A Perilous Journey

by Darrell Maloney

  She dragged him back to the tent and swept aside the flap.

  The old gypsy was nowhere to be found.

  The Yellowstone Event, Book 1:

  FIRE IN THE SKY

  is available now on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers

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  If you enjoyed

  A PERILOUS JOURNEY

  you might also enjoy

  Countdown to Armageddon

  Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

  *************************

  Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.

  His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?

  No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter that word might well be “average.”

  If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.

  And it was that combination – his penchant for making a buck and being lucky, that led him here on this day to the Guerra Public Library on the west side of San Antonio.

  To research what he believed was the pending collapse of mankind.

  Twenty three years earlier, Scott had done two things that would change his life forever. Even back then, he was just an average Joe. He’d had plans to become a doctor, but his average grades weren’t cutting it. So he dropped out of college halfway through his junior year.

  He’d have loved to have married a beauty queen, but his average looks certainly did nothing to attract any. Neither did his average amount of charm. So instead he started dating Linda Amparano, who was a sweet girl but somewhat average herself. They seemed to make a perfect, if slightly vanilla, couple.

  The second thing Scott did that year was buy a dilapidated self-storage unit on the north side of San Antonio. It was one of those places where people rent lockers to store their things when their garages have run out of space. Or their kids go off to college. Or when they just accumulate so many things that they’ve run out of room to put them all.

  Pat, the guy who sold the property to Scott, was a friendly enough sort, but not a businessman at all. He didn’t understand some of the basic principles of running such an operation.

  Not that Scott was an expert. At least back then he wasn’t.

  But even back then, Scott knew the value of curb appeal, and that a fresh paint job and a few repairs could attract a few more customers. And a few more customers would help supply money for advertising, and special offers, and long-term lease discounts. No brainers, actually.

  So by the end of that year, two things happened. Scott had turned around the business and made it into a money-making operation. And he married Linda.

  The pair said their vows on December 17th of that year. It was bitterly cold that day. The coldest December 17th on record for that part of Texas.

  If the cold was an omen, though, neither of them saw it. If either of them had, and had gotten cold feet, their lives would be so much different today.

  But they just laughed it off, as young couples in love are wont to do. And they went ahead with their nuptials and started their lives together and never looked back at that cold day in December when they ran headlong into a marriage that shouldn’t have happened.

  The marriage lasted nine years. It produced two great sons, so there was that. And Scott and Linda remained friends. That was something else. So there was a good legacy, of sorts, left behind by their mistake that cold December day.

  Scott adored his boys. There was Jordan, his oldest, who was intelligent and talented and a bit of a goofball. And there was Zachary, who Scott was convinced would someday become a scientist or a highly successful engineer. Zach was always taking things apart and making other things with them. His curious mind never stopped working, and he loved exploring new things and new ideas. Zach was sweeter than a bucket of molasses. He was everybody’s best friend.

  Yes, Scott was lucky as a father. No problems with his boys at all.

  He was also lucky in that he lived in Texas at the time of the divorce. Texas wasn’t an alimony state. So he wasn’t saddled with monster alimony payments like his brother in Atlanta was. His brother Mike was divorced the same year as Scott, and was ordered by the court to pay forty percent of his before-tax income to a wife who had cheated on him multiple times.

  No, Scott had no such problem. He paid child support, of course, and was always on time with it. And he doted on his boys and bought them nice things.

  But since he didn’t have to pay alimony, he was able to take that money instead and use it to build his business.

  After the first storage facility was turning a healthy profit, he was able to buy a second. Then a third. And with each one he followed the same business model. He’d do some cosmetic improvements to attract a few more customers. Then he’d turn that additional income into air time on the local radio station, or ads in the local paper. Getting the word out drew more customers, which in turn would supply more money for special deals and discounts. Which would provide more money for another new facility.

  It was a business model that had served him well.

  And now, seventeen years later, Scott Harter owned a chain of thirty one storage facilities spread throughout San Antonio and nearby Houston.

  So even though he wasn’t as handsome as a movie star, and would never be a candidate to join Mensa, he was doing all right. And that was good enough for him.

  Linda had remarried within a year. The marriage only lasted two years and was full of problems. She waited a bit longer to marry her third husband, and the third time seemed to be the charm for her. The third husband, Tony, was a good man, who treated Linda and the boys well. At least it appeared that way to Scott. He didn’t know that since their divorce, Linda had gotten very good at putting on airs and keeping secrets. Keeping the ugly truth from Scott made it easier for Scott and Tony to be casual friends. Scott eventually found out that Tony was a con man and a user, who’d taken Linda for pretty much everything she had.

  It was Scott who helped her get back on her feet. She banished Tony from her life, and swore off marriage forever.

  From that point on, Linda chose a life less complicated. A life with an endless stream of boyfriends who didn’t provide a sense of stability. But they were a lot easier to get rid of when they didn’t work out.

  Their boys had been brought up in a stable environment, which meant they were well behaved and relatively problem free. Neither of them ever got into drugs, or ran away from home. Neither of them had gone to jail, or left a string of broken hearts. Both of them were good kids, who had bright futures ahead of them. Or so they thought. Actually, there were problems ahead, which none of them knew about, but which their father would soon discover.

  Yes, all in all, Scott was a lucky man, despite his being just an average guy. And he was living a pretty comfortable life.

  That was about to change.

  *************************

  Countdown to Armageddon

  is available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

  *************************

  *************************

  Please enjoy one of my short stories,

  And thanks for reading my books.

  -Darrell-

  *************************

  The Journey of the Hands

  By Darrell Maloney

  Copyright 2004

  I was born in a big marble building in the middle of Philadelphia in 1925.

  Back then I was sturdy and strong, with a sharp chiseled face. I even sparkled in the sunlight, although I didn't see sunlight for the first time until I was six months old.

  I took my first boat trip on the Erie Canal, in a canvas bag with 999 others just like me. It was crampe
d but not uncomfortable. I had no idea where I was going, but was happy for the company of the others.

  From time to time the bag we were in would be tossed from hand to hand as workers moved us from the boat to an armored car, then into a bank in Detroit.

  The first time I was touched by humans I was picked up by a grizzled old merchant named Hanz, at his family's apotheke in Taylor, Michigan. He handed me to a lovely woman named Clara, in a beautiful gingham dress and a bright yellow Easter bonnet.

  Clara immediately passed me to a young girl named Betsy, who held me up in wonder in the dusty sunlight breaking through the store's east window, and marveled at how I shone.

  I remember the brilliance of the light, and the warmth of her little girl hands, sticky from the gumball she had been passing back and forth between her mouth and her fingers.

  Thus began my journey of the hands.

  I took my first train trip in a rickety old Pullman car, nestled into the pocket of a man named Gustafson Baker. He preferred Gus, although his wife used his full name when she was peeved at him, which she frequently was.

  The train moved west over the Rockies, into Salt Lake City. I was rooted from my nest in Gustafson’s pocket and dropped into the hand of a young porter named Joe, who helped carry the Bakers' bags from the train into the station. Joe traded me for a piece of penny licorice a couple of days later.

  I look back at my days in Salt Lake City with fond memories. I got to meet a lot of people and felt the warmth of hundreds of hands as I was passed around, sometimes several times a day.

  Sometimes the hands were soft, and smelled of sweet lilac or perfume. Sometimes the hands were grimy and gnarled, covered with dirt or coal dust, or heaven knows what else.

  Sometimes I would ride around in a genteel lady's pocketbook for days or weeks at a time. The women tended to hang onto me longer than the men did. I suppose that's because in the bottom of a pocketbook I could be easily forgotten.

  Once I got to go to a magnificent schoolhouse in the small pocket of a girl of nine named Millicent. She traded me and an old buffalo nickel for a bowl of soup and a biscuit. Then she sat down and ate her lunch amidst a chorus of chatter and giggles, while I sat in a cold cash drawer, waiting to be passed to someone else.

  By the time I was five years old I had given up on my goal of counting the number of hands I had touched. The quest was borne out of boredom, and I had no idea it would be so many.

  After the first hundred hands or so I gave up on trying to remember all the names, or the details. After a thousand or so I gave up altogether. Suffice it to say it was a lot of hands in those early years.

  When I was ten, I was on the move again.

  This time was not so glorious a journey. I slipped through a hole in the pocket of a farmhand who was loading steers into a cattle car heading south.

  For days I lay on the hard wooden floor of the car as it lurched along its tracks, occasionally being stepped on by a four-legged beast which had no more idea where we were heading than I did.

  We wound up in southern California, where the cattle were turned into steaks and I was passed many times from one hand to another. I learned my worth was two tomatoes or one apple. I was in the land of itinerant farmers, most of whom were displaced by the dust bowl and the depression, and moved west in search of a better life.

  I would go back and forth, from a set of scratched and cracked hands belonging to a picker, to the soft and lotioned hands of a grocer, in exchange for two tomatoes, or an apple, or a pat of wrapped bread. Then given in change back to another set of cracked dry hands.

  Back and forth, day in and day out. It was monotonous. Sometimes I was passed back and forth in poker games, where I was apparently enough to ante my owner's hand of cards into the game.

  In 1943 I belonged to a man named John.

  John had picked me up on a sidewalk in Waco, Texas, where I had been carelessly dropped by a small child whose hands were too tiny to carry a handful of change.

  John looked at my date and proclaimed me his lucky penny, since we had been born the same year. I knew it was 1943 because the other pennies being jostled about in John's trouser pockets were marked with that date, and were shiny and new.

  They never stayed around long, though. John carefully picked through his change whenever he paid for something. The shiny pennies would leave, never to be seen again.

  I would stay with him to bring him luck, he'd say.

  John worked in an armament factory outside of Waco, making gun barrels, until the day he changed careers and put on an ugly brown uniform. He stopped being John and began being Private Moseley, and he kept that name for the rest of the time I knew him.

  Private Moseley always rubbed my face before going into battle. For luck, he said. In those chaotic days, scared men in faraway lands did whatever they could to calm their nerves and convince themselves that they would live to see another sunset.

  The last time I saw Private Moseley we were on a landing craft in rough seas, heading toward something called Omaha Beach. He rubbed my face, said a short prayer, and placed me in his left breast pocket. Then he patted me through the pocket. I heard him tell a buddy that his lucky penny would keep him alive.

  For two long weeks I sat in a box alongside a handful of other change, some love letters from Mary, three worn and tattered photographs of Private Moseley's mom, Mary and his young nephews with their ear-to-ear grins.

  I was jostled about in this box, not knowing where I was, or where I was going, but knowing from the constant rocking that I was in the cargo hold of a ship.

  Later I could feel the vibration of a truck that seemed to labor forever across the dusty and bumpy roads of west Texas. Finally I heard voices, then saw light, as the box was finally opened.

  I saw Mary's face, red and puffy, polluted by too many tears rolling from her pretty blue eyes. I saw her clutch the love letters she had written to Private Moseley, to John, so many months before. I felt the warmth of her fingers as she picked me up, his lucky penny, and gazed hard at me.

  Then in a rage she threw me from the porch swing where she was sitting, and into the soft green grass of her front yard.

  For many years I sat in the dirt of that front yard, watching seasons come and go. In the spring and summer months, the grass would grow tall, and would block out the sun. Then someone would cut it and I'd see light for a few days or weeks, until it went away again.

  My life became a series of cycles. I became very good at guessing the seasons. The grass growing and cutting cycles meant spring. When the growing slowed marked summer. When it stopped altogether it was fall. The cold marked winter, and I lost track of how many winters I laid there.

  One year in the cycle I knew as spring, I could hear voices. A lawnmower had passed over me not too many days before, and sunlight was penetrating through the shortened grass and warming my face.

  Suddenly I was up, away from the earth, feeling fresh air for the first time in way too many years. A smallish hand scraped the dirt from my sides, and I went into a dark pocket, where I joined two other pennies. One of them was rough cut, with freshly minted features. I could not see it well in the darkness, but I could tell from the feel of it and the smell of new copper that it was recently minted. It said 1963 on its face.

  Suddenly I was alive again. I was being used again in the manner in which I enjoyed, being passed from hand to hand to hand. Children buying candy. Ladies buying produce. Men buying flowers for angry wives they had slighted in various ways.

  I sat in a coin tray at a 7-Eleven convenience store, unwanted by one customer, then picked up and used by another.

  One day I was dropped at a bakery and rolled under a display case. For several months I lay, smelling the glorious smells of fresh donuts each morning, and hearing the joyous laughter of children begging their mothers for cookies.

  One day the smells drifted away, never to return, and the laughter went away as well. For a long time I was once again alone, day and night.
At least I wasn't getting rained on as I had been in Mary's front yard.

  Eventually the old bakery was reopened, only it wasn't a bakery any more. It was now an insurance office, and of course the old ovens and display cases had to be removed to make room for desks and chairs and typewriters and such. As the display case was lifted off of me, a worker picked me up, dusted me off, and thrust me into a khaki pants pocket. The pompous, overbearing quarter beside me said 1981.

  These days I don't go anywhere. I am confined to an airless, clear plastic pouch, which I assume is for display purposes.

  On the white cardboard label attached to the pouch are the words "Lincoln Cent, 1925 P". I don't know what that means, but I do know that I am lonely. I miss being passed from hand to hand and traveling across the country and around the world. I miss being admired by children and hearing the joy in their voices as they traded me for the latest sweet thing.

  It’s funny, but I also miss the grumbling of some adults who cast me into parking lots or on sidewalks, as though carrying me was not worth their effort. I knew that invariably, someone would pick me back up, recognize my worth, and pass me along.

  I even miss feeling the ants run across my face in Mary's yard, and shuddering each time the lawnmower passed over, ten to twelve times a year, in the season I knew as spring. I would love to break out of my plastic prison and feel the warmth of the hands. I really miss them...