Between the Pages

While continuing to work on the third installment of The Brotherhood of the Sword trilogy I have been turning the play I wrote many years ago into a short novel.  I would like to share it with you.  Have a look see at chapter one.

Chapter One

“In God We Trust”

The park was empty.  That wasn’t unusual.  That’s why John came here, because most of the time it was empty.  Just like his life.  Oh, that wasn’t really true, but for John it was true and that was all that really counted now wasn’t it? 

John couldn’t see past his own troubles.  Even those few people that came and went were not really noticed, at least not by John.  His eyes were fogged by his trials and the fact that when he left this park or where ever he might be he would go home and the act would have to begin again.  He would become John Coffee successful businessman.  He had become quite good at his little deception, quite good indeed.  Not good enough though to make it real.

This was only his third time in this particular park.  It was small and out of the way.  The perfect place for what he had planned.  Maybe it would be today.  Maybe today it would come to an end.  He had everything he needed, except the courage to do the deed.  Too bad the vendor on the corner of Vine and Windmill didn’t have some of that in a bottle.  Then, he didn’t have anything to buy it with anyway.

It was all gone.  Every last penny was gone.  All his credit cards were out to their limits.  His savings gone, his 401K gone, his stock options gone, everything was gone.  Now it was his turn to be gone.  Yes, that was it, his turn to be gone.  Yes, his last few minutes before being off on the journey from which there is no return.

“I might as well enjoy my last few minutes,” he mumbled feeling the weight of the revolver in his pocket as he looked around at the park.  He began taking in all that he could from his vantage point standing several feet inside its entrance.

Now that he looked at it, the park was kind of nice.  There were only four benches in the whole of it.  They were painted green.  The wishing well sat in the center of the park.  It was not very big but it was really deep.  You couldn’t see the bottom.  That was disappointing because he had hoped that there would be some change within reach for him to snag.

With the exception of the pile of newspapers behind one of the benches it was well kept.  The grass was cut and there were some flowers near the wishing well.  This place would do nicely.

John walked with his feet dragging to the closest of the four benches.  He sat down heavily feeling the weight come off of the soles of his feet.  It was funny how of late he had become aware of little things like that.  He could even feel the beat of his heart as it worked to keep him alive.  That wouldn’t go on much longer.  Just a few minutes more and its work would be done.  All done.

He put the lunch box that he carried in his right hand down on the bench and slid his hand in his pocket.  He felt the cold steel of the gun that he had hidden in there.  For such a small pistol it seemed very heavy.  He had spent his last fifty dollars on the thing.  He could remember when fifty dollars didn’t seem like a lot of money.  Now it was a fortune. 

He thought about finding a cheaper way out.  He considered jumping off of a bridge or a tall building.  The problem with that was that he was afraid of heights.  It didn’t really make any sense as a reason not to do it.  After all the whole idea was to die.  Still when he approached the edge of the Main Street Bridge he got so scared that he just turned and walked back to the bus stop and he didn’t even look back.  He never gave that method another thought.

He considered for about fifteen minutes taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills.  How bad could that be?  You went to sleep and never woke up.  Then he remembered his cousin.  Good old cousin Tom.  Tom tried that route.  Only they found him before his heart stopped for good and pumped his stomach out.  He wound up in some kind of home where they wouldn’t even let him have a belt to hold up his pants.

It seemed like every thing he thought of had something wrong with it.  Using a gun seemed the best solution.  One bullet to the head and it would be all over.  No fuss no muss, well, at least not for him.  Someone else would have the mess to clean up.

The sun was just peaking through the trees.  It felt warm.  For a moment, and just a moment, John forgot his troubles.  All that he felt was the warm sunlight.  He closed his eyes and concentrated on the warmth he felt.  Then like an ocean wave his troubles crashed over him and he couldn’t breathe.  It felt like someone was holding his nose closed.

When he opened his eyes he took a long hard breath.  Then he saw something glinting in the sunlight.  It was there by the wishing well.  It was a quarter.  Someone must have had really bad aim to miss the opening of the well by that much.

“Well,” John mumbled to himself as he stood up.  He had been mumbling to himself a lot lately.   “Their bad aim is my good fortune.”

There was a time when he thought that people that talked to themselves were two quarters short of a dollar.  There was a guy a long time ago named Dick that worked at the grocery store.  He talked to himself while he stocked the shelves.  John was just a teenager at the time and he and his teenage buddies used to laugh at Dick and say that he was crazy.  Now John knew better.  It was just something that happened to older people.  Kind of like nose hair.

As life unfolds all sorts of things take on different meanings.  Like that quarter he was closing in on.  There was a time when he wouldn’t have wasted his time picking up change off of the ground.  Now, well, now it was a different thing altogether.

When he stooped to pick up the coin he found that it wasn’t a quarter.  It was a dollar, one of those Suzan B. Anthony things.  That was four times better.  It was enough for a cup of coffee at a McDonalds if you didn’t include the sales tax.  He didn’t know exactly why they had to tax a cup of coffee, but the taxman was everywhere and he seemed to get a little piece of everything.

John looked at the coin.  It was minted thirteen years ago in 1999.  Times were sure better then, at least for John.  He had just started his new job with great pay and good benefits.  His bride of one year was expecting a child in a few months and he was full of great plans for the future.  Talk about ignorance.

He slowly walked around the well looking closely at the ground.  Perhaps he could find some more ill aimed coins.  It wouldn’t hurt to have a last cup of coffee with what ever it was that his wife had packed in his lunch box.  He managed to find thirteen cents more.  Maybe that would be enough for a cup of coffee from the vendor on the corner.  That was a lot closer than McDonalds.

John went back to the bench and sat down.  He rolled the coins he found around in his hand then he laid them out heads up on the bench and looked at them.  He carefully turned them one at a time until all the heads were right side up.  He had never really paid much attention to coins.  They were something his wife threw into a jar and that was the last he saw of them.  He wondered now what she did with that jar.

Now he looked with something akin to fascination at the coins lined up on the bench.  Good old Abe Lincoln was facing right while FDR was looking left.  Knowing what little he did of the two perhaps the direction they were facing wasn’t an accident.  It looked like Suzan B. Anthony was trying to see what the three Abe Lincolns were looking at.  For a moment he wondered who Susan B. Anthony was, other than being on the dollar, he had no idea who she had been.  The only thing that he was sure of was that she hadn’t been a president.

She must have done something important to have her head imprinted on that dollar.  If he hadn’t hocked his lap top computer he could have googled her name and looked her up.  Only if he hadn’t hocked the thing he wouldn’t have had the money to buy the gun.  Then he would have had to jump off a building or… this line of thinking was making his head hurt.  So he stopped thinking and went back to looking at the coins.

That’s when he saw it.  It was on each coin.  Right there on each coin as big as life it said, “In God We Trust”.  He knew it was on the paper money that once upon a time he use to have.  He had never noticed it on the coins before.  Then he never really looked at them.  It was easy to tell them apart without reading what was written on them.

“In God We Trust,” he said softly to himself.  He looked up into the sky and saw a seagull circling above him.  If God was up there he was well camouflaged.

“Are you up there with that bird?” he asked still speaking softly.

He continued to watch as the gull spiraled above him.  Something came away from the bird and fell tumbling as it went.  John watched it come down toward him and then too late he figured out what it was.  The bird crap hit him square in the forehead.

That is it for chapter one!  I will send you chapter two as soon as it is done.  I would welcome your coments.

Please note that I am donating 50% of the royalties from my novel to "Soldier On".  They provide housing for homeless veterans.  Please help me help those who have given so much to provide the freedom we all enjoy.

My Website: http://tagewright.blogspot.com/

Download my novels "Operation Armageddon"
and "Project Vengeance" in Kindle Format on Amazon


tagewright@aol.com
(860) 608-8451