Chapter 30

  After Shawn pulled out of Vietnam, he spent the remaining days of his enlistment at Fort Bragg. While there, he tried to find out what had happened to Jesse. However, no one at Walter Reed seemed to know anything about his condition or even if he was ever admitted there. Shawn tried to find Jesse’s mother in Bemus Point, NY, through the phone operator, with no success. He had lost Jesse’s home address and phone number, and the local telephone assistance was of little help. What he couldn’t have known was that his mother had remarried. She had sent Jesse a letter informing him of her short courtship and marriage to a local attorney. Unfortunately, it arrived the day he was airlifted back to the US.

  After his discharge, Shawn traveled the short distance back to Middlesboro, Kentucky, to look up old friends and family. Despite their father, Shawn had a lot of affection for his brothers and sister, who were all devastated by the loss of their mother. He was happy to finally meet his sister's husband. He was a farmer and a good man. Both of his brothers had good jobs, although neither was married. His sister informed him that his old high school gym teacher had opened a "Dojang" in town, and he stopped to see him the next day. His former instructor was surprised to see how filled out Shawn had become. The "Sabum" introduced Shawn to his class and asked if any of his students would like to spar with him. None did.

  Shawn learned that the police had no clue as to the whereabouts of his stepfather, and he suspected the police had given up looking for the man. Shawn knew that Jack had relatives in Ft. Lauderdale and Denver, and after growing restless, he headed to Florida to hopefully find him and settle the score. He bought an old Chevy C20 pickup truck with a cabover camper and hit the road south.

  *****

  It took Shawn just over four weeks to do what the police couldn’t do in five years. When he arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, he purchased a dark, shoulder-length wig, dark sunglasses, hippie beads, and a floppy hat to hide his identity. Before he left Middlesboro, he started to grow a beard and mustache. He wore faded and torn bell-bottomed jeans and a jean jacket with peace symbols and American flags loosely sewn on. He didn’t want anyone to accurately describe him to the police. If he found Jack, he had no intention of turning him over to them.

  Shawn found a small campground off of I-95 to park his pickup camper. He also needed a vehicle that was a little less conspicuous, and after two days of searching, he spotted a faded slate blue 1966 VW bug with a for sale sign on it for 350 dollars parked at a strip mall within a mile of his campsite. Shawn called the owner, and after a short negotiation, he paid the man 300 dollars cash for the bug and gave the seller a bogus name and address. The two men shook hands, and Shawn promised the seller he would transfer the title into his name and drove off. With the money in his hand, the man of Cuban descent didn’t seem to care one way or the other if he did.

  Shawn drove around that night and found a black VW, which was approximately the same year. Although he couldn’t be sure, they all looked the same to him. After all traffic and activity stopped, Shawn put on a pair of work gloves, took his screwdriver, and switched license plates with a pair he had stolen off a Chevy sedan. He then drove to a park and switched his VW’s plates with the ones he had just absconded. After finishing, he walked over to a small pond adjacent to the campground and tossed the slate blue VW plates as far as he could into the muddy, brownish-green water.

  *****

  Jack's sister and her husband lived on a quiet residential street in a working-class neighborhood of Ft. Lauderdale. The home was a small single-story brick and stucco job they kept in fairly good condition. Kids' bikes and toys were scattered all over the front yard, yet the lawn and trees were well-kept. Jack's sister was a stay-at-home mom, and her husband worked long hours at a local factory. He wore a working man's uniform: a light blue shirt with an oval nametag above the left-hand pocket, dark blue pants, and black work boots. He was a classy guy who came home every day after a hard day's work and sat on the front steps with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He waved at all the neighbors who walked or drove by and was absolutely clueless about the image he portrayed to the rest of his neighbors.

  Shawn used a spotting scope from the delivery area in the back of a small strip mall to stake out Jack’s sister’s house almost two blocks away. It wasn’t a perfect spot, but he could see all the cars coming and going down the street, and no one would call the police if someone spotted him with the scope. Shawn watched the house every day for two weeks without any luck. Thinking it was a dead end, he searched all the auto repair shops in and around the city. Jack was an auto mechanic by trade, and Shawn figured the man hadn’t changed professions and had become a brain surgeon. He also assumed that Jack had either bought a new identity, so easily obtained on the streets of Miami or that he was working for cash and was not using his own social security number. Shawn suspected the latter. Using the Yellow Pages for the next two weeks, he visited over one hundred repair shops and gas stations in the Ft. Lauderdale area without any luck. At the rate he was going, it would take him the rest of his life to find Jack, if he was in Florida at all. He decided to stake out the sister’s home one more time before he called it quits and moved on to Denver.

  *****

  It was on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when Shawn spotted a maroon 1965 Cadillac Sedan Deville driving slowly down the street. A big man was behind the wheel, and a woman was in the front seat next to him. The driver pulled the big Caddy along the curb in front of Jack’s sister’s home and climbed out. Shawn put the spotting scope on him and immediately recognized the ugly bastard. Jack hadn’t changed much in those few years.

  He watched with amusement as a forty-something woman with frizzy dishwater blond hair, bright red lipstick, and a quart of makeup got out of the Caddy with a cigarette dangling from her lips. She had a 16 oz. can of Colt 45 in one hand and four more in the other, joined together by a plastic six-pack retainer. The woman was a sight to behold. She appeared to be just over five tall and weighed in at around one hundred and fifty pounds. She wore pink pedal pushers from the nineteen-sixties that were skin tight, four-inch spiked heels, and a short white tube top. She had large breasts that swayed from side to side as she did a catwalk up to the front door. Clearly, this woman thought she was very sexy and that she was God’s gift to men. Shawn figured that Jack had picked her up at a bar at closing time, and she had become a permanent fixture at his side ever since. After waking up and seeing this woman in bed, most men would do one of two things depending on their current state of inebriation. He would think he was the luckiest bastard that walked the earth or get up and quickly run to the bathroom and proceed to lose the entire contents of his stomach. Shawn assumed Jack thought the former.

  The darling couple was greeted halfway to the front door by the man of the house, who was sitting on the front step drinking a can of beer with two empties beside him. He shook Jack’s hand and then proceeded to embrace the sexy blond thing with way too much enthusiasm. He let his bear hug last a bit too long, and Jack had to pull the man out of his prized possession. The woman seemed to enjoy all the fuss.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Shawn thought, “What’s this bitch like when she’s really drunk.”

  The beautiful couple stayed most of the afternoon, and Shawn was ready when they left. The sexy blond thing fell on her ass several times, from the front door to the big Caddy, yet she managed to keep a cigarette dangling from the sexy lips and a beer can clutched in her chubby little fingers each time. The man of the house was more than happy to help her up, and he had his hands all over her when he did. On her last fall, she seemed to purposely pull down her tube top, exposing her breasts for much too long.

  As she got up, she laughed and eyed Jack’s brother-in-law with a seductive smile, then slowly pulled up her tube top. “You didn’t see my anything, did you?” she asked with a giggle. Jack’s brother-in-law didn’t bother to answer her obvious rhetorical question. He just grinned from ear to ear!

  *****

  Jack wasn’t very happy with her little performance. He snatched up his little sweetie and planted her in the front seat of his car. Seconds later, the Caddy pulled away from the curb as the beauty queen blew kisses at the man of the house. Through the spotting scope, Shawn looked at the man standing at the curb and smiled when he saw that he appeared to be aroused.

  As he put the scope down, Shawn said, “What a fucking loser!”

  *****

  Shawn just hoped he could keep up with the Caddy. He knew that he was outmatched. The Caddy’s big V8 had 7 times the horsepower of his little bug. He now wished that he had bought something with a little more punch. Yet the VW could offer him something no other car could: anonymity. Shawn followed the Caddy to the Interstate entrance and soon realized he was in trouble. The top speed of the VW was seventy-five mph. And that’s when it was new. God only knew how many miles there were on it now.

  Jack headed south toward Miami with his prize passed out with her head on his lap. He quickly got the big Caddy up to seventy and held it there while fondling his princess as he drove. Shawn kept his foot to the floor as he shifted through all four gears, trying desperately to keep up. By the time he reached the top of the Interstate on-ramp, the Caddy was nowhere in sight.

  Shawn stayed in the right lane and looked down each exit he passed to see if Jack had gotten off. The little bug was doing seventy-two mph, but no more. He cursed himself for not seeing this possibility. Shawn’s hopes faded with every mile without seeing the Caddy. Eighteen miles down the Interstate, Shawn finally spotted it. About a quarter mile ahead, the Caddy had slowed to exit the Interstate. Shawn held the gas pedal to the floor without slowing for the exit ramp and hoped the bug’s brakes wouldn’t fail him. When he looked at the stop light ahead, the Caddy was nowhere to be seen, and the light had just turned red. Shawn had to make a quick decision: right or left. He chose right, away from the Atlantic Ocean. There was no one in front of him, and he quickly glanced to his left and ran the red light. Another quarter mile ahead, he spotted the Caddy just as it turned right into a mobile home park. “Gotcha, you bastard,” Shawn said as he pounded on the big steering wheel of the little car.

  Shawn pulled into the trailer park just as the sun was setting and wasn’t surprised to see that there wasn’t a security gate. After traveling just a short distance, he immediately knew that he had made a mistake. Shawn felt the eyes of everyone penetrating him, a strange car and driver going through their turf. He had entered a world that was foreign to him and one that was leery of strangers. This was the melting pot of the less fortunate, poor White trash, Cubans, Latinos, and Haitians, all in their own little pockets of hell with Pit bulls, Dobermans, and German Shepherds guarding their owner’s turf and what little possessions they had. Cars ranging from junkers to new Mercedes and Cadillacs were parked next to trailers just a step above a shanty. The only way out was the way he came in, except if you knew where the emergency exit was, which Shawn didn’t. He wanted out, and he wanted out quickly. Not that Shawn feared for his life. He didn’t want anyone tipping off Jack that he’d been tailed. After only traveling past fifteen trailers, Shawn tried to back up and turn around in a vacant parking space. Turning back to face forward again, he stopped as two young Latino boys blocked his way forward.

  “Hey man, what the fuck you doin on my turf?” The bigger of the two demanded.

  Shawn judged the boys to be no more than seventeen or eighteen, their arms were full of tattoos, and they both had on hair nets or some sort of shit covering their heads. The smaller one was holding a bottle of cheap wine while the larger one stood with his arm folded across his chest in a defiant jester. He clearly thought he was tough. No fuckin hippie in a VW bug was going to be a match for him. Shawn had to defuse the situation as quickly as possible. He was too deep into the trailer park, and someone was going to get hurt if he didn’t. He just hoped they didn’t have guns.

  *****

  Shawn wasn’t worried about the two boys; he was more concerned with all the eyes that were watching them from the dingy trailers. They must have known he wasn’t a cop, simply because no cop would be foolish enough to set foot in this park after sunset, especially without backup. They had to figure that he was either stupid, lost, or both. Shawn didn’t want to hurt anyone, and he just hoped that it wouldn’t come to that before he got out of the shithole. He decided to play dumb.

  “Hey man, I ain’t looking for no trouble. I just wanna buy some weed, that’s all. Some dude on the beach told me to come to this trailer park and ask for Raoul in a blue trailer; he said he has the best weed around.”

  “Shut the fuck up, you little faggot and get the fuck out of that little piece of fuckin shit,” the bigger one said as he kicked the side of the VW’s door.

  “Like I said, I don’t want no trouble...I just came in here for some weed, that’s all.”

  The bigger man just laughed, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a switchblade. He flipped it open and stuck it in Shawn’s face. “I said get the fuck out of the car, you mother fuckin little pussy, and empty your pockets, or I’ll cut your face wide open.”

  Shawn just sighed and did as he was told. This was not going the way he hoped. His baggy, long-sleeved tie-dyed pullover top hid his muscular build, which would give him a little advantage. Not that he needed it. He just didn’t want anyone to give the cops his description if things went south. Although he doubted that anyone in the trailer park would talk to the police if things did. He stepped out of the VW, put his hands in his pants pocket, pulled out a few dollars, and handed it to the man with the knife.

  “That’s all I got, man; take it and let me get out of here,” Shawn said quietly.

  That’s all you fuckin got?” the Latino said in disbelief.

  “What the fuck you gonna buy with this, you dumb fuckin cracker? Where’s the rest of your money, fool.”

  The man reached for Shawn’s front pockets with his free hand, and when he did, Shawn grabbed his wrist and held it firm. Shawn inwardly smiled at the look on the boy’s face.

  “What the fuck…are you stupid or something. I’m gonna cut your fuckin face off.”

  The man lunged with his knife at Shawn’s face, but before his knife found its target, Shawn slipped to the side and blocked the blade with his left hand. At the same time, he quickly released the man’s wrist and hit him in the throat with a quick rabbit punch. The young man dropped the knife and put both of his hands on his damaged windpipe, and as he did, Shawn slammed his knee into his family jewels. The boy howled in pain and bent forward. Shawn grabbed his hair net, pulled his head down, and brought his knee up at the same time, striking him in his face and breaking his nose. He toppled over and lay on the ground in excruciating pain.

  Dumbshit number two stood with his mouth wide open, catching flies. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen. A fuckin hippie driving a piece of shit VW drives in on their turf, and in a matter of seconds, he kicks the shit out of one of the toughest men in Little Haiti. The idiot should have run. Instead, he raised the wine bottle in his right hand and charged intent on taking Shawn’s head off; however, he didn’t get the chance. Shawn simply ducked the intended blow and took the man’s feet right out from under him as he charged by off balance. Shawn was on him in an instant. He bent down and put a vicious blow to the side of the boy’s head that sent him into the dream world. After finishing off the two young Latinos, Shawn looked around in all directions for any imminent danger. Finding none, he stepped over dumbshit number one and got into his VW. He started up the little four-banger, rammed it into first gear, dumped the clutch, and drove out of the cesspool before any other fools tried anything stupid.