Saint Luke: The Odyssey of a Serial Killer

By R Thompson

Luke is the product of a religious and domineering mother. She rules his life with a unreasonably stern iron hand. Luke eventually rebels and in the process kills his mother and in a sense his father. Guilt and remorse haunt him for the rest of his life, but so does the knowledge that monsters exist as women ( and men ) who subjugate their children, making them helpless emotional and physical slaves. He flees after killing his mother to commit one murder after another, and from one love affair after another. He, like Tom Jones, is irresistible to women another curse from his parentage. When he sees victims of child abuse, like the Ancient Mariner, he knows instinctively what is going on and like the Mariner he is honor-bound to correct the problem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490766577

R Thompson

The author, after a mundane life which grows ever closer to the end, has looked back on it and decided that he needs to do something of note – even just slightly of note, so he has written a novel or two or three. This is his first. He was a teacher, a painter of some small talent (his webpage is robsgeocrylics.com, or andartbybob.com, which can be found by looking them up on Google) The self-portrait is a painting he did some years ago and, like many of the pictures of authors, it is hopelessly out of date. He no longer looks like that. Nor does he want to. The picture was painted during his look like Hemingway period. He has always been a would-be writer, and has written much during his life. When he first submitted this novel to an agent she asked to see the whole work, and eventually rejected it, saying it was a ‘project’. I was rather amused as I rather thought that all thrillers were merely ‘projects’. Anyway, This is my ‘project’ revised, but not much.

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© Copyright 2015 Robert Thompson.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4907-6656-0 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-6657-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015917703

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

To Flo: without whom my life would be incomplete

T heir cabin was a hundred feet from the road. The property was just a few miles northeast of Fort Stockton, off a dirt road on the way to the Comanche River. The land was flat - as flat as the Devil’s frying pan and nearly as hot; it was late August. The roof of the shack was swaybacked; the cabin itself was a weathered clapboard structure with four rooms, a sagging veranda that matched the roof, and a single hole outhouse, with a door made from six inch vertical slats that had warped so that it wouldn’t shut properly. The front yard was liberally sprinkled with prairie grasses, sage, cinquefoil and a few large-limbed pecan trees, each with a few interstitial red-leafed branches sprouting from the bases of old gnarled limbs, heralding a short life span for the already moribund, rain-starved trees. The screen door slapped a staccato against the frame as Luke pushed his way into the darkened living room. The hymn from church yesterday was still echoing in his head: Bringing in the sheaves, Bringing in the sheaves… He always enjoyed going to church. The quiet serenity and the familiar music relaxed and comforted him. He loved to sing the words to the melodies, or whistle the tune if he couldn’t remember the words, which didn’t often happen. But it was the peaceful sanctuary of the place that made him feel comfortable; it was the home he never knew.

His mother’s wheezing from her room in the back of the house broke in on his reverie. He strode down the short hallway toward one of the two back bedrooms and entered hers. She was lying on the bed with her arms tied to the top corner posts of the bed frame. Her feet were bound to each other with an old pillowcase, then tied to the bottom corner posts, and her mouth was duck taped, which didn’t shut out her desperate, whimpering, wheezy, pleading squeals. He walked over to her bedside and looked dispassionately into Lydia’s eyes, dark eyes, the irises so darkly brown, you couldn’t tell where they began and the pupil ended. Eyes that now were bulging with terror. Above the headboard of the bed was a picture of a WASP Christ with sandy colored hair and beard, stigmata oozing blood, and hooded blue eyes looking with infinite pity, out into space, as if ignorant of the scene below. Luke reached to pull the pillow from beneath his mother’s head and lowered it slowly to her face. Her black eyes pleaded with him before the pillow blotted them out. He pushed down until the face resisted the pressure. Lydia struggled violently against the cords, the confinement of the bed and the weight of the pillow, like a chicken thrashing about after the kill. Then her body relaxed as suddenly as it had tensed - her nerves giving up shortly after her brain had told them to. Luke grimaced. He had felt her pain, her nerve endings shrieking through the pillow. He imagined her lungs exploding in her reedy chest, like a small incendiary going off inside - the burning in her chest receding as she fell into oblivion. He held the pillow’s pressure for a minute more, then relaxed. Luke ripped the duct tape from her mouth, half expecting to hear her complain but she merely stared up at him and remained silent. He rose to his feet and looked down on the figure lying silent and motionless. It was so unlike her. She was a pale, bird-like creature with jet-black hair that was cut too short, her red sunburned scalp glowing through the sparse covering. Her beak-like nose, that had always poked censoriously into his affairs pointed up at him, and her voice, shrill and cacophonous - the omnipresent reminder of her constant pecking away at his pride, eroding what little sense of worth he had in himself, was stilled. He had had to rid the world of her, as if by nullifying her presence, he could prove to himself to be a man. She was a small woman, weighing only ninety six pounds. She always dressed in black as if black, in her convoluted thinking, somehow represented purity. She looked like starving crow. Now, well…he thought grimly, she had eaten some. She had even hopped around the kitchen when she worked - the way crows do when they are attacking road kill. Her quick little movements as she attacked the meat she was preparing for supper reminded Luke of their watchful pecking at the carcasses they fed on. She would cut a piece, jump back, throw it into the egg mix and crumbs, look up quickly at the men watching, then leap back to attack the meat once again. It had been her ritual - attack, watch - head cocked; attack, watch,… He momentarily mentally pictured the image of her confronting Satan in Hell – the two locked in a close battle in her need to reign supreme … even in Hell. He thought that Her ‘Fall’ was likely to be His undoing. Poor Satan.

Luke untied the restraints and lifted her body in his arms, cradling her like a reverse pieta. He carried her out the door, down the groaning stairs and across the lot to the rickety car shed. He threw her body onto the converted flatbed of the half-ton Chevy. It fell with a dull thud beside the large fetal shape of her husband, who had, a few minutes before her death, succumbed to a heart attack. Luke had not wanted to kill him, but his father had come home early from town where had gone to pick up some rope and tape that he needed in order to package the week’s supply of garbage he was going to take to the town landfill. He had walked into the house and had seen his wife tied to the bed. The shock of seeing his wife tied up on her bed had stopped his heart. His father had not been a bad man, just a spineless one. And he had had a heart condition for some time now, probably, Luke thought, brought on by the parasitic pecking she had battered him with since they were married.

Luke went into the outhouse to get a sack of lime, which he threw on top of the bodies. He went back into the house and emerged with the clothes from their wardrobe still on the hangers. These, he threw on top of the bodies. Then he went to his room, got his small mattress, and threw it over the rest of the items in the flatbed. A few more trips for a few more odds and ends, and he was ready. He anchored the load with a tarp and bungee cords, got into the cab of the truck, turned the key and wrung it into life with repeated jabs with his foot at the starter button on the floor. The Chevy sputtered agonizingly, then kicked over. He put it into reverse, backed up, wheeled onto the rutted path leading to the main road, turned right and drove six miles along it north into the deserted countryside where he turned again, rattled over the railing of a cattle guard, and onto another rutted trail that led him into nowhere - into a deserted nowhere field.

He could make out the frame of a still dinosaur in the growing gloom, the remnant of a dry oil hole. The jack pump’s rusted hulk was as much a symbol of hard luck as were the few other similar derelicts scattered around the countryside. He continued for about a mile till he came to the deep hole he had dug in the relative cool of that morning. Stopping the truck, Luke climbed out and took his shirt off. The early evening was still hot, a dry bitter heat rising from the canyon floor in waves that split the landscape into layers, like cuts from a CAT scan. He tossed the two bodies into the pit, took the sack of lime from the flatbed and sprinkled some of it over the remains, then tossed the mattress, their clothes and her Bible, the one the pastor had signed for her, on top of the heap. He used the lime because he had seen pictures of the Nazis in W.W. II using lime on the corpses of the Jews before they were bulldozed over. It cut the smell from rotting bodies. He sprinkled the rest over the mattress, then threw the empty bag into the hole. That, he thought, should stop any critters from nosing out the bodies. He shoveled four feet of earth over the remains, tamping it down several times during the fill. When the pit was full, he spread the rest of the earth in a slight mound above the desert floor. In a few days it would settle to lie even with the surrounding earth. He scattered dry twigs, some blackened leaves from the dead Mesquite trees over the fresh dirt. It looked raw but in one day the disturbed earth would bleach to match the rest of the landscape. He wiped his chest with his shirt, threw it into the cab of the truck, climbed in after it and drove back to the farm. He re-entered the house to take what little remained of their possessions.

The darkness was growing thicker. He would have to hurry. He got the mattress from his parent’s bed and threw it onto the flatbed. He took the two table lamps, all the identification from their rooms, their wardrobes, and the tools from the utility drawer. He gathered all the religious bric-a-brac from the house. He would get rid of somewhere along the way - the icons, pictures of Christ, Christ and Mary, Mary, Mary and Joseph, religious embroidery that read God Bless Our Happy Home and other homilies to live and die by. The house was crammed with crosses, little crosses, big crosses, Christ on the cross, …they had all been her crosses. She had been his cross – one he thought he no longer had to bear. Her only cross now was the one that wasn’t planted over her head. He tossed everything into the back of the truck, cleaned out the refrigerator, took the TV, the phone, the microwave, and some of the dishes - anything to make it look as if they had just packed in a hurry and left. He gathered the meager supply of tools from the car shed, climbed into the truck and drove off. The last object he had brought from the house was on the seat beside him - his Bible - the one he had earned for perfect attendance. Its presence was a comfort. Luke was, for all he had just done, a religious person - a deeply religious man/boy.

The darkness was complete now. Luke was smiling in relief. In his mind, phrases from the hymn echoed in his head, Bringing in the Sheaves, Bringing in the sheaves, We will come rejoicing,… He began to whistle. The evening had grown cool. The truck moved forward into the bowl of darkness that was the night, swallowing him, womb-like, so that he could be resurrected at some future time in a place far from here

Chapter 1

T he Sportsman Barber Shop , a discolored, drab adobe building, was just off Dickinson Blvd. on Main Street. It was owned by the Joseph brothers. Tom, the oldest of the two, was slightly older than God, and his brother, Sam, was two years younger. They both suffered from a mild case of Parkinson’s. They had, like the proverbial saying, one foot in the grave and the other securely planted right beside it. They weren’t dead, but you had to look twice to make sure. They were fixtures in the town, with a male clientele that was just about as old. Each brother had his own particular customers. When a man phoned for an appointment, he would specify which brother was to do the cutting. They had each been known to draw blood from time to time, but the regulars were loyal, …good Texas folk who knew how to take care of their own. And the brothers survived by the grace of God and the good Christian men folk of Fort Stockton; the good Texan women folk stayed in the kitchen where they belonged and did their own hair if it was long enough with paper curlers.

Sam was trimming what was left of the sheriff’s hair.

Matt Saunders, the Sheriff, sat in the swivel chair facing Mayor Giesbrecht, who had come in with Matt to finish the conversation they had begun in the street. Rudy, the mayor, didn’t have his hair trimmed by the brothers; he frequented, as befit his station in the community, a salon a few blocks away. Matt, the sheriff, his closest friend, was the main rural lawman in town. Matt was a little over fifty, with thinning sandy colored hair that he combed straight back in a what used to be a pompadour when there was more of it. He was grossly overweight with a Peony-red, pock marked bulbous nose. Some of the townspeople reckoned that he drank some; some of them reckoned that he ate too much, most of them reckoned that he did both. In spite of his looks and bulk, he was a popular figure and had even earned some of the respect he commanded. He deemed himself a little of a roué with the town ladies. The uniform helped some, he admitted to himself with satisfaction, although the ladies were inclined to think otherwise. The official brown shirt was intended to be worn inside the pants, but his vanity would not allow him to expose his substantial gut; he wore it on the outside where the tails hung mockingly over his holster and gun. One or two of the town halfwits after a night at the pub had dubbed him ‘Slo-Draw Saunders.’ The name had unofficially stuck; matt’s six foot-four frame and prodigious girth made the title a little too risky to bandy about in public. So Matt had not heard it used yet.

Mayor, Rudy Giesbrecht, was a toff. He felt the image suited his position. And so it did. A cream-colored ten-gallon hung on the nail over his chair. It matched the western motif of the powder blue jacket that hung beside it. Rudy’s silver gray hair swept around his head in carefully coiffed waves forming a leonine mane; a matching full moustache graced his upper lip, and a slight cleft palate made him slur his s’s almost, but not quite, unnoticeably, endearing him to the ladies and setting him apart from the men. He was small and natty, with a dark tan that was cultivated in the Erotic Scream Tanning Salon, not from the dry exposure to the Texas sun. He had great square, white, gleaming teeth, and a trim physique that he pampered as much as he cultivated the tan. The townspeople liked him; they liked to vote for him. When he ran for re-election, he got more votes than any of the other candidates combined. The townsfolk may not have voted for candidates running for other offices, but they always took the time to vote for Rudy. He seldom had opposition and when he did, he swept it away in landslide victories; he was a contented man, reveling in his small pond successes. He brushed some hair off his neatly pressed blue jeans. Rudy spoke with a British accent that he had cultivated from watching British movies. It was a southern British accent; southern Texas British, that is. The locals thought that he sounded English; an Englishman would just have thought he sounded rather peculiar.

Do you think that we need to keep the jail open this weekend? It will be pretty s’slow, what with the county fair on in Odessa. Most of the ranch hands will be going away for the weekend. Perhaps you should just lock the jail and join the crowd.

Matt looked chagrined for a moment. He couldn’t close the jail, much as he would like to. He wanted the freedom. He figured that he had been making some time with the new waitress at Smitty’s. Lucy was a skinny broad, about forty years old, with big knockers that jutted almost perpendicularly from a small rib cage and were either still firm, doctored, or she wore a damn fine bra. Thinking about her tits made Matt hard. She knew it too and flaunted them. She was forward and brash, like the character of Flo in that old program about Mel’s Diner. Lucy’s head was crowned with a cowgirl singer’s hair, dyed a coppery auburn. She was leggy with a thin face, high cheekbones and a long, thin, pointy nose. Matt knew the saying about women with long noses. The thought made him salivate. She had full lips and a ready smile, and no ass to speak of. She wasn’t particularly pretty but she was sexy with that Flo-look and she flaunted what equipment she had. With Matt’s looks, he figured he couldn’t be choosy and when Lucy had leaned over the counter letting him get a good look at four inches of cleavage and tits just short of the nipple last time he ate there, he decided that he would try to get rid of the wife for a while if he could. She and the boys wanted to go to the fair at Odessa. He would tell her that he had to keep the jail open so he could stay behind. Rudy had just given him a plan. Lucy didn’t appear to be choosy about a man’s marital status; in fact, she flirted more with the married ones than the single guys. She didn’t advertise being in the marriage market.

Yeh, unfortunately we do. Not legal to close it. I’ll have to stay here to keep it open. Shame t’miss the fair at Odessa though. Wouldn’t want anyone to take advantage of a lawman bein‘ out of town, would we now? Matt answered, smiling at the thought of taking a little advantage of a good thing himself.

You hear any more about the missing Morrison’s? I heard that they just packed up and left the farm. No trace of them. You heard any more since yesterday?

No. Funny thing. Screen doors were shut, but the front and back doors were both wide open. There was a lot of stuff still in the house but all the essentials was gone. Mattresses, all the electric stuff in the kitchen, clothes - everything someone would need to start over with. The jalopy wasn’t in the garage, and most o’ the tools was missing’. Guess they just got fed up and split. No one heard or saw them go, but they wasn’t too neighborly anyway. Folks didn’t take kindly to them. I figure from the dust over everything they’ve bin gone for some time. Nobody took much notice of’ ’em. Tried their best to ignore ’em - the woman ‘specially. All that religious crap; always rantin’ an’ carryin’ on. Felt sorry for her kid though. Too bad for him. He seemed like a real nice boy; quiet and polite like

The mayor grinned, Poor fellow. I couldn’t abide his mother. She was a groaner. The Holy Rollers or Two-by-Fours couldn’t have outdone her. She was always preaching Hellfire and redemption as if they belonged together in the same package. The poor chap had a lot to live up to. Do you remember when she caught him reading that s’skin magazine? Made him confess in church the following Sunday. I rather think the chap never lived it down. The lads at school even quit calling him Luke the Puke for a month or two. They gave him a new one. Play Boy! The name s’stuck until the fun wore off and then they went back to ‘Luke the Puke.’ Kids can be terribly mean, if you let them.

Matt’s face screwed up with laughter as he recollected the stunned look on young Luke’s face during the church that day. He had always been a passive boy, much like his old man. Not much rebellion there, in either of them. Luke had endured a lot with that old witch. She never missed a Sunday meeting though in all the time they lived here; first, on that old homestead that no one would ever have made a go of, then when they had squatted on that piece of land that had lain vacant since Pat McGruder had up and left it as suddenly as the Morrison’s had just now. That land wouldn’t provide for a coyote, much less than a family.

Perhaps you should take another drive out there just to be sure they’re really gone for good? You don’t believe there was any foul play, do you?

Nope. People in Fort Stockton don’t murder other folks. Not done here. We got our share of rapes, and break-ins, and some domestic violence, but not murders. Just not done here. You should know that, Rudy.

I guess. But there might be something you missed which could prove interesting. We wouldn’t want it said that we don’t look after the whereabouts of our local voters, now, do we?

Rudy interrupted his thoughts. Perhaps I shall go with you just for interest’s sake. Do you mind a great deal if you have a passenger?

Rudy’s curiosity had been piqued. His concern was strictly political.

Matt nodded. They decided to look first thing in the morning before the present heat wave made the day unbearable. Matt wanted to be back in the air-conditioned office before then. And he hoped that no one committed any crimes till the evening cooled off a bit, at least not outside city limits.

Ψ

Matt drove and Rudy studied the landscape, not that there was much to see. The blackened, dead Mesquite branches scraped at the sky with grotesquely gnarled limbs and sage rolled across the road at intervals, pushed by the incessant wind. Fences, with ragged strands of barbed wire hanging from the posts, were evidence that the rangeland was now unoccupied. The billowing dust behind the Dodge Black and White caught up to them, sifting in through the cracks in the back seat floor boards, when they slowed for corners. There was a thick layer of dust over the dash and the instrument panel. The men chewed gum to keep their mouths moist.

The Morrison shack appeared in the distance, a black square on the landscape, which grew grayer as they closed the distance, and took shape as they drew into the yard. The screen door flapped in the wind. The place screamed empty. Matt shut the engine off and climbed out of the seat. Rudy looked around the yard. It was a typical squatter’s shack, likely built by a cotton grower for the Mexican pickers a long time ago. Matt strolled across the yard, followed by Rudy, whose bouncing gait was typical of small men. It was his Alec Guinness strut.

The screen door rattled after them as they entered the house.

Not much here, Rudy stated, looking at the disarray of magazines over the floor and the second-hand excuse for a sofa in the living room. One overturned slat- back chair lay by the entrance to the kitchen. A TV stand, empty; an old rug, curled at the edges and worn completely through in places, covered some of the dirty pine planking that made up the floor. A thick layer of dust covered everything with a chalky film.

What’s in the kitchen, Rudy asked?

Matt replied with his head stuck into the near empty fridge, Nothin’ much. There’s a few jars of pickle remains, some soda, a used bottle of ketchup and mildew. I’ll leave the fridge door open and shut off the electricity when we go. The drawers are full of towels, some old utensils, not worth takin’, some pots n’ pans, not worth takin’, and some other cookin‘ stuff, not worth havin’. Let’s check the bedrooms.

They walked down the hall to the two rooms. Matt looked into one, where a closet with no door stared back at him.

No clothes left. Nothin’ in th’ bureau, neither.

The bare springs on the bed gaped at him.

Rudy checked the other room. There is nothing in here. This must have been his room. No girly magazines, or pin-ups. I guess he learned his lesson after that session in church. No clothes’s in the closet or in the bureau drawers, only a s’small table by the bedstead. No mattress on the bed. There is nothing left at all. Rudy tended not to use contractions. It sounded more British and he allowed his lisp to drag on the final ‘s’ a little

Leth’s look at the garage.

They checked the car shed. Some old detritus - jars of loose screws, rusted with age, bits of wire, rope… years of collecting.

Rudy went to the outhouse to take a leak. When he returned, he commented, there is nothing left out there either, not even a roll of toilet paper. But there was a black spot on the floor. I guess it was where they kept the lime bag. Funny it’s not there. But I guess thath’s the kind of thing a farmer would take. I knew a farmer once who moved to a new location, and he took three gunny sacks of manure with him. There is no accounting for people behavior.

They took a last look around, climbed into the police car, and headed back to town.

What do you think?

Matt replied, They left in a hurry. Took off all right.

What makes you say that?

Found this on the kitchen counter.

Matt handed Rudy three envelopes. Rudy looked at them and said, Oh, yes, electric, telephone and cable. None of them paid. Righto, three goodbye notes. I rather guess they’re gone for good. I guess that the town is all the better for their absence.

Matt answered, Lydia could’a put the fear of the Lord into a zombie and her husband should’a clucked ‘stead a’ talked. He was about as useful as a second arsehole on a starving‘ wolf. I guess it’s a good riddance to all of ’em,

He grinned appreciatively at the metaphor. He liked it; but then, so did the whole town.

Ψ

Matt got back to the office just as his deputy was leaving for the day. He was talking to the night dispatcher. Clay, the dispatcher, looked up at Matt as he entered, and said, Jake, here, got it good today. He was tryin’ to make time with thet girl at Smitty’s, Y’ know, Lucy. The one with the big boobs and skinny ass. Heh, heh! She tole him to take off. Wasn’t interested in givin’ a freebe to a cop. Hee! Hee! Never took her for a pro. Wonder what she charges? What would a guy pay for that, you figure? Heh, heh! Twenty five tops. Heh, heh! Never know what turns a guy on. She got a big nose though.

He winked at Matt. I guess thoughts of a sure thing’s liable to make any man horny. Whadduya think Matt. Heh, heh! What would you pay fer thet skinny ass?

He grinned at Matt, almost as if he suspected something. Matt felt a little uncomfortable. Did these guys know?

Jake tried to defend himself, "Hell Clay, you never woke up in bed with something’ strange? I herd you done it a few times. An’ some of the ones I heard ’bout weren’t pretty strange; they was real strange. Did you really wake up with the thet bald drunk. Left her wig on the bed knob, I herd. Anyway, don’t imagine Matt, here’d pay fer what he’d get at home with no hassle and no chanc’t of a funny disease. Specially with the looker he’s got fer a wife. Would you now, Matt?"

Matt felt his face and neck color. He slunk into his office before they noticed.

Chapter 2

L uke drove along highway #10. It was only few miles to Deming, New Mexico, now. He liked the thought of settling here but he wondered about the distance. Had he come far enough? And it was another small town, smaller than Fort Stockton had been. Maybe he hadn’t ought to go to another small town, but he knew small towns, and familiarity was a blessing. He could see the lights up ahead. It was late and the town was lit up like a stadium. Brilliant white lights illuminated the sky for miles. He had seen the town a good thirty miles back. He wondered what kind of industry would need daylight at night.

He pulled off the Freeway onto W. Pine Street, thinking that there would be a grungy motel on this side or the other side of town. There always was. As he entered the city, the lights he had seen looked further north, away from town – a halo of luminescence in the distance. It appeared to be coming from an electrical relay station or a railway yard or maybe both. But it had been a beacon, an omen almost, he thought, and he contemplated his priorities. He would look for a job, maybe at a gas station - he could do all the menial jobs required. Or maybe at a McDonald’s or the equivalent. These places weren’t too fussy about who they hired. As long as you were willing to work for bottom dollar and for all the greasy food you could swipe, you were fine. He’d rent a room with a poor family, maybe Mexican, if they weren’t too afraid to rent to whites. They generally asked no questions - a polite people. Knew their place, or maybe just afraid to know too much about anything. In spite of their heritage and the length of the time they had lived in Texas, they still considered themselves to be outsiders.

Then he’d find a church. He liked the one he had being attending. The Emmanuel Baptist Church on Saint Gall Street. Nice name and a fitting location. He liked the sound of it, and the music they had played had been joyous and infectious. He pulled off at a small motel at the far end of town, an adobe construction badly in need of re-stuccoing and repair, with a blinking neon sign in front that read, ‘V-can -y.’ This place would do fine for a few nights. He would find a permanent place to rent later. In the morning, after a good night’s sleep, he would find a church and a job. Mornings were great - all the problems of the world are usually solved by morning. New light, clear day, fresh start! Evenings were full of evils and hobgoblins of the mind. Mornings, …well, that’s when the world came to life again; he would be rejuvenated. There was something nagging at his conscience.

He had taken four hundred and fifty two dollars and change from his mother’s nightstand when he left Fort Stockton. That was all the money they had. His mother had not believed in banks - everyone would know how poor you were, if the tellers or bankers talked about you. And she was sure they did. She had been mistrustful of most folks and of all institutions. They were all out to get you if they could. It was best not to trust folks, she would often say. Look after yourself. She had hammered the thought as a household litany. Well, he had taken care of himself! Would she be proud of him? He rather doubted that. She had never acknowledged any feat he had performed. He doubted that she would have commended his killing of her. In spite of the enormous amount of courage and resolve it had taken to break free from her bondage but he had somehow summoned the spiritual strength to do it. He had finally taken care of himself; and she had been right. He repeatedly told himself that felt good about his actions. It had been her life’s work to make him subservient, but ironically, it had been she who had given him the impetus to act when the time came. Thank God for platitudes and homilies! He had finally taken care of himself.

Ψ

Luke woke, peered at the blinking dial of the clock on his nightstand - 6:00. He rolled onto his back and stared at the blackened ceiling where the soot from years of cigarette smoke had stained it. The room was non-smoking, but the stink from years of cigarettes and cigars still clung tenaciously in the mildew behind the walls, the dark brown smell of custom. Luke really didn’t mind. He felt at ease with the world. Today he would go job hunting and look for a comfortable church. There must be many in a town as frontier as this one appeared to be.

He drove down Pine Street toward the underpass where he had noticed several garages the night before. He stopped at three and applied for a gas jockey position. One of the three needed a man, and the owner, a Mister Strong, said he would call Luke later in the day at his motel. He had been impressed when Luke told him that he was used to working on old model cars and trucks and could fix most of the ordinary problems they developed. Jeff Strong also like they way Luke presented himself - an awkward but presentable kid, about seventeen or eighteen, with a firm handshake and a funny kind of open stare that suggested straight forwardness and honesty. The kid was a big one; he figured that Luke stood a couple of inches over six feet and he was filling out. It wouldn’t hurt to have a good lookin’ gas jockey out front, and his size might deter robbers. Might be he would bring in the ladies for servicing! He smiled at his own joke. Looked a bit like a young unkempt Matt Damon, not that he figured Damon was much older than this kid, at least in his first movies, that is. The local girls would find a way to get their fathers or boy friends to use his business. Luke would do well for him out front. He needed someone to keep the constant gas buzzer from interrupting his work in the shop. Luke wouldn’t cost him a lot and he could make up the wages in an increased workload. But he wouldn’t tell that to Luke till later. No sense giving him a big head or he’d be wantin’ more money than Jeff was willing to pay.

After seeing the prospective bosses, Luke had gone to a bike store and bought a second-hand Raleigh ten-speed for forty-five bucks. The salesman told him that he had just purchased the bike from a young couple in a Volkswagen Van. It had been secured it to the back of their vehicle with binder twine and they sold it cheap because they were in a desperate need for gas money. They had been headed for Yuma where they were expecting to find a windfall in an American Express office. Parents, kicking through with bail-out-of-dire straights money he had assumed. The bike looked in pretty good shape and, after Luke had bought it, he had taken it for a ride. He cycled around the town first, looking at churches. One of them on St. Grand Ave. seemed nice - a low friendly looking structure with a nicely tended front landscape. He then headed out of town on Highway Eleven, toward the Mexican border. The road was paved with a wide bicycle path on either side. It was straight and not too hilly. He passed a dude ranch, some Mexican shanties and a lot of vacant land. The strands of cotton clinging to the roadside suggested cotton fields, but he didn’t see any. A saw- tooth range to the east was impressive and Luke made a mental note to go climbing there sometime in the future, if things worked out here. As he was returning from the fifteen-mile sight seeing trip, the front tire sprung a leak and slowly went flat. He had to push the bike for several hundred yards but luckily, on the outskirts of town, there was a bicycle shop. The fellow who owned it was a gruff outdoor type - the gruffness, more cultivated than genetic. He was about fifty with a stubborn mop of reddish hair, an ironic grin, and a disinclination to say much. He took the inner tube out of the tire, examined it, looked Luke over and said Not from around here! It wasn’t a question.

Luke answered anyway, No, but I’d like to settle. How did you know?

Anybody hereabouts knows enough to put heavy-duty tubes in their bikes. The road’s full’a thorns. Make short work of tires. Yu’ need t’uh put in th’ heavy duty ones. They’s expensive though.

How much? Luke asked, a little hesitant.

Seventeen ninety five each. The owner looked at him, expecting a refusal. He wasn’t disappointed. Luke was stalling, considering his finances. The man sensed a possible sale though, with Luke’s hesitation.

Won’t do no better any place in town. Cycle shop in town be a lot more.

Luke figured that he would be using the bike a lot, but he hadn’t yet got a job. Mr. Strong had said that they would let him know that night, so he felt pretty confident - Mr. Strong had seemed to want to hire him, just needed a little time to think about it. The bike was more money than he had wanted to pay, but he would be using the it for most of his trips around town, and back and forth to work, whenever he landed a job, so he agreed and had the two tubes replaced. If he got the job, he would come back to stock up with two more spares.

He paid and went back to his motel room to wait. The call came at five, just as promised. Mr. Strong said that he would try Luke out and that he was to start work in the morning. Seven A.M. Sharp! He would be there. It didn’t pay much, but Luke was used to being frugal. His spirits lifted. Money would not be a problem now. The lights had been an omen after all.

Chapter 3

L uke woke, rolled over onto his back and stared at the clean white Donacona ceiling. He had been in town for three weeks and there had been no hint of reprisal. The past was beginning to fade slightly from his memory. He accepted his new town and had been accepted in return. He looked at the clock; it was