Redemption

By R.L. Bowden

Cam Cummings is an ordinary guy. He is your neighbor. A pillar of the community and devoted husband of twenty-seven years to his wife, Emma. Until one day, his world crumbles. His wife, Emma, succumbs to cancer. Childless and now widowed, Cam loses not only his wife but also his faith and his will to live.

Seeking solace in the bottle, Cam asks questions for which there are no answers. Until one day, when he is kidnapped and cant give his captors what they want; they leave him to die. Suddenly, Cam has a reason to liverevenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514419489

R.L. Bowden

R.L. Bowden lives in Central Maine along with his wife, Karen, and his faithful dog, Jasper.

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Copyright © 2015 by R.L. Bowden.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/27/2015

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Contents

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Dedication

For Amie Butler, my self-proclaimed biggest fan.

For my children and of course, my wife, Karen, for her unwavering support

For Jasper for not biting me long enough to finish my edits.

For Eric Weeks. I wish you could have read this one.

1

Cam drove his old pickup truck down route 52 when he saw something that made him do a double-take. He pulled over to the side of the road and let the straggle of cars behind him pass. He wasn’t in any hurry. It was Sunday morning and he didn’t have any plans except to clean out that damned garage, finally. He supposed the only reason he was driving around was to avoid even doing that.

He wasn’t going to church. In fact the only time he had ever stepped inside a church was when his wife Emma had dragged him on Easter Sundays. And she had stopped doing that a couple of years ago. Not since ‘the Cancer’ had taken her from him. That’s what they called it around these parts, "The Cancer’. Not just cancer. It was always ‘The Cancer’. In capital letters. Cam couldn’t rightly recall what kind of cancer got its hooks into Emma. Nor did it matter. It wasn’t right. Emma had never smoked a day in her life. Cam occasionally had one, but only with a can of beer. He was up to a pack and a half lately. Read into that what you will.

No, Cam wasn’t going to church. He and God weren’t on speaking terms. They had a big falling out on the day that Emma died. Cam called Him every name in the book. Including a selfish bastard! They haven’t spoken since. And that’s the way he liked it. The local pastor had come by about six weeks after Emma was gone and asked Cam if he’d like to attend the church. Cam told him in no uncertain terms where he could go and take his stinking congregation with him. Then he had kindly asked the preacher to get off his property. Well, maybe not so kindly but the preacher had been banging on his door when he was trying to sleep off the world’s worst hangover. That had been nearly two years ago and the preacher hadn’t bothered him since.

When the final car had gone by, he had looked around and saw that the road was clear and did a lazy U-turn right in the middle of the road. He drove a hundred yards or so and pulled off again. He got out of his truck and walked over to the opposite side of the road and looked at the sign that was standing there. It read: Donner’s Redemption 2 Miles with an arrow pointing to a dirt road that he hadn’t noticed before. He must’ve driven this road a thousand times and had never seen that sign before. Nor could he recall the road.

What the hell, he thought. He had to return his empties at some point and the only bottle redemption place that he knew about was clear into town. He wasn’t keen on driving that distance. In fact, he didn’t like driving at all unless he had a particular destination in mind. He walked back to his truck, put it in gear, and drove back home.

He pulled up in front of his garage and got out.

Emma’s Toyota Camry was parked off to the side where it had been since the day she had died. The windows were rolled up tight and someday, he figured, the heat from the sun would blow them right out. But that was a chance he was willing to take. He started it every now and then to keep the battery charged and kept the tires inflated every couple of weeks. In case she needed it sometime, he supposed. He kept the windows up because the scent of her perfume still lingered inside and he didn’t want the wind to blow it away.

Sometimes, late at night, when he was drinking heavy, he would get in and close the door quickly behind him. The scent of her perfume was so strong that it felt like she was right there with him. He’d sit and talk with her until he passed out. She had spilled a bottle of perfume in there at some point, he figured, that’s why the scent was so strong. But that was okay. It was the only part of her he had left.

He backed up the truck to the garage and got out and looked at the Camry again. It had picked up a coat of dust and he supposed he ought to take the hose to her. But not right now. He had finally worked up the energy to do something constructive and knew instinctively, that if he hesitated for even one minute longer, the opportunity would be lost. He threw open the garage door.

Holy shit, he thought. This is going to take more than one trip. Emma used to take care of this when he slept in on Saturday mornings. It had been awhile. He sighed and went inside to get some heavy-duty garbage bags. It had taken two hours and the bed of the pick-up truck was rounded over. He really didn’t have the energy to take the bottles back now but what else could he do? He couldn’t just leave it like this and he couldn’t put the bottles back into the garage. He sucked it up and hopped into the cab of the truck. He started up the truck and looked over to the Camry and smiled. A single tear rolled down his cheek. Maybe tonight, old girl, he murmured. Maybe tonight.

He put the truck in gear and let out the clutch slowly so as not to spill the contents that were overloaded. He pulled out onto the highway and drove twenty-five on a forty-five marked road, caution lights blinking. Whenever a car pulled up behind him, horn blaring, he’d roll down his window and calmly wave them past. The epithets as they passed didn’t bother him. Sometimes he’d join in, saying, Up yours, too, you little twit! with a big grin on his face.

He didn’t mind going slow. It gave him time to think. He and Emma had been married for twenty-seven years. Barely out of high school. They had no children of their own. Emma was barren. Another one of God’s practical jokes. He didn’t care. He had plenty of nieces and nephews that he adored. But they had stopped coming around after Emma had passed. It was just as well. He wasn’t fit company, anyway. Becoming a bit surly in his ripe old age of forty-seven. He had his health, for the most part. He had never cheated on her. Never even thought about it. And neither did she as far as he knew. He got a job at the mill working sixty hours a week so that they could buy the house in which he now lived alone. Emma had picked up some part-time secretarial work. Typing mostly. Cam had protested, saying, no wife of his was going to work if he had his say but Emma told him she wanted to get a job because the milkman was starting to look good to her, giving him a wink. The milkman, Hobbs, was seventy years old with an arthritic hip and could barely walk but he had been with the company since the turn of the century, it seemed. They gave him an easy route out of loyalty, back when those things mattered. Only two or three stops. Whenever he came by, Emma would invite him in for a glass of milk and a slice of apple pie and they’d sit and chat and watch soap operas most of the afternoon. When his other customers began to complain that their milk always arrived late and was often warm, he was asked to retire. Emma felt guilty about that.

Cam had made shop foreman after twenty years but he didn’t act like a foreman. He put in long hours and participated in the heavy lifting as much as any of his workers. Everybody loved Cam. But as fate would have it, a two hundred pound spool of wool fell off the top shelf while Cam was helping move machinery and struck him square in the back, crushing his fourth and fifth vertebrae. Three back surgeries and six months of rehab, the doctors finally declared him unfit to work and therefore disabled. He collected a nice pension. Not as much as when he put in sixty hours but still a tidy sum. Most days, when it was warm, he felt fine but when it was cold and rainy, he could barely get out of bed. Six months after that, Emma was diagnosed with ‘the Cancer’. Another kick in the nuts.

It didn’t help that the end of Emma’s time was during the rainy month of November. She had been bed-ridden during this time and he was, as well. She would often wake up crying because of the pain and they would look at each other and laugh. They both felt so pathetic. It hurt but it felt good at the same time.

The problem with ‘the Cancer’ was not only did it slowly eat away at the person it had inflicted, it also ate away at the person that cared about them. In Cam’s case, it ate away at his ‘give-a-shit’.

When Cam reached the sign he pulled over again, surveying the road off to the right. It was unmarked. It was a long, winding, dirt road that disappeared into a gully then up again into a forest of elms. There were no telephone poles that he could see. He got back into his idling truck and eased onto the road. It was mid-May and a bright sunny day. The temperature was in the mid-seventies but it seemed like it had rained every other day. Hard, pouring rain and it appeared to wash the shoulders off the road leaving deep gullies on either side. There was barely enough room for one vehicle. On this incline, with no room to turn around, if another vehicle came along in the opposite direction, he was fucked.

The odometer on the old pick-up clicked on two miles exactly when Cam came across another sign that read Donner’s Redemption. This one pointed to an old abandoned apple orchard. Cam peered out the window looking for a road but could see none. The only thing he could see was a trail made up of what looked like it was made for wagon wheels that led through the orchard and off into the woods. He shifted the truck into four-wheel drive and pulled in. The smell of rotten apples was pungent. The old truck bucked like a buckboard through the ruts in the trail, springs squeaking. More than one time he had to stop and pick up a bag of his cargo that had spilled out of the truck bed. Past the orchard and into the woods, he saw another set of tracks that led deep into the woods. This was a bit better. Not much but a bit. Like a logging trail, maybe.

Within minutes, the sun was blocked out completely by the overhanging trees. Even though it was early afternoon he had to put his headlights on.

What the hell…? he muttered. He glanced down at the odometer and saw that he had gone seven miles into the woods, It didn’t seem that far but