hired a coach for the three day ride home and headed off for Madrid to meet the rest of the family.
It will be nice to see everyone again Hali thought.
Hali and Dakarai enjoyed the scenery as the made their way through the countryside.
There were hills covered in grape vines and orchards as far as the eye could see.
Domingo told him that even here there was a danger with bandits along the way and they had to be on alert until they got to Madrid.

After three days of bouncing around they reached the outskirts of Madrid but they still had a way to go because they lived on the opposite side and had to go around to the estate of the Dela Rosa family.
When their coach pulled into the front of the estate Isabella ran out the front door to them in tears.
She told them they had to hurry they were just in time.
Hali asked where their mother was and Isabella told him that she was in her bedroom.
She was ill and not expected to last much longer

She told them that she was happy when they got word that they were in Spain and on their way.
She didn’t think that they had even gotten the message they had sent.
Isabella led them to the second floor and to the master bedroom.
There was a wheelchair at the door as they entered.

Hali saw his mother and went to her side immediately and kissed her cheek.
He looked at her face running his hand over her hair, the gray streak that had not been there the last time he saw her.
Ada's eyes smiled at her son she looked over at Domingo and Dakarai.
Her sons were finally back home with her.
She smiled at Dakarai and thanked him for taking care of Hali for her.

They all gathered around the bed and watched on as this one life that meant so much to all of them slowly drifted away and out of their lives, but not their hearts and memories.
“Diego” she whispered then smiled at him

Seven years ago a battle was fought on distance shores by a family who just wanted to be left to live in peace but others had different ideas and they learned how much freedom cost when Diego was struck down.
The enemy was repelled but Diego was mortally wounded.
They carried him into the hacienda where Dakarai and Baba went to work on his wounds.
His shoulder blade was severed and a bad gash in his chest but wasn’t to deep, probably stopped by the breast bone.

The wound in his back was another matter.
It was obvious that his spine had been cut and the blow had left a cut all the way to his side.
Both men opened their pouches and started administering what ever knowledge they had.
Hali has sent someone to fetch the doctor while the others were trying to stop the bleeding.
The doctor arrived an hour after the attack and the three of them set to putting Diego back together as well as they could.
The doctor said that he didn’t know if he would live, he had lost a lot of blood and didn’t know what to do about his spine.
No one knew how Diego managed to survive, but he did.
He fought through a burning fever that had him screaming through the night.
Was it the efforts of three men who pooled their knowledge to save him or was it the love of a woman who sat at his bed until he opened his eyes and saw her there.

He regained his stregnth but he was never to be the same again.
He could not walk any more and was left to the wheelchair they had built for him to get around in but it wasn’t all bad.
Áda would push him through the garden every day and they would stare at the stars in the night sky and remember all the stars they have seen together.

He got seven extra years with the woman he loved thanks to their efforts. he would have given everything he owned for just one second more.
He looked up from his bed and thanks god for his three tall sons
A beautiful daughter
A new grand child
The woman of his dreams sitting by his side.

He could hear his father calling him.
“Yes, there he is, momma too”, then smiled to Ada before he left to join them.

Walker

The Red Clay: Part Fourteen

2010-11-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hali and Adalia had been seeing a lot of each other over that last couple of months after that first lunch they had together.
He learned that she was majoring in Social Care and wanted to work in the welfare system helping children.
She worked at the commisary so that she could afford to live off campus in her own apaerment.
He also learned that she was born in France because her father was in the military and they moved around a lot depending where he was stationed.
Her parents lived in Germany now but her father was trying to get transfered to a post back home so he could be settled here when he finally retired.

Hali told her he was from Louisianna, about his parents, his gramdmother who raised him and about how he wanted to become a doctor then go to Africa and help the people there.
Hali told her about his family’s history and how he wanted to go back to see what it was like and try to imagine how people lived back then.
He also wanted to work with the Peace Corp or maybe even the United Nations as a doctor in Africa, mostly to help the kids there but first he had to graduate and work for at least a year before he could think of that.

They both had a passion for helping people that needed it the most, like children and spent hours talking about these subjects.
Slowly they started becoming closer and falling in love without either of then knowing it was happening.
He also told her about his trip through Nevada, about the carnage in the desert and all the blood, the nightmares he’s been having.

Jonas woke with a start, mostly due to the hammering at the hotel door.
Maggie was buried under the sheets next to him and seemed not to notice it or pretended she didn’t.
He got out of bed and walked to the door then asked who it was.
The manager was at the door telling him that the police were here wanting to talk to him and if would come out to see them.
Jonas told them he had to get dressed and would be right out.
He knew why they were there.

He put his shirt on first then pulled his pants up tucking the shirt inside them before tightening his belt.
Socks and boots went on next and then stood up to slip his jacket on.
He stood there looking at himself in the mirror as he combed his hair thinking about the night’s events and how he got to this stage in his life.

A month ago he was in Georgia on business and after three days he found himself falling off the edge of a cliff into oblivian with another man’s hand around his throat.
Not just any man but his brother, the bastard son of one of his father’s victims.
There were no shortage of victims when it came to his father.
He now knew how cold his father was and where he got his lust for blood.
He saw it with his own eyes as he choked the life out of his mother with his bare hands then tossing her on the ground only to burned her in her house like they burn refuse when it’s no longer useful.
His mother’s soul bled through his father’s hands as his father’s now stained his own along with the other before him.

His years of boxing and training did not all go to waste, even though he detested to fight back and get dirty but he did learn lifes lessons and learned them well over the last few months.
He managed to get a hand under the arm around his neck and pried if off then flipped his brother over his shoulder sending him crashing through a heavy chair.

When he stepped back he saw his brother laying on the floor motionless, his head twisted in a grotesque manner, his neck broken.
Bending down he cautiously reached over and felt for a pulse but there was none.
A sense of triumph came over him.
It was a strange feeling but he liked it.

Getting up he grabbed for his clothes and started getting dressed as all this new information was gathering in his head asking questions looking for answers, some being answered others not but why it had to be eluded him.

He was scared but as he gathered his clothes and thoughts he was also being enlightened.
Old questions were aswered, nigtmares finally understood, the truth was coming out now over twenty years later.
After he got dressed he started for the door then stopped, he couldn’t leave him like that on the floor so he undressed his dead brother and tossed the clothes on the chair where his were once before then walked out into the hallway where Belle was waiting for him.

Belle could see the shock in his face when he came out into the hallway and lead him to her office for another drink.
She was proud of her son for exacting her revenge for her after all these years and now she was going to finish her plan by taking care of the beast now that she had replaced the pup with her own.

How fortunate she thought that they both looked so much alike, the first time she saw him she didn’t know it wasn’t her son and though her boy was playing a joke on her but she quickly realized who he really was and the plan started forming in her head.
Now she would finish the job and avenge the deaths of her parents and her sister Mary once and for all then with any luck they would profit from it all and live in the lap of luxuary.
Belle filled his glass to the top and passed it over to her son as he sat there silently starting back at her.

Jonas looked down at the full glass then reached out for it.
Took a sip, then downed the rest in one swallow then put it back on the table for Belle filled it for him again.
Jonas looked at this woman and wondered why she hated him so much, he had done nothing to this woman?
What had his father done to give this woman the desire to see him dead, to make her son into a murderer.

Was it vengence for deeds done or for services not rendered?
He picked up his drink once more and downed it this time without taking a sip first.
His brain swam with with confusion, anger, pain and fueled by the nector of formented grapes, that were first squashed like his life had been all these years.
He reached over and took the bottle then filled his glass once more and downed it.

Belle got up then, walking around the table and told him that he had enough then reached to take the bottle away from him but he held it formly in his grasp then pulled it out of her hand once more filling his glass with another drink.
Belle was sensing his anger so she reached out and touched his soft cheek.

Jonas looked in her eyes and it was then he saw realization dawn in Belle’s eyes as he stood up in front of her.
She took a step to back from him but he grabbed her by the throat with his right hand and squeezed her soft delicate lily white neck.
She grabbed at his wrist and tried to pull him off but he was to strong for her.
His hand squeezed harder as visions of his father creeped into his head, as he watched his fathers hands on his mother’s throat throttling her then tossing her to the floor.

Jonas stared down at Belle’s body and could feel the erection in his pants.
Stepping over her he then walked out of the office and into the sitting room where he found Maggie waiting there for who ever came for her.

He walked up to her and told her to get on her knees.
She was scared but she wasn’t.
She dropped to her knees and he opened the front of his pants and told her to suck on it until he was done.

He looked down at Maggie as she sat on the floor hair messed up and the front of her dress torn open then told her to get her things packed.
They were leaving for New York to meet his father.
She got up and walked to him and told him they had time then threw her arms around his neck, kissed him, then took him by the hand, leading him to her room where they spent an hour bent over the foot of the bed while his brother’s dead eyes looked on.

He picked up the revolver on the table and dropped it in his pocket before he turned to leave the room.
Jonas walked out of the room leaving Maggie in bed to continue her sleep, if she was asleep, she was going to need the rest for when he returned to her.

The hotel manager was standing outside the door flanked by two burly men in suits.
One asked him if he was the son of Jonas Beacham to which he told him that he was and they asked him to come with them.
Outside they got into a carriage and headed off to him father’s house.
They told him that it was on fire and didn’t know if anyone was in it yet because no one can get to close to it because it to hot.

Before they even got close to the house he could see the night sky lit up from behind the buildings that were obscuring his view.
As soon as they got around the corner though, they were greating by a giant fireball licking at the sky above.
There was a crowd of people passing buckets filled with water back and forth trying to keep the other buildings around it from catching fire also and making it worse than it already was.

As Jonas was standing across the street watching the efforts being made to get it under control the butler came to him from the crowd that was standing around watching the house burn.
He was crying as he walked up to him and trying to tell Jonas that he called for his father in the cellar but his father didn’t respond back.
He told Jonas he couldn’t go down to the celar because the fire was between him and the door.

The butler told him that he couldn’t understand how the fire had started down there, he didn’t know what was in the cellar because his father didn’t allow anyone down there.
He saw everything that came in and out of the house and there was nothing more than some old furniture that was stored downstairs he was told by his employer.

Jonas was listening to him tell him his story but was beginning to realize that he didn’t want the authorities to know where the fire started because that would make them suspicious of arson and look deeper into it instead of leaving it as a tragic accident.

Jonas asked him if he had spoken to the police yet and the butler said no.
Jonas then reached into his poscket and took out some money and passed it to the butler then told him to go to the hotel and get some rest, he would relay to the police what he just told him.
Then in two days he’ll come and see him at his hotel but before he left Jonas took out the pistol and passed it to him.
He told him to take it to protect him from anyone that might attack or attempt to rob him on the way to the hotel because it was late and there were bad people out at night that would take advantage of someone walking alone the dark.

The butler took the pistol and stared at it for a second, he had never fired one before and wasn’t sure if he should take it.
He Told Jonas he didn’t want it but Jonas insisted and told him he can give it back the next time he saw him.
He didn’t know if he could shoot someone if he had to but just the same he put it in his pocket to keep Mr Jonas happy, then walked away from the fire and into the darkness of the gathering crowd.

A policemen walked over to him and asked if he knew if his father was home and if there was anyone else living in the house.
Jonas told him that he had just arrived back to New York from Savannah Georgia just that evening and didn’t know but he assumed he would be here and there was a servant that lived at the house as well.

The curiuos policemen asked why he hadn’t gone home on his arrival back to New York, but Jonas had an answer for that as well.
He told him that he had gotten married while down south and wanted to surprise his father with his new bride in the morning.
Satisfied with the answers he got the officer turned and walked to his partner who was watching the firemen trying to douse the fire out.

Jonas was staring at the fire, it brought back many memories, some frightening but some……..some excited him.
The more he stared at the flames rising to the sky, the more aroused he became.
He was thinking how much he wished he was at the hotel room now when an idea came into his thoughts.

Jonas walked over to the two policemen and told them that he just saw what could have been his father’s servant running away down the street.
He said he called out to him but ran off after he saw it was him.
The policemen asked him in which direction he saw him run off in and they took off after the butler.

Jonas waited for about an hour before he hailed a carriage and went back to the hotel but all the way back he was rehersing his idea and plan of action for the next couple of days.
By the time he got back to the hotel he had played out the future in his head a dozen times before he stepped out of the carriage and went up to his room.
Maggie was still asleep when he walked into the room and dropped all his clothes on the floor then stood at the foot of the bed staring at her.

Reaching down he pulled the sheet off the bed in one violent move and tossed it across the room.
That woke her up.
She looked up with sleepy eyes and could see his excitement pointing in her direction.
Jonas grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her down to the end of the bed until half of her was hanging off of the edge.

In the morning after breakfast Jonas went to the police station and asked to see the police officers from the night before and told them that someone had come to him last night and told him that his life may be in danger.
Someone who wanted to remain annonymous had informed him that there was a plot to kill him like his father was killed.
Jonas said that informant told Jonas that he was going to be shot when leaving the hotel some day soon.

The police told Jonas that they could keep him in protective custody at the jail if he liked but Jonas said he would rather they watched his hotel instead.
He didn’t want to be separated from his new wife and she was in a new setting and stranger to the big city.
They told him that they could put his hotel on twenty four hour watch for a week and see if anything come up from this information.

After he left the police stationn Jonas went to the barber shop when he was done there he stepped onto the sidewalk where he stopped a boy walking along and asked him to deliver a letter for him then gave the boy a nickle to deliver it.
When the boy had left Jonas made his way back to the room and Maggie.

In the morning Jonas stepped out of the hotel but as soon as he got to the sidewalk he saw his father’s butler walking up to him.
As the butler stepped up to Jonas he held the revolver he had been give the night before out to him but before the butler could say anything a policeman stepped out and shot him twice at close range killing him instantly.

While everyone ran in shock or for cover Jonas knelt down next to the man and picked up a paper that had fallen on the ground from the butler’s hand and slipped in in his pocket.
A policeman grabbed Jonas and rushed him into the hotel just incase there was another shooter.
In the hotel he was told to go to his room and close the door and to not open it unless a policeman came to get him which Jonas quicly complied to.
In the room Jonas took out the piece of paper from his pocket and read it.

Meet me at my hotel in the morning and bring what I gave you, I need it.
Jr.

Hali, Dakarai and Baba travelled all over Haiti and some of the small islands around the area, helping people in need of medicine for the next few years.
While travelling around with his two friends Hali was learning a lot about herbs and other plants that could heal people.
There were some that produced the opposite effect but Baba said that they had their place in the healing process also.
There was one plant that rendered a person helpless and in a comatosed state to the extent of making the person look dead.
The medicine men used to imobalize a patient so he wouldn’t move around until he was fully healed with this.

He also had to learn French because that was the language on this side of the Island, there was a lot about Haiti that was different from the Dominican Republic.
What they had in common was an unstable government and found themselves in civil war all the time.

It was here that he met his first American, a black man like him, Jebediah Washington.
Hali couldn’t say his name so he called him Jeb.
They sat down one day and he told him about America then about the war that gave him his freedom.
Hali learned that America was so big that you could walk for months before you got to the other end of the country.
It only took them two weeks to walk across Haiti.

When Hali asked him what he was doing here and not there, he told Hali that he was here with the United States Navy and scouting the Spanish forces.
Over the last few years tension had built up between the Americans and the Spanish and was looking like a war may erupt at any moment.
America supported the independence factions while Spain was trying to keep its hold on the region.

Hali thought for a little while and remembered the year before when he returned to the hacienda after his abrupt departure and found it burned to the ground with everything in it, including his memories.
The state had taken over his fields and had men out there with whips having them cultivated by forcing the old workers, many his friends to work by whipping them until they were satisfied.
Halli looked at Jeb and asked him if there was anything he could do to help him.

Both men sat there listening and talking to each other, Hali had a first hand view of the whole Island and could tell Jeb whatever they needed to know about the lay of the land.
He also offered to scout for them if they needed a scout.
Hali believed if war came and the Americans won, then the Spanish would leave and slavery would die with their departure.
Right now there wasn’t supposed to be any slavery but the workers were treated like slaves and still being beaten as slaves.
Jeb told him that he would have to talk to his superiors before he could accept his offer but didn’t see them saying no to his offer.

For the next twelve months Jeb travelled with them throughout Haiti and every now and then into the Dominican Republic to get any information about the size of any military there.
The whole time Jeb was keeping notes on what he saw and would send them to their base in Haiti to be sent back to Naval Intellegence.

At night Jeb would tell stories about where he was from, a place called Louisianna.
He would describle the mountains and forests.along with the different animals that they had there.
All three of them would sit around and listen to tales of creatures that stood taller that a man with claws ten inches long that could slice a man in half.

He also told stories of what it was like being a slave, being taken away from his mother and sold.
His father had been killed for stealing food for them when he was still a baby.
Things were better now but there was still a lot of hate from everyone.
People hated them because they were black and others hated them because they lost someone trying to free them from slavery.
The civil war brought out a lot of hate in people and it will take years if not decades before most of it to be forgotten.

Within two years of Hali meeting Jeb War was declared.
America was officially at war once more, this time with the Spanish.
Jeb came to Hali one morning and told him that he was leaving to join his regiment for the invasion of Cuba.
There they will help the Cubans push out the Spanish and aid the revolutionaries so they could achieve their independence.
Hali told him that he would miss his new friend and to be careful.
They shook hands and parted ways.

Hali spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon squeezing roots to extract oils from them and then he filled a small polished wooded flask with what he had extracted.
It was supposed to help bring down fever caused by malaria.

When he had finished that he sat there thinking about Jeb and the adventure he was embarking on, a noble cause, to help people be free from another’s grip.
Hali looked at Dakarai then Baba, they both knew what he was thinking about before he even told them.
They had been together to long not to be able to read each other’s thoughts.

Dakarai and Baba stood up then picked up their belongings and told Hali they would all go together but Hali said he would do this alone and go to help with the sick and wounded.
Dakarai told him that he had promised his mother that he would take care of him but Hali wouldn’t hear none of it.
He told him that he was needed in Haiti for now and when this was over he would come back and they would be together again.

Hali showed up at the hotel where the Americans had set up a makeshift office and was asking for Jeb when Jeb walked in.
Jeb was surprised to see him there and asked Hali what was wrong and why he was there?
Hali told Jeb that he wanted to come along to Cuba and help and he told him that he had this feeling that he was supposed to go with him to Cuba for some reason.

Jeb tried to talk him out of it, telling him that where he was going was no place for a civilian.
Hali countered with that he knew a lot of medicine pertaining for this region and spoke Spanish and French which might come in handy if they needed a translator.
Jeb told him he would have to talk with his commander to get permission.

Hali had been on some boats but never on a ship of this size before.
He thought the first one they took from Haiti was big but when then transfered to this battle ship he was in total awe of the work that must have been put into creating one of this size.
The other Americans on the ship were different from Jeb to.
Most were white men and some blacks but there were other that looked like natives from someplace other than where he comes from, Indians Jeb called them.
They also spoke a different language called, english.

One of their leaders who was on the same ship was an odd man with small glasses but he was respected by all and when he walked towards them they moved over as he approached, even Hali moved over when he came close to him but one day he stopped infront of him and looked him over.

Jeb came to his side and explained to the lieutenant colonel that Hali didn’t speak English and was a volunteer medic from Haiti.
The colonel put out his hand and shook Hali’s and thanked him for joining their noble cause and hoped he wouldn’t need his services.
Jeb translated it for Hali and in turn Hali hoped he wouldn’t need his services either.

On June 22 1898 they landed on Cuba, two days later they played a pivotal role at the Battle of Las Guasimas.
This resulted in the lieutenant colonel being promoted to full colonel and on July 1 1898 with the colonel in the lead, they charge up a hill and into the history books.
The battle for Santiago was fought in a series of battles over various Spanish fortification around the city and this was the hill the held the key to the city.

Hali charged up the hill with the rest of the troops helping those that were wounded along the way.
There were many dead as there were sick from malaria every night he would treat many that were suffering from it.

Bombs exploded all around him as he charged up the hill and all of a sudden he saw the colonel’s horse go down and Hali rushed to his side.
The Colonel looked up at him and told him his foot was stuck under the horse so Hali helped by digging under the horse with his hands to get the colonel loose from his trap.
Bombs were exploding all around them but Hali pressed on until the colonel what free once more.

It was a vicious battle with people dieing all around them but these brave men kept charging on up the hill until San Juan Heights was taken and the city of Santiago had no choice but to surrender.

When Hali had done all he could with the wounded he walked over the battlefield and over into the captured areas where enemy bodies lay scattered around.
Most were dead but there were some that were still alive as he could hear their moans in the failing light.

He walked out and started treating the enemy wounded.
One such wounded man caught his attention, actually a shiny object that glinted in the sunlight did.
Hali walked over to investigate.
He bent down to the man’s side and picked up the gold watch that was still attached to the man’s pocked by a chain and he looked at it.
It looked familiar.
It was Diego’s watch.

Walker