I can finally say that I'm almost finished. For now, I'll just share an early, unedited chapter with you. Enjoy and as always, feel free to leave comments. Also, here is the PayPal Purchase Link for those of you who have been asking about pre-ordering autographed copies directly from me. It's been a long, strenuous process to get this book done and I thank you for the support along the way.
CHAPTER 2 - GUNSLINGERS
Jon the molester, Margaret Chance the
lawyer’s daughter, Wolf the drug dealer, Caesar Ruiz the witch doctor and
Hector, the hater were all recurring figures that weighed on Lenox’s
conscience. They were also the faces he saw on the empty bottles and tin cans
he used for target practice as the sound of Jahaira’s grandfather’s revolvers
echoed like cannons through the trees. In one way or another, directly or
indirectly, he was responsible for all of their deaths. Occasionally he saw
Carmen’s face as well but only because it pleased him to imagine blowing her
head off. He squeezed the trigger of the chrome magnum in his right hand and a
fraction of a second later a Heineken brand beer bottle exploded and sent bits
of green glass flying in every direction. He had been aiming for the small red
star on the label and his ego convinced him that he actually hit his mark. The
sadistic side of his psyche imagined that the scattered fragments were chunks
of skull and brain from Carmen’s head. She was gone from this world but his
hatred for the woman had not died with her or even diminished. He slowly raised
the revolver in his left hand and pointed it at a dented tin can that had once
contained sweat peas on a log about twenty yards away. There had been a time
when his hands would shake whenever his mind replayed the cold winter day he
killed he blew holes in Hector’s frame and left him with his brains leaking all
over the snow-covered sidewalk. He was past that now, especially after Jahaira
told him about everything that had happened, and almost happened to her. His
hands were as steady now. He closed one eye, aimed at the faded label on the
side of the can, squeezed the trigger …and missed. He didn’t stress about it
though because when it had really mattered, in front of that damned warehouse,
when he had rolled down his car’s dark tinted window, he hadn’t missed and THAT
made him smile.
Jahaira had planned to go back to
college for the fall semester following that summer but, that was before she
found out that she was pregnant, got kidnapped, was almost raped, was nearly
murdered and forced to ruthlessly run over one of her aunts with a speeding car
to save Lenox’s life. Instead of taking notes while listening to lectures, she
found herself at least twenty pounds heavier than she had been seven months ago
with a gun in her hand in the woods behind a new house that still didn’t quite
feel like home, learning how to shoot just in case their hideaway wasn’t quite
secret or safe enough.
While the big revolvers Lenox held in
his hands like a modern day cinema cowboy made inanimate objects explode, she
took aim with her small .22 caliber pistol. Directly in her sights was an
Eastern Bluebird that foolishly hadn’t flown away from the sounds of repeated
gunfire, perched on a tree limb with its brown breast bravely poked out. She
felt bad for having such a strong, sadistic, urge to kill it for no other
reason than it being something to shoot at so she was actually relieved when
she fired a single shot and missed. She had been feeling bipolar and crazy
lately. The thin branch the small bird had been perched on shattered into
splinters and the bird finally took off, flapping its wings frantically as it
made its escape into the beautifully clear, cloudless blue sky.
The woods beside the lake they
frequently visited for their target practice sessions was clean, pure and
pristine. It reminded her of the photos from the calendars she would get every
December as gifts from the dry cleaners in her old neighborhood for her
business. All the same, despite its natural beauty, the place still made the hairs
on the back of her neck stand up. To her, it was also too similar to too many
laces she had seen in way too many psycho/slasher
horror flicks. She half-expected some machete-wielding maniac in a goofy mask
to pop out of the shadows behind the trees to his own spooky theme music. The
only reason she wasn’t completely freaked out was because, in the unlikely
event that aforementioned cliché movie-maniac dared to attack them, both she
and Lenox would riddle him full of bullet holes before he got within ten paces
of them. After months of practice, they had become pretty damn good shots.
“You’re getting better. You nearly shot
that lil birdy dead,” Lenox complimented her as he used his hand to shield his
eyes from the glare of the midday sun while he looked up at the splintered
branch.
“That’s good to hear. Maybe now you’ll
let me try out a real gun instead of this little thing?” she asked, waving the
.22 around carelessly.
“Well, it’s not the size…” he started to
say.
“Ha! That’s a lie,” she interrupted,
winked and smiled while looking down at his crotch. “I can handle it.”
“You mean you want to see if you can
handle one of these?” he asked with a
slick, devilish grin, holding up one of the heavy revolvers. The sun glinted
off of the shiny end of the long chrome barrel.
“Yes,” she answered, wetting her lips
with the tip of her tongue.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, why not? You think I can’t
because I’m a girl?”
“Well, technically, you’re a pregnant girl.”
“Oh shut up and just gimme the gun. You
think you’re soo funny,”
She handed him the .22 and roughly
snatched one of the .45 magnums. He sarcastically and playfully walked behind
her then took ten steps away, safely out of her line of fire. She raised her
left hand to right wrist to steady it, took aim at an empty cognac bottle that
Lenox had missed wide right, twice. She closed one eye, exhaled as she squeezed
the trigger and hit it on her first try. They were both equally amazed by how
true her aim was as bits of thick glass went flying.
“Wow, you’re a better shot than I am,”
he complimented her as he walked up from behind and smacked her on the butt.
“Bet you didn’t think I could hit it?”
she giggled.
“I have to admit I’m impressed. Seems
like your grandfather’s spirit is guiding those hands,” he said smiling.
He thought she looked beautifully
dangerous and angelic in her long white dress, slightly dirty at the hem from
walking in the woods, with the smoking gun in her hand at her side.
“Maybe,” she answered. “Or, I might just
be a natural.”
“Could be,” he answered, scratching his
head.
“Enough shooting for today. Let’s go for
a swim. The baby likes the water,” she told him while rubbing her baby bump.
She let the straps of the loose cotton
dress fall from her shoulders. Once she successfully worked it down below her
belly, she slipped out of it easily and laid it down neatly on a log before she
kicked off her sandals. She loved the way the uneven wild grass tickled her
toes as she walked barefoot to the lake in her underwear. In all the times they
had come there, they had never seen another soul so she wasn’t bashful or
hesitant about walking around in her lace, cream-colored bra and panties which
weren’t exactly swimwear. Even though she had gained weight, she still wore her
fancy undies because she still liked
to feel sexy and wasn’t about to let a few extra pounds change that.
The quaint body of water in front of her
was one of the few things she had grown to love since their relocation. All
those swimming lessons her father forced her to take every summer at the “Y”
finally came in handy. Being in the water helped with her back pain and the
baby growing inside her seemed to like it a lot. As she stood on the edge of
the water waiting for Lenox, she pressed her toes into the soft mud which was
soothing relief for her aching feet.
“Come on slowpoke. You still afraid of
the water?” she yelled.
“”I’m not that good of a swimmer,” he
answered as he slowly walked to meet her.
“Hold my hand then you big baby.”
Tentatively, with Jahaira’s arm firmly
locked with his, he tip-toed into the cool, clear water, careful not to wade
into the deeper parts where he might panic and flounder. When the water was at
his waist she let go of his arm and swam away like a mermaid. He never took his
eyes off her as he smiled and wished that he could go with her. She needed
this. The times when she was in the water seemed like the only time she didn’t
mind their new neighborhood and it’s rural surroundings. For that, he was glad.
After all that had happened, she deserved to smile and find some semblance of
peace, something that he had been denied unfortunately. Before he died, Lenox’s
father always warned him not to love anything too intensely because life had a
way of humbling a man by ripping away the things he held most dear at the worst
possible times. His dad’s words felt foreboding and now, that warning felt more
like prophecy, especially after everything they had just barely escaped. All
the same, he didn’t intend to love her any less. He was going to hold onto her
as for long as he could and Life
would have to pry her away from his stiff, dead fingers.
As she swam farther and farther away,
Jahaira occasionally looked back towards the shore to watch him wade nervously
in the shallows. She knew how deathly afraid of drowning he was so after aboulf
half an hour in the water and blissful relief from her aches, she swam back to
him. She hugged him and with her wet body pressed awkwardly against him because
of her belly, she felt the muscles in his body relax. He felt safe in her arms
for a change instead of the other way around. A few fluffy white clouds floated
across the sunny skies above their heads as the couple stood in waist-deep
waters, kissing as if the world was ending and that would be the last time they
would taste each other’s lips. When they finally parted, he affectionately
massaged her belly.
“We should get married,” he whispered
after planting a series of soft, wet kisses on her face and neck.
“We ARE getting married. You forgot that
you asked me months ago and I said yes?” she asked, smiling.
Jahaira would never forget the day, or
the way he had proposed. They had been staying in hotels, moving from place to
place and never staying anywhere for too long in fear that trouble would be
following, hot on their heels. Although they had only been defending
themselves, there would be serious consequences if they had to answer for the
corpses they were responsible for. She remembered how he had come back from a
routine trip the grocery store in a panic, telling her that they had to go
right away. She loved him and trusted him so without hesitation, she grabbed
everything and rushed off with him. For almost two hours, they drover farther
and farther out of the city. She remembered how clear the sky was once they
were clear of the cloud of smog that hung over it. That night, the moon glowed
like a giant pearl floating in a black ocean with stars that twinkled like
distant, precious gemstones. They hardly spoke the entire drive and she was too
afraid to ask him exactly what they were running from or who might be after
them. He finally pulled up to a house with a tree in the front yard with a
wooden swing hanging from one of its limbs. He shut the car off, came around to
her side and opened the door. Fright, fear and curiosity made her head spin as
he took her hand and walked her across the yard. She could still remember the
silence, only disturbed by the crunching of their feet in the snow that covered
the front yard. As they got to the swing, she noticed fresh, red rose petals
scattered all over the ground randomly which she found unusual, seeing as how
it was the dead of winter. Lenox sat her down on the swing, got down on his
knees on the frozen ground and proposed in front of the house he had bought for
her. Through her own tears, she barely noticed the gorgeous ring he presented
to her but instead, she saw God deep in the pools of his dark brown eyes. She
would never forget that.
“I meant that we should do it right now.
I don’t want to wait until after the baby,” he answered.
“But look at me,” she said, staring down
at her belly.
“I AM looking at you…and I see you,” he
answered as he looked at her that way that every woman who ever lived wanted to
be looked at.
“I wanted to wait until after the baby
was born…so I can look pretty in my wedding dress. What woman hasn’t dreamed of
walking down the aisle, looking as beautiful as she will ever look in her
entire life on that one, magical day?” she asked.
“Since the day we first met, you’ve
never stopped being the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen.”
Jahaira wasn’t sure if it was the baby
or what Lenox had just said that caused the fluttering in her stomach. His
sincerity warmed her heart in ways that no one else had ever been able to. She
wished that she could relax and bask in the moment but, there was fear in his
voice and although he tried to mask it behind the truths he spoke it, she heard
it clearly all the same.
“What’s the matter? I can tell
something’s worrying you.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he answered quickly.
“Really?”
“Really. You know me. I’m always like this.”
“Ox, you promised me that there would be
no more secrets between us.”
“I promise, there’s nothing wrong J.
It’s just that I’m ALREADY waiting impatiently for the baby. I just don’t want
to have to wait any longer than I have to for you to be my wife. I’m anxious
because I want you,” he explained while hugging her tightly.
“You already have me,” she told him.
What Lenox told Jahaira was the truth
but the sense of dangerously dark future crawled up his spine and he did not
want to share or worry her with the doom he felt closing in on them. Something
sinister was coming for them and he wasn’t entirely sure that he would be able
to stop it. All the same, he stood firm on the certainty that he would
sacrifice his own life to save his family if he had to.
“What really has you so worried? We
don’t keep anything from each other anymore remember?”Jahaira asked him. She
felt the emotional dam he had built weakening and she wanted his true feelings
to flow even at the risk that she might drown in them.
“I’ve been thinking about my father a
lot lately,” he answered.
“Well that shouldn’t be troubling you.
From everything you told me about him, you had a great dad.”
“That’s just it. I don’ know if I can be
what he was as a father ways and I’m not sure if I want to be the type of
husband he was.”
“Haven’t I been telling you over and
over again that you’re going to be a great daddy? Besides, I’ll be there to
help you. We’re doing this together babe,” she tried to reassure him.
“But J, my father ended up raising me by
himself. He must not have been that good a husband if my mother walked away,”
he answered with such sadness in his voice that Jahaira’s heart ached.
“I’m never leaving you Ox. Only death
can take me away from you and even then, I’ll come back to haunt you. I’ll
always watch over you both,” she answered with one hand on the back of his head
and her other hand on her belly.
They brought their foreheads together
gently and both began to cry.
Copyright © 2014 Keith Kareem Williams
All Rights Reserved
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