Pursuit. Maim.: Pursuit, #1

By Vern Harrison

His preacher father sold him when he was about 10 years old. The buyer was a 16 year old female who paid for the boy with a month of full body submission to the father.

The agreement was for the itinerant father to use him a few years — for taking maintaining the camp, hunting for camp food, running errands, be available when the father got drunk (often). The boy did not know he was sold.

Custody was to be delivered on the day of the boy's 13th birthday.

During the three years the father had custody, at the suggestion of the buyer, Maude, the father instilled a morbid fear of killing a human person, even by accident. Maude assumed the boy would be upset with her and his father. The block was to prevent him from killing his nemeses. Years of repetitive demonstration of the pain of heat and admonishment of the for-sure hell destination of any person who kills another did its work.

But the boy could maim.

He suddenly got fed up with his mistreatment and did exactly that. He shot and destroyed most of his fathers joints — elbows, knees, …. He and his horse disappeared left camp with the intent to never return.

Maude did not take kindly to her property disappearing just when she was ready to collect. She had paid dearly for that boy, the worst month of her life she later declared.

Maude took out after him.

The boy soon found out he was sold. But he did not get caught. Not then.

To escape, he went West. Sometimes he had human company, but mostly not.

He survived, not by killing but by so thoroughly maiming opponents that they would be unable to follow up and kill him.

This book talks about the first part of the ten years he avoided Maude. (That's book 1, 55,000 words.)

(The second book talks about Maude's adventures trying to catch her property. The third book describes the events that lead to the catch.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Will Bontrager Software LLC
• Release date: Feb 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224216024

Book preview

Excerpts

From the Screams chapter:

When they were close enough for clear sight, they saw a man drag a woman by her hair roundabout a clearing.

No wonder she’s screaming, thought Clarence.

From the Demonstration of Skill chapter:

Can I have that colt when you’re dead? asked the proprietor.

No, said Maim. My wife will be here in a week or so. All of my stuff will belong to her.

It was strange how the proprietor took it for granted that he would be dead after his encounter with the man at the tavern.

From The First Night chapter:

Silk! she declared. "This is silk! And the red is the reddest red I’ve ever seen!

"Oh, Maim, I don’t know what to do! How am I supposed to act?

"Who ever heard of breaking up in advance, for one thing? And whoever heard of giving a welcome gift at the same time?

Maim, nothing is normal around you!

From the Maim Lives chapter:

He was thirsty. Very, very thirsty.

His thoughts were awakening to usefulness. It was the blood, he knew. He must have lost a lot of blood to be this thirsty.

His horse nudged him again, this time right in his face.

He tried to say, I’m getting up, Morse, but realized all he got out was a grunt.

This was alarming, not being able to talk. The alarm triggered adrenalin.

Overview

His preacher father sold him when he was 9, almost 10. The buyer was a 16 year old female who paid for the boy with a month of full body submission to the father.

Custody was to be delivered on the day of the boy's 13th birthday. The itinerant father would first use him a few years for taking care of the camp.

During the interim, at the suggestion of the buyer, Maude, the father instilled a morbid fear of killing a human person, even by accident. Maude assumed the boy would be upset with her and his father. The block was to prevent him from killing his nemeses. Years of repetitive demonstration of the pain of heat and admonishment of the for-sure hell destination of any person who kills another did its work.

The boy could not kill. But he could maim. He suddenly got fed up with his mistreatment and did exactly that. He shot and destroyed most of his fathers joints — elbows, knees, …. He and his horse disappeared.

Maude did not take kindly to her property disappearing just when she was ready to collect. She had paid dearly for that boy, the worst month of her life she later declared.

The boy had not known he was sold. But he soon found out.

To escape, he went West. Sometimes he had human company, but mostly not.

He survived, not by killing but by so thoroughly maiming opponents that they would be unable to follow up and kill him.

This book talks about the first part of the ten years he avoided Maude.

(The second book talks about Maude's adventures trying to catch her property. The third book describes the events that lead to the catch.)

Gone

Abruptly, all in an instant, Clarence had quite enough.

Something broke inside the boy. Something fell into place. Something was understood in a gestalt way.

He had been throwing rocks and pebbles at leaves shifting in the wind, practicing his aim.

As he threw a pebble, in that instant, his arm jerked back. His brain cleared itself of obfuscations, of deceptions.

The pebble missed. It may have been the only time ever that Clarence did not watch the flight of a pebble he threw.

The instant was as if he had walked through a portal that shifted his entire life’s point of view. He understood things about himself in a holistic kind of way.

Of all the things he was aware of, there was one urgent thing Clarence was clear about. With a profound certainty, he knew it was imperative to leave camp.

Now.

This happened early in the morning of the day before Clarence turned thirteen.

His father had started drinking the night before and ended up on the forest floor a dozen feet from the tent. He snored the sleep of a sopping drunk.

The drunk’s pants were peed. He would poop his shorts before he roused, Clarence knew, assuming he wore shorts that would catch his shit before it squished around in his pants.

Clarence saddled M. The horse had no reins, only a halter. Reins weren’t needed. He went where Clarence wanted him to go.

The boy packed the saddlebags. The first things that got packed were the two unopened bottles of whisky. They were stored in the saddle bag with his father’s only good shirt as padding to prevent the bottles from breaking. With the whisky unavailable, his father could not maintain his drunk.

Still taking care of your father, huh, Clarence? his inner voice complained. And him doing nothing for you. For how many years!

Clarence ignored the voice, pushed it away from his attention. There were things to do.

The camp pistol got packed. As soon as he packed it, Clarence realized it was a stupid thing to do and retrieved it. He would carry it handy on his person.

The boy dropped some bullets into his pants pockets. They would be readily available if he needed them. The rest of the bullets, all he and his father had available in the camp, went into the saddlebags. All the blankets and clothes, too, of which there weren’t many.

The tent stayed. It was ripped and heavy.

Every morsel of food went into the saddlebags. The camp hatchet and the sharpening stone got packed.

Clarence went through his dad’s pockets to find the knife always kept there. He found two knives. The unexpected knife was beautiful.

Clarence felt hurried, no time to admire a pretty knife. Snug places in the saddlebags were found for both. His own he kept in a pocket.

The almost-teenager was getting himself and the horse out of camp. The clear destination in his mind was away.

As Clarence closed the saddlebags, the horse walked over and made his back and rump available. It took less than a minute to attach the saddlebags to the saddle.

The boy jumped onto the saddle and motioned for M to get moving. Any direction away from camp would be fine.

As he settled into the saddle, Clarence had a thought.

His father would track him, chase him down, bring him back with a rope around his neck. Although his father was a preacher who admonished others how to live, he had no scruples about anything concerning himself.

Actually, the boy wanted to kill his father, get rid of him once and for all. He dearly wanted to. But he could not.

He had a loaded pistol, his father was deeply unconscious prone on the forest dirt, but Clarence could not kill him.

It was not from guilt or scruples. Instead, it was from a rabid fear of divine consequences should he, even accidentally, kill a human, any human.

I might not be able to kill you, Father, the boy spoke out loud to his unhearing parent. But I can prevent pursuit.

The boy dismounted and from point blank of a few inches he put a bullet through one of his father’s knees.

The knee jerked with the impact.

There was hardly any blood. It looked like the knee joint was dislocated, though.

The drunk man didn’t stir. Wherever the consciousness might have been, it had no inkling one of its knees was shattered.

Clarence specifically aimed for the kneecap when he put a bullet through the other knee. The knee did a satisfactory jump as the bullet entered it. The kneecap appeared to be ripped.

No more washing your shitty butt when you wake up, said Clarence. Again, out loud. There was nobody else in this area of the wilderness to overhear.

No more being the only hunter, never hearing thanks for the meat I bring, just expecting me to continue doing it. No more preaching about how I must act even while you do the opposite.

Clarence placed the barrel of his pistol carefully about an inch away from an ankle. He squeezed the trigger. Under the skin, the ankle appeared shattered. To verify the ankle was unusable, the boy twisted the foot around until it faced backward.

The second ankle got the same treatment.

Like the knees, the ankles didn’t bleed much. Yet, they certainly were unusable.

That would solve it, he figured. With no knees and no ankles, his father could not come after him.

The boy returned to his horse, ready to mount and leave. His father would be the only occupant of the camp that Clarence was about to leave behind.

The preacher man was murmuring and groaning in his drunkenness. It seemed that the shattered joints were interfering with the drunk’s peace.

M stepped away from Clarence, refusing to let him mount.

At first, Clarence was perplexed. M had never done this, not in all of the very short time his father had owned the horse.

Then, Clarence realized this moment was the only chance he would have for getting some of his own back. So to speak. It would be his only chance to inflict revenge.

He could not suddenly receive the training and education withheld from him since he was ten years old. But he could assuage his ire.

Three years ago, his father halted his son’s education.

It was after a woman spent a whole month with his father.

Maude was her name. She was sixteen, Clarence knew, because that was the only age his father ever shared his blankets with. She was a woman only from the perspective of a nine-year old.

After Maude’s month-long visit, his father seemed to be interested in his son only for what Clarence could do for him. He acted like he owned Clarence, treating Clarence as property.

All ownership was ending now, the boy thrilled. In a few minutes, he was leaving.

He would get as much of his own back as he could before his exit.

Not by killing his father.

Hundreds of times during the last three years, his father’s voice would impinge on the boy.

Don’t ever kill anyone, Clary. Ever. You would certainly go to hell. Ain’t no way out. God always throws murderers into the hottest pits. And there you stay trapped for eternity. Think about that. Eternity!

Sometimes the magnitude of the heat was illustrated by forcing the boy’s hand up close to a campfire.

Hell is a hundred times as hot, boy! And you can not die, not ever. God will make sure you stay alive and feeling it all. You can only burn and scream!

The countless repetition, oftentimes after being hit with a fist or stick or foot for whatever wrong his father imagined he had done, created a solid, uncrackable lump of excruciating horror for Clarence to intentionally, or even accidentally, kill a human. It was a critical and powerful repulsion, effective no matter how dire the circumstances might be.

For Clarence’s own satisfaction, being denied the closure of killing the preacher, his father would be made a total invalid for the rest of his life.

Clarence reloaded his pistol. Both of his father’s wrists got destroyed. The hands flopped a bit as the bullets tore through the little wrist bones.

Clarence looked at his father’s bearded face as it lay on the ground in a pool of dribble. The son could not remember when his father had last attempted to shave.

The preacher moaned from within his unconsciousness, his wrists, ankles and knees shattered.

The elbows, too, thought Clarence. If I’m going to do a job, it might as well be a good one. Exactly what my preacher father told me whenever I didn’t do a job as well as he desired.

The boy expended two more shots, one into each elbow, separating the bones from the joints, destroying them. The elbows, lighter than the knees, jumped with alacrity from the impact of the bullets. Clarence found the sight comforting, somehow.

A hate had formed. He had mentally extricated himself from relying on his father for substance and his very existence and no longer had a reason to obfuscate iniquities.

M made his back available. Clarence mounted. He let M decide which trail to take. The horse would surely sense how to get out of these mountains, figured the boy.

The horse removed Clarence from the scene of the preacher father’s constant oppression.

Clarence’s sire, the only individual left back in camp, continued to experience an uneasy drunkenness. He was unaware that eight of his joints were shattered. In the near future, when a degree of consciousness returned, the joints would shoot intense pain into his brain. Before long, the man would realize he can no longer do anything for himself.

The man was known as Appalachian Preacher among the folks of the half a dozen small towns he serviced. The people knew him as a preacher, not as a minister. He talked a lot. He yelled and made declarations. But he did not know how to, nor care to, minister to individuals.

The preacher had sold M for five bottles of whisky, in spite of the horse being the best he ever had. The need for drink overrode prudence. Always.

Perhaps the drink overrode prudence a little easier because the father could see that the horse seemed able to read his son’s mind. The preacher may have experienced an uneasiness, perhaps undefined, as he realized M and Clarence were kindred souls.

The sale of M was actually the trigger for why Clarence snapped. The inner need to separate himself from his father had been growing for years. The loathing was like a highly stretched rubber band. It required but a slight touch to rupture.

His dad had agreed to deliver M to the buyer when they got to town on Sunday.

Now it never would happen, no matter that his father always insisted that a deal was a deal and had to be kept.

M and Clarence were on their way out of that part of the country. M was traveling at a fast walk, as if he knew distance from the camp was the immediate objective.

The preacher would miss the unopened bottles. Soon, his pain would verge on unbearable. The whisky would have helped him through it. Even without working hands and forearms, he would have figured out a way to somehow drink the whisky. He still had a working neck and mouth, after all. And shoulders.

Several times a year, Clarence had witnessed his father’s drunken bouts. But this was different. This time, his father would return to consciousness as an invalid. Clarence imagined what would happen.

When the drunk was partially out of his stupor and somewhat aware of his debilitation, he would yell for Clarence. When his son didn’t respond to his demanding yells, the preacher would look for his pistol, thinking a shot in the air would get his son’s attention. The pistol was something he never would sell because, you never know when you might need it.

But the preacher would not find the pistol. Nor the boy.

Clarence, the pistol, the inventory of two whisky bottles, and the horse someone else had purchased were on their way out of camp. No food was left behind. And no blankets.

M used trails that bypassed towns and villages. No camp or hut saw the horse or the boy as they traveled.

When the boy reviewed his actions, he was amazed at his own audacity. His face was wearing what appeared to be a perpetual smile.

M was in good stride. He had not been used for some days and was well rested. The trail crossed a stream once in a while. The horse would drink and crop the grass as he wanted.

Clarence understood that horses needed riding breaks. Their stamina was not automatically maintained during travel.

Clarence and M were friends. Buddies. They understood each other. There was an instant psychic connection between the two when his father acquired the horse for preacher services rendered.

The two friends, horse and boy, traveled along the side of the mountain instead of downhill.

As evening of their first day on the trail deepened, Clarence asked M to ride off the path. They found a small grassy area, large enough for the boy to fit his blanket along an edge of it and give his horse room. M leisurely cropped the tender grass between the tougher clumps, then also rested.

While resting and reviewing