Roman Wolfe 2: Classroom Terror Part One

6

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Abraham Lincoln

Fang burst through the double doors at the extreme end of the school hallway. The AK-47 pointing in a ready-to-fire position, its strap running over his shoulder so the weapon could be aimed with only his right hand on the grip, near the trigger guard.

          Charlie and Freddy followed Fang into the hallway, the doors slowly closing behind them, with a wheezing noise, like the hoarse breathing of a dying emphysema patient.

          Charlie had one of the .357 magnums. He felt like Billy the Kid walking through bat-wing saloon doors, pistol drawn and looking for action. That feeling of power resulted in a hard-on. Always the pompous one, he considered his erection to be another one of his weapons, like a cop’s hidden, “holdout” gun.

          Freddy carried the spare weapons bag and the ammunition bag. He looked like a new Army enlistee who should have joined the Boy Scouts instead. His face was red from the strain of carrying the heavy equipment; his face saturated with fear and slick with sweat. His fear nearly choked him, so he inhaled heavily and gasped often. Now he regretted trying to show-off by helping his brother. He thought that this would be his chance to show Otto that he was brave and useful, to earn his respect. But he’d planned on an easy get-away, not this disaster. He was out on a thin limb and knew it. Even worse, he knew that Otto and Charlie knew it. He thought, I think that fag, Charlie, should be made to do this lifting and carrying. Shit! I’m not even more important than Otto’s fag? He grimaced, then silently whispered, “Praise the Lord. God forgives all sins. Our father, who art in heaven, save me from evil.” But Freddy never really thought much about the nature of good and evil. Naiveté caused him to like the frosting, yet know nothing about the cake.

          Fang surveyed the hallway; his eyes snapping back and forth, sizing up the place. He could smell his brother’s fear. It stank like vomit exiting his sweat glands. Fang was disgusted by the sight of Freddy and wished the little shit had something worthwhile to contribute. Fang thought, I’d hoped the jackass would have grown up while I was in prison.

          Fang spied Charlie’s strange cowboy act and wondered why he had never seen this weird, wild, sexually-excited-by-danger side of him inside the prison. In prison, Charlie acted withdrawn, timid, shy and helpless. He was like a cuddly puppy, cute and needing protection. Fang smiled, realizing you can never really know a person’s true feelings.

          Fang looked at his watch. It was mid-morning. The students and teachers were busy with their classes. The hallway was deserted. Muffled noises could be heard coming from the classrooms. The sound of teachers lecturing and/or demonstrating the lessons to their students was indistinct.

          Fang, in brief flashes, remembered parts of his school days. He hated the thought, hated the prison-like look and sounds of school, hated the teachers, too. Teachers, to Fang, were simply know-it-all bastards and bitches who got their sexual thrills from the power that they had over kids. They were all bookish wimps who couldn’t save their own asses without using a book or quoting from one. Fang thought, I’d like ta see those fancy words stop a bullet. Anyway, Fang thought, them teachers are perverts jus’ like me, if their power over children sexually excites ‘em. Fang laughed at his sudden revelation.

          Fang whispered to Charlie and Freddy, “Teachers are like cannibals, yuh know. They feed on their students’ helplessness, as if the kids are food. Classrooms are like a big melting pot. The teachers mix the male an’ female students in their classroom pot, stir ‘em with their pointing sticks, then use plenty a seasoning, mostly sarcasm and tests, add large ‘mounts a humiliation, stir the pot, then put in large ‘mounts a useless facts an’ figures, then finally they add some secret stuff, that only teachers know ‘bout, that stops any fun from happenin’. But it don’t jus’ stop the fun. It causes lots of strict discipline an’, a course, they let all them things cook fer the whole school year an’ then they’ve a tasty stew ta feed their egos durin’ summer vacation. Probly most are fags or lesbos.”

          As Fang talked, Freddy wondered if Fang ever realized that his name was only one letter away from “fag.” Take the “n” away and Fang is fag. Freddy giggled at the irony, but lacked the courage to say anything about it.

          Fang pointed forward as an indication for Charlie and Freddy to follow him. Fang was like a shark, while Charlie and Freddy were the Remora attached to his side, feeding off left-over morsels cast aside for them by Fang. Fang walked cautiously past two classrooms. The classroom doors were closed so that no one noticed the armed trio.

          Fang mumbled, “I don’t wanna be next ta the stairs we jus’ come up, an’ I wanna take a classroom on the same side a the building as the parkin’ lot. “We goin’ ta have ta take this classroom here.” He pointed toward the classroom across the hallway. The door nameplate said MR. WOLFE, ROOM 202.

          Freddy was near total panic; his legs and arms were weak. He shivered from extreme fear, anxiety and nervousness. His body reeked from the odor of fear. Freddy said, in a hushed tone that crackled, “Wa. . . why . . . why the hell ah . . . are we goin’ in there? Let’s get outta here.”

          Fang replied, “How we gunna do that, bro?” Fang paused, then when no response came from Freddy, he said, “Shut up unless yuh ‘ave a good idea.” Then Fang thought, Yeah. Right. Like that’s gonna happen.

          Fang looked at Charlie, grinned at him, then said, “He’s my brother, but I’m the one that been born with the brains an’ the muscles. My bro be a waste of air and food.”

          When Freddy walked closer, Charlie wrinkled his nose in disgust, saying, “Jesus Christ, man. You smell like shit. Yuh know what a shower is?”

          Looking at Freddy’s angry expression, Fang said, “In a couple a minutes this whole fuckin’ place be surrounded by cops. We need ta take hostages in order ta stan’ a chance a gettin’ outta here.” Fang raised his eyebrows, then smiled at Charlie, as they both stood and giggled conspiratorially in the dark shadow of Freddy’s humiliation.

          As Fang reached for the doorknob, he was startled when it suddenly turned, seemly by itself. He quickly withdrew his hand as the door opened inward into the classroom.

          Framed by the doorway, like a picture frame, stood one of the fourth grade’s prettiest and sweetest girls: Alyson Boyd. Even in shocked fear her face was beautiful. She was mature beyond her years, looking more like a sixth grader. She had her dark brown hair parted on the left side and slanted across her forehead. Her brown eyes dimmed with surprise; her flesh delicate and blemish free, with peach colored cheeks. A dainty, almost unnoticeable scar crossed the bridge of her nose, while a lovely, delicate, light-brown beauty mark sat at the left corner of her mouth. Her ear lobes glimmered with opal earrings. She wore a lavender pair of slacks with a matching lavender and white striped sweater, white socks and shiny black shoes.

          Fang, then Charlie, noticed all those attractions; their pederast desires inflamed.

          In a fraction of a second, Alyson’s eyes showed alarm. She stepped backwards.

          Then all hell broke lose. Screaming inundated the hallway with loud, shrill, fearful echoes. Some students, down the hallway, were going to the bathroom, as was Alyson, when they saw the men with weapons and panicked. They screamed as they turned around and ran back into their classrooms.

          Roman Wolfe, Alyson’s fourth grade teacher, came rushing toward his classroom door. Alyson was still holding the door partially open, frozen in that position. Fang smiled and stared at her, pleased with himself for selecting this particular room.

          Roman drew the door completely open. Seeing Fang, he said, “What’s going on?” as he pulled gently on Alyson’s arm, pulling her away from the door. He told her to return to her desk and pushed her gently away from the door. Roman thought he saw more men so he tilted his head to look around Fang. His curiosity was dramatically interrupted as the barrel of Fang’s AK-47 followed his head movement. Roman started to say something else, but at the first sign of lip movement, Fang pressed the barrel against Roman’s upper lip. Roman could feel its circular coldness and could also feel the ridge of the front barrel sight against the septum of his nose. He could smell the combination of cleaning oil and burnt powder residue. His eyes immediately scanned the gun. He knew instantly what kind of rifle it was. His brain flashed with milli-second, synaptic images of Vietnam jungles, Viet Cong and NVA soldiers across the membrane of his mind. Without realizing what he was saying, his lips parted and he mumbled, “Shit! goddamnit. Not again!”

          Fang sneered, saying, “Ferget about God, Asshole. There ain’t no such animal, so yuh ain’t gonna have any invisible means a support.” Fang laughed loudly at his joke; a joke that had passed from prison cell to prison cell and brought some humor to the gloomy inmates. Fang shoved Roman backwards, into the classroom. “Now, back off Asshole or yur neck will get broke.”

          Roman cooperated immediately. He did as he was told, though he knew that the best chance of disarming someone is when they are close to you and an even better chance is when the weapon is in contact with your body. But there were twenty-four children to consider and a conservative reaction was the more prudent way to go, he thought. And since there appeared to be more men behind Fang, Roman backed off cooperatively, while visions of Nam and the Adirondacks mountains drifted, like vengeful ghosts and ruthless monsters across his mind. He thought of Stephen King who said, “Monsters are real and ghosts are real too; they live inside of us.”

          Charlie growled and contorted his face like a maniac at the curiosity seekers from other classrooms, who were now sticking their heads into the hallway. And when a couple of teachers stepped into the hallway to see what was happening, he brandished his handgun with delight and, again, felt the power of Billy-the-Kid surge through him. The hallway cleared in seconds. The quick-witted teachers had the sense to lock their doors immediately and call the office to report the incident to the principal.

          Roman calmly told his students to remain in their seats and be quiet. They understood him, though his voice was slightly distorted by the pressure on his upper lip from the barrel of Fang’s rifle.

          Fang thought, The parking lot and the school will be crawling with cops soon, so he forced the barrel harder under Roman’s nose, forcing it hard enough to make Roman grimace in pain as he was forced farther into the classroom.

          Once Roman’s students clearly saw what Roman had seen─ not one intruder, but three─ they grew fearful. Some moaned, some cried and some were silenced by shock and/or anxiety.

          Fang yelled impatiently at Roman, “Lock the damn door, Teach, an’ don’t think a runnin’ off or lots a little dead bodies will end up in the hallway.” Fang removed the rifle barrel from Mr. Wolfe’s lip.

          “Please don’t scare the kids,” Roman said, as he took out his keys and locked the door. As he backed away from the door Fang told Roman to lean a long table, lengthwise, against the door to cover up the door’s four feet tall by one foot wide window. The television stand was moved against the table to brace it.

          There were many times when Fang grew sexually excited by the sounds of a crying child, but right now the moaning and the crying were getting on his nerves. “Shut up!” he growled loudly at the children, like a raging bear, then pointed the rifle at them and said, “Shut the fuck up, yuh damn babies,” in order to quiet the kids and get their attention. But just the opposite happened when the kids heard Fang’s growl. Instead of low moaning and crying, the kids began loudly crying, moaning and speaking incoherently to Mr. Wolfe.

          Fang looked at Roman and snarled, “Shut ‘em up! Now!”

          Restraining his fury, Roman stated, “You can’t shut them up by scaring them. You see what happens when you scare them?” Roman pointed to the students. “Be civil. Pretend if you need to, then they’ll be calm and quiet.”

          Roman walked to the light switch and flicked the classroom lights off, then on. He repeated this action. It was a trick he’d used thousands of times to quiet the students. It’s effect was Pavlovian. The students understood the signal, became quiet and, within a minute, all that could be heard and seen were a series of sniffles, some coughing, runny noses, and tearful eyes.

          Roman walked to his desk, grabbed a box of tissues and gave them to the closest student, saying, “Take one, if you need it, then pass them around.”

          Fang was pleased. It was now relatively quiet in the classroom. He ordered Roman to sit in the chair by his desk. After Roman sat down, he said, in a normal voice, “Boys and girls, please stay quiet and calm. These men won’t hurt you.”

          As Fang smiled at Roman, an announcement came over the school loudspeakers to evacuate the school for a fire-drill. Then the fire-drill horn blared through all the hallway loudspeakers.

          Roman recognized Principal Howard’s voice. Roman also recognized the strain in that voice. Mr. Howard’s voice was clear, as usual, but the tone was not as confident as usual and the tension in each word was easily recognizable as having a slight tremor.

          Mr. Howard said, “All students, teachers and staff should immediately evacuate the building by following the fire-drill exit procedures.” There was a short pause, some indistinct whispering could be heard from the speakers, then Mr. Howard spoke again, “Attention all students, teachers, and staff: Please stay away from Mr. Wolfe’s fourth grade classroom as you evacuate the building. If your normal fire drill route goes by his room, then change it and go a different way. Please do not attempt to go near that classroom, but leave your own classrooms immediately.”

          Roman thought, Good, everyone else will get out safely at least. But sinister, dark thoughts started to meander in Roman’s head like slithering wraiths on the prowl. Roman rubbed his temples and thought, I try to be peaceful, but violence always intrudes. My life is too filled with violence, yet I can’t escape it, not for long anyway. I’ve never been a “turn-the-other-cheek” kind of guy and when someone, like these guys, shatters my peace and quiet, scares the kids, performs some vile act, I need to repay them in kind. It’s just the way my mind works, he said to himself─ though he wondered if that was really what he believed. Yes, it’s vengeance, but vengeance can be justice, especially when there’s a miscarriage of justice.

          After the noise stopped, Roman’s classroom phone rang. Roman looked at Fang and Fang nodded, so Roman answered it. Roman listened, said, “OK,” then handed the phone to Fang, saying, “It’s for you.”

          A serious and highly authoritative female voice said, “Mr. Fangzahn, I’m Captain Lewis with the State Police. We’re willing to negotiate with you as soon as everyone has departed the building. Please do not injure any innocent people. We will contact you again as soon as the whole building has been evacuated. Please be patient so that young, innocent lives can be spared. After that, I will listen to your demands. Will that be OK sir?”

          Fang replied gruffly, “Sure, Sweetheart. I got plenty a time. This is much better than bein’ in prison. I’m even lookin’ forward ta lunch. Are yuh the waitress whose goin’ ta take are order?” His savage laughter echoed into the right ear that was at the other end of the telephone line. Then there was the clicking sound of the telephone being hung up. Fang was still holding his phone to his ear and laughing when he heard the click. Then he wondered, Who the hell was that chick. Christ almighty! Did she say she’s a Captain with the State Police? Damn! They let women do anything now-a-days.

          Fang opened up the top compartment of the equipment bag. Then he unzipped the two side pocket zippers. He checked the ammo, stuck another .357 magnum into his belt, then strapped one hunting knife to his belt and gave the other knife to Charlie.

          Freddy pushed his back against the wall as if he couldn’t maintain his balance without it. Freddy was praying, “Praise the Lord. God’s love is forever. Help me Lord for I have sinned.” Tears rolled down his cheeks.

          Fang whispered to Charlie, “Fuck the love shit. Fear’s more powerful than love. I want fear, Charlie, an’ yuh listen close, OK? Fear’s ‘bout havin’ control, but love’s ‘bout givin’ up control. That love bullshit must’ve been invented by bitches. So don’t fall fer that crap. Yuh want control, Charlie? Then make the bitches fear yuh. Works on bastards, too.”

          Roman heard Freddy’s prayer and thought of an Albert Einstein quote. “If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

          Roman was at his desk when he heard the sound of those zippers. It unnerved him. The sound reminded him of all the olive green body bags that he had heard being zipped up in Nam. It’s Nam and the Adirondack situation all over again, he thought. Sweat broke out on his forehead; his hands got clammy; his heart raced and all the while the projection screen in his brain flashed body bag after body bag at him; bodies in hundreds of bags; blood running down some of the green bags; blood oozing from closed zippers; the red blood on green body bags giving the impression of a mutilated frog. Roman saw severed arms and legs being placed into the bags, after the bodies had been loaded. He saw a severed head being pushed into a bloated body bag. All these terrible visions flashed across his mental projection screen in seconds. He squeezed his eyes closed, took a deep breath through his mouth then slowly exhaled from his nose.

          Roman had only recently stopped cringing when he zipped up his own pants or coat. The sound of almost any zipper used to send chills up his spine and cause his face to break out in a cold sweat. His muscles would tense, his memories became vivid and his heart would race from the thoughts of his fallen comrades that were brought to consciousness by the simple sound of zippers.

          His next vision was that of a white wolf, appearing out of a dense fog, then pacing back and forth, as if it were a sentry who was guarding something.

          Roman was well acquainted with this ghost wolf and had given him the name Blizzard. Blizzard was Roman’s spirit guide. Through the fog Blizzard howled, as if it was his way of honoring the dead soldiers in Roman’s visions. The image of Blizzard made Roman feel more confident.

          Roman remembered the first time that Blizzard had spoken to him via mental communication. The experience still shocked him as he thought of it. Blizzard said, “I am an ancient creature; a remnant of the ice-age. I don’t fear Man, thought he fears me. I am feared because I can be vicious, yet mysterious. I am the ghost of ancient ancestors. I am wary of Man. Because of that I remain elusive. Man has nearly annihilated me, yet my spirit survives, a spirit that can see back to the ice-age as if it were yesterday. We white wolves have survived Man’s evil and greedy onslaught, cloaked in our spirit world and committed to a few humans who, though certainly not perfect, represent our survival with a wildness of character, but one that is well disciplined. In return, for those worthy and extremely rare individuals, we grant our spiritual power to them.

          “I am the color of ice-age snow. I am not pure of action and thought. I can be gentle; I can be violent. I can be a friend or an enemy. I can blend with the hoary frost, melt into a shadow or meld with fog and forest. I can always be with you, Roman, as your spirit wolf, if you will accept me and allow me to bond with your own spirit as I have done with many of my Native American friends in past centuries.”

          Then, in the vision, the fog disappeared and Blizzard walked regally in front of the black Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall as if honoring the more than fifty-eight thousand dead Americans who died in Vietnam. Blizzard appeared in front of the Three Service Men’s statue that stands near The Vietnam Wall. Roman’s mind followed Blizzard. Blizzard stood on two back legs, its front legs propped on the base of the statue, where the soldier’s feet are: one black man, one Hispanic and one white.

          Blizzard had not appeared to Roman in a very long time. In a way Roman was glad to see him, but Roman knew that Blizzard usually appeared to him only in times of dire need, life-or-death situations, or unless Roman purposely called for him in times of great mental confusion or frustration. The vision of Blizzard turned to look directly into Roman’s eyes, then vanished.

          Roman felt guilty about not taking action immediately. He knew it was the best decision to wait, but the guilt nagged at him. The guilt had an added, disturbing effect because guilt isn’t simply emotional. There’s a distressing physical component to it, also, like large boulders that rest on each shoulder.

          As Roman sat at his desk, looking at Fang, Charlie, and Freddy, a slight smile appeared on his face. He knew now what was happening to him; he knew what he was becoming; he knew that his conscious mind had sent out an SOS signal and that the long dormant animal in him was sprinting forward and that he’d be here soon. The soldier known as Solo-Lobo, Lone Wolf, Ghost Wolf and his mysterious white wolf companion would bring with him the honor, integrity, bravery and loyalty that he had promised Roman in Nam and in the Adirondack Mountains. And he would bring more, especially the skills, courage and resolve to defuse this dangerous situation.

          Roman thought, sagely, Don’t get cocky. Don’t be overconfident. Be careful. Be smart . . . for the kids’ sake. Be patient, like a stalking wolf, then pounce and sink your teeth in deeply.

          Roman’s face was his autobiography. Each line on his face told a story, each furrow on his forehead, each scar and each spark from those secretive, sensitive eyes had secrets and character written in them.

          Roman was a reticent man who seldom revealed very much of himself and seldom allowed anyone to get close to him. He didn’t laugh as easily as before the war and idle chatter bored him. He thought that all religions were false beliefs, non-existent hope, yet he seldom condemned religious beliefs in public because he saw that religion’s false dogmas concerning a non-existent God actually helped a lot of people live happier lives, perhaps better lives, so Roman couldn’t kick the crutch from under an injured person’s arm. Religious beliefs were too contradictory for Roman. He remembered reading that Mohandas Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

          Roman firmly believed that in another millennium, sincerely rational people will finally confront their own religious foolishness, fantasies and myths and place the present day religions and Gods into the same historical perspective as we currently view the ancient Roman and Greek (and others) religions and Gods.

          Roman’s daughter, Grace, once said to him, “Daddy, you should believe in God. It’s like having an invisible, superman for another father. Angels are pretty neat, too.” Roman thought about it, but not wanting to influence her with his atheistic beliefs he said, “Grace, don’t you think it’s incredible how invisible things look exactly like non-existent things? Just something to think about, Sweetheart.” Grace then walked down the hallway to her bedroom as if she really had something confusing to think about and that’s all Roman wanted from her.

          But, Roman thought, if religious fantasy was doing more good than harm, he would remain silent about its lies. Besides, he was always out-numbered plenty-to-one when he informed others that he was an atheist.

          The line separating good from evil passes through everyone’s brain and heart. We are all part good and part evil. We all hope, for the sake of mankind, that the ‘good’ dominates the ‘evil,’ Roman thought. And before Roman and Blizzard took action, Roman needed to find out just how much evil resided in this trio, starting with Fang, who already appeared to be a despicable man.

          Roman stood, smiled disarmingly and shuffle-stepped, like a frightened person, toward Fang. Outwardly Roman appeared calm, but inside he was a very tightly wrapped coil of spring steel, wound around knotted muscles, straining for control. Roman lowered his gaze to the floor as he walked. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, Roman thought─ whatever a soul is or isn’t─ then Fang would see that his eyes were now the eyes of a lethally trained assassin.

          As Roman walked to the front of the room, he felt something brush against his leg. Blizzard?

          Roman’s thoughts went to Nam and a Marine General who told him, “The men in our special forces, who voluntarily jump into a viper pit so they can rip the heads off poisonous snakes, then exit unharmed, are not just crazy and supremely weird, they are also desperately needed, especially at times when a Roy Bean sense of justice is called for.”

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7

“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.”

Gilbert K. Chesterton

          Her name is Beverly Lewis, thirty-eight years old, gorgeous, and a cop. A New York State Trooper to be exact, and the captain of Troop B, to be even more precise. She’s a rare commodity in the New York State Troopers. Seldom did one find a woman in a position with this much authority, in this overwhelmingly male dominated domain. It was like trying to find a man teaching kindergarten. There were a few, of course, but you’d have to search long and hard to find them.

          She didn’t get to this position by kissing asses either, or by letting her ass be kissed. She could be as tough as an absentee landlord’s heart, if called for, and she was as competent and intelligent as she was pretty. Her rounded, triangular face was without blemishes, not even beauty marks. Her hair was a long, plush brown and had a natural sheen. Her mouth is wide and sensuous, highlighted by ivory white teeth. Above those Hollywood-perfect teeth were penetrating brown eyes; the skin at the corners slightly wrinkled from the stress of her job. Long eyebrows and eyelashes hovered over those insightful eyes. From the neck downward she was a slim, hard-bodied woman with taught skin, toned muscles─ from regular exercise─ but well-developed in the places most men liked. However, she downplayed her looks by not wearing make-up or jewelry─ other than a plain, non-expensive watch. Her hair was usually up in a stern-looking bun. She did not often wear tight clothing or expose cleavage, but when she did─ at a party─ her appearance was like that of the glamorous movie star, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

          Captain Lewis’s smile didn’t shine like a crescent moon, either. You might say that her tight-lipped smile was thrifty, as if she were saving her best smiles for private occasions, more personal situations. Her public smile was restrained, but pleasant, though it did not usually escape the confines of her seriousness and seldom reached her eyes. In private, her open smile reached her eyes and radiated warmth. But she was known for her indelicate diplomacy, also, saying what needed to be said and doing what needed to be done. She had more guts than a slaughter-house.

          After college, Captain Lewis attended Trooper school in Albany, New York. But, unlike most other troopers, she had finished at the top of her class in the overall rankings; a feat unheard of for a woman trooper and, to this day, unsurpassed.

          She came in third, in her class of thirty-one, at the shooting range─ accuracy compared to quickness of draw and the time it took to fire the first round─ which made the men take her seriously. Her only weakness was a natural one, and to be expected. She wasn’t built with the same amount of muscle mass that men have. So she faltered on tests of physical strength and the related area of physical combat. But that was only a weakness if compared to men, whom nature favored with larger musculature. If compared to the other women in her class, she was, again, at the top in the ratings.

          She usually attracted attention, being pretty, tall, slender, and athletic looking. She played women’s varsity basketball for the SUNY Binghamton (State University of N.Y. at Binghamton) and was not only the leading scorer, but the leading rebounder as well. At five feet, ten inches tall, she had a fade-away jump shot that was the envy of most guys on the men’s varsity team. As a matter of fact, her college boyfriend was a varsity basketball player and they practiced against each other. They were evenly matched in shooting accuracy, but he was six feet, four inches tall and could easily out-rebound her. But she could dribble circles around him. She was so talented that the coach of the men’s basketball team secretly wished that she’d get a sex change.

          In her senior year, she and her boyfriend, Jason─ he majored in Business Administration and minored in Marketing─ had a serious, shocking (for Bev), and revealing discussion about getting married after they graduated. Jason wanted to settle down and have tons of kids. To accomplish his goal, he wanted Bev to be a stay-at-home mom─ he didn’t come right out and say it, but his idea of a good wife was one who stayed at home, having babies, preparing food and taking care of the house.

          Bev’s major, in college, was Police Sciences─ her minor was American Literature. Her ambition was to become a cop, especially a state trooper. But Jason told her she’d have to settle down and act like a normal woman, stop showing-up the guys, take care of the house and kids and meals, and forget about being a cop. He said it was too dangerous for a woman and no wife of his would be a cop.

          Bev realized that this revelation was something that he had deliberately concealed from her until he arrogantly thought that she was trapped into marrying him. It was then that she realized that love can easily blind a person’s insight and reason, but it intensifies human senses, except maybe for common sense and that her deceitful boyfriend was a closet chauvinist and an overt hypocrite.

          Bev Lewis vividly remembered her father telling her that the most important decision, affecting her entire adult life, would be choosing the man she married, if she married. “This is truly a Robert Frost decision,” he told her. “Take all your other important decisions about yourself, combine them all and they still won’t have equal importance to who you choose to marry,” her father emphasized.

          Bev remembered her dad talking about marital partnership, that partners often disagree and get angry, but in the end, if they truly love and respect one another, they persevere; they realized that they need to be there in their partner’s time of need, with genuine concern for their spouse’s welfare and happiness. They must help to console, support and offer advice, even if they disagree with their spouse’s actions. A successful marriage, her dad emphasized, often means putting your partner’s needs before your own. Caring about your spouse’s and your children’s needs quite often has to come before your own desires and wishes; not being subservient to them, of course, but realizing that their happiness also translates into your own happiness. But to make the marriage work, your spouse has to sincerely think the same way. And there’s the rub because, sometimes, it’s terribly difficult. She remembered her dad saying, “Honey, marriage isn’t like a hobby or a career. Those are, relatively speaking, all short-term activities compared to nearly a lifetime of marriage. Whomever you choose to marry, you and he will act like a wheel with you and your husband at the hub and all the really important decisions projecting outward from the both of you, like the spokes in the wheel. So choose very carefully.”

          Bev remembered that talk between her and her dad, during the fall that she was going to start college─ she thought the talk was going to be sex related and was grateful that the subject was different. Bev thanked her father for being candid and concerned. She thought her dad was a wise man.

          Bev thought about that talk the whole day. The following day she immediately broke off her engagement and returned Jason’s ring, as she stared defiantly into his stunned and startled eyes. She then applied for acceptance at the State Trooper Academy in Albany, New York. A month later she had an interview, then another one a week later. Two weeks later she received her acceptance letter and was asked to report for training in at the end of June─ she would graduate from college in May. After her college graduation, she had a few weeks off, then officially enrolled at the trooper school. Now her ambition to be a trooper would become a reality.

          For her last senior semester sociology class, with law enforcement in mind, she wrote a paper about a troubled, modern American society. There was one portion of her paper that really energized her with the idea that she could do good by being an excellent New York State Trooper.

          She wrote: “Society is in great peril and few people seem concerned. Truth and reality are under attack by myriads of myopic religious fanatics and their lemming-like minions. Traditional values are spurned or simply ignored by recalcitrant youth, irresponsible adults and duplicitous politicians and generally ridiculed by the fringe population. Honesty and responsibility are considered archaic. Love, caring and concern for others are only thought of for the egotistical benefits they dole out, and not for genuine, sincere characteristics. The family structure and solidarity is crumbling quickly and parenthood is shunned more and more each year. The divorce rate is soaring, as well as most violent crimes. Hope for a better future is at an all-time low and clinical depression, anger, and violence are replacing good mental health, compassion, sympathy and logic. Our school system is failing our youth because the best and brightest won’t allow themselves to be enslaved and humiliated by low pay and increased parental interference, which means that inferior teachers are filling the teacher job market. Police can’t keep up with growing crime; serial killings are on the rise (serial killers aren’t only men anymore, as in the past, because more women are getting involved). The frequency of sexual abuse is skyrocketing; suicides have increased dramatically and fewer and fewer responsible, conscientious adults are willing to be firefighters, police, nurses, teachers because of the huge sacrifices that are required of them, while men and women who play children’s sports are paid multi-millions for each season six month season. Worst of all, nuclear weapons proliferate in rogue countries with borderline sane leaders who threaten the whole world.

          “Society’s downfall is glaringly apparent when a criminal’s rights take priority over the victim’s rights and asinine anti-gun fanatics think they can solve gun related crimes by taking guns away from citizens who have never committed a crime. How can you reduce crime by taking guns away from law-abiding citizens, but not getting them out of the criminals’ hands? Legislators and police ignore the hundreds of laws that are also ignored by criminals because legislators have no solution for criminals using illegal guns. It’s as if they think its logical to take all drivers’ licenses away from persons who’ve never had an accident because a few drivers have killed people with their cars.

          “Perhaps, the most controversial issue of all is rampant immigration. The early immigration of the Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Asians and many other cultures was one of the reasons that our country became great and so advanced. Our country, then, was built on immigration. Now, however, America is being torn apart by its liberal immigration policies and the increasing illegal alien population. Why should we be allowing immigrants who hate us, want to destroy us, into our country?

          “Even the modern onslaught of the juggernaut of political correctness is muzzling our citizens’ right to free speech. The Bill of Rights is slowly crumbling, which means that the traditional America that we once knew is crumbling like aged mortar.”

          Now, after many years of hard work, she is Captain Lewis: dedicated, career oriented, unmarried, no kids, but relatively happy. Her major commitments are to her job. She is stern, strict, forceful and decisive, yet sensible, reasonable and caring. But there’s also an almost impenetrable veneer of toughness that covers her caring nature, like the bark on a tree. When necessary, her jaw locks and a steely stare comes over her eyes like someone has pulled a black curtain across a window.

          She won’t be bullied or intimidated by anyone, though she will listen to ideas and suggestions, as long as they are given respectfully and are cogent. She knows that the root of intimidation is basically about power and domination, about superior power and control over someone. She almost always tries to use her power judiciously.

          She has a difficult time separating her demanding job from her personal life; seldom goes on dates, and doesn’t pursue what, to her, had become romantic fantasies of marriage and children. She realized long ago that cops and marriage aren’t a good mix. She also realized that she had probably sacrificed a family life to her career, yet she was only slightly disappointed because she found immense satisfaction in her career and with solid friendships.

          However, when she had time, and was out of uniform, and off duty, around friends, she liked to have fun. Then she was humorous, relaxed and openly friendly. She usually shocked her rare dates and new friends with her robust, risqué jokes and conversation. One of her best friends once said of her, “She’s so damn cheerful off duty that she should wear a clown costume to bed, just in case someone needed cheering-up in the middle of the night. She can also be as shocking as hearing the truth ejaculating from the mouth of Jesse Jackson.”

          She drank coffee heavily─ heavy enough so that she should have invested in Starbucks. As a matter of fact she had a coffee mug on her office desk, for all to see, that said, “Men who call women ‘sweetheart,’ or ‘baby,’ or ‘honey’ should have their tiny, little peckers cut off.” She caught many a male trooper staring at that coffee mug and had many private laughs over its effects on some of them.

          Captain Lewis sized-up the school hostage situation in minutes, placed her men at strategic locations inside and outside of the school, asked the principal to give orders that everyone, but Mr. Wolfe’s classroom, be evacuated and sent home, then she immediately called in a State Police SWAT team. But not just any Special Weapons And Tactics team. She wanted a certain team of men, commanded by a particular Lieutenant that she knew was a highly competent, experienced leader and close friend. She had the rank, drive and tenacity to get the SWAT team that she wanted and what she wanted was Lieutenant Joe Hawkey’s team. She considered Joe and his team to be rigorously disciplined, having excellent skills and the best of the elite teams.

          She knew that Joe was tough, knowledgeable, combat tested in Vietnam and a perfectionist─ any major sloppiness or carelessness and you were off his team. She liked Joe a lot, though there was nothing romantic involved in their mutual respect and friendship.

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8

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I? I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost

The New York State Trooper SWAT teams handled the extra dangerous situations involving armed criminal and/or hostage situations.

          Lt. Hawkey received his phone call and authorization about an hour after the hostage situation began. His specialized team was geared up and ready to leave Henrietta─ a suburb of Rochester─ for the Kroy School, in their special SWAT team van.

          Lt. Hawkey, like Captain Lewis, was also a rare breed of trooper. He rose through the ranks to the rank of Lieutenant, not on academic achievements or classic intellectual prowess─ not that he wasn’t a very intelligent person─ but on his uncanny, superbly honed street smarts, instincts, combat skills and his proficiency with weapons. He was a man who got the job done. To look at his exemplary record, you’d think that he didn’t know how to fuck-up.

          Because of his full-blooded, Native American, Mohawk heritage, Joe appeared to have a sun tan even in mid-winter. Captain Lewis thought that Joe looked like a young Burt Reynolds with his leather-colored flesh, roundish face, short brown hair and his medium muscular frame that rose to five feet eleven inches and filled out to about two-hundred pounds. His small waist and broad shoulders gave his torso the look of an inverted triangle.

          Like Captain Lewis─ who constantly fought female stereotyping─ knew that Lt. Hawkey worked harder than most troopers because he had to constantly fight ages old Indian stereotyping: lazy, dumb, alcoholic and on welfare.

          Lt Hawkeye was also a multi-decorated Vietnam Marine, a combat veteran who walked in the shadow of death several times in Nam. He joined the troopers shortly after his honorable discharge and not long after that he sky-rocketed to success and promotions in spite of his wise-guy, sometimes recalcitrant behaviors, his boyish arrogance and, disrespectful behavior. Normally, these traits would have been a great disadvantage when coming up for promotions, but getting the job done correctly took precedence over all of those characteristics. The troopers needed men like him, so his promotions came regularly and most certainly would continue as he traveled on his successful career path. He was now in a position of great responsibility. Protecting his men turned him into a much more serious leader and made him more respectful of his superiors, when on the job.

          He was extremely competent as a SWAT team leader. His experiences in Nam gave him a tremendous advantage over other troopers who had more seniority and more college credits. And his Mohawk Indian training put him light years ahead of his competitors when it came to discipline, tactics, courage and hand-to-hand combat.

          Lt. Hawkey had the knack for getting the job done and his superiors reveled in his successes because the spotlight of his successes shone brightly on them as well. Lieutenant Hawkey was a usually a happy person, the type of happy person who isn’t happy because they have the best of everything, but because they make the most of everything that they do have.

          Lieutenant Hawkey often told his troopers that really important SWAT decisions happen at three speeds: fast, faster and fastest. He said, “Men, most combat decisions, by necessity, occur at those speeds. That means that if you don’t know who you are, what you value, what your goals are, what standards you use to rule your life, you’ll miss most opportunities to better yourself, to do good things with your life, to protect your family, to hold chaos and panic at bay and to reach your full potential as a decent person and as a SWAT team member. Be decisive, but be smart.”

          Lieutenant Hawkey was, like most people in authoritative positions, envied, respected, loved and hated. Those who loved him were on his team. They totally trusted him. They knew that his knowledge, his experiences in Nam and his rigorous training, could save their lives, and that he wouldn’t put them into foolish or irresponsible danger. He often fought by their sides; he didn’t just give the go-ahead orders to the troops. He usually led them into combat─ though his superiors, including Captain Lewis, requested that he not lead his men into combat for fear of an excellent leader and great asset being wounded or killed, and because he had a family. He was a man’s man and not a single person on his team was afraid of any homosexual interpretations when they freely admitted that they loved this renegade Mohawk, that they’d fight along side of him even if he had to face the flaming legions of hell.

          Those who hated him were the jealous ones, the ones who got passed over for the promotions and respect that Lieutenant Hawkey received. Sometimes it was simply just a case of bigotry or cultural bias. But now-a-days the bigots didn’t spout their ethnic venom to his face, at least not since one night in a bar frequented by police, where two bigoted young troopers picked themselves up off the floor after only finishing half the sentence: “The only good Indian . . . ”

          Then there were those who loved him and hated him depending on whichever feeling served their purpose at the time. Those troopers who were his superiors loved him for the glory that his competence shined on them, but they hated him for his seemingly arrogant confidence and, sometimes, sarcastic humor and flippant attitudes. Hawkey was sure of himself, but occasionally stern and contradictory. He could be a PR man’s nightmare as well as his fondest dream.

          He’d been divorced for a few years. His ex-wife, Susan, loved him as a person. He was a good husband and father . . . when he was home. She loved him for giving her two wonderful children, a boy and a girl. But tension in their marriage quickly escalated when he would not take an easier, safer, less time-consuming job, so that he could be home more often. Susan could no longer deal with the constant worrying about his safety. It led to great friction, stress and the inevitable arguments, then finally to divorce. It was an amicable divorce. They remained good friends and neither remarried. Sue did not try to prevent Joe from seeing the children, she encouraged it. Sue resigned herself to the fact that Joe’s mistress was his job and that his SWAT team was his family. Joe was unaware of the large volume of tears that his mistress and family caused Susan, yet she loved him.

          Sometimes, usually under the stress of worrying about Joe’s safety, Sue would think that she didn’t really know Joe. On those occasions she would think, No matter how long you’re married, once in awhile, just every now and then and spread out over the years, your spouse appears, talks or acts like a total stranger with a unknown face, an abnormal mood, a startling voice and piercing eyes. At those times, Susan would immediately shake her head, then thinking out loud, she’d say, “Enough of that masochistic crap.”

          She remembered how adamant Joe was to name their son, Roman, after telling her some fantastic, probably exaggerated, glory stories about some guy that saved his life a couple of times while both of them fought the Viet Cong and NVA soldiers, somewhere in the hellishly hot jungles of Vietnam.

          She was genuinely surprised to hear Joe mention that there was someone, somewhere that he thought was tougher than himself because she knew that her husband was the toughest son-of-a-bitch that she’d ever known. Those stories peaked her curiosity about this character named Roman, especially when Joe referred to him as “Wolf” or “Ghost Wolf.” She asked Joe for more details about Roman.

          Joe remarks were sparse. He said that he and Roman had been separated in the panic and confusion after a battle had ended and hadn’t heard from each other since then. But Joe never forgot Roman’s intense face. They had shared an unspoken feeling of brotherhood and Joe, being a Native American, with extreme pride and honor, wanted to repay this man, somehow. Joe told Sue that one of the greatest disappointments of his life was that he’d lost touch with Roman so suddenly. They had had a special connection, as if they were brothers in a past life. Joe had even named his son after the guy. Joe’s memories of the man were vivid─ especially the white wolf sightings which he didn’t mention to his wife─ plus Wolf had saved Joe’s life more than once. Even though he had also saved Roman’s life, once, Joe felt honor bound to Roman because Roman saved his life more than once and with great danger to himself. If not for Roman, he told Sue, he’d never have survived Nam. Joe told her that Roman taught him how to survive, taught him that the code for survival in Nam was to kill or be killed, and then taught him how to do it.

          Sue Hawkey loved her husband for introducing her to the Adirondacks Mountains, the traditional land of the Mohawk Nation. Joe always took the whole family there each summer for a couple of weeks. Joe visited with family members who all valued Sue and the children. Sue felt comfortable around them. They were warm, friendly people. Those summers were wonderful for her. She often thought, “Could there ever be a more wild and yet beautiful place on earth?”

          Joe took her and the kids mountain climbing, canoeing, and hiking where few white people had ever been, where, in the distant past, thousands of Mohawk ancestors had travelled during hunting expeditions, or at war with the Algonquin tribes. She would miss the Adirondack vacations now that they were divorced. But she still thought fondly about Joe’s relatives.

          Joe’s mother, father and grandparents kept the Mohawk traditions and history alive for him. The Mohawks, like the other Iroquois tribes, had no written language. They relied on good memory and the spoken word to pass on their cultural heritage. Joe’s grandfather was his primary teacher in the old ways of the tribe. The oral lessons that stuck into and nagged at his mind the most were the teachings that concerned the sad history between the white, European settlers and the Iroquois tribes.

          Joe often thought, “It’s been over one hundred years since my people were placed on barren reservations, but the lot of most Native Americans hasn’t changed much. They still exist on small, obscure reservations, many of them living on welfare. They have an exceptionally high alcoholic rate and are still tightly bound by that unyielding yoke of America’s broken promises, broken treaties, broken hearts and minds.” Joe wondered how he ever broke free─ the military, he thought. But the pain of his people ate away at his insides like a voracious, monster. After his divorce he wondered how his wife had been able to stand him for as long as she did, with the dangers of his job, not being home much and with a misplaced hatred of what happened to his people. But, the biggest question for Joe, after his divorce, was, Why did I marry a white woman? Perhaps it was because she understood him and was willing to share the burden of his emotional pain─ though always well hidden. But, realistically, she could only do that for so long, until the stress and anxiety conquered her own defenses.

          Sadly, Joe and Sue divorced, but happily it was only then that Joe really set his dislike for white men aside, thinking how unfair it was to blame present-day white men for what their great, great, great, grandfathers did. Joe finally realized how wrong he was, with Susan’s help. He and Sue had discussed the fact that he was actually becoming what he hated: a bigot, a hypocrite, and prejudiced.

          Later Joe realized, with shame, that he had driven Sue away, so he reluctantly let his family go. Somehow he knew it was really for the best. He loved the kids, saw them as often as he could─ which wasn’t very often, according to Sue─ and devoted himself to his job. He was sorry it had to be that way, but he loved his job, wouldn’t think of leaving it, needed it, in fact, like an addict needs drugs. Nam had trained him for combat. That’s what he knew best; that’s what he wanted to do.

          Lt. Hawkey also has a quiet, compassionate side that is a secret to most people. He has a weakness for kids, especially kids in trouble. A half-dozen times a year he visits─ he brings his own children with him─ some group of boys and girls and gives anti-smoking speeches and tells interesting, Native American stories and related history. Like his grandfather, Hawkey was a good storyteller, entertaining and educating children at the same time, especially with humor.

          With children Hawkey was most popular for the demonstrations that he gave about shooting arrows with a traditional longbow, knife throwing, and tomahawk throwing. He has an uncanny ability with a bow and arrow. He called the system “instinctive reflex action.” Joe told the children that he didn’t really aim the bow, he simply focused on whatever he wanted to hit and let his brain, instinctively, compute the speed and distance for him. What he did was different, entertaining because it was unusual and exciting. Very few kids ever forgot him. And because of that, they remembered his lessons. Lieutenant Hawkey never mentions these off-duty activities to any of his trooper colleagues, though Captain Lewis knows, but also says nothing, at Joe’s request.

          Joe carries a quiet pride for having helped the kids. The crowning golden memory of all his demonstrations for kids happened on a recent trip to Camp Happy Times, a camp facility, near Rochester, for children who are terminally ill. As usual he demonstrated the use of the bow and arrow from many different positions: standing, running, sitting, and even the prone position. When standing, he could hit clay disks that were thrown into the air by camp counselors. It was a perfected skill that most hunters needed a shotgun to accomplish.

          Just before he moved to the next demonstrations with knife and tomahawk-throwing, a sad and emotionally shattered ten year old boy with no legs approached him, struggling to push his wheel chair forward. When the boy got close to Hawkey, he looked up at him─ it looked as if it were a strain to hold his head up─ looked at his bow and arrows, tears rolling down his cheeks and spoke with an old-man’s voice, “Mister, can you please teach me how?” Hawkey fought to stop his tears as he examined the lad, then told him in a cheerful voice, “Yep, I sure can. Right now. What’s your name, Buddy?”

          “Danny.”

          Hawkey picked up his short bow and an arrow. He knelt beside Danny and helped him hold the short-bow horizontally─ since Danny was in a wheelchair─ notched the arrow on the bow string and showed Danny how to aim the arrow. Joe looked over the kid’s shoulder, helped him hold the bow, then guided Danny’s hand on the bow, while helping him to draw the bow string back half-way. Joe instructed Danny to look along the arrow so the point looked like it was on the target, which had a large picture of a deer on it.

          “I see it,” Danny said. Hawkey made sure the arrow was pointing correctly and told Danny to let go of the string quickly. The arrow hit the deer’s rear end─ unintentionally─ and caused a cacophony of laughter from the group. Everyone cheered for Danny, then applauded. Hawkeye looked at Danny and said, “ Oops. The deer will have a hard time sitting at the dinner table tonight.” Even louder laughter and applauding occurred, as Danny smiled for the first time in weeks. Danny’s parents were crying.

          Joe immediately, and very patiently, gave tips to Danny about how to correct the next shots, making the lad do as much as possible himself, until four shots later the elated boy had two more arrows in the target: one in the stomach and one in the chest. The other two arrows were in the target, but missed the deer picture. Hawkey praised Danny, smiled at him, patted him on the back and told him that he’d never taught anybody who learned as quickly as Danny learned to use the bow and arrow.

          Danny, with the sparkling eyes of hero worship, stared at Hawkey, then laughed. Danny was so elated that he behaved as if it the event was several Christmases combined into one glorious event. Danny leaned over the wheel chair handle and grabbed Joe around the waist, then buried his face into Joe’s belly until Joe’s belly was wet with happy tears. Hawkey patted Danny’s back, then kneeled down to Danny’s level. He guided Danny’s head to his shoulder. Hawkey’s eyesight blurred from the sudden rush of uncontrollable tears. What Hawkey didn’t see were the looks of admiration and respect that surrounded him.

          Hawkey became so emotionally attached to Danny that he gave the boy his short bow and one arrow.

          Danny was so proud and elated with his accomplishment and his souvenirs that two months later, his parents buried him with his precious bow and arrow after he had succumbed to his bone marrow cancer.

          Hawkey was invited to the funeral. He went, of course, and he wept for Danny the same as he did for his Vietnam buddies who were KIA (killed in action) or for a trooper killed in the line of duty. He would never forget Danny and the happiness that he was able to share with him. He envisioned his son, Roman, being the one in that wheelchair; his eyes flooding and his chin trembling.

                  *

          Whether loved or hated, few troopers, except for foolish novices, ever challenged Hawkey physically. Not only was he tall and strong, he was also a weapons expert with all sorts of rifles and handguns, knew how to use a knife and how to disarm someone with one. He was skilled in close quarters combat─ thanks to Roman’s training sessions in Nam. Many a criminal had seen his humor turn into their pain when they made the mistake of seeing Hawkey’s humor as a weakness.

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9

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Bertrand Russell

Fang’s eyes were lasciviously glued to Alyson Boyd as Roman walked toward him. Roman saw the sudden changes in Fang’s facial expression: the raised eyebrows, wide open eyes, a slight, open-lipped smile, then licking his lips. Roman knew that look. He’d seen it in the Adirondacks a couple of years ago. Roman could see the kind of hunger that Fang had for little girls. Roman also knew that he had to distract Fang before an innocent young girl got scarred mentally and/or physically for life. Roman’s primary responsibility now was to protect the kids, at any cost.

          Roman walked up to within a few feet of Fang. At five feet ten inches and two-hundred forty pounds of muscle, Fang saw no threat from a six feet two inch, one-hundred and eighty-five pound wimpy teacher, especially one dressed in what he considered to be sissy clothes: white shirt with cobalt-blue pin-stripes; a navy-blue silk tie held down by what appeared to be a knife-shaped tie tack; black, neatly pressed pants held up by a glossy black belt with a shiny silver buckle, and black wing-tip shoes. Probably a fag, Fang thought.

          “We need to talk ,” Roman, said as he stared directly into Fang’s eyes.

          Fang looked up at Roman’s neatly combed hair and grinned. To Fang it looked like Roman thought he was Glen Campbell at the height of his career, with not a single strand of hair out of place. Fang’s eyes slowly moved down the length of Roman’s deceivingly slender body, examining his clothes. His eyes slowly rose back up to meet Roman’s. Fang noticed a slight scar on Roman’s upper left cheekbone, about an inch under the left eye. It looked like a cut, not a tear, but Fang didn’t have an inkling that it came from a knife during hand-to-hand combat in the Adirondack Mountains─ other scars, from Nam, were hidden by Roman’s clothes. Fang’s lips stretched into a contemptuous grin. He raised his right hand, stuck out his index finger and poked it forcefully into Roman’s chest so that Roman was knocked a step backward. Roman could feel the power of that one finger, like a fireplace poker thrust against his chest, but Roman remained stoic. Nam had taught him to accept pain. He took a step forward and continued staring into the menacing eyes of Fang. Roman didn’t fear for himself, but he was very fearful for the safety of his students who were currently sitting at their desks silently staring, terror radiating from their moist eyes and trembling lips.

          “I’ll let you know when we need to talk,” Fang yelled, with a fierce growl, his chin jutted forward, eyes boring into Roman, trying to intimidate him into a more submissive posture.

          Wanting to distract Fang’s mind from Alyson, Roman’s retort was, “Will that be when my lower lip starts to quiver and my knees begin to buckle from debilitating fear?”

          Fang squinted his eyes. His eyes seemed to glow like red-hot magma deep within the bowels of the earth, ready to explode to the surface. Those eyes glared with rage when Fang saw that this wimpy teacher wouldn’t back off, wouldn’t be intimidated, wouldn’t cower in the face of his brutishness.

          Fang was not all brawn and no brains, however. He possessed a good deal of both, compared to his cohorts. He realized immediately that his first impression of this nerdy teacher could have been wrong, at least partially wrong, anyway. Either that or the teacher was a fool. But, none-the-less, Fang had a bad feeling about him. He thought that behind the weak-looking facade their was something rather peculiar, perhaps something dangerous. Fang was ready to shake off this feeling as absurd until he caught a spark in Roman’s eyes, a spark that Fang did not want to become a fire. Fang wanted to break Roman in half, but thought it wasn’t the appropriate time for that. Fang thought that Roman must be incredibly naïve or stupid to challenge him with his eyes, to stare into him like a drill-bit biting into wood. He didn’t know that Roman’s intent was to distract his mind from Alyson. The ploy had worked exceptionally well.

          But, somehow, Fang’s mind wouldn’t let go of the idea that what he was looking at was a wimpy, faggy-looking teacher who was full of bluff and bluster. To him all teachers were chair dusters, paper prowlers and pencil pushers without much real value in the world. He thought, This creep’s just being an asshole, putting on a show for his students, which, of course, he thought was par for the course. The pricks and prickettes, minus their books and red pens are mostly weaklings.

          Fang hated all of his school teachers and thought of spreading the legs of some of those bitches, especially the JAP geometry teacher. Well . . . Jap is what he and the boys called her. To the boys, JAP was hotter than a preacher’s teenage, hormonal daughter. Her real name was Judy Ann Perry. She liked to tease the teenage boys by sitting on the front of her desk, facing the students, wearing a skirt. Her knees would be close together, with her skirt reaching the tops of her knees. All the boys, Fang too, waited all period for her to get on or off the desk, make an errant leg move and spread her knees apart so they could have a glance at her panty pussy.

          In the fall of Fang’s junior year of high school─ after daylight saving time, when it got darker earlier─ he had kept a two week vigil on her house, watching her shadow move inside the house, keeping track of her routines, peering into her windows. It turned out, that on Thursday nights she brought the garbage can from the back of the house to the front sidewalk so the garbage collectors could pick it up early Friday morning.

          The following Thursday, after school, he hurried home, full of excitement and shaved his pubic hairs, then put on a pair of boxer underwear. When his mom and dad got home, he pretended to feel sick, didn’t want to eat and retired early to his bedroom where he turned on the radio a little louder than usual. He made a trip to the bathroom to pee and another trip to pretend to vomit. When his mom heard him and yelled up the stairs to see if he needed help, he said he didn’t and that he was going to listen to his radio and try to fall asleep. He had already collected a pair of small, tightly fitting, cotton gloves; a condom; a small, bleach-soaked rag that he placed inside a plastic sandwich bag; two cotton ropes (a three feet length and a six feet length); an old, long-sleeve shirt; ragged socks; old pants; a solid, rubber ball, with a smallish, elastic rope through the center and exiting a foot on both sides of the ball and the ends tied (the ball was placed in the right pants pocket); an old pair of sneakers; a balaclava mask that he’d made from an old, stretched-out woolen hat that he’d cut holes into for the eyes and nose, but not a mouth hole so that his fang would not show; and, finally, a small container of Vicks VapoRub. Then, at dusk, he turned off his bedroom lights, dressed and kept the radio on so his mom and dad were sure to hear it. He placed a gob of Vicks on the back of both gloves, then stuck all his fingers into the container so that the tips of all his fingers were covered with Vicks. He closed the container and stuck it into his left pocket. He slowly tip-toed across the room and quietly opened his bedroom window, closing it just as carefully after he exited and climbed down the oak tree that was adjacent to the house. Then he carefully snuck to Miss Perry’s house, staying away from roads and lights as much as possible. He cut through back yards when possible. A couple of dogs barked at him, but he was gone before they put up much of a fuss. When he got to JAP’s house he hid around the corner from where her garbage can was resting.

          Fang waited for his petite JAP geometry teacher to appear. When she did, he grabbed her, picked her up in the air─ her shoes fell off─ forced her farther into the dark back yard, threw her on her back, then slammed his knee into her stomach to knock the air out of her lungs so she couldn’t scream. As she was trying to catch her breath, he rubbed the Vicks from the backs of his gloves into her eyes. Now her eyes burned and watered so badly that she couldn’t see anything, and even if she could, it would be a teary, dark blur. Fang quickly choked her almost to unconsciousness, then stopped and let her breathe. When she caught her breath, he put his hands around her neck, again, whispering in a faked, hoarse voice, “Stay quiet or I’ll do it again, but next time I won’t stop. You understand me?” Fang was trying very hard to pronounce each word correctly because that was not his natural way of speaking. He liked his uneducated pronunciation of words because it frustrated his teachers. Miss Perry nodded her head which reeked of the thick, greasy Vicks.

          With his left hand still on her neck, he whispered, “Open your mouth wide my sex slave. I’ve got something to put in it.”

          When she started to beg, up came his right hand with the rubber ball, jamming it into her mouth, effectively nullifying any further, undesired noises. He stretched the elastic rope around the back of her head so she could not tongue the ball out of her mouth. He rolled her over onto her stomach and used the short rope to tie her hands in back. With one end of the long rope he tied her ankles and used the extra length of that rope to make a slip knot noose which followed her spine up her back, then placed the loop around her neck. Now if she tried to straighten her legs, she’d pull on the neck rope, choking herself. This way, her hands would be out of his way, also. Then he rolled her onto her back so she was lying on her tied hands with her feet near her buttocks and her knees looking like the inverted letter “V.”

          “Now the fun starts, you cunt. I saw you in the grocery store and followed you home.” A ruse. “I bet you’re one of those teasing bitches, aren’t you? I saw the J . . A . . P letters on your sweaters and blouses. Been stalking you for a long time, Missy. Checked your mail and even know what those initials mean.” Another ruse. “We pounded those Japs in the war. Now I’m going to pound a JAP just like I would a whore. Hear that, my little lady whore? War and whore rhyme. So a poet is going to fuck you. Bet you wish I hadn’t seen you so often in the grocery store . I bet you wish you hadn’t opened your coat to show off your tits. ”This was also a ruse to make her think that it wasn’t any one from the school environment who was doing this to her.

          As Fang slowly dragged his hand, starting at the knee, up her thigh, her skirt followed easily all the way to her panties. Fang was disappointed that he couldn’t see the color of her panties. She squirmed and tried to talk, to beg, but it was futile. She felt her panties being ripped off, then the tug of her skirt being pulled down to her ankles. She was like a trussed hog waiting to be slaughtered. The thought was so thrilling to Fang that he nearly ejaculated prematurely.

          Fang ripped open her blouse and cut her bra between the cups. Now that she was totally naked, he finger fucked her repeatedly, seeing how many fingers she could take. He rubbed her clitoris sadistically hard, then middle fingered her G-spot roughly. After ten minutes of this torturous teasing and brutal foreplay, he lowered his pants, pulled his hammer-hard cock out the slit in his boxer underwear, slipped a condom on, then raped her repeatedly. In between rapes he’d rub more Vicks into her eyes while he waited to get his stamina back, using the time to also thoroughly lick and suck on her breasts and bite her nipples, leaving bruise-like hickey marks.

          When he finished, she was barely conscious. He untied her, wiped her face, breasts and groin with the bleach-soaked rag─ to prevent the analysis of blood or saliva, removed the ball and ropes, cut free and gathered her dress, blouse, panties, bra and shoes, then simply walked away and left her lying there, totally naked, immobile and semi-conscious.

          He took a different way home, but he stuck to backyards and fields, dark, shadowed areas and wherever possible, avoiding lighted areas. One field led to the back of the pizza shop where there was a dumpster shared by two other stores. He removed all his old clothes except for the underwear, socks and sneakers, opened a black garbage bag that was already in the dumpster─ among many others, since it was the end of the week and garbage day was tomorrow─ and placed his and her clothes into the bag. He retied the bag with its twist-tie and buried it as far under the other bags as his arm length would allow.

          He sprinted the remainder of the way home, climbed the tree, entered, closed and locked the window quietly, took off his sneakers and socks and hid them. Then he pretended to hurry to the bathroom while gagging. He faked vomiting. This time his father came up the stairs and opened the bathroom door a crack. Otto stood there in his underwear, wiping his mouth, while the sound of the flushing toilet combined with the radio to produce a very unusual symphony.

          “You OK, son?”

          “I feel better, now, Dad, but I feel sweaty and dirty. I’m going ta take a hot shower an’ hit the sack, again. Really, my stomach feels much better now that I threw-up.”

          “Can’t be your mom’s cookin’, son, ‘cause your mom and me ain’t sick.”

          “Nah. Must a been some bug I picked up at school today. Good night, Dad.”

          “Good night, son. Hope you feel better in the morning.”

          “I will.”

          Young Otto showered thoroughly. When he grabbed the soap and brought it close to his face, he noticed a weak smell of Vicks. He didn’t think his dad had noticed or he would’ve said something. He soaped his entire body three times, doing his hands twice more, washed his hair twice, then poured drain cleaner down the shower drain to ruin any evidence that might have been down there─ his favorite TV shows were the police, detective and forensic science shows, especially on cable TV where he learned a lot if fact-based information.

          The next morning he also took a shower; no smell of Vicks remained. He felt very happy this morning. He attended school, of course─ it might look suspicious if he didn’t. When he arrived at school he was all smiles, but he didn’t tell a single person what he had done─ the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. Miss Perry’s class had a substitute teacher. The substitute teacher didn’t say anything about Miss Perry’s absence, probably didn’t know about it, Otto thought and she’s too embarrassed to report it. Otto’s smile grew larger and so did his erection.

          The garbage from the town businesses and residential homes was picked up that morning and carried away to a Rochester dump site. Evidence gone.

          The following Monday, after class, and from then on, after all of Miss Perry’s classes, he always stopped and said, “I hope you have an nice day and a relaxing night, Miss Perry.” Then he’d smile and walk away, awash with glorious, evil satisfaction, though it turned out to be a minor mistake.

          Miss Perry’s suspicions were aroused, but she never did anything for fear of how she would be treated by the students and her colleagues. She never sat on the front of her desk again, and she always wore women’s dress pants from then on. Not quite a year later she married the male algebra teacher, the biggest, strongest-looking man in the school. He looked tough, but he wasn’t handsome. To Otto, he was too hairy and ape-like, while JAP was pretty. Why would she marry him? Otto figured that she had primarily married a body-guard, not a lover and husband. Otto desired control and, in his mind, he had even controlled whom JAP married.

                  *

          Fang had been mentally unstable since his early years. Everything in life is filtered through a person’s past experiences which contributes to the development of his self-concept. But if the filter, itself, is ineffective, tainted, dirty or sat in a polluted and shallow gene pool, then everything that passes through it is contaminated as well. Fang’s academic intelligence was average, but his mental filter (e.g. feelings or lack of, behaviors, attitudes) was polluted. That caused him to misjudge the tall, skinny teacher standing before him.

          Fang grinned and rubbed his chin with his left hand as Charlie reached for his knife.

          Freddy was a blatant misfit in this situation, like sending a priest to fight in a war. In any physical confrontation, Freddy was useless, like a hammer with no head. But Freddy was trying to reform his criminal ways. However, brutal honesty showed that he was a frigid chill looking for a spine to crawl up. Freddy nervously backed away as he said, “ Lord save me. For with God, nothing shall be impossible. Luke 1:37.”

          Roman, hearing Freddy’s desperate plea for heavenly help, thought of a Christopher Hitchen’s quote. “What can be asserted without proof can also be dismissed without proof.”

          Freddy’s stomach churned from nervousness and worry. He was as jumpy as a startled frog. This was all supposed to be so simple, he thought. His intestines groaned. He felt the internal pressure of a large gas bubble running its course to its final exit point. He squeezed his buttocks together to stop the putrid cloud of flatus from being born, but, to his disappointment, out came the cloud of gas. He took the opportunity offered by Mr. Wolfe’s distraction and walked to the back of the classroom, as he mumbled, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in troubled times. Palms 46:1.”

          Freddy’s foul flatus must have been a tail-fart, like the tail on a kite. As he passed the students, they grimaced, some of them pinching their noses closed after their gag-reflex was activated, while others fanned the air in front of their noses with an open hand.

          Standing in the back of the room, Freddy looked in fear at his brother and Charlie.

          One of the students, Steven Blake, caught a whiff of the tail-fart and without thinking, turned, looked over his shoulder to the back of the room, stared at Freddy while pinching his nose closed and said, in a nasal voice that sounded as if he had a cold, “Man, you stink. You sure know how to cut-the-cheese.”

          Roman, hearing Steven’s reaction to the smell, turned and looked, with concern, at Steven. Roman smiled, winked then placed his right index finger perpendicular to his lips─ the universal sign for quiet. Steven nodded his head, an indication that he would obey, but stole another peek at Freddy who was staring back at him.

          While in the process of turning back toward Fang, Roman wasn’t aware of Fang’s raised left hand, clenched into a fist, about to act like a piston. Fang’s upper arm and shoulder muscles drove his piston-like fist into Roman’s belly.

          Despite Roman’s karate exercises, which made his stomach muscles tight and hard, he was caught off guard. Air exploded from his lungs like air from a ruptured tire. The pain was excruciating. While desperately trying to catch his breath, he was hoping that no internal organs had been damaged.

          The force of Fang’s fist crashing into Roman’s stomach was greater than anything he had ever experienced. The punch literally lifted him off the floor and threw him backward a few feet, making him stumble, lose his balance and fall on his back. Roman finally inhaled desperately, filling his lungs, breathing deeply and rapidly. He sat up, then pushed himself up from the floor slowly, still breathing deeply and quickly. Then he coughed, causing his stomach muscles to tighten, which caused more pain. He faked a smile for the kids, so they wouldn’t worry as much.

          “Not so brave now, are yuh?” Fang grinned.

          Roman remained silent.

          Roman noticed that a couple of the boys started to grin at him. They knew this game. Mr. Wolfe often let them punch him in the stomach as he teasingly said to them, “You can’t hurt steel.” But some of the boys had wondered what would happen if someone older and stronger had a chance to hit Mr. Wolfe in the stomach. Now, to their guarded delight, that question was answered and, for them, it took some of the fear out of their situation, allowing them to express guarded smiles.

          Steven Blake yelled, “Yuh can’t hurt steel.”

          Roman grimaced, wishing Steven had not said that. He looked at Steven, put a serious expression on his face, then shook his head back and forth slightly, indicating that he didn’t want Steven to talk.

          Taking the fear out of this situation was good for the children, but not for Roman. He thrived on fear and intimidation. He noticed the students smiling as his own anger increased. Fang glared at Roman, who was holding his stomach and loudly shouted, in a disgusted-sounding voice, “Steel, my ass, boy. Yuh ever seen steel gettin’ bent, knocked back an’ fallin’ over. No, not steel, kid. More like that silver stuff yuh wrap food in . . . ah . . . ‘lumnum foil.”

          In the back of his mind, however, Fang anxiously thought, No one had ever been able to take a blow to the stomach like this teacher had just done, even if he collapsed to the floor. He got up too quickly, as if he wasn’t hurt seriously. When Fang had punched someone like that before, the guy didn’t get up for quite a while because of internal damage. Fang thought, Maybe I should have punched the guy over his heart, thinking of the time he had killed a guy by punching the guy there. The punch literally broke the chest bones and drove them into the guy’s heart. The heart ruptured and the guy was dead shortly after his limp body hit the ground. He fell limply to the ground, as if all his bones had turned into rubber bands.

          Roman stepped toward Fang while taking another deep breath to inflate his lungs. He stared at Fang a moment before saying, “Listen, Fang. If you or your goons hurt any of these children, I’ll make such a fuss that it’ll attract the attention of the police and they’ll be forced to come charging in here. Hurt me, not the children.”

          “Jus’ did that, didn’t I? That’s not a threat, is it Slim? Sounds like suicide ta me,” Fang ejaculated with gobs of saliva bursting from his mouth, like lava from an erupting volcano. “Yuh can’t be that much a fool. Can yuh?”

          “Suicide? What? You planning on killing yourself? Situations like these are like mini-wars. And in war, it’s tacitly understood that one does not deliberately injure women and children. Better to be an honorable and civilized fool than a savage, contemptible and ignorant bully,” Roman responded with venomous words.

          There was a pause as Roman and Fang glared at each other.

          Fang bunched his muscles, clenched his fists, then said, “Yuh goin’ ta challenge me, Teach?”

          Roman stood his ground, saying, “Only if you hurt any of my students.”

          Suddenly, Blizzard’s thoughts entered Roman’s mind and Roman knew that Charlie was coming up behind him. Roman could have easily rear-kicked him to take him out of action, but he decided against it. He didn’t want to give away his karate knowledge and skills. It was to his advantage not to let them know that he was a black-belt in karate. Then a frightening thought occurred to him: What if the kids mentioned it? Then a further thought: What if Fang used the classroom television and the media mentioned it? That would take away any advantage that he had had and make this situation worse. Roman worried about the kids . Somehow he had to get the kids out or at least get some of them out of the classroom safely.

          Roman was distracted by these urgent thoughts when he felt a sharp pain in his back.

          Charlie stuck the point of his knife near Roman’s lower spine.

          Some children screamed. Roman looked at them and held up his hand to let them know it was okay.

          To Fang, Roman whispered, “Tell your cock sucking chicken to back off.”

          Fang’s anger flared. Like lightening he landed a vicious, but glancing right fist to Roman’s jaw. Roman had rolled his head with the punch, unable to get his hands up in time to block it. Fang’s fist was fast, for such a big man. Fang’s follow-up left hook caught Roman on the upper lip and nose, knocking him backward into Charlie’s knife point. The knife wound, Roman knew, would only be superficial. Roman’s nose, however, was broken and his upper lip was cut. He did not dare to fight back. He staggered backward. He could feel and taste the stream of warm blood flowing down around the corner of his mouth and over his lips. He grimaced, then spit blood.

          But despite the pain, he could still feel the presence of Charlie in back of him and as he spun around to make it look as if he were trying to catch his balance, he elbowed Charlie in the temple. Such a blow could be lethal due to the fragile nature of the skull at that part of the cranium. Shards of bone can be caused to ram into the brain causing hemorrhaging, swelling, pressure, then death. But Roman was, in fact, partly off balance and didn’t intend for the elbow to be lethal. The knife popped out of Charlie’s hand as he fell to the floor unconscious. Roman fell next to him and wondered if now was the time to unleash his fury on Fang.

          Roman sat up, felt and saw the blur of white leap from his chest, then heard Blizzard’s muffled growl. Blizzard, Roman’s spirit guide, suddenly appeared to him. Roman looked around to see if anyone else had seen Blizzard. It was extremely rare for anyone but Roman to see Blizzard, but once in a great while someone did and that someone was usually a child. No one reacted to Blizzard’s presence.

          Roman and Blizzard communicated by a mysterious telepathic process. Thoughts were exchanged, like Monarch butterflies bursting from their brains, then speedily floating in a stream of vivid thoughts as if being delivered by a rainbow. In this way they could read each other’s thoughts and observe the amazing process that took place, something only they could see, like owning a Picasso painting and hiding it so that only the owner can see it. So they spoke to each other in this manner, with Blizzard and Roman exchanging ideas, offering suggestions, advice and support which settled in each of their brains stems, then, in a millisecond, flashed to all the relevant nerve synapses and all the relevant receptors where they were translated into action, as if they were traveling at the speed of light, on the tracks of a cosmic train of thought.

          Laughing hysterically, Fang said, “Did not think I hit yuh that hard. Guess yuh ain’t as tough as yuh sound, little fella.”

          Roman stood, raised his two open hands and pressed them together, each on one side of his nose, then he snapped both hands in the opposite direction of the break. The crunch was audible─ that’s how Medics fixed broken noses when he and his fellow soldiers were in the jungle, days from their base of operation and doctors. Blood from his nose and lip trailed down the insides of his hands. Anger flushed his face and his eyes watered profusely. Continuous rivulets of tears streamed down his cheeks. He stood up as quickly as he could, but then realized that it was a mistake. Was this action be taken as rebellion or as an accident? he wondered.

          “Yuh be very entertaining,” Fang stated mirthfully, then thought, I could crush this guy like cotton candy, but the prick is right ‘bout one thing. If I do that, then these babies would panic. No tellin’ what they do, then I lose control of ‘em an’ they might do somethin’ foolish ta attrac’ the cops. He paused, then smiled. He had thought of something more effective that he could do.

          Still on the floor, Charlie was stirring and mumbling. Fang kicked him lightly in the ribs and said, “Get up. I need yuh.” Charlie did not respond.

          Then Fang walked to Alyson Boyd, who sat in a front row desk. With his left hand he grabbed her by the neck, under the chin, lifted her out of her seat, then up and over her desk. He set her down in front of him as he one-handedly aimed his assault rifle at Roman.

          Roman saw his students cringe and start whimpering.

          “Stop that! You’re scaring the kids,” Roman yelled. Then Roman lied, saying, “I meant no harm. Knocking Charlie down was an accident. I tried to catch my balance and accidentally crashed into him, that’s all.” Roman made his voice and mannerisms sound and look contrite. “I mean you people no harm. I just want to keep the kids safe.”

          Alyson gasped, then rubbed her red, sore neck and wiped away her tears.

          “Hell, I knows that,” Fang responded as he lowered the rifle. “It be the part where yuh threaten me, an’ thinks yuh has control, that bother me.”

          Freddy, hesitantly, came to the front of the room, bent over Charlie, reluctantly offering to help him, but Charlie was still unconscious, though he was moaning. Freddy stood up and looked at his brother with anger. “You beatin’ up little girls now, brother? Our Lord only has so much patience, yuh know.”

          “Shut yur damn mouth with that Lordy bullshit, yuh sissy.”

          I’d rather have fanatically religious Freddy as a friend than a fiend like Fang, Roman thought. At least we could argue our religious positions without anyone being physically hurt.

          Fang said to Roman, “Okay, Asshole. Now yuh listen careful. Yuh do what yur tol’ an’ back off before I start really hurtin’ some kids.” Then Fang dug his free hand into Alyson’s hair, pulled upward and lifted Alyson’s a foot off the ground. She screamed, her feet dangling in the air; her hands reaching desperately toward Fang’s, attempting to relieve the pain. Her pretty face and smile became disfigured as her facial muscles contorted in anguish.

          The students started squirming, mumbling and crying.

          Roman held up both open hands, palms forward, in front of Fang and shouted, “Okay, okay, no more trouble,” Roman said, then thought, I thought I’d have some leverage, but the bluff didn’t work. “Please put Alyson down. Don’t you think the kids are scared enough? The kids are scared by my blood and your rifle. May I go to the sink and wash up? And if you’ll not aim that rifle at any of them, it’ll help settle everybody down.”

          Fang lowered Alyson. “Go!” Fang growled fiercely, rage seeming to drip from his eyes like tears. “Sit yur ass down,” Fang growled at Alyson, as he inspected the claw marks that Alyson had left on his forearm.

          As Roman cleaned the blood off his face and hands, he could hear Charlie moaning and see him moving as he slowly regained consciousness.

          At the same time, Fang was yelling at his brother for not helping out, for just standing by like a scared, little child. Fang slapped Freddy and Freddy pleaded with him not to do it again, but Fang did it again, twice. When Fang stopped slapping Freddy─ Freddy’s cheeks had turned red as ripe cherries─ Freddy said, “Brother, please depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. Psalms 34:14.”

          Roman thought, Religion had to be the last vestige of Neanderthal superstition and like the human appendix, it still exists, despite being useless, purposeless and redundant. Most people are smart; why don’t they understand the illogic of religion? Then Roman thought, Perhaps it’s like Mark Twain said, “It isn’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.”

          After each Psalm recitation, Freddy appeared to enter a form of rapture that appeared as if it were self-hypnosis, in which he appeared to attain an orgasmic-like pleasure. “Otto . . . ah, Fang. Please. God will forgive all your sins, but you have to stop these evil ways. God loves you and will forgive you. I know that for a fact.”

          Fang turned away from Freddy, mumbling, “Useless fool.”

          Roman had frequently heard Freddy reciting religious nonsense and was thinking that ignorance is such fertile soil for the germination of a religious seeds. Plant those mythological seeds, watch them sprout, have the gardener praise them, nourish them, harvest them and distribute millions of those seeds, then watch new religions grow and claim mythological gods.

          For some reason, the seeds of common sense were rare, but even if they weren’t, they’d perish if planted in that soil of ignorance. That was probably why the most uncommon traits to be found in the world, when the subject is religion, are reason, logic and common sense. Roman thought of Mark Twain, again: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

          Fang looked at his brother and said, “Yur such a preachin’ asshole. I liked yuh better before, when yuh didn’t believe in fairy tales. Yuh always was a little, wimpy pain in my ass. I’m not yur momma or yur baby-sitter. Time ta grow up . . . or maybe yuh should sit down an’ be one a them babies over there.” Fang pointed to the students. “That or get yur head outta yur ass. Are yuh with us or against us?” Fang screamed at him.

          Roman felt a sense of unrestrained evil in Fang’s voice, like murky and infested swamp water, infested with multitudes of danger just below the surface.

          Then, in what seemed to be an obvious contradiction, Fang gave the assault rifle to Freddy as he bent and helped Charlie get to his feet. Charlie was groggy and staggered as he held onto Fang’s arm for support.

          The room became as silent as a late night morgue.

          Fang was thinking how good it felt to hold onto Alyson and how wonderful it would be to be standing over her as they were both naked, and what wonderful things he could force her to do to his naked body, if he could only get her alone somewhere. That thought aroused him, synapses fired like machine guns and nerve endings twitched. His groin stirred at the thought and he felt the pulsing of his heart behind his zipper. He looked at Alyson and smiled.

          Freddy thought about the new hatred he had for Otto. How he had always been made to feel inferior to Otto, how he mistakenly thought that they could be equals if he collaborated with Otto by meeting him with the all-important, get-away car. But now he saw that his brother would always see him as a slow, lowly form of life, a slug, lower than whale shit. Psalm 1:1 filled his mind. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” Then, much less forgiving, he thought, Otto isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is. If there was a problem that someone said could be figured out by the simple process of elimination, Otto would be the first one to drop his pants and shit on the floor, then look a the turd to find the solution. Not bad thinking for a retard, Freddy thought proudly.

          Charlie, who was now fully conscious and alert, was staring at Roman, suspiciously, and feeling that the elbow strike wasn’t an accident.

          Roman saw Charlie staring at him. “I’m sorry,” Roman said to Charlie. “It was an accident. I was trying to catch my balance.”

          That’s bullshit. I don’t believe him, Charlie thought, as he glared at Roman.

          To Charlie it wasn’t worth the effort to differentiate between the two of them, except in a sort of lazy nonsense fashion. To him the result of a good coincidence was good luck and a the result of a bad coincidence was bad luck. He didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t give a shit, to learn that “luck” is a random occurrence that operates either for you or against you; whereas, “coincidence” is a random occurrence that brings two or more related circumstances together in the same space, and at the same time─ so coincidence would be when a man’s wife and mistress both unknowingly decide to visit him at his office at the same time of day, but luck is when his mistress gets a flat tire on the way and has to postpone her trip until another day. It’s not knowing and not wanting to know things like this that held Charlie back during his whole life. He thought crime didn’t take brains because he could simply steal the things he wanted from the people who had brains enough to earn nice stuff.

          It wasn’t that Charlie wasn’t capable of such thoughts, he was just too lazy. If it didn’t come easily, it wasn’t worth going after. Being a thief and a pervert were easy. He wasn’t aware of such sage advice as, If you want to earn a lot of money, stay away from easy. His simple thoughts─ obsessions─ were mostly of revenge and inflicting pain, especially when it came to his desires for perverted sexual gratification. Charlie’s heart is cold, his mind is sadistic, his stomach full of ice and his eyes reflected those feelings. His eyes, now the color of blue ice, lacked civility, compassion and were devoid of even a remnant of remorse. His eyes looked as if an iceberg was floating in back of them, but an observer could only see the tip of his rage. And right now, the tip of his rage was aimed at Roman. Charlie picked up his knife, promising himself the ultimate revenge against Roman. Charlie thought, I’ll savor the death of that teacher before this is over. I’ll lick his blood off my knife, after I stab it deep into his guts, then rip him open like a gutted fish.

          Charlie stared a Roman and laconically said five words. “You will pay for that.” Then he silently mouthed the word “motherfucker” with a look of lethal portents.

          Roman grinned, then responded; “Yeah. I know. You’re a dangerous ‘cereal’ killer, but do me a favor, OK? Please don’t kill Mr. Cheerios. I really like him.”

          Charlie gave Roman the middle finger, then stuck his index finger out with his thumb up, while fisting the other fingers to show a finger-gun. He aimed it at Roman and mouthed the word bang.

                  *

          Though the state police commander hadn’t had a chance to read it yet, the prison psychiatrist’s report concerning Charlie stated:

          “As with adults, many long-abused teens, like Charlie, will injure or kill easily, the result of their overly and frequent aggressiveness, as well as their inability to control their rage. Those, like Charlie, are usually emotionally cold and lack feelings of remorse and compassion. They also tend to demonstrate explosive tempers and seem to find nourishment in revenge, sadism and perversions, especially when it’s sexually related. Most of them will lash out after long-term victimization with a life dominating need for vengeance. Charlie may kill or maim because he has been traumatized and is simply unable to tolerate their own miserable existence. He feels worthless, hopeless and great anger, all of which, if prolonged, lead to dark and sinister thoughts and actions. Charlie is a classic case; he’s dominated by immature and narcissistic behaviors which formed as the result of his prolonged abuse. His current personality traits are a reaction to his constant, prior abuse.

          “Charlie is obsessed with certain sexual behaviors. For Charlie it appears to be domination of children, followed by oral sex, though in prison he’s had to settle for adult oral sex and/or anal sex.

          “Since he has been deprived of love and acceptance from early childhood, he feels justified with his own violent nature. He has stated in one of our therapy sessions that he shouldn’t have to feel bad or have remorse because his violent nature and pedophilia were caused by his parents; therefore, they are to blame for his actions, not him.

          “Less common, but often more dramatic are killings committed by the psychotic personality, those with disturbed, disordered, chaotic thoughts and delusions, with only a slim hold on reality. Though Charlie is not yet psychotic, he is highly susceptible to that condition in the future. (NOTE: Though Charlie has no record of killing anyone, I’d be very surprised if he hasn’t done so already, but didn’t get caught.)

          “Psychotics use extreme violence because they say they hear voices that command them. Voices from gods, angels, saints, loved ones or even personal heroes. But psychopaths like Charlie (and his cell-mate, Otto) are different. They kill mostly for another reason. They relish the emotional ecstasy and thrill that it brings to them. It’s like an orgasm to them. A psychopath’s childhood is usually an appalling wreck, so the psychopath’s learned behaviors are amoral, at best, immoral at worst, as well as anti-social to the point of being labeled a sociopath. Furthermore, a psychopath is often average to above average in intelligence (however, this particular trait varies more than the other traits), and shows no genuine shame or remorse for his premeditated crimes, even murder. They have the ability to separate their personal lives from their cruel actions, as if they were watching someone else commit violent acts in a movie.

          “A person with a psychopathic personality, like Charlie, has few feelings that aren’t somehow related to anger and rage. He sees people as unimportant objects to be used, like tools, and may, in fact, care much more deeply for objects (e.g. his car) than for human beings. The psychopath is also highly secretive about himself, his intentions and activities, and very often demonstrates mild to severe signs of paranoia. In many cases, like Charlie’s, he can outwardly look and act quite normal. This allows for cold, calculated, well-planned and brutally sadistic behaviors that, in normal, everyday life, are well disguised. The psychotic wants to please the voices s/he hears, but the psychopath only wants to please himself, and, with Charlie, pleasure involves pain, sometimes his own pain, but usually it involves the pain of his sex partners or those that he abuses in other ways for the pleasure of watching their pain. It’s what makes the normal appearing psychopath much more unpredictable and; therefore, much more dangerous than the delusional psychotic.

          “Sometimes in life, for a few people at least, the pain of their past forges a painful and harsh destiny for them, a path that appears predetermined and nearly inescapable. For them that path becomes a dark, rough, sharply twisting and dangerously plunging psycho-path toward destructive behaviors and ultimately toward self-destruction.”

                  *

          The students were in a state of shock. They were all frightened to death of the three men with guns and knives. They felt helpless and confused, especially when they saw Mr. Wolfe’s bloody face and badly bent nose. They thought of him as indestructible, a black-belt in karate who could beat-up these guys. They wondered why he didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t. Some of them started doubting his bravery and his skill at karate, but mostly they were just confused, scared and stunned into a sort of numbness that wipes out logic as well as speech─ which was good for Mr. Wolfe, since he didn’t want any of the kids to talk about karate.

          Roman absorbed Charlie’s vengeful stare, knew that there would be a time of reckoning, but still felt pity for Charlie who must have had a life full of abuse, followed by rage, then tragic decisions. Roman thought, Charlie’s life must resonated with mistreatment and blunders, like thunder and lightning from his past.

          Then Roman’s thoughts turned to Freddy. Roman felt a sad kind of pity for Freddy who was probably treated like shit all his life, experiencing abuse and the lack of love, then becoming a criminal turned deacon. Freddy was one of those cases where Roman thought that religion was useful, as a crutch for a handicapped person. Usually, though, Roman was against religious beliefs for many different reasons, but a simple reason was that Roman had similar thoughts to Richard Dawkins, who said, “I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” One has to temporality suspend reality and truth during the religious part of their lives, in order to blindly believe in the impossibilities and other nonsense contained in myths of religion.”

          Roman returned his concentration to Fang and thought, There would be a time of reckoning here, also, if he didn’t get a shiv in the back from Charlie. Then he thought, How come I end up having to fight these big ass dudes? What the hell am I? A muscle magnet?

          Besides keeping the kids safe, Roman’s worse worry was how the students would view him after this incident was over. Could he ever again be an effective teacher? Would this incident, coupled with the Adirondack incident, combined with his Vietnam experiences, ruin his ability to be an effective teacher? Would parents, teachers and administrators fear him and feel uncomfortable around him? And worst of all, would the kids be traumatized if he had to use his combat skills in a lethal manner? Would he be seen as a menacing force by the kids, threatening their safety, making them unable to learn from him because they would be forever fearful of being punished or abused by him? Would he lose their respect? Would students, parents and school staff idolize him or ostracize him? Would he be banished from school for being a bad influence and a very poor role model? Roman felt discouraged.

          Each question seemed to riddle Roman’s body with painful holes just like many of the bodies he’d seen in Nam riddled by automatic weapons fire, knife wounds or shrapnel. He felt as if his life’s blood was draining from him. He reached into his left front pocket and felt the Annie button that his daughter, Grace, had given to him a few years ago. It felt good in his hand. Roman took comfort in the worn smoothness of the button and the good memories that sprang from it as he rubbed it.

          The simple feel of the button put him more at peace with himself. He thought of Grace and Sam. He loved them both tremendously and  knew they’d always love him, too. He took comfort in that knowledge and fought off the advancing depression that he felt was slowly engulfing him, like an amoeba surrounding its food. The stress was releasing too much adrenaline into his blood stream and neutralizing the medication that he took for depression.

          But Roman’s heart and mind were uplifted when he saw Blizzard prowling in circles around the perimeter of the classroom. Blizzard looked so friendly and gentle . . . at this moment. He thought about how he and Blizzard were alike: gentle and sensitive when not threatened, but capable of much violence if threatened. It was as if both had the talent to change from cotton to iron.

          How could such characteristics reside in one man or animal? Roman wanted to be nonviolent, but he was pushed or, perhaps, allowed himself to be pushed too far. The truth was, he wasn’t as tough as many people thought he was. He never intended it to be that way, it just happened. There’s a lot more cotton in him than most people would suspect. Only close family and friends would know that and he won’t let outsiders get to know him. Actually, he’s often scared, afraid that he won’t be able to protect those who are closest to him, those who really do know him, though that’s a very small group of people. He’s afraid that he’ll be in a combat situation with someone better, though it was hard to imagine anyone with superior skills. Roman knows that there’s always someone better, especially a Dim Mak (death touch) master.

          To Roman, reality meant the relationships between constant opposites (up-down, left-right, large-small. One can’t exist without the other for comparison), which meant that there would always be winners because there are losers, even within the same person. He could lose a fight and not be bothered too much, but if losing that fight caused someone close to him great harm, that would bother him a great deal.

          Sometimes Roman was even afraid of himself, what he might do or what he may not be able to control. He’d read an article given to him by Dr. Lash. The part that stuck heavily in his mind was the paragraph that stated: “Male depression is usually turned outward, to damage others with anger and violence, whereas depression in women is mostly turned inward, against themselves. Thus women are more likely to cut themselves, have eating disorders and other self-mutilating, self-destroying actions.

          Roman’s mind became peaceful and relaxed, as his thoughts drifted to his wife, Samantha. Sam’s image appeared in his mind clearly and redolent from shampooed hair and perfumed skin. To him she was beautiful. He longed to lift the back of her luxuriant auburn hair, exposing the nape of her neck, then kiss that tender, sensitive skin, just at the hairline─ Roman snapped out of than line of thought, saying, “Not now, stupid.”

          Roman shook his head and blinked his eyes to clear his mind. His thoughts focused on three things he had to do right away: First, he had to, somehow, tell all the kids not to mention his karate skills and not to mention Vietnam or the Adirondack Mountains incident. Secondly, he had to disable the television so that the media couldn’t do the same things, if Fang decided to turn on the television. And, thirdly, he had to think of a way to get all, or as many of the kids as possible, out of this potentially explosive situation.

          The bleeding from his lips and nose had stopped. His nose was straightened and would heal in time, but in order to stop it from bleeding he had to jam part of a tissue up one nostril. His left cheek was swelling and his left eye was turning black and blue and puffy, but the pain had subsided. He shook his head slowly, thoughtfully, and wondered how this would all end, then bowed his head and wondered why this type of incident kept happening to him. Coincidence? Bad luck? He thought, First Nam, then the Adirondack incident and now this school hostage situation. He shook his head in confusion and frustration. Shit happens, he thought.

          All he wanted was peace, quiet, anonymity and the family he loved and that loved him, plus a rewarding job as a teacher of elementary school kids. He didn’t want to be in the spotlight. He’d grown to hate that. He just wanted to blend in, to go unnoticed. But somehow fate wouldn’t grant his wish for any great length of time. Sooner or later he was thrust into an unwanted spotlight and the danger that came with it.

          Roman dried his face with a paper towel, then reached into his pocket to feel the Annie button. It felt warm and comforting like it had a life of its own. The thought of his daughter once again brought a comforting smile and hope to him.

          Out of the blue, a memory came to him. He remembered reading somewhere about the stages of growth that a daughter goes through concerning her changing views of her father. Roman strained to think. He thought, It was something like: at age 1-2, Dad is the only man in her world; age 3-4, Dad knows everything; age 7-8, Dad knows almost everything; age 9-10, Dad doesn’t know some things; age 11-12, Dad doesn’t know a lot of things; age 13-14, Dad is really old and has weird ideas about kids; ages 15-17, Dad is so frustrating; ages 18-19, Dad is really stupid; ages 20-21, Maybe Dad isn’t as stupid as I thought; ages 22-25, I should really ask Dad what he thinks before I do this; ages 26-35, I shouldn’t make rash decisions. I need to check with Dad first; ages 36-50, Gee, I wonder what Dad would think? I’d better call him; ages 51-60, I’d give anything if dad wasn’t so far away. I worry about him and how he’s doing. He was so easy to talk to. He was so understanding and smart about everything; ages 61-90, Dad’s been dead for a few years. What will I do without him and his advice? Dad was a wonderful father. Life will be so lonely without him.

          Roman looked around the room. He thought about the look in everyone’s eyes: the innocent and scared looks in the eyes of the children . . . and Freddy, the fire of hatred in Fang’s eyes and the ice-like rage in Charlie’s eyes. He wondered what shone in his own eyes. Sam had once told him that when he’s angry or disturbed about something important, his eyes looked menacing, like pewter-colored storm clouds just before a heavy downpour of rain.

          Roman came to a decision, then he strode meekly toward Fang, Roman’s eyes and chin lowered to hide his fake nervousness. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He wanted to appear subservient to pacify Fang’s need for domination and control.

          As he approached Fang, he thought, What makes a brave person? His responding thought was that a brave person is simply an average person who sees what needs to be done and does it, regardless of the consequences or personal sacrifices. Roman knew that brave people seldom thought of themselves as brave until later when someone compliments them on how brave they were. But there are some brave people who were dull, bored and, perhaps, had been mentally stagnated by work and home routines that numbed their once sharp minds, but then acted bravely to surprise even themselves. Then there are those who act bravely because they were simply too afraid, too panicked to run away from danger. So they ran toward it and instinctually did something that was successful, making them appear to be brave when they were not.

          As he got near Fang, Roman’s anger rose. He didn’t just remember his previous anger, he relearned it in all of its original intensity, power, force and emotion.

/-.--/---/..-/.-/.-././..-./..-/-./-./-.--/--/../-.-/./

10

“What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.”

Sigmund Freud

Charlie was born to parents who didn’t love him or want him. He was simply the unfortunate child of a primitive, biological and instinctive sexual urge, enhanced by various liquids and drugs.

          Charlie’s very first memories of his early youth were of the Catholic orphanage where he was placed when his father and mother got a divorce. His father got custody because the mother skipped town, but he had no idea what to do with Charlie. To Charlie’s father, Charlie was a serious inconvenience.

          Charlie’s father, Ignatius, was a contemptible bastard in more than one sense of the word. He was minimally educated and worked as a janitor for a computer company. He picked up trash that others threw on the floor, emptied garbage cans, swept, mopped, served as a gofer and usually went to work with a hangover. The loves of his life were bars, beer and drugs. He was, at his roots, a repugnant, irresponsible, immature man-child, devoid of love or concern for Charlie, though he always brought Charlie home from the orphanage on weekends─ for religious indoctrination. It was the Christian thing to do.

          Charlie honestly, and bitterly, never remembered the man ever saying that he loved Charlie. Worse yet, he never gave Charlie the impression that he even liked him, though he let Charlie accompany him to one bar after another. Charlie’s father simply brought him along because he knew of no one else who would take him. So Charlie got to stay up through the early morning hours to meet all his father’s alcoholic, miscreant friends.

          Charlie frequently laughed at his father’s first name, Ignatius. He found that it was some Catholic saint’s name. Iggy─ the name Charlie used when he thought about his father─ claimed to be a devout Catholic, but Charlie and Iggy’s friends knew that, in truth, he was simply a devout hypocrite; his church was the local bar and his holy grail was a beer bottle. The only spirits he worshipped were beer and liquor. But he did go to church most Sundays. Iggy usually went to a late-morning mass so he could sleep through his drunken state of the night before, then he could appear at mass sober and not reeking of the smell of beer. After church he worshipped booze for the remainder of the day. Even after going to confession, he hurried away with little Charlie in tow. He’d leave Saint Anthony’s Church with a brisk walk and spend the rest of the afternoon, late evening and early morning hours hopping, like a drunken rabbit, from one bar to another, sipping, guzzling, then gulping, one beer after another. Charlie, who was ten to thirteen years old during this time period. At the bars, Charlie was shoved into a dark, lonely, corner booth with popcorn and orange soda. If he was lucky he’d have a television to watch, though he often could not hear it above the roar of his dad’s bellowing, boozer friends.

          But, to Charlie, the television wasn’t nearly as entertaining as his drunken father and his friends. Iggy and his drunken pals were hilarious entertainment for Charlie, usually much better than TV. He used to laugh silently at them, but deep down he was abysmally sad, being ashamed of, and hating his father. Since he had turned old enough to go to school, his hatred had grown each year. A knife plunged directly into his heart wouldn’t have hurt him as much as having his father ignore him hour after hour, seldom coming to his booth─ the bartender brought the eats and drinks to Charlie─ never sitting with him, never a kind word─ even when sober─ never an arm around the shoulder, never a hug or a kiss and never a mention of the word “love.”

          The closest that Charlie ever came physically to his dad was when Charlie would do something or say something his dad didn’t like. Then Charlie would get spanked. Most times the offenses he committed were mild infractions, like swearing, that he was being punished for. Actions that most parents wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at or would just shrug a shoulder at or reprimand with a few words. But not Iggy. The booze made him over-sensitive and morally superior, paralleling his façade of rigorous religious faith. For punishment he made Charlie pull down his pants and underpants, then lie submissively across his father’s lap. Then his father would spank Charlie’s bare buttocks until Charlie cried. He wouldn’t stop until he heard Charlie crying. Iggy was a saint in his own mind, but a faggot in Charlie’s mind. Charlie lost complete respect for his father and didn’t trust him any farther than he could throw Ayer’s Rock.

          Iggy constantly and inanely talked about religion, about God’s will, about God’s commands, the ten commandments, about immorality, about biblical references and how Charlie must always “follow the rules of Catholicism,” or be plunged into the searing, agonizing and eternal flames of God’s vengeful hell.

          By Charlie’s mid-teens he had read enough and learned enough to know that most people who behave themselves, seldom took risks that would make their lives better or change a bit of history─ if even just family history─ or benefit mankind. Charlie read about and thought of Copernicus, who said that the sun, not the earth, was the center of our solar system and, for that discovery, he was threatened with severe punishment and/or imprisonment. He was eventually placed under house arrest by the leaders of the his Catholic church who considered his discovery to be blasphemy and heresy.

          As Charlie got older and wiser he realized that the warmth of Iggy’s hand, as it came smashing down on the naked flesh of his buttocks, was the only warmth that his father had to offer him. It was the only familial warmth that he was ever going to receive from the guy. Shortly after that realization Charlie would act-up purposely in order to receive a spanking. Then, as he lay face-down across his father’s lap, he would smile at the floor and wait for the warmth of that stinging, punishing hand. Charlie started enjoying the pain. He enjoyed hearing the slap of his father’s hand, was excited by the tingling feeling that the harsh slap created on his fleshy buttocks. He relished the warmth and then the hotness of his flesh. He enjoyed the pain, but eventually faked his crying so he didn’t let his secret become known. He did this for a few months, until he gained a solid, masochistic confidence. Then one Saturday morning he decided to surprise his daddy dearest.

          Iggy lived in a small, one-room apartment over a bar/restaurant called The Coffee Pot─ it should have been more appropriately called The Beer Barrel. The bar only served breakfasts. While Iggy and Charlie were eating breakfast that morning, Charlie purposefully spilled his orange juice. Iggy was moody. Charlie had learned to read his eyes, facial expressions, tone of voice and actions. He knew that he was going to get spanked when they went upstairs to Iggy’s room. Charlie was delighted at the thought, but hid the gratifying smile that was anxious to burst forth from his lips. He could feel the pressure on his buttocks from the stool he was sitting on and the flattening of his buttocks aroused him enough to allow a slight, mischievous smile.

          Iggy lit one of his usual, awful-smelling, stogie cigars, then paid for breakfast. He walked up the stairs to his room with thirteen year old Charlie following behind him, thinking that he wished his father was naked as he walked up the steps so that he could ram that stogie so far up his ass that it would burn a hole in his stomach. Charlie permitted himself a brief smile. He was thrilled by the thought and realized that sadism also aroused him. But he was even more excited about getting back to his father’s room, even though it smelled as if it was a huge ashtray.

          Iggy locked the door and placed the stogie in an ashtray that sat on an ancient and marred dresser. Iggy sat on the bed and waited for Charlie. Charlie knew the routine, but pretended to be reluctant as he slowly unbuckled his jeans and pulled them and his underwear down around his ankles. He thought about pissing in his father’s lap. Even delaying the spanking was fun, he thought. Charlie could feel his scrotum pulling loose from the skin on his inner thighs, the scrotum skin tightening, shrinking, pulling his testicles up closer toward his crotch. He could feel his penis unbending and begin to stiffen as he lay across his father’s lap. Iggy always placed his left hand on the small of Charlie’s back, with his right hand resting on Charlie’s buttocks─ Charlie often wondered if his father was queer and got a perverted thrill out of the spankings. Iggy told Charlie that he was getting this spanking for spilling his juice. Charlie didn’t answer, just waited for Iggy’s right hand to rise slowly into the air, anticipating and savoring the moment.

          Iggy’s right hand rose from Charlie’s soft, white mound of flesh and a second later came crashing down with a loud slapping noise. Charlie smiled and exhaled with delight, knowing that his father was totally unaware of the pleasure he was creating for him. Charlie remained quiet and waited. Then two more times Iggy’s hand came smashing down, each of them harder than the previous one, but Charlie said nothing; he didn’t even move. Surprise, daddy, he thought. Charlie’s eyes closed as he felt the warmth, the heat, the pain, the intense pleasure, but no moaning or crying sounds exited his smiling mouth. Charlie had faked his crying long enough. Now he was taking a different approach to spanking, one that would frustrate and/or anger Iggy, but bring joy to his own mind and pleasure to his butt.

          “Goddamnit!” Iggy bellowed with a nasty growl. “I guess I’m not hittin’ you hard enough, huh? Well let’s try this!” Then Iggy’s open hand smashed downward upon Charlie’s buttocks, twice; the sounds echoing in the small room.

          Charlie smiled, his mind turning the pain to pleasure. Harder, harder, he thought, then said, “Daddy dearest? Is that all you got? You spank like a little girl. Is this really the best you got?”

          “You’ve always been a good-for-nothing wiseass!” Iggy shouted.

          Charlie remained silent, though a dreamy-eyed smile stretched across his face. He didn’t think he had a wise ass. A hot, red, stinging ass, but nothing wise about it.

          Iggy was frustrated with the continued silence and spanked even harder. Charlie lost all sense of punishment; the pleasure he felt was so great, so overwhelming that it hypnotized and numbed him into a dreamy, ecstatic silence.

          The room, again, echoed with the rapid slapping of Iggy’s hand on Charlie’s bare, red and raw-looking buttocks. The thought of the pain that his father must be feeling in his hand made this an even more pleasurable experience for Charlie. Charlie remained as silent as a corpse and a limp as a flaccid penis. Even the smack, smack, smack noises could not intrude on his private, pleasurable thoughts.

          Charlie knew then that he would never cry again. His father’s hand stopped, to Charlie’s disappointment, yet he was still feeling a residual pleasure, like no other pleasure he’d ever felt before. His whole body tingled with it, though now, it was concentrated within his groin. It was a pleasure so great that Charlie had to laugh loudly.

          Iggy, in a gruff, frustrated voice said, “Get up, goddamnit!” Charlie got up, showing a face that was masked in ecstasy. Charlie stared at Iggy with glazed, dreamy eyes. He smiled at his father, then, again, burst out laughing manically when he bent and looked at his penis. The tumescence he had felt in his groin was very real. It was a living force that was pulsating with every heartbeat. Charlie’s erection was so large that it didn’t seem that it could belong to a thirteen year old boy. Iggy stared at and was shocked by the erection. Charlie continued to laugh and stare at Iggy. Then, to Iggy’s horror, Charlie aimed his penis at him and ejaculated; the first spasm of thick, off-white, seminal fluid squirted out and landed on the knee of Iggy’s pants, looking like a gob of Corn Huskers Hand Lotion. Successive spasms caused the remaining seminal fluid to land on the floor, then to run down the shaft of Charlie’s penis, then onto his scrotum. Charlie was crazy with laughter and shouted, “Thanks for the spanking, Pop! We just had our first father/son sex experience.” Charlie stared into Iggy’s shocked eyes that radiated disgust. Iggy had been shocked into silence; no ridiculous, religious nonsense spilled out of his mouth like his usual vomit.

          The pause continued, then Charlie said, “What’s the matter, Pop? Cat got your tongue? How ‘bout I give you a blow-job so I can return the favor?”

          Iggy looked at Charlie in horror. Charlie looked back at Iggy with bright eyes and booming laughter. The laughter was deafening, as Iggy cupped his ears. Iggy looked into Charlie’s vengeful eyes and made the religious sign-of-the-cross over his chest.

          Charlie pulled up his underwear and jeans as his laughter quieted. Charlie stopped laughing completely when he saw his father’s hypocritical sign-of-the-cross. It reminded Charlie of reading Lenny Bruce’s biography, in which Lenny Bruce questioned why an instrument of Roman torture, a cross, crucifix, would become the universal symbol of Christianity. Lenny Bruce also wondered, “If Christianity just now had it’s beginning, would its universal symbol be the electric chair? A hangman’s noose? A firing squad? A  needle?” Charlie sneered sarcastically. Too many of his family and friends thought he was stupid. No, he hadn’t read any of the classics, couldn’t even name any of them and didn’t give a shit about them or what happened hundreds of years ago. So what if he wasn’t good at math or science, he thought. He didn’t think that that made him stupid. He was able to read, though slowly and had good comprehension. He could write well enough, though his spelling and punctuation were poor. He read books, but only those that interested him. He thought he had a creative imagination and was exploring his own perverted, dark side. You don’t have to go to college to be smart, he thought. He smiled when he remembered an idea, concerning education, by Einstein. Einstein, who said something to the effect that, “Education is what remains after a person forgets what he has learned in school.” Charlie thought that Einstein was referring to “street-smarts.”

          Iggy never spanked Charlie again, but Charlie never needed him to do it any more. Charlie found that his own curled fingers, a home-made whip for self-flagellation and a vivid imagination were even more pleasurable than his father’s hand.

          Charlie remembers that day as the day of his young manhood. The day he bested his father at his own perverted game. But, as Charlie remembered, the game still wasn’t quite over because the unforgiving Iggy could still create emotional pain for Charlie, the kind of pain that came with guilt, shame and embarrassment.

          Not many weeks after Charlie ejaculated on Iggy’s pants, they both went into a bar and Iggy got full-blown drunk, like Charlie had never seem him do before. Usually Iggy had at least a little control of himself due to his high tolerance for beer. But this time Iggy was so stinking drunk that he nearly fell off the bar stool a couple of times. Iggy had started drinking at noon and it was now an hour past midnight. Iggy pointed to Charlie’s booth, where Charlie sat watching him while drinking orange soda and eating pretzels. With a typical drunken slur to his speech Iggy began: “That’s my sham . . . shame . . .ful son.” Iggy pointed to Charlie. “He . . . he is . . .baaad. He a prob . . . lem fer (burp) . . . ever . . . buddy. . . . A qu . . . eer. A sin (hiccup) . . . sin-ner . . . (a coughing spasm) an’ a devil . . . My son . . . su . . . such a embar . . . sment. Diso . . . disown him.”

          Iggy went on to say, in his slurred voice, that he wished Charlie was dead and out of his life and that Charlie should stay in the Catholic orphanage and that he would not take Charlie from the orphanage on weekends any more. The bartender and Iggy’s semi-sober drinking pals had to stop him from continuing his venomous tirade when he began threatening violence toward Charlie.

          No tears streamed down Charlie’s face, as would have been normal a year or two prior to this incident. Instead, a bright, crescent moon smile flashed across his lips as he fingered the jack-knife in his pant’s pocket. He knew that there could never be any love between him and his dad and that he had grown terminally tired of the man. So, looking directly at Iggy, he joyfully lied, “OK, Iggy. No more blow-jobs for you. I can’t keep it a secret any more. You guys know that we give each other blow-jobs? We swallow too. Don’t let him fool you, he loves it an’ keeps asking for more.”

          Iggy’s pals stared at Charlie, then at Iggy, wondering if it was true.

          “Fuckin’ bas . . . turd. Li . . . liar!” Iggy screamed with rage. He picked up an empty beer bottle and staggered toward Charlie.

          Charlie stood up, grasped the jack-knife more firmly, still in his pocket, until Iggy’s pals stopped him, held him back.

          However, when Charlie stood up, he was not worried in the slightest. He wanted to stab his father, kill him and be able to call it self-defense, but Iggy’s pals saved him.

          Though outwardly calm, Charlie felt much differently in his private thoughts. His body warmth vanished, to be replaced by a cold chill. His face, drained of blood and gave a ghostly impression. His stomach churned. From that point on Charlie knew that there was no turning back, no healing of wounds, no forgiveness. He permanently hated his father from that moment on and granted him his barroom wish: Charlie would no longer be a part of his father’s life. And from that point on he avoided his father in any way possible.

          Shortly thereafter, Iggy decided that he wanted Charlie to be far away, so Iggy took Charlie out of the local orphanage and sent Charlie away to live in another state with Charlie’s older brother, Larry, his sister-in-law, Fran, and their children, for as long as it might last. During those years Iggy and Charlie only saw each other during Thanksgiving dinner when Iggy drove to Larry’s house. Iggy and Charlie both liked that arrangement and never spoke to each other and never sat close to each other again. Their relationship was ice-cold, with Charlie showing up at the dinner table a couple of minutes before dinner and usually departing before anyone else was done. Then Charlie usually could not be found until Iggy’s Ford Edsel drove away.

          To everyone’s surprise, Charlie and his brother’s family got along very well. Charlie didn’t want to be a problem because then he would be sent back to the orphanage or to a foster-home or, perhaps, to a juvenile correctional facility. Larry and Fran tried to do the best they could while raising Charlie through his rough teenage years and though Charlie enjoyed his new family, especially his nephews and niece whom he bonded with, he knew that an ominous die had already been cast for his future.

                  *

          Iggy died of a stroke one night as he lay thoroughly inebriated in bed. It happened in August, a month after Charlie’s eighteenth birthday. Charlie celebrates that date every year by stripping off his pants and underwear, then beating his buttocks raw with his whip. He doesn’t stop until he gets an erection, then he masturbates until he has an orgasm. He’s ecstatic as he watches his seminal fluid squirt into the air, like a feeble shot from a water gun. Now, years after Iggy’s death, Iggy is vicariously giving Charlie sexual pleasure.

          However, in a way, Charlie felt cheated by Iggy’s death. Charlie wanted the man to suffer long and hard before he died. But, somehow, Iggy got off easily─ much too easily─ thought Charlie. A stroke was much too quick for such a hypocritical bastard, Charlie mused. He would have liked to have killed the man himself, up close and personal. Find the rib separation that’s adjacent to the heart and slowly─ very slowly─ slip an ice pick into that separation, a fourth of an inch at a time, watching the blood drip as the ice pick penetrated slowly, but deeply, while he delightedly watched Iggy’s eyes and body react in terror. Charlie wouldn’t gag the man; he wanted to hear the pathetic begging, the futile pleading, the painful crying, the desperate promises and apologies. Charlie thought it would make him feel like a kid on Christmas morning.

          At Iggy’s funeral Charlie sauntered down the aisle to his father’s casket as people on each side of him turned and stared. Charlie wondered how a man such as Iggy could have so many friends. Then he thought, Must have treated them a hell-of-a-lot better than he treated me. Must have pretended to be a nice, fun-loving guy, or he bought them enough beer to make them feel obliged.

          Charlie stood alone in front of the casket and peered downward at the man he had grown to hate. Iggy was dressed in a black suit, quite appropriate, Charlie thought, for the black hearted bastard. Iggy’s face had been shaved and make-up had been applied. His thick, salt and pepper hair had been combed nicely. Charlie thought he looked better dead than alive. He glared at Iggy’s arms folded across his stomach with rosary beads in his fingers. Hypocrisy, Charlie thought, but at least now it was silent hypocrisy. “Praise the Lord,” Charlie whispered to Iggy, sarcastically, then giggled as he added, “You good-for-nothing bastard. I’m so glad you’re finally dead.” Charlie wouldn’t touch Iggy, his clothes or even the casket. Charlie couldn’t forgive Iggy, nor pray for him. Pray to what? Charlie thought, if there’s a God, he must be vengeful, mean and sadistic if he could create, in his own image, men and women like his father, mother and himself. Charlie would not kneel; it seemed inappropriate. A sneer slowly stretched his lips, a venomous sneer. Charlie whispered, again, to his father, “Good riddance, asshole, and may you feel the agony of hell forever.” Then Charlie pulled both his hands up close to the front of his chest, thus well hidden, and gave his dad a double, middle-finger salute, while whispering, “Fuck you, Father. I hope you know that whenever I anal fuck a boy or man, it’ll be you that I’m fucking and when I anal fuck a girl or a women, it’ll be Mother that I’m really fucking. And I intend to fuck the both of you a whole lot.”

          Charlie startled the other mourners by spinning around swiftly and walking briskly away from the casket, his heels clicking on the wooden floor, his face displaying a broad, happy smile. As he exited the funeral parlor, he mused, The world is a fucked-up place and its carpenter must have been a drunken fool. Charlie thought, God must have created the earth and people so he could enjoy their pain, then created hell so he could enjoy their agony, or maybe earth is hell and was created for his own sadistic enjoyment. Perhaps there isn’t a God, no heaven and no hell and the Bible is simply a two thousand year old children’s book of pure nonsense. Hell, I like that idea, thought Charlie, enthusiastically.

          That same night, after Charlie’s simple revelation, he became a bitter atheist, not a thoughtful atheist who uses research, reasoning and logic to form a conclusion, but an atheist formed by a reaction to a tragic and abusive childhood, with frequent punitive experiences that resulted in self-hatred, hopelessness, paranoia and aggressive anger toward others, a sociopath─ though in prison he controlled himself because he got what he wanted and needed from Fang. Fang didn’t know what Charlie was thinking any more than a woman knows what a man is thinking while his erection is inside of her.

          That was also the first night that Charlie encountered the toilet snakes. In the middle of the night he felt a bowel movement coming and went into the bathroom to take a dump. He locked the bathroom door, pulled his pants and underwear down around his ankles and sat on the toilet. He spread his cheeks apart using the friction of the toilet seat to keep them apart He started straining while looking between his thighs at the toilet water. Abruptly, he stopped straining and jumped up off the toilet seat as if he was a tightly-coiled jack-in-the-box. He looked down into the toilet water and saw a snake. It looked as if it were patiently waiting for him to sit back down. Charlie closed his eyes, rubbed them vigorously, then looked again. No snake. Must have been my imagination, he thought. Immediately following that thought, came another thought, Hell, why not? Could feel good.

          Charlie sat back on the toilet and had his bowel movement. He wiped himself and flushed the toilet, but stayed seated. He closed his eyes to heighten his imagination. He heard rippling noises in the water, which made him smile. Then he felt the snake poke its head into his anus. The snake squirmed around in his colon, to Charlie’s surprise and pleasure. When Charlie opened his eyes, he found his hand wrapped around his erection. He could feel his own heartbeat in his hand. As his anal pleasure continued, he spit several times into his hand, then stroked his erection gently, caressing it with a loose, saliva-lubricated grip that repeatedly moved up and down his engorged penis. Just before climax he aimed his penis into the toilet and ejaculated into the water. Charlie imagined the snake swallowing his ejaculate before disappearing down the toilet bowl. Charlie felt such bliss that he yanked-up his underwear and started to flush the toilet to rid it of his ejaculate . . . but none of it was there. How could it be gone? he thought. The snake? He unlocked the bathroom door and walked out. He was still hard.

                 *

          Charlie’s mother was nearly as bad as his father. She’d had polio as a child which affected her right leg movements and made her limp─ behind her back he called her Gimpy. Charlie figured it also must have affected her mind. She only had a second grade education, couldn’t write enough to sign her own name, couldn’t read and couldn’t do simple, basic math. Charlie was embarrassed by her illiteracy and hated her almost as much as he hated his father, though not so much because she punished him, but rather because she had deserted him, abandoned him to his father and the cruel nuns at a Catholic orphanage.

          She and Iggy had divorced when Charlie was four. Gimpy remarried and moved from New York State to Florida and, because of the distance and the disinterest, Charlie didn’t see much of her, sometimes not for years. That’s the way she wanted it, though, Charlie reasoned or she would have stuck around. She was a child-like cripple, both physically and mentally, in an old lady’s body, Charlie often thought. She professed to love young Charlie, but her words were rarely followed by meaningful actions. She used her professed love for Charlie to make him feel guilty, which led to a few gifts and some money from him. That’s the impression that Charlie got on those rare occasions that he saw her or when he received a letter that had to be written by her second husband. Charlie desperately needed his mother to genuinely love him, to make up for the hate and bitterness that existed between him and his father. But it wasn’t to be, so Charlie shut her out of his life, too. After that, not even residual guilt remained in Charlie. He felt at least one positive thought about her: She hadn’t, because he only saw her twice in ten years, burdened him with religious dogma, or a lot of overwhelmingly, negative memories like Iggy had. In his earlier years Charlie was a little more sympathetic towards his mother, not because he loved her or even liked her, but rather because he hated her less than he hated his father. After all, he thought, he was constantly abused by his dad, but his mom had only abandoned him to the care of others who could then abuse him. It did, however, seem ironic to Charlie that one of the rare positive things that he could say about his own mother was the fact that perhaps she felt less negative about him than Iggy did. Charlie’s mother embarrassed him, so he felt no guilt when he told his friends: “Light travels faster than sound and that’s the reason why his mother might appear smart, until she opened her mouth and spoke.

          Charlie had a recurring vision of his mother limping in a backyard garden, then going down on her knees to pick weeds. Right where she belonged, Charlie thought. He was pleased that he was not the near moron that his mother was─ by comparison, he felt superior and proud of it. He thought, As least I made it through high school─ although just barely and by taking the easiest courses available to get a local diploma, which was much easier that trying to earn a New York State Regents diploma. He was overly proud of himself because he didn’t have to have someone write a letter for him. He could read, write and think well enough, he thought.

          But life was a continuously negative experience for Charlie, being thrown away and tossed about like garbage, by loveless, ignorant parents, then being embraced by an unrelenting loneliness and a barely contained rage. He felt as if he were sliding down a greased pole, into Satan’s lair, into boiling oil, into an eternal conflagration of pain. But he acted resigned to his fate because he thought that that’s where he belonged . . . in Hell.

                 *

          Charlie had labored to read the book, Helter Skelter. He had become fascinated with Charles Manson and had grown to revere Manson and his gang. In that book, Manson said, “No sense makes sense.” Charlie thought that if that was true then his mom’s stupidity must “make sense” because he believed she sure as hell had “no sense.” He thought he was being clever and felt proud.

          Charles Milles Manson’s name often popped up in Charlie’s mind. As Charlie got older he thought about the man more and more. He wished that he could go to Folsom Prison to visit Manson. Charlie took great pleasure in having the same first name as Manson, like somehow it meant that they were kin. Charlie felt a special closeness to Manson after reading about Manson’s similar early family life, his diminutive stature, and because of his search for power and opportunities to vent his rage.

          Charlie wanted to make others suffer more than he had suffered, just like Manson. If he could make others suffer more than he had, then, by comparison, he felt better because he could say, “Man, I’m sure glad I wasn’t abused that much or abused in those ways.” Charlie had a great need to share and disperse his pain by inflicting it on others, like bad seeds thrown into the wind. He wanted to know that others understood his pain first-hand, by experiencing that pain. He felt that causing pain in others lessened his own pain and increased his pleasure. He learned this from the Manson book and soon started thinking like Manson, who thought that, by hurting people, he had really helped them and by killing them in painful ways, he was actually setting them free. But how does hurting and killing people help them and what does it set them free from? Those were two questions that Charlie didn’t have answers for. He wished that he could ask Manson personally. He knew that Manson would surely have the perfect answers.

          Perhaps, some day, he mused, he’d get a chance to talk to Manson. But better yet, perhaps some day he’d out-do Manson’s deeds, over-shadow him, take his place in the limelight of criminal history, steal his reputation and fame. Given a chance, Charlie thought, he could do it. He had the genes for it. He definitely knew he had the right genes. Manson and his family of outlaws liked knives. They liked to stab, slice, chop and sever flesh. Charlie liked knives, too. Knives were hard, cold, sharp, just as he thought of himself, plus they killed up close and personal. Manson was mean, aggressive, forceful, and it led to power, control, domination. Charlie wanted power, too. Given a chance, he’d make something of his life. He’d have power. He’d rid himself of the putrid memories of his mother and father. Given a chance, he’d make Manson proud, too. Some day, Charlie thought, Manson might be the one who wants to meet me. “No sense makes sense,” Charlie thought, with a cruel twist of his lips.

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