War

By Ken Kuhlken

Book Four of For America. Otis Otterbach decides he won't live in the same world as the man he holds responsible for burning down his home and killing his dearest friend. He trains to make himself into a ruthless warrior then and sets off on what he supposes will likely be a suicide mission. After searching in wilderness and jungles, he finally arrives in the capital of Mexico, where the Enemy and followers await him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher Hickey & McGee
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463047439

Ken Kuhlken

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in ESQUIRE and numerous other magazines, been honorably mentioned in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.His novels include MIDHEAVEN, finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, and the Hickey family mysteries: THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES; THE GOOD KNOW NOTHING; THE VENUS DEAL; THE LOUD ADIOS, Private Eye Writers of America Press Best First PI Novel; THE ANGEL GANG; THE DO-RE-MI, finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award; THE VAGABOND VIRGINS; THE VERY LEAST; and THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.His five-book saga FOR AMERICA, is together a long, long novel and an incantation, a work of magic created to postpone the end of the world for at least a thousand years.His work in progress is a YA mystery.His WRITING AND THE SPIRIT advises artists seeking inspiration. He guides readers on a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven in READING BROTHER LAWRENCE.Also, he reads a lot, plays golf, watches and coaches baseball and softball, teaches at Perelandra College, and hangs out with his daughter when she comes home from her excellent college back east.

Book preview

WAR

FOR AMERICA -- BOOK FOUR

Ken Kuhlken

Hickey & McGee, publishers

hickeybooks.com

Praise for Ken and his novels

. . . brings a great new character — and a fresh voice — into the mystery field. Novelist Tony Hillerman

Kuhlken is an original, and in these days of cookie-cutter fiction, originality is something to be prized. San Diego Union Tribune

. . . brings the social and cultural scene of the period vividly to life. Publisher's Weekly

. . . a tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed. Kirkus Reviews

. . . takes readers into dark experiences and deep understandings that can't help but leave them changed. Novelist Michael Collins

Kuhlken weaves a complex plot around a complex man, a weary hero who tries to maintain standards as all around him fall to temptation. Publisher's Weekly

. . . a stunning combination of bad guys and angels, of fast-moving action and poignant, heartbreaking encounters. Novelist Wendy Hornsby

. . . captures the history and atmosphere of the 1970s as well as the complex dynamics of a fascinating family. Booklist

. . . a tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed . . . Crime, punishment and redemption. Kirkus Reviews

. . . fast-moving adventure, effectively combines mainstream historical fiction with the conventions of the hard-boiled detective novel. Booklist

A wonderful, literate, and very ambitious novel that does everything a good story should do. It surprises, delights, it jolts and makes you think . Novelist T. Jefferson Parker

. . . a pleasure to read. Novelist Anne Tyler

Elegant, eloquent, and elegiac, Kuhlken's novels sing an old melody, at the same time haunting and beautiful. Novelist Don Winslow

Copyright 2019 by Ken Kuhlken

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Hickey & McGee

8697-C La Mesa Boulevard

La Mesa, CA 91942

hickeybooks.com

ISBN: 9780463047439

BISAC:

FIC050S,000      FICTION / Crime

FIC019000      FICTION / Literary

FIC008000      FICTION / Sagas

FIC038000      FICTION / Sports

FIC031010      FICTION / Thrillers / Crime

FIC031090      FICTION / Thrillers / Terrorism

Smashwords Edition

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Author's note:

The collection of five books I call FOR AMERICA has been a long time coming. The story began when I rode in an old truck with Laurent Sozzani to Iowa. Back home, in what city folks called the sticks east of San Diego, I wrote some pages about the trip and called my story The Gas Crisis.

A few years later, my five-year-old Darcy noticed me standing in the kitchen staring at nothing, and she remarked, Oh no, crazy ol' daddy's working on the grass crisis again.

I am especially indebted to the people who inspired the characters you will find in the novel. In addition to the aforementioned Laurent, they include, my grandparents, Wade and Mary Garfield; my dad Wayne Kuhlken and mom Ada Garfield Kuhlken; Laura Munger; all the Torrey family, especially Cliff, Bill, and Barbara; Bill, Steve and Pam Zarp; Ron Martina and Pat; Halima who used to be Yvonne; my cousins, Steve, Kris, Jill, Ed, Wade, Virgie, Wendy, Susie, Patti, Tim, Gayle; my aunts Harriet and Mary and uncles Charlie, Jimmy, Fenton, Eddy, and Virgil; as well as friends including Denny Williamson, Gene Seaman, Pam Fox, and Lucas and Carol Field, Bob Williams, Karl Hartman, Stephanie Schram, Fred and Cliff Niman, Margaret Beasley, Tony Tarantino, Gus Schuetz, Ron Maxted, and David Knop; and all the fine musicians who blessed the Candy Company and other coffee houses, among them Jackson Browne, Hoyt Axton, Big Mama Thornton, Steve Martin, Lightnin' Hopkins, Steve Gillette, Ray Phoenix, Hedge and Donna, Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Ponies, Barry McGuire, Glen Frey and J.D. Souther. And the story would never have begun without the inspiration of my dear friends and mentors Eric and Sylvia Curtis.

Special thanks to Jennifer Silva Redmond for editing, proofing, and encouraging.

I will consider all the time and energy I devoted to For America well spent if my beloved children, Darcy, Cody, Zoë, and Nicholas, use it to vicariously experience life in some turbulent, exciting, and perhaps ominous times. Thousands of thanks to their mothers for collaborating in the creation and nurturing of such marvels as they have grown to be even while crazy ol' daddy spent thousands of hours working on and otherwise living what Darcy still calls the grass crisis.

Contents

Author's note

Brief Reminders

FOR AMERICA, book four

WAR

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

11

A request

A preview of book five

Also by Ken Kuhlken

About the author

Brief Reminders

Supermen: Otis Otterbach at age six determines he will be a baseball pitcher. Soon he meets Carl Jones, aka Casey, a talented catcher. The two become like close brothers and are sought after by professional and college scouts. But Casey's mother, the homicidal Cynthia Jones, disrupts their careers by sending them on a mysterious mission. All Otis knows about the purpose of the mission is that it concerns a Biblical beast and the end of the world.

This Rough Beast finds Otis bereft. Over the past few years, he has lost his father and his beloved grandma, an artist whose stories inspired him with a vast imagination. And now he has not only lost his dearest friend; he believes Casey obeyed his mother and committed murder.

Otis plays ball one season in college then gives up the game after maiming a batter. In place of sports, he frequents beatnik coffee houses and invites musicians and other friends to live in the home he inherited. By the time Casey reappears, the place is what people call a hippie commune.

Casey assures Otis he hasn't killed anybody. Rather, he fabricated the story attempting to end Cynthia's plotting against his cousin, Henry Tucker, whom Cynthia believes is a mythical Beast she calls the Enemy. He tells Otis that Henry — who deserted the U.S. Army — has become a major producer of LSD.

Soon after Casey reappears, so does their long-time friend Nancy, who is now a target of the Manson family, from which she got entangled then escaped. She and Casey become a couple. Then Henry Tucker and followers, on the run after an FBI bust, make a stop at Otis's home and leave behind a fire that turns the place into ashes.

The Gas Crisis: Otis can't let go of the obsession that Henry Tucker, aside from burning down his home, also murdered Casey. He attempts to dismiss Casey's mother's insistence that destiny has assigned him to avenge Casey by killing Henry Tucker. But no matter how hard he tries to put the past behind him, he simply can't. Instead, he descends ever deeper into the world of his powerful imagination, which provides some relief and prompts him to apply to a writing program at the University of Iowa. His wife Denise urges him to go.

In Iowa, he hopes to stay and find wisdom and encouragement from writers John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut. But when Cynthia convinces him that Casey may be alive and in Mexico with Henry Tucker and his followers, he gives up on school, leaves Iowa and, the trip west, gets possessed by acute delirium.

FOR AMERICA

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. John F. Kennedy"

WAR

When I hold you in my arms, and I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm, because happiness is a warm gun, bang bang shoot shoot. The Beatles

1

From Editor Clifford:

Otis Otterbach learned about killing from a master storyteller. His beloved grandma filled him with stories about the warrior Hiawatha slaying the evil magician; valiant Robin Hood protecting England with his bow and arrows; the rowdy, chivalrous knights of the Round Table fighting all comers, slaughtering plenty of them; and Joan of Arc battling and dying true to her call.

Yet Otis grew to be a gentle man. So gentle that, after he worked hard for a dozen years to master the art of pitching, he quit the game rather than risk hurting any more batters.

Since I knew both Otis and Cynthia Jones, I marvel at the wiles and persistence that allowed her to make him an assassin, to join her crusade to save America from destruction by exterminating the Enemy, Henry Tucker, son the Bitch.

From Otis:

On the way to Cynthia's, I remembered Andy, my Iowa friend, saying an unloaded gun is good for nothing.

I was a gun that needed loading, like I was born with pitcher potential but needed to throw a hundred pitches a day to become a pitcher.

Always before, after Cynthia gave up the small house near our ballfield in Piedras, a suburban place she argued was best for raising Casey, she had lived in studios where her many dozens of stolen library books and photos of her son used up most the floor and wall space. But now she was in a smart townhome on Bayside Walk near Santa Clara Point on San Diego’s Mission Bay.

Since the townhome, two stories with a balcony and front patio across the walkway from the sandy beach, appeared worth a fortune, I wondered if she might have succeeded in her outrageous scheme of engaging the famous lawyer Vincent Bugliosi — as a gesture of thanks for our friend Nancy's help convicting Charles Manson — to represent her in swindling Walt Disney with the threat of a lawsuit. Her plan had been to sue Disney for corrupting children by luring them into his cartoon world by creating his mice, ducks, and Mouseketeers all with cute little butts.

After I rapped on her door and waited then rapped again and waited then rapped and so on, Cynthia threw her door open. Look at me! she yowled. Isn’t it obvious I'm dying? Her powdered skin appeared raw and loose. Her eyeballs were streaked with yellow. At forty-seven she might have passed for seventy.

Okay, I said.

Look at you! She stood gaping at my burn scars, two strips like bacon from my forehead down and over my right cheek, reminders of the fire that turned my house and maybe her only son into ashes. Can't you find an ointment or makeup?

So, what are you dying from this time? I asked.

You had better hope I live until after you kill the Enemy and I make you my heir.

Do you own this place?

Own? she whined. I could never own a home as long as the Bitch is alive, as long as I have to move every month or so.

Then what good is being your heir? I’ll get some girdles, a bunch of pills, a cane.

And a hundred and forty-four acres of forest. She stood, swished a dramatic turn, and hobbled to the kitchen. Her flailing elbow knocked a jar from the counter. It shattered on the floor. She grabbed a broom, screeched, flung the broom like a javelin, and yowled, I cut my foot, dammit all!

The broom had stabbed the mauve velvet sectional couch, part of a set that also included a love seat, recliner, and glass-topped coffee table. Did you buy all this? I asked.

My foot! she yowled again. And why would I buy this hideous modern junk, Otisss? Can’t you see the place came furnished?

I yanked the broom out of the sofa, carried it to the kitchen and swept up a mess of glass and red jelly while she opened the refrigerator, pulled out a small metal box and hopped to the dinette booth, balancing herself along the counter. At the booth table she opened