The Curse of the Scots

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We start off for my home:

As I drove off I didn't see anybody trying to follow me, but that didn't mean anything. Pretty soon Vince or somebody would realize I'd made off with what they'd think was a valuable piece of property. Hell, for all I knew they might have installed some kind of tracking unit in a wheel well or something. I doubted it; they didn't look that smart.

I could see the sun was just starting to come up. I looked over at my new piece of property. Christ she was one fucked up mess. Vince had beaten the living shit out of her. There were belt marks all over her chest, back, stomach, and legs. Her body had a few tattoos; one I recognized as a typical whore property marker; that was a black bar code across her shoulders just under the nape of her neck. Most of her other tattoos didn't look half bad; there was a small butterfly on an ass cheek, a few tiny birds made to look like they're flitting around her left shoulder and a rather pretty flower of some sort on her left breast. It looked like a lily. I could see now in the early light she had what looked like maybe a week old black eye. There were other bruises all over.

Yeah, this bitch had been through some shit.

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I hated the damn long drive home with nothing to do but talk to myself.

I guess I had about seven hours travel time. She looked pretty beat. I figured we'd drive along and I'd let her sleep until we got south of Dover, Delaware, then I'd pull into a Walmart or Target or someplace and get her something simple to wear. I skipped the idea of food. We'd wait till we got to my farm. I didn't want her throwing up inside my truck. Sure there was dog hair and all in it, but that was OK. I just didn't want a lot of vomit on the seats.

I looked at her. She seemed about half asleep, I wondered how she was doing. I asked her, "You thirsty?"

She nodded.

"How about a coke?"

She nodded again.

I wondered just how much she'd been allowed to do. I wondered if she'd even been allowed to talk much. She looked like someone who was just about at the end of her rope. I wondered if I shouldn't have let them just kill her. No, not really. I was glad I didn't. Who knows they might have killed her and tried to pin it on me?

I found a Turkey Hill, they're the Pennsylvania version of a 7-11. I left her in the truck while I went in and got two bottled cokes. I didn't want to risk her spilling anything; that's why I got bottles instead of fountain cokes. I took them back, twisted off the lid for her, stuffed in a straw, and handed it to her. I watched as she took a sip. I saw her extend her pinky finger. Well what did I know? She wasn't a complete moron?

I told her, "Try to get some sleep. I'll wake you up before we get to my place."

She only nodded. She evinced no interest in where we were going. I wondered if her lack of interest was stupidity or maybe just apathy.

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Well with the seven hour drive ahead of me it gave me some time to reflect on who I am, and where I might be headed. One thing I knew for sure; I couldn't just drop this bitch off somewhere. So where do I begin. I guess if I told everyone a little about myself that might be a start.

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First, I was born and raised on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. That's a peninsula that encompasses parts of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia; that's why they call it the Delmarva Peninsula. Most of my story takes place in those first two states.

I was born in spite of a failed abortion attempt by my mother. I never knew my mother; she died just a few days after I came into the world. I was seven months along, two months early. I was the third child of farmers. My family owned a lot of land south of Selbyville, Delaware and west of the Dupont Highway.

My father wasn't interested in trying to keep a premature baby just after his wife died so he had me placed in a back room to die. It was winter time, and I probably would have died except the Negro mother of a boy who worked for my father found me and took me to her home. She wrapped me in blankets and kept me on her stove, and to everybody's surprise I didn't die.

Well my father, being a racist man, couldn't allow his son, no matter how unwelcome, to be raised by a black family, so he got me back and turned me over to relatives. As it happened it was my great-grandmother and four of her children who lived just about a half a mile from my father's; it was my great-grandmother who agreed to take me in.

Honestly my great-grandmother didn't have much to do with me since my mom had been a Jewish girl named Elshevah. I think that's how she might have spelled it, I don't really know since they threw that name out when she married my father. They Anglicized it and basically made her go by Elizabeth, or Lizzie as I was told. Her father had been a jeweler; how she and my father came to fall in love and get married I'll never know. But here was this great big man, six feet four, wed to this little five foot two dark haired Jewess. That's what they said anyway.

So I was born too soon as a result of a failed abortion, and neither my mother, who was dead anyway, nor my father really wanted me. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that my great-grandmother didn't really want me either. However my great-grandmother had talked four of her seven children into not getting married. Her husband, my great-grandfather I guess, had died prematurely as a result of a fishing trip where he got pneumonia, and I think my great-grandmother was afraid of being left alone.

These four unmarried people included two brothers and two sisters. The oldest was named John. He was a real son-of-a-bitch. I never liked him. He was a drunk, and died pretty young. The youngest was a man also. His name was Mitchel. Mitchel had been in the military and had suffered some sort of ailment as a result of it. He spent most of his life just trying to breathe.

That left the women, two sisters, Margaret and Olive. It was my Aunt Margaret mostly who raised me, but Aunt Olive helped some. Aunt Olive had to help out because Aunt Margaret was kind of crazy. Today they'd say Margaret was bi-polar with a heavy dose of Narcolepsy thrown in.

All four of these old people were actually my great aunts and uncles, but I just called them aunt and uncle. They were already old when I went to live with them. I had some regular aunts and uncles; they were my father's brothers and sisters, but I hardly ever met any of them. They weren't very nice people anyway.

I never knew or ever found anything out about my grandfather. Someone said he found his wife with another man. He killed the man, then his wife, and then he blew his own head off with a shot gun. No one ever talked about him. I didn't care anyway.

From among the five old people who raised me Aunt Olive was the smartest; she'd gone off and become a nurse, but she'd come home to be a caregiver for her mother and siblings. Like I said, it was Aunt Margaret, Maggie, who really raised me; she was the only one I really loved. In fact, except for just one other person who I met when I was older I never even thought about loving anybody.

It was a pretty strange upbringing. I was kind of like an only child. Aunt Maggie made sure nobody bothered me. I got just about anything I wanted, and it was extra lucky for me she lived the longest.

Why is that important that Maggie lived the longest? I have two brothers and a sister through my real mother, and another two half-brothers and a half-sister through my father's second wife. Then through the two other uncles whom I've hardly ever seen there are seven more cousins. Worse, my grandfather was one of the three brothers who actually did leave my great-grandmother. The two of them had five children, and all of them have offspring. If Aunt Maggie hadn't specifically left me the farm it probably would have been sold off and the money divided up among more than thirty people.

All these brothers, sisters, and uncles and cousins would have had a claim on the farm where I was raised if it hadn't been for my Aunt Maggie. She left me a nice farm, over three hundred acres cleared, another one hundred and sixty acres of woods, plus around twenty acres of river front property up in Delaware. She left it all to me. Not bad for somebody who was born too soon, and wasn't even wanted anyway.

Honestly I had it made on one level, but life was still for shit growing up. First I always had plenty of money. I got a car right away at sixteen. Hell I was driving the pick-ups when I was twelve. On the other hand I had to do most of the work around the place. I didn't have to actually do much farm work; John and Mitchell did that, but we always had at least two horses, plus the usual chickens, geese, guineas, dogs, cats, steers, and swine. In other words, my uncles did the corn and soy beans. I did all the animals, plus outside maintenance like the grass, bushes, windows, and the roofs.

We had two barns. Maggie had chicken houses, and there were several out buildings; like the corn stalks, tool sheds, a hen house, and an old outhouse. Even though we had indoor plumbing that included a bathroom with a tub, I had to keep up the outhouse. They were all worried someday the electricity might go out they'd be without a place to shit. It made sense I guess.

I suppose by now everyone's wondering when they're going to hear more about the bitch next to me. Well it's a seven hour drive so fuck off. I just want everyone to know I'm not some dirt poor asshole. I've got land and resources. What I don't have is any friends and I've had shitty luck with women; the whore beside me is just that much more proof of that.

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How I fucked up my life right out of the Gate:

I had a hell of a good time in high school. I drank, cussed, smoked, and played my way through my sophomore, junior, and senior years.

My first true love after was Aunt Maggie, and still would be I guess if another woman hadn't shown up. She's a girl named Angie. Angie is not the whore by the way. Remember the whore's name is Caprice. Angie is somebody else entirely.

Angie started out as this perfect kid. Her parents raised her to be a good upright Christian girl. I'm a Christian too. Well I'm working on it. Angie got excellent grades, went to church every Sunday, and I can say she minded her manners right through her senior year. Her problems didn't start till she graduated and got involved with me.

Honestly Angie was never what anyone would call very pretty. She was a tiny little girl, basically flat chested, glasses, dark brown hair and brown eyes. If you remember the kids in the smartest classes in school I'm sure you remember all the flattest least attractive girls were usually in the best class. That was Angie.

I took one look at Angie and decided this was someone I could have fun with. I don't mean take out and be nice to; I mean someone I could degrade. I mean like fuck over. I don't know why I felt that way. I honestly can't explain why I was like that or why I hurt her the way I did. I was just so angry all the time; angry, lonely, and mean.

I was a hell raiser, and poor Angie was this really good kid. Of course, you know what I did to her. I introduced her to Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, and Old Granddad. I showed her how to smoke marijuana. I showed her how her little pussy worked. In short I took this sweet innocent kid and totally fucked her up. I admit it; I ruined her. How was I supposed to know that this not so pretty little girl had what they call an addictive personality? Booze lit her lights, marijuana gave her goose bumps, and sex drove her half wild.

There were times when I could make her do anything I wanted. I made her suck me off on the old high school bleachers one night while all my drinking buddies sat around and watched. They all sat there and laughed while I gave her directions on how to do it better.

I used to make her wear the shittiest most revealing clothes. I pulled her shorts down and spanked her naked ass once on a picnic table bench while some of her 'good' friends watched.

When we went to the tavern I'd make her go to the bar and bring me drinks. We were both under twenty-one, but that didn't matter. I'd make her sit on my lap while I played with her flat chest in front of everybody. I did it because I was mean. I did it because it used to make her cry.

There was a time I almost went too far. I told her to go down for my friends. There were five of them that afternoon. She really cried, I mean really cried. She begged me not to make her suck off my friends. That's when I realized she really would do anything I said, so I changed my mind and didn't make her.

I think that's when I started to change; at least I started to change about Angie. I started to believe that maybe there was somebody else, I mean somebody besides a crazy aunt, who might actually care about me.

It was almost unimaginable that there could be another person on the planet who actually gave a rat's ass about whether I lived or died, but I sat there that afternoon and watched her cry and beg me not to make her suck off these other guys.

She kept crying, and she kept pleading with me not to make her do it. That's when I thought maybe Angie did care about me. I mean it never occurred to her to just tell me to fuck off and go home. She really would do anything for me.

The joke should have been on Angie. Damn, her cherry hadn't been the first I'd busted! No, the joke turned out to be on me! Like an asshole I fell in love with the squirt! Of course I was stupid; I married the little bitch.

If falling in love had been my first mistake, then marrying her was my second. Remember this; first and foremost I was a loner, a lobo wolf. I wanted and needed no one. I had no real friends, and that was fine with me. But I was, and am, a farmer. There are times of the year when that means some pretty long hours, and as Uncle Mitchel and Uncle John aged I had to take over more and more of their responsibilities.

Well poor Angie either couldn't or wouldn't wait around all day and night for her ever loving man to come home. I had no idea how fucked up she'd become. Little Angie needed her whiskey, and her smoke, and with that came her need for the big salami. If I wasn't home she didn't wait. There was a time there when during certain parts of the year, most notably the fall, I'd get home three or four o'clock in the morning after working machinery since the early morning and I'd get a phone call telling me my poor wife was asleep somewhere with vomit on her dress, booze in her stomach, and the semen from a half dozen men in her snatch.

Look I knew I was a cuck, but it was mostly my fault. I'd taken this sweet innocent and totally fucked her up. Oh sure I had acquaintances who told me to drop the bitch; just get rid of her, throw her scrawny ass out. I told everyone I just couldn't do it. Every time I saw her I remembered the sweet innocent little girl I'd found and how I'd corrupted her. I can honestly say it's true; paybacks are a bitch.

I tried my damnedest. I really tried, but there's a limit to how many times I could drag my drunken wife out of the tavern, how many times I could pick up my woman as she was lying asleep in her own puke on some other man's front lawn, or how many times I walked into the grocery or the feed store and hear the sniggering and the muffled jokes.

I gave up. I talked it over with my aunts, and together we decided it was time for some serious changes. The first thing I did was to get my aunts, by then Mitchel and John were dead, to agree to sharecrop. I sold off the animals. I hated to do that. Then I dumped Angie. I drove her back to her parents and dropped her off, and I went off and joined the army.

In short, I ran away. I didn't exactly completely run away. Everybody knew I'd be back, but what Maggie and Olive and I agreed was I needed a real dose of discipline. Sure I knew how to work hard, but I hadn't become a man. They agreed the army would either make me or break me. I drove off, leaving my two old maid aunts to tend the farm. I also left a sick little wife to suffer with her domineering hateful father and her overcompensating doting mother. I still didn't divorce Angie; I just couldn't do it. Call me stupid, call me a wimp; I guess I just had a touch of conscience. Imagine me with a guilty conscience. What a fucked up joke!

I signed up for the army. I don't know what it's like now, but the draft hadn't been gone all that long and they still talked about four categories of enlisted men; there were the N.G.s, National Guard, E.R.s, Enlisted Reserves, U.S.s, draftees, and last the R.A.s, Regular Army. When I went in there were still a few incredibly old U.S.s around, all of them having reenlisted several times. I went in as Regular Army.

When I went in we weren't at war with anybody; the First Iraq War had just ended, and our military was so primed it didn't look like anybody would ever try us. In fact everybody sort of figured we'd never get in any more wars; we were that damned good.

I could have done almost anything I wanted in the Army. I tested out quite high; some of the Warrant Officers tried to get me to go to school for foreign languages. I didn't see much value Arabic would have on a farm; so I opted for the motor pool. I worked a farm and understood the need for a little common sense knowledge about how machinery worked.

It didn't matter, what I learned in the Army didn't amount to too much. I already knew how to use a variety of firearms, and standing and working in the cold and the rain are things most farmers don't think about. The motor pool helped, I think it would have helped a lot more if we didn't have to put up with those little 'Goldie bars' running around acting like they were God's gift. Anyone who has ever been in knows who they are.

I pulled my time; saw a lot of Georgia, Texas, Kentucky, and Missouri, but I never left the States. I worried about my aunts, and went home every chance I got. I sent money to Angie's parents; never to Angie. Angie's dad died, but that was later, and I was sort of glad of it.

Once I took his daughter home he vowed to keep her away from me forever. That wasn't that big a deal since I was gone anyway, but what was good was he kept her in the house.

Though her dad hated me, and with good reason, he really loved his girl, and he kept her on the reservation. This was important, because just about two months after I left for Fort Benning, where else, I got word Angie was pregnant. A couple months after that I got served. I'm sure her dad made her divorce me. I got the paperwork, signed it, and sent it back. I made a copy though and put it on the bulletin board for the other trainees to see. That turned out good since a couple boys got 'Dear John's' and my divorce papers sort of softened the blow for them.

I figured it up and knew the baby was probably mine, but her father swore as long as he was alive I'd never see the kid. Damn if he didn't back what he said up too. While he was alive if I tried to see Angie or the baby when I was home on leave I was met at the door by her dad and her older brother.

Still I had to hand it to the bastard; he kept Angie dry the whole time she was pregnant. The baby was born, it was girl, and they named her Emily. Without even seeing her I knew I'd love her; how could anyone not love a girl named Emily?

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I got out of the army and went home:

I got home and went right to work. Too bad, two months after I got back Aunt Olive died, and four months after that I lost Aunt Maggie. It was like they were waiting for me to get home before they left. So here I was with a nice big farm, a tidy nest egg, and my ex-wife who wouldn't come near me, in fact a woman I hadn't been able to see more than four times in three years, and a little toddler I'd never seen. I had no friends; only acquaintances, hired hands, and jealous relatives. I went to work.