How did I get myself into this? As I sit here waiting to collect yet another debt for Mr. Asher, I question it all. How did I get here? What drives me to do what I do? Do I enjoy hurting people or is this just my twisted sense of justice? I don’t know if I can do this much longer, there has got to be something better in this world for me. No matter how empty I feel about most aspects of my life, I must admit that being JW’s enforcer provides me with an outlet for my inner anger.
I sure hope this guy is not late. I’ve been waiting at this train station for an hour and the train is suppose to be here at 5:00 p.m. sharp. I guess I can’t fault him if the train is late, unless he is the conductor, which I doubt. As long as he is on board, I will give him a pass on the time, but he better have the money and not some rehearsed excuse. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me, and we are only familiar by name alone.
My name is Abraham McCarthy, but most people call me Mac. I guess I don’t mind it so much, but I do find it funny how people take it upon themselves to shorten a name that your parents gave you. To me it just shows the audacity of the person to make such an assumption. This is the type of behavior that makes me not so much of a people person; actually, I would go so far as to say that the world would be a wonderful place to live if it wasn’t for the people. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not advocating wiping out the human race, I’m just stating a fact. It is an existential circumstance that cannot be avoided.
I know that I can be a bit cynical, but that is a part of my charm. OK, I can be a downright hard-ass, but one thing you have to give me is that I am fair. I offer this past situation as an example.
One day while drinking and gambling in a saloon in El Paso, Texas, a fella wanted to accuse me of cheating at poker. He was losing his money like piss in a holey bucket, and I was winning my fair share, but I am no cheater. Moreover, I don’t take too kindly about no man slandering my reputation or questioning my integrity. Inevitably, his constant jaw jacking and my emerging headache got my blood boiling. I offered him his final warning. “Look, friend, you can either show proof of your claim or shut the hell up. My fucking head is killing me and your constant belly aching ain’t helping it one bit! I promise you this, you would rather push a wet noodle up a tiger’s ass, then fuck with me during the onset of one of my headaches.” It was clear that my warning wasn’t concise enough to inspire him to take heed. He continued to insist, so I made him a deal. “I tell you what, partner, you call me out for cheating once more and prove your claim you can take all my winnings. However, if you are proven to be wrong in your accusations, then you will have to settle the debt you mounted by trying to taint my good name.” Unwittingly, he agreed. We played a few more hands, and just as expected, he cried wolf once more. He said that I was using the waitress to spy the other players’ hands and to slip me cards to stack my hand as she served us drinks. At that moment, I instructed no one to move and for the dealer to count the cards. Once he counted the deck and the hands of each player, he nodded to me and let me know everything was in order. I instantly knocked back another shot of whiskey, and as I slammed my glass down, I drew my Colt from my hip holster and shot my accuser right between the eyes. He dropped dead face down on the table. To most it may seem like an extremely harsh approach to take, but he made the deal and knew the consequences. Maybe he wasn’t aware that I meant he would pay with his life when I said he would have to settle his debt if proven wrong, but I view it like this, all a man has in this world is his word. So his word is his life. He tried to take my integrity and therefore he owed me his life. I told you I was fair. The most twisted part of that story is that he actually was holding a full house with three sixes and two jacks. Ironic, I guess the devil is a joker.
I wasn’t always this edgy, but after the war, I carry with me some scars that will never heal: the most nagging of which are the headaches. I was wounded by a musket ball that left metal shavings in the right temporal region of my skull. The doctors couldn’t remove it all for fear of causing more damage than good and the headaches are the result. To put it mildly, when they hit, it’s like being kicked in the head by a mule. I drink whiskey to take the edge off, but the truth be told nothing really helps. This includes the medicine the docs gave me, which I refuse to take anymore because I’m not some sickly person. What I have will never go away, and I will just have to live with that fact.
The war also changed me in another way. Being born in Tennessee, I was raised with traditional Southern values. My family owned slaves, and my uncle taught me that they were inferior to the white man and that because they were savages they couldn’t learn or be educated. Nor were they capable of showing compassion or love. All of these things were instilled in me from birth, so as an adult you can imagine my view of them. So having to fight a war that would determine their rights in this country was very important to me. Being almost fatally injured in that war affected my opinion of them even more.
It is safe to say that I took everything my uncle said to heart because he was the only male role model I had. My father was killed by Indians before I was born. He and my uncle were twins and had the very bond you would expect, so it was no major adjustment for my uncle to step right in and pick up the responsibility of making me a man. He was a successful businessman. He did very well for himself in the coal mining business in the mountains of West Virginia. He was what most people in that area would call rich, and he would do whatever it took to keep his position of wealth secure. As a young man, I saw him use others almost to their breaking point. I’m not just talking about the slaves but the whites who worked for him as well. He used to always say that the number one priority of a man in a position of power is to keep everyone else beneath him by any means necessary. I didn’t understand exactly what he meant at the time nor did I have much of an opinion on how I felt about it, but after all, I have been through in my life you can be sure that I fully understand what he meant, and I am brimming with my own personal feelings about his logic.
Now that I work for JW, it’s kind of like working for my uncle. They share similar beliefs about wealth, business, and managing the people who work for them. I guess that is one reason I don’t mind working for him because I am familiar with the mentality.
As for what kind of work I do for him, well, let’s just say I’m the finder of “hard justice.” If someone owes money and they are late on a payment, I help them understand the perpetual impact delinquency has on his business. The “justice” is that it’s only fair to affect the person the in the same manner as they affected JW’s business. Time is money, so wasted time derived from lateness means loss of money. Loss of money can result in cutbacks. Cutbacks could cost someone their job. Losing their job could result in a person taking drastic measures like robbing, stealing, or killing. If either of these things were to happen, then it would typically be considered as someone loses something of value. Maybe to the person who is late on their payment none of these things are connected, but to me they are all possibilities that could result from someone not honoring the sticking points of a deal. So I say all that to say this, I exact my justice in a manner that suits the crime. You spill JW’s milk, I kill your cow. You track dirt on his rug, I bury you up to your neck in the desert. You forget and make a late payment, I leave a scar on your face that will remind you every time you look in the mirror. I guess that would be the “hard” part of the justice. Most people think that I take things to the extreme, and some even think that I’m crazy, but none of it matters to me because I believe in “cause and effect.” In the cases I deal with, this theory fits perfectly. Every person I seek to bring to justice made their choice. Whether that choice be to do or not to do something, either way that represents the “cause” that sets me in motion. The actions I take as a result of their choice would result in the “effect.” The principles of this theory are poetic in their exactness. If you make a choice, you have to be willing to live with those choices. I truly believe that people in this world do things against others when they don’t fear repercussions.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t enjoy hurting people. I have actually been thinking of quitting and finding a more peaceful life. Hell, maybe I could just drop everything and travel the world. There is one thing I know for sure, and that is there is no shortages of things to do in this world as long as you got the money and the imagination. No sense in dreaming about all that right now, I still have unfinished business here in Apache Junction, and I never leave anything undone, for now let me turn my thoughts back to why I am here.
Well, looky here. Here is my mark now rushing off the train as it finally comes to a halt. I know it has to be him because of the panicked look on his face, and who else but a wannabe politician would come to the desert wearing an all-white suit. People always think that white will keep you cooler. Well, I got news for all of them, white suit, blue suit, black suit, a 115 degrees is hot, no matter what you are wearing. Not my matter though, I just hope he has that money because white isn’t the typical color of choice for funerals.