"Lord, bless your child. Guide his spirit during the storm he has described to me. Give him strength to do your will. Father lift him up, and show him to the path of righteousness. Your name be praised, amen"
The priest moved his hand from my head and told me to go in peace. I collected my coat and walked out the front door of the church.
I had just confessed an impending sin to this priest. I let him, and my Lord know that two men would die tonight by my hand. Two men who had been very instrumental in creating who I am, but two men who had comitted a serious crime, and deserved punishment.
Their names were Gary Warden and Bary Sullivan. Several years ago they were deputies in my hometown, and corrupt deputies at that. They collected money from each family that owned a farm and used it to fund their own agendas in the town. If a family couldn't pay, their farm was torched overnight. If a family threatened to go public, their house was emptied in several hours and the family 'disappeared'.
Their greed left my family poor and wanting. Even as my fathers reputation grew as a kind hearted man who would give you his last crate of crops, he played their game and kept up the payments. He said that 'Good could not exist without evil, I will be clean in Gods eyes for this.' I disagreed with him completely on this matter. I could not stand corruption that results in the suffering of honest families. Because of this, I would routinely go behind my father's back and commit small nuisance crimes against these two deputies. Some would call them pranks, but I liked to think of them as my own brand of justice, as much justice as my 12 year old self could muster. The two deputies knew it was me constantly doing these pranks, and would consistently threaten to make my life miserable if I didn't stop. I knew that they didn't have the stones to really harm me. I had no fear or respect for these two individuals, and let them know such things.
I continued to live my years with my family growing up into adulthood. My dad has taken over a small shipping company as their foreman. In his stead, he had increased the throughput of the crew by 200 percent, while still keeping his costs down to a minimum. The town prospered because of my fathers hard work, so Warden and Sullivan prospered as well. This kept my father in their good graces, as long as he did well, they were graceful on payments to a certain degree. Sometimes, they would even give him a discount. My father always acted grateful to them, even though he quietly cursed their names in our home at night.
The favor they showed him dissolved last year, when a shipment my dad was in charge of came up missing. The ship carrying a large supply of building materials arrived with one less box that originally marked on the shipping manifest. Warden and Sullivan blamed my father, whose innocence could be well proven. This however did not deter them from their accusations and they demanded that my father pay for the lost package. My father, despite his willingness to play the game, refused to go this far. He told them he would find that package, and that there was no clause for violence.
They didn't agree, and my father never had time to find the package. He was gunned down the next day in front of me and my mother. I tried to fight back, but I was held down. They broke my arm in two places and set fire to our farmhouse. Despite my shattered arm, I gathered my mother and escaped the house before the flames consumed us. We traveled across the back lines of the farm, to a neighboring family's house. The family knew who my father was, and immediately let us stay inside. I told them what happened, as the man of the house helped me fashion a splint for my arm. They sympathized with us, but unfortunately, were too afraid to help us any further. We stayed there for several days, letting the shock of losing our father pass. I began to, in that time, take stock of the situation.
We had no money, and no possessions. We had to be careful who we spoke to, just in case they were friendly with Warden and Sullivan. I was afraid for my mother, and needed to get her out of town. This meant first dealing with outside sources. I began by trying to remember any and all sources my father had spoken of during his shipping days. Sadly, my father didn't share a lot of details. I would have to get creative.
We received a lucky break the next day. The family's youngest son was walking along the border of the two farms and spotted a peculiar pile of rocks. He came back to report this to me. My curiosity was piqued, and I waited until nightfall to go check it out. I removed the stones to discover a metal box with a combination lock. I brought the box back to the house and asked my mother about it. She did not know about any boxes my father kept. We broke open the lock and took a look inside.
Inside the box were two separate bags, one with my name, one with my mothers name. I opened up my bag and found a passport with my picture and a different name. There was also a large amount of money and a letter. The letter was from my father, with instructions on who to contact about leaving the country with my mother. He had provided us with enough money to survive for 8 months on the run, long enough time to make sure our tracks disappeared.
The realization hit me that my father knew this was going to happen. I dug deeper into the box and found one more thick bag. I opened it up and found a large pile of papers and folders. They appeared to documents from my dad's shipping business. My mother and I began to discuss our options with our funding and ways out of the town. We were interrupted by the son barging in and telling us that Warden and Sullivan had just crossed the edge of their property and were headed towards the house.
A late night visit such as this could only mean they knew we had survived and were searching houses. My mother and I grabbed the bags and prepared to leave. Before walking out the door, I took half the cash from my bag and handed it to the father of the house, as a token of thanks. I gave him a few quick ideas of where to hide it while their house was searched. I blessed them for helping us and my mother and I dashed out the door, heading towards the back patch of their land.
We saw a line of trees towards the back lot, and ran as fast as we could. We never looked back. Once we reached the woods, we stopped. I reviewed the letter for information about our escape. Once I had the directions memorized, we gathered our things and moved out.
Several hours later, we were on a boat heading east to the United Kingdom. While on the boat, we had time to breathe. I opened up the papers my father had left us and looked them over. It took me a few hours of reading and piecing together to understand the importance of hundreds of sheets of cargo manifests. It was a chronological list of shipping inconsistencies my father was told to "overlook". He logged each conversation he had with either Warden or Sullivan regarding the cargo.
It was evidence. My father had given me ammunition needed to take down Warden and Sullivan in the near future. Unfortunately, I already decided to use another kind of ammunition on them.
My mother and I used a network of names my father had left us to secure some living quarters in the town of Henilan. Far enough inland that it would take someone searching for us a very long time to hunt us down. My mother and I laid low for several weeks then began to show ourselves around the community. We made friends, using the fake names we had. My mother became involved in the church while I took odd jobs around the town and worked to stay active. In our off time, we mourned the loss of a father and husband. My mother and I would share stories nightly about the kind of man he was. We spoke about him like he had never died, like he was just out of town on business. It was our way of softening the blow of him being gone.
My mother encouraged me to never strike back at those who killed him. She said it would make me no better than they are, and that the guilt would eat me alive. I tried to believe that what she said was true, but there were many sleepless nights on my part because they were still alive. My dreams burned with visions of making them disappear just like they had done to so many honest families. They had to pay.
A year passed, I was a well-known manager of the towns largest business. My mother stayed at home and tended to the house. We were liked and appreciated amongst the community, if not a little reserved. We had grown so accustomed to life in this town that we rarely talked about Ireland, or dad.
That all changed the day my mother died though. I was working the office when I got a call that my mother was lying on our porch face down. I hung up immediately and sped home. By the time i had got there, neighbors had gathered into a crowd and paramedics had arrived. I ran up to see paramedics doing chest compressions on my mother. I began to give all her information to the other paramedic when the one helping my mother stopped. He checked her pulse one final time, and heard nothing. He looked at his partner and called it.
I was too stunned to argue it. It was without warning. She never mentioned feeling bad. It was unclear how long she had been laying outside, but it didn't matter. My mother was now dead, gone to be with my father. Hours passed as we took her body to the hospital. We did the paperwork necessary for her burial. I returned home exhausted. I looked in the kitchen and noticed a single glass of water on the counter. I picked it up, and thought about the last drink my mother took before her death. Does anybody ever think about such things?
I went to pour the water down the drain when I caught a whiff of an odd scent. I looked around for the culprit. Maybe some meat my mother had left out? No...then I sniffed the glass. The scent was faint, but there. It wasn't alcohol. It was unique. Most people drinking that wouldn't even think twice about it's scent. But me? I knew something was wrong.
It took a few seconds for me to think it through. It had been a year, we were at peace. It didn't matter about my success. Nothing suspicious. The house was quiet. The town was quiet. But this smell, it's not typical water smell.
I began to deny it. It wasn't possible. I was just being paranoid. They couldn't have found me. We'd hid too well.
Then I began to accept it. They were resourceful, they were meticulous, they were vengeful. They wanted to win this...and after all the trouble I had given them, I was special.
I took one final sniff of the glass, and then there was no denying.
My mother had been poisoned.
To be continued.
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