A Story of Salvation

By Mike Shepherd

A Story of Salvation begins in Spunky Point, Illinois where the protagonist, Mick Scott, and his two younger sisters live with their grandparents after their parents split up. Their violent, suicidal, alcoholic mother is ruled unfit by a family court to care for them. She blames the court’s decision on her ex-husband, so she enlists the assistance of her violent new lover to exact revenge on him and the children, thinking that they conspired against her in court.

As the three siblings grow into adulthood, they, along with their father, are forced to deal with their mother’s lover’s vicious attacks against them.

After all is said and done, do they succeed in ending his evil reign of terror, or do they succumb to it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663228079

Mike Shepherd

Mike Shepherd is the author of Like Another Lifetime In Another World an historic fiction based on his experiences as a reporter for Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam in 1967 and ‘68. It too is available through iUniverse.com. Shepherd is a free-lance writer who lives in the country near Springfield, Illinois.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

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I n the middle of the night she collapsed in the bathroom, drunk and naked after swallowing a handful of sleeping pills. Dad called for an ambulance that took her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. This was not the first time she had attempted suicide, nor would it be the last, unless she increased the dosage. It was like a recurring nightmare that my two sisters and I, and my dad as well, had to endure, until he took us to our grandparents to stay for the summer, and I happily realized that the nightmares would be over for a while, living with them where domestic tranquility was the norm.

My sisters slept together in a big bed in the front bedroom, and I slept on a roll away bed in my great granddad Paul’s room, which was an addition to the house. It had an outdoor entrance that led to an expansive back yard, where he went every morning in the summer to tend to his flower and vegetable gardens.

At night he sat in an old easy chair beneath a standup lamp reading Zane Grey westerns. I used to peek out at him from beneath a pillow. His head bobbed up and down in the yellow glow of the lampshade as he struggled to stay awake. The clock on the roll- top desk ticked away the hours, while crickets chirped incessantly, and a train whistled as it rolled down the tracks on the Missouri side of the river With the cadence of time passing, I drifted into slumber.

In the morning, Grandad rose with the sun to beat the heat of the day, but I never heard him leave. What I did hear was the clock chiming ten. I was a late sleeper. I finally got up, dressed and went into the kitchen, where Grandma Ethel, Grandad’s daughter-in-law, sat at the table drinking coffee.

Well good morning, sunshine, she always said, Wanna bowl of snap, crackle and pop?

She too had been up since the crack of dawn to fix her husband Frank a soft boiled egg and toast before sending him off to work, at a bank across the river in Keokuk, Iowa.

This was their daily routine. Mine was to go down to the Mississippi River, which was visible from the back yard, through the woods of a hollow that sloped down to the bank. I skinny-dipped on a sandbar. Its shallow water appeared much cleaner and less dangerous to swim in than the steep muddy bank where the water was dirty and deep, so I didn’t have to take a bath until Saturday night – bath night for kids in those days. When the noon whistle blew uptown at the fire station I knew it was time to go home for lunch.

After we ate Grandad Paul went out front to the curb to meet the mailman for the Chicago Tribune and replies to the many letters he had written to family and friends all over the country. He never cranked up the telephone – long distance calls were just ...too damned expensive, besides, they were on a party line and he didn’t like sharing his business with all the busybodies in town.

Before retiring from the post office he had delivered mail throughout the rural areas of Spunky Point in a horse-drawn buggy.

Thought we had everything we needed till Sears & Roebuck came out with that catalogue. Got so I hesitated to deliver the damn things. Some folks went broke makin’ those boys rich. Now it’s that little electric box with little people in it tellin’ us what they think we need.

On hot lazy afternoons we sat on the screened in front porch, and he reminisced about his beloved horses, and days gone by. Before long, his straw hat slid down over his eyes and he was snoring, while I dozed off in the swing, which was easy to do as a delightful breeze whispered through the trees and mourning doves cooed their forlorn song. We woke when towboat horns echoed in the Mississippi River valley and hopped into Grandad’s black ‘39 Chevy to drive to the obelisk on the Point that marked where old Fort Edwards used to be, just in time to see long barges carrying coal, oil and grain up and down the river. Standing on the breast of Illinois, where Zachary Taylor, who had commanded the frontier fort (before he became president of the US) once stood, keeping an eye on the movements of Indians during the Black Hawk Wars.

Only one thing made me doze off more quickly than my naps on the front porch: the Saturday afternoon baseball game of the week on NBC television, with Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese, sponsored by Falstaff Beer.

Dean’s Arkansas drawl was sedating, and I seldom stayed awake past the 5th inning, but his broadcasting caused Grandma’s ear to stand on end. A stickler for correct English, she was highly critical of the man’s poor grammar.

Grandma nudged me when the game was over. Better go out and mow now, before it rains. That was my weekly chore, in addition to burning trash. Both of them made me smell bad, so Saturday night, before supper, I took my bath.

Saturday nights were special in the summertime in Spunky Point: the municipal band played concerts on a mobile bandstand in the middle of a thriving Main Street.

The kids of farmers, who had come to town to shop, mingled with town kids. They skipped around the bandstand while little girls held hands, and giggled, and the boys appeared to be chasing them. At times it looked like the girls were chasing the boys.

On the sidewalk, ladies of the Episcopal Women’s Guild operated a colorfully-lit popcorn machine that resembled an old-fashioned juke box. The air was redolent with the delicious smell of popping corn; I got my fill of it while watching the endless promenade going round and round the bandstand. I was a little too old to participate, so I settled for listening to the band, directed by my maternal grandfather Walter, a Dixieland jazz drummer well-known in these parts. He had started playing in the kitchen at the age of three, my mom once told me, pounding on pots and pans with wooden spoons. He had a natural ear for music. And since moms aren’t suppose to lie, I also believed her story about his being up on scaffolding at the Burgemeister brewery, laying stone with his father John, my other great grandad. When he heard some swinging band on the boat dock below, he knew something special was up. His dad let him go down to see.

Years later Daddy recalled what happened next, Mom said, when she was lucid enough to communicate sensibly. A brown, moon-faced man stood on the deck of the boat, blowing so hard on a trumpet that sweat seemed to squirt from his bulging eyes. I can see him now, smiling broadly while dabbing his sweaty cheeks and brow with a big white handkerchief. It was none other than Louis Satchmo" Armstrong raspily singing Up the Lazing River. ‘Oh yessss,’ he sang as he ended the song."

And because moms don’t lie, I believed her when she said, "By and by Satchmo – the Ambassador of Good Will -- let Daddy sit in on the drums. Don’t ask me why. I guess he saw a glint in the little guy’s eye, or the rhythm in his feet as he tapped time to the music.

Anyway, Satchmo liked the way he played so much that he invited Daddy to play again the next time he came through Spunky Point. Satchmo did, and Daddy played all the way to his grave. He died on his way to his last gig, at a hotel in Quincy, many years later, she said with a smile, like the one Grandpa Walter always had when he sat behind those drums.

CHAPTER 2

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I f it wasn’t raining on Wednesday mornings, Grandma dragged the wash tub and ringer out of the washhouse onto the concrete pad, where she proceeded to wash a week’s worth of dirty clothes, then hang them out on a line to dry.

When the washhouse wasn’t being used to do laundry, we put it to good use as a playhouse. There were plenty of costumes to go around, old clothes that my grandparents wore back in the Roaring 20’s, that were stored in a wardrobe. One of my grandpa’s striped zoot suits fit me perfectly, and I played the role of a bootlegger. Grandma showed my sister Christine how to dress like a flapper. Randy, one of the neighborhood kids also dressed like one, and when he tried to kiss me I punched him in the groin to remind him that he was really a boy, but it only made his voice go up higher which fit the role he was playing.

One of the neighborhood kids I liked palling around with was Charlie. He was into camping and canoeing, and other outdoor activities like hiking through the woods. He hope to become an Eagle Scout. He needed a merit badge in first aid to qualify.

On a hot July day, we were skinny-dipping at the Waterfalls in Geode Glen, and instead of jumping out away from the falls, I dropped straight down into the pool and landed on a jagged rock protruding from the water that nearly cut one of my heels off. I dragged myself onto a rock shelf. I was bleeding profusely. Charlie grabbed his t-shirt, which was lying nearby, ripped off a strip, and wrapped it around my foot to stop the bleeding and hold the heel in place, then he rode me down to the clinic on his bike. It took several stitches to close the wound, and I hobbled around on crutches for the next month or so. When the scout master heard of the accident and Charlie’s reaction to it, he was awarded the merit badge for first aid. Charlie was bound to become a paramedic.

When school started in late August, I was immediately struck in the heart by Cupid’s arrow, the first time I saw Mary Lou Young’s big bright blue eyes, which looked right through me as if I didn’t exist. It was an unrequited attraction, my first experience with that agonizing dilemma, and, boy, it hurt. To relieve the pain I resorted to sneaking whiskey from the medicine cabinet, which was intended for hot toddies if someone came down with a cold or the flu. Was I becoming an alcoholic at such a young age? Had I inherited a desire for booze from my mother? Would I develop suicidal tendencies like hers? I wondered if she had attempted another suicide after Dad sent us away. When he came to visit us on Thanksgiving, he informed us that she had entered an alcohol rehab program, and hadn’t attempted suicide again but I’m sad to say that we’re getting a divorce anyway, so you’ll have to stay with grandma and grandpa until the court decides who will get custody.

CHAPTER 3

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A fter Thanksgiving, we were hit by an Alberta Clipper weather front from Canada. The river froze over the narrow channel between the bank and Mud Island. It was hunting season, and deer were known to inhabit the island, so a couple of fellows from school and I took rifles and dared to cross the snow-covered ice, hoping to spot one to shoot. The ice crackled menacingly beneath our feet. When I looked up and muttered a quick prayer, I saw a black speck in the gray, overcast sky, high above where we stood. I thought it might have been a buzzard, so just for the hell of it, I took aim and fired. Thinking nothing of it I continued walking toward the island. Occasionally I glanced skyward to see what had become of the bird. To my surprise it was descending over us rapidly, then it began to flutter. For a moment the bird regained normal flight, but its resurgence was short-lived – it was coming down. Splotches of blood appeared in the snow. As it got closer, its markings became more distinct. The majestic white head, yellow beak and talons and white tail feathers revealed it to be, not a buzzard after all, but a Great American Bald Eagle.

Spreading its wings, the bird braced its talons for a crash landing as it swept down in front of me and skidded across the snowy ice, leaving a trail of blood behind it. Coming to a stop about twenty yards away, it reared up, flapped its wings and screeched loudly, wild eyes flashing. Then the big, beautiful bird collapsed in a pool of blood and screeched no more.

The sight of the dead bird made me shiver from head to toe. My heart sank, and tears welled up in my eyes.

Jesus Christ, what have I done?

The wind began to howl, and the frozen river groaned beneath my feet as I looked down at the carnage. The gun, too heavy to hold now, slipped from my hand and fell with a thud on the ice. I picked the eagle up by its talons and tossed it onto the bank of Mud Island. What was once a magnificent raptor was nothing more than a pile of bloody feathers now, on a bed of snow-crusted dead leaves.

As we shuffled back to the river bank I glanced over my shoulder at the island’s stark tree line, fading in the dusk. Crows, flocking there for the night, cawed relentlessly, as if to scold me for what I had done. I didn’t bother to go back and pick up the gun. My hunting days were over.

CHAPTER 4

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C hristmas came and so did word from my dad that his divorce from Mom was final. The court was deciding who would get custody of my sisters and me. Our living arrangement with our grandparents was only temporary. It came down to Mom or Dad. Mom had been sober now, for several months, and she hadn’t attempted another suicide. She had gotten a job as a secretary, and was in serious contention for custody, because she was our mother. The court was inclined to favor mothers regardless of their past behavior. Until the court made a final decision, we’d remain with our grandparents, which was fine with me – I loved living with them, especially at Christmas.

Christmas was an extravaganza at their house, when we were younger and still believed in Santa Claus, but our belief in Jesus Christ kept the Christmas spirit alive as we grew older. Both Christ and Santa were celebrated on Christmas eve. As a youngster I wrote poetry, and composed one about that magical night:

I remember that anticipation was the first sensation to come over me

when snow fell in December.

For some reason a white Christmas symbolized the season,

Although it seldom snowed in Bethlehem.

Must have been to depict St. Nick in the north land,

from where he launched his reindeer-driven sleigh ride,

giving gifts around the Earth in the spirit of the yuletide,

while on the same day God gave us the greatest gift of all,

when the virgin Mary gave birth to His son in an animal stall.

As a child I believed in both,

but I was somewhat perplexed

because reindeer don’t fly

and Christ was conceived without sex,

so I perceived it to be a miracle

born of the metaphysical.

When Christmas Eve came at last there were presents to open under the tree

before we went to midnight mass.

The beautiful little church was aglow from the rows of stained glass windows,

and the altar was appointed with Advent’s vestments

along with festive poinsettias made bright by mellow candle light.

When the priest recited Luke’s description from the scriptures

of angels appearing before shepherds near the Syrian City of David

to tell them that the Savior was born that night,

as an acolyte I worked the chains of the censer,

dispensing incense smoke that drifted high above the people

all the way up to the steeple, where nigh upon midnight

twelve bells rang and