Blood, Love and Justice

By Joe Lovato

Evil is fluid but so is the grace to fight it. The moods of fate take their toll, one step at a time until the unthinkable seems natural. Billy is strong, above the fray, unshakable. But things that don’t bend tend to break. Like a flaw in a dam, one drop spawns the next until the flood is inevitable. Can the unforgiveable be forgiven? The road to redemption is endless, but love helps. If opposites attract then so must good and evil. Billy is troubled while Colleen is filled with the unrestrained joy of youth. In the end will good prevail? Trump and politics play a small but critical part in the story, as one evil reflects the other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664108608

Book preview

Billy

Some men stand on a broken leg just to see if it’ll hurt; and when it does, they do it again just to see if they can take the pain. Pushing the limits of reason can be costly. Sometimes the cost is small, and sometimes the pain spreads. He always felt a little drunk, disconnected somehow, constantly driving down an endless road, the miles passing unnoticed. He tried to fly above the fray, like the spirit of a body floating above a corpse—judging, judging, always judging. He kept trying to find the good among the bad, although most people were just degrees of bad. He always looked too closely, exposing greasy pores to the light and highlighting natural flaws. The world was full of people who replace the truth with self-forgiving fantasy. He worked with most of them. He strived to stay untouched by their hunger. He tried to stay removed, stoic, unreachable, a stone face carved into the minds of those around him. But sometimes his emotions betrayed him, and he lost battles he should have won.

Billy could have been anything he wanted. He should have been a farmer or, better yet, a sheepherder. His great failing was that he thought there should be innate fairness to life. Broken legs never heal if you keep walking on them.

To fortify himself for the day ahead, he would get up much earlier than he needed to. Though it would be a warm day, he started the van and let it run a few minutes. He pictured the oil slipping through all the places it needed to go. It was a dark-blue van, almost black; and he liked to keep it as shiny as possible. He went to work in it; he hunted in it. It was his rolling sanctuary. It was big, powerful, and guzzled gas, a pregnant Batmobile. The long dusty road over the mountain always left a thin layer of film on the van. Like a dog chasing its tail, he would try to outrun the trailing dust; but the road was too bumpy, and the dust always caught him. The highway would ease the trip. The long dependable routine saved his sanity.

His home was hidden from a city that had outgrown its humanity. Where there was once a view of the mountain, there were now tall buildings so that a few people could have a view of the mountain. Though they could have spread to the plains below, they were drawn to what they could not have. Already, the city’s tentacles had crept relentlessly into every canyon of the mountain’s western slope.

Facing sheer rock cliffs, the decay had come to a stop. In time, an exposed artery through a winding mountain pass would explode with people, houses, and barking dogs. For now, he was safe. His road to work was long and hard, but it protected him from that world. It gave him time to gear up to meet its challenges and then unwind to forget them.

Billy had built their home on the edge of a very large ranch, a haven at the foot of the mountain’s eastern slope, still safe from the city’s assault. The land below was an open prairie that ran forever. Their little home was built at the highest point of a twenty-acre parcel that hugged the side of a wide winding canyon. It was not finished, a never-ending project. Occasionally, the old man next door would help him. Although he was old, he was strong and seemed to know everything about building.

His narrow road snaked its way over the mountain. In the silence of the night, the occasional car from the distant highway gave a warning that died in the dark. Designed by reckless repetition, the little road twisted and turned until it found its way. The road was dirt and rock, flanked by sagebrush and the occasional hardy flower. Winter ruts left their mark etched in hardened mud and then softened by pounding tires that left a layer of dust, his self-imposed nemesis. Although the mud and dust were a problem, they were part of the land, part of life, and therefore acceptable.

As he turned onto the pavement, his headlights caught the old man on horseback. He owned the large ranch next to them. Alone, the old man would move the cattle up and down the mountain with the weather. He was part of the landscape; like a small star in a dark sky, he came and went with the light. He knew his wife, Colleen, when she was a little girl. He seemed to appear whenever he was needed. Though he appreciated the help, he wanted Colleen all to himself. He envied the old man. He drove on until he crested the mountain. There he pulled off the road, not to see the world below but to feel the comfort of the dark.

He tilted the seat back and waited for the sun to break the calm. For now, there was nothing to do but pour steaming coffee into his thick mug. He loved the feel of the old mug; and although it was too hot to drink, he took a sip anyway. Slowly, the coffee would cool, and his sense of taste and touch would meld for a moment. His solitude was void of thought and peaceful. The moon slid from cloud to cloud, leaving tendrils of shadow and light.

Crows started their early-morning journeys to the slaughterhouse in the valley. The constant beat of their wings fought the canyon’s rising currents. This time alone had become an essential part of his morning. Too soon, the dawn would break; and he would follow the crows to the city—a city that breathed a grinding hum no one else seemed to hear.

Strength and intelligence are the results of both conditioning and natural ability. But sometimes the two are more affected by an enigmatic internal pressure that controls the character. Some people work out in gyms to produce the desired effect. Billy’s body was the result of a natural-born strength coupled with the repetition of strenuous tasks. While others read and read to understand, Billy took one thought and extrapolated it until it fit his unique version of the truth.

He loved working with his hands because it allowed him to focus on the task at hand, shutting out the rest of the world. Wood and stone brought everything together to a natural end. At the office, everything was lost in an endless circle of routine; every action had an equal and unsettling reaction. There was always room for doubt; nothing went unchallenged. At home, he could feel the weight of the stone and the power of the hammer. At work, words were left to interpretation; and the truth was lost in a statistical haze.

Injustice swam beneath the surface of every wondering thought. Like a blind man, his life was quietly controlled by the inequities of life. From bullies on the playground to the cronyism at work, there was more bad than good in the world; and he couldn’t do anything about it. When he could, he would give a dollar to those beggars standing at a stoplight with little signs that tried to reach out to their fellow man. Though he knew the money would go for drugs or booze, he thought that, for that moment in time, in their lost little lives, the booze was as important as the food. It was a small reprieve from the injustice in the world. He never listened to Trump.

The one haven in a world where even saying good morning was a competition was his wife Colleen. She would always listen to the day’s battles so he could plan his revenge. Not only was she a loving, devoted wife, but she was also the most beautiful woman he had ever known. He was amazed that she loved him. Each day, he hated to face the world without her. It was only forty miles from heaven to hell, but love can be fragile when strained by the struggle of life.

When you’ve been recklessly swimming underwater for a long time and you start to panic, and then finally break the surface gasping for air, you should appreciate the value of air—but you don’t. Simple, unheralded things go unnoticed. That was his wife, Colleen. She was like his home—strong and stable, always there—but he was too consumed with the trials of life to notice. Women were always approaching him with unbridled attempts at seduction. He would not only reject them but would also turn them from a friend to an enemy. Some things were right, and some things were wrong, and there was nothing else.

He had to pick up the pace because today was Thursday. Thursday was the day he played the killing game. It was just a game, kind of like killing monsters in a video game. The speedometer read one hundred miles an hour when he pulled off the highway and into a small community. He was slowly winding his way along a narrow road when he saw a trail of running water. He parked on the tiny stream. The silky rivulets of water trickled between the tire treads. Somehow, he sensed the intrusion. The water was meant for the grass, not the gutter. Some people just didn’t care! He sat up in the van and looked in the passenger’s side rearview mirror, trying to find the source of the reckless stream. The words embossed in the mirror always bothered him no matter how many times he read them: Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. The truth was that objects in the mirror were farther away than they appeared because the mirror brought them closer. Who wrote this stuff? He started the van and slowly began to follow the trickle of water when it occurred to him that people tend to notice slow-moving cars, so he increased his speed. The surprisingly long trail of water led away from the road to one of the old mansions built by the early miners.

A breeze came up as he pulled over to the curb. A leaf skipped across the street like it thought it was alive. He parked under a sad bleeding Chinese elm. Chinese elms were the weed of the tree family and thrived in dusty abandoned lots. It shouldn’t have been in this neighborhood. A wide cracked concrete driveway shot straight up the hill to a mansion. Purple sage and buffalo grass accompanied the driveway to the house. There was a neglected flower bed with a decaying fountain in front of the house. Water shot out from the broken penis of a cherub in the middle of the fountain. The water fell on a long-dead rosebush before continuing down the driveway.

In a poor attempt to look like a Southern mansion, six long splintered columns fronted the ostentatious structure. Pee yellow gargoyles stood sentry at the corners of the roof. Rather than being set toward the front of the building—which would have given them an independent, menacing look—they were set back on the roof, sitting on their haunches. It made them look like hens trying to lay broken eggs. The walls were made of red brick, which had been painted over white, and were now cracked or peeling. Narrow windows on the bottom floor and picture windows on the top two floors completed the ludicrous look. What may have once been a cloying attempt to replicate the past was now a moldering shell without grace or character.

He brought the rifle up slowly. The length of the gun made it hard to point without hitting the window on the passenger’s side of the van. The window groaned on its old tracks as he lowered it about ten inches. He knew he was still well hidden behind the mouth of his cave. He thought of how kids liked to make forts out of kitchen chairs and old blankets. He had found the rifle years ago on a hunting trip and equipped it with the highest-powered variable scope he could find. He liked to adjust the sights so that the target was as close as possible; however, the closer the target got, the harder it was to find and keep in the scope. He recently discovered a kind of handheld sandbag that he’d seen on one of those new television shows. He felt the grains of sand sliding into position, allowing him to slowly, steadily fix on the target. He knew there was no bullet in the chamber, but it gave him a feeling of power to look through a scope instead of binoculars. But the longer he looked, the more he thought. If there was no bullet in the barrel, it was kind of like playing with a toy gun. That’s ok. Some bullets were in the chamber. There was a smooth metallic sound as the bullet slid into place as he cocked the rifle. He wondered why he hadn’t done it before. He slowly slipped the safety on.

He thought of Huckleberry Finn floating down the Mississippi. Sometimes he would hit a sandbar and have to fight to get away; otherwise, he was just floating with no control, no choice. That’s me. He couldn’t remember when he started talking to himself when he was alone, but it had intensified and become a habit.

Before Colleen, he spent most of his time hiking in the forest. When hunting season started, the rest of his life came to a stop. He had hunted since he was six years old. He missed a couple of seasons when he was in the army. He loved hunting, not for the bloodlust, but for the great joy in stalking his prey. He knew when to walk quietly and when to wait and watch. Today, he would wait and watch.

The crosshair was on one of the gargoyles. When the double doors opened, a large middle-aged woman appeared in old flannel pajamas. She picked up the newspaper, stood, and sniffed the air like a deer at the edge of a meadow. She looked straight at him. Although he knew she could not see him, for a moment, he felt like he was the prey. He thought he saw her wave, but that couldn’t be. He tried to focus the scope on the small hearts that patterned the pajamas, but he couldn’t keep the rifle still.

I should have known! He sat back like a man who’d just lost his last dollar in a high-stakes poker game. It was Ruth, the lady who worked down the hall from his cubicle. She was the poster child for unfounded narcissism. She floated along convinced that she was a beautiful, warm, wonderful person, blissfully unaware of the truth. She thought she looked like Gal Gadot, maybe if you added forty pounds, thirty years, and a failed facelift. The governor appointed her as the morale stimulator for the department. She thought that her job consisted of smiling, fluttering her fake eyelashes at the administration, and cutting out newspaper coupons.

Billy didn’t hate her; but when he saw her, it was just like looking at a plate of creamed vomit. He was amazed that she could be so wrong about herself. People could exist and thrive without the weight of reality. They could condition themselves to ignore the truth and supplant whatever made them feel good in its place. He didn’t want to kill Ruth, but she represented everything that was wrong with the world.

He slowly unloaded the rifle and put it back into the case. As Billy drove on to work, he took some solace in the fact that he had the ultimate power over all of them. He would never use it; it was just a game that struck a balance between what was and what could be. It was good to know that the inequities of life could be corrected with one bullet. He controlled the karma. But there was just too much to lose. Ruth and all her ancestors weren’t worth one hair on Colleen’s head; and the more you hate, the less you love. Love is impossible when hate is around. Like sand slowly sifting through an hourglass, one vessel fills as the other is emptied. Although work was a pain, life at home was terrific, so you just had to endure the bad and enjoy the good.

He could see his building in the distance. It looked like a mountain with sheer cliffs, impossible to climb. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw that someone had parked in his place. It really wasn’t his spot; but he liked to park there, away from the crowd. A steady stream of cars pulled into a parking lot too small to hold all the cars that would arrive. Both handicapped parking and those intended for the politically correct took up more spaces than needed. To save a few steps, workers scurried like mice in a maze for the spaces closest to the building. He found a spot away from the crowd.

It was a brown brick building whose bricks weren’t really brick or block or stone. They were manufactured distressed-looking concrete slabs trying to make the building look old and modern at the same time and failing at both attempts. The windows ran continually from floor to floor and were set at forty-five-degree angles so that the light could come in and still restrict the view, light without sight. Elevators that ran like slot machines were at the mercy of self-absorbed, loquacious would-be workers who felt it necessary to finish their conversations while holding the elevator doors open. He always took the stairs; and with each step, he worked on his game face. Like pinching himself before jumping into cold water or the boxer who smacks himself in the head before stepping into the ring. For now, he could still enjoy the isolation of the van. He sat back and tried to relax.

Until Ken opened the passenger door, sat down, and said, How much time do we have? Ken was the only person who hated the place as much as Billy. Common enemies make for cathartic friends.

Twelve minutes. There still some coffee left. I spit in the mug and cleaned it for you. It’s behind the seat. Although it sounded like a joke, Billy had cleaned the mug with spit.

Although Ken was usually in a good mood, it was Monday. He poured some coffee and said, Why don’t those assholes leave things alone? Just because they supported the right candidate, they think they can go from selling hot dogs to knowing what to do.

They drank their coffee in silence.

Colleen

Her dawn broke, a dream racing within, vague, skipping, repeating like an old record—a hiss, a tick, and then again. A hushed moan left her lips as she tried to bring it back, but it kept slipping away. Flecks of light floated in the haze of an early-morning sun. Pushed by a hidden breeze, they danced and swirled before coming to rest on silky skin. Like a painting in progress, the pastels were moving to brighter colors while the ripples of the white sheet framed her bronze body. The subtle changes in the room were drifting through better dreams, slowly weaving the gray to light, lifting the haze, and easing her into the world. Firm legs kicked away the sheet as she stretched for the four corners of the bed. Splayed limbs were tied to invisible chains as her muscular body was held by the thought of him. Then letting go, a flower unfolding in the morning sun. Long thick red hair flowed over perfect breasts, slipping down the valley between her hips, the last wisps lost in a tangled web. Her mouth was dry, cottony. She longed for something wet. She had to move.

But movement came slowly. She rolled out of the bed on her hands and knees, arching her back, finely on her toes. Now starting her push-ups, back straight, elbows bent, up and down as her nipples lightly tapped the floor with a steady beat. Her hair fell from her shoulders in a cloud, floating, fighting the pace. The stupid hair was always a problem, but Billy loved the way it tickled his ears when they made love.

In time, she went to the kitchen, splashed water on her face, and took a long drink from the faucet. She dressed quickly—sports bra, running shorts, shoes—and then tied her hair back. Not thinking about anything, letting the routine take over, she smiled as she ran out the door. Her morning run was her lifeline to sanity, a ritual, as necessary as the air around her. Running was meditation on the move, letting the brain meld with the body. The house was a cell; the run was her escape. Today’s run would be long but not hard. They lived at the foot of a mountain, and each morning she made the choice of either attacking the mountain or flying down to the plains.

Colleen started her run on the crescent gravel driveway that kept the mud from the house when the rains came. Someday there would be enough money to gravel the road all the way to the highway; but for now, these few small stones would forge the battle alone. As bad as the greasy mire was when wet, it was the antithesis of the muddy mess when dry.

Clumps of clay were padded down to form parallel trails by relentless tires as they made their way home. Small flowers grew on the islands, steadily escaping the trek from above. Each curve in the road took the path of least resistance forming a winding road through a green pleasant pasture. Though lacking the strength of a straight road, the winding path seemed to fit in better, a natural means to an end.

The ruins of an old log cabin marked the spot where she would either go up the mountain or out to the plains. Small skeletal beams clung to one another, trying to hold on to what they once were. Yellow roses bloomed from the rotting shell of a home. The gray of the slowly decaying timbers evoked thoughts of how the flowers came to be. Every time Colleen ran by, she would think of the woman who planted the flowers and if she was happy in her time. She would develop happy scenarios of the lady’s life on the mountain. But the thought came and went. She had to make room for the bliss of the morning. Like the seconds slowly ticking away on an old clock, each step was just another beat of her heart. The more the body moves, the more the mind mellows.

Her mood dictated whether she would go up the mountain or turn toward the plains. As usual, the plains won out. Plains that went on forever with nothing to blur the view of the infinite. She always thought she didn’t have to stop if she didn’t want to. Where one side of the mountain was nothing but people, they were the only people on this side. The sole exception was Mr. Santos, and he was only around to move his cattle from the plains to the mountain.

She knew him when she was little. Her parents bought the land from him, and they would all come out and have a picnic. Dad rarely had time to join them. Mr. Santos was kind to her then and even kinder to her now. Although Billy tried to stay away from him, he was a good friend and was always helping them.

Her hidden valley was a couple of miles from home, like a world hidden in the depths of a