Chapter Ten

“Turn Of Events”

 

 

Later that day, Kerry was vomiting violently in the bathroom, bent over the toilet and hurling her guts out. She looked totally green in color and her eyes had the darkest rings around them that looked as though she was near death’s door. Her hurls of hot vomit didn’t stop. It was as if she were hurling her entire body inside out into that toilet as it filled with the creamy mess.

Damon had been watching from behind her, hiding his eyes in disgust every time she exhaled the goo, as if she shouldn’t have been doing this. But then again, he was also concerned with her money making potential too. If anything happened to her, his funds would be slimmed down.

She had become an additional source of funds for him and a fairly nice one, as he pimped her to the max, and now she was in grave shape at best and getting worse by the moment. “Baby, what’s wrong, you is sicker then a dawg?”

“I don’t feel good,” she barely told him, upchucking again. “I really think I need you to get me to emergency,” she struggled before again hurling what little contents were left in her stomach.

Damon was busy slipping into a dirty pair of pants as fast as he could in a grand panic, like the man had never been before. “Okay baby,” he yelled out the bedroom door. “I’ll take you there right now.”

 

Damon walked Kerry through the opening doors of the emergency at Bakersfield hospital, while everybody threw him a weird glance of disdain at the site of her.

Assistants helped her get seated as Damon made his way to the receptionist’s desk. While he worked with her to get the documents for payment, Kerry was put in a wheelchair half slumped over and wheeled through the emergency doors and into a patient’s room.

Damon entered the room, where he glanced down at Kerry who was just lying there as if half-dead.

He held his chin thinking about everything he had done to her, the good times, as he liked to remember them. Was she dead as of yet, would he need to find another white or black woman to use like he had used her? Lots of questions and few answers plagued him as doctor Beck entered the room. He was a tall guy with darkish auburn hair and greenish eyes, as he studied his clipboard.

He glanced at Damon, spotting the guy’s shabby dress manner, and then focused his attention on Kerry. “Doctor, what is it, what’s happening?” Damon leaned across Kerry’s bed, his hands beside her tired body.

Beck glanced up at him, took a deep breath and with a straight face like doctor’s often do, politely told him the following. “Your wife seems to be pregnant.”

“WHAT! What?” Damon almost freaked out. “Pregnant?” It had hit him so far from out of left field that he nearly collapsed in disbelief himself, and that was just the beginning of things.

“That is according to our blood tests,” Beck continued. “It’s very preliminary at this point,” he kept a straight face. “But all indicators point to that as the only explanation.”

“Wow,” Damon slapped a hand over his forehead in disbelief and Beck could see that Damon wasn’t at all happy with what he was being told. Then he turned to the doctor. “I see,” he faked his concern. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes I am,” Beck responded. He glanced a moment at his chart, flipped a page then glanced back up at Damon. “I’ll need some time alone with the patient.” It had been a stern comment and Damon realized that maybe it was best to let things play out.

“Okay doctor,” he nodded. “I be right outside waiting for anything.” He walked to the door, spun for a moment as Beck glanced up at Damon. “Can I see her after you’re done?”

“By all means,” Beck replied. With those words spoken, Damon exited the patient’s room and walked down the corridor to a waiting room with other folks.

The time had passed and an hour had gone by as Damon continued waiting patiently, checking his watch every so often, while his frustrations and thoughts grew. Meanwhile, inside the room, Beck walked over to Kerry’s bedside as she had become more with it and awake, at least cognizant of her surroundings.

“First things first,” Beck told her. “I have found an illegal substance in your body.” She rolled her head aside, glancing away. “You know what I’m getting at,” he told her in a scornful tone. “Now I have some good news and bad news for you.” He took a deep breath as she turned her head and stared up at him from her pillow. “First I’ll tell you the good news. Your collapse was do to a very preliminary pregnancy.”

“No,” she moaned in a sorrowful tone that threw doctor beck’s senses of her situation out of proportion. “No—oh my God!”

“I told your husband outside,” Beck informed.

“He’s not my husband,” she replied in a depressed state brought on by a harsh reality. What had been thought to be good news had been indeed very bad.

“I see,” Beck took a deep breath and sighed. “Well then, I suppose what I say next is best left in this room, unless you decide to disclose it with anyone.” He could see the intense worry building in her soulful eyes. “I also had another sample of your blood run, and you appear to have possibly contracted the HIV virus in your blood.”

“AIDS…?” she screamed in disbelief and shock

“I’ll have the confirmation from the lab in about three days. I thought I should notify you of these early findings so that you could let your partner know.”

She had fallen into near total shock and her voice had become a whimper at best. “I see,” she replied stunned. “Are you certain?” she asked, a panic in her tone. “It’s got to be a mistake.”

“Like I said, I’ll know in three days, you will need to call me then,” he told her closing his clipboard. “Otherwise I’ll release you tonight. I know this is tough for you, but I have to let you know what’s going on. We’ll talk again,” he told her as he exited the room, and then Damon entered shortly thereafter.

“He told you about the pregnancy?” Kerry asked him as she sat up in her bed.

“Yes baby he did, you is gonna be alright,” Damon responded, but he wasn’t cracking a smile or even a simple grin for that matter.

“I have a very personal question to re-ask you.”

”Go ahead,” he responded placing his hands at his sides.

“As you know, I trusted you.”

“Yes baby, you did.”

“Now I must ask this question again. Do you have AIDS?” She laid her head back upon the pillow waiting and waiting for his response.

Damon sighed, then took a moment to pause and finally stared right at her. “No…I don’t baby. I told you I didn’t. Dem other men, all dem used condoms, right?”

“Yes they did, the doctor must have been mistaken.”

“Oh baby,” he became quietly enraged as his eyes narrowed and one could see the heat rising from his scalp. “Don’t you go telling me you got AIDS!”

“I won’t know until three days from now,” she replied as tears ran down her face.

Damon looked over his shoulder and walked over to the door, quietly closing it. He quietly walked around her bedside and bent over her bed, slowly gripping her neck as she grabbed his hand. He tightened his grip, without yet choking her from breathing. “If you gave me AIDS bitch, I cut your fucking ass…you understand?” He started slowly squeezing until she nodded as more tears wept and a few got on his hand making him release her ASAP.

He took a step back away from her, wiping his hand frantically, then going quickly to a sink and washing his hand with soap and water. Then he turned to her. “Good. Now I’ll be back for you later when you gets the discharge. Until then, you just keep yo pretty lil ass warm in that bed. I got some money to earn.” With those words spoken, he walked out of the room and closed the door, and Kerry just totally began to breakdown in a flood of tears and internal agony she could no longer handle anymore.

 

Schweinfert leaned his hands over Kennedy’s desk. “Where do you get off running from a nigger?” Kennedy scorned him. “You were supposed to squeeze the trigger on him and if that meant shooting your white nigger bitch as well, then so be it.”

“I did, but an old friend took the bullet.”

“Was this old friend white?” Kennedy questioned sarcastically as he stood up eye to eye with Schweinfert.

“Yes…yes he was,” Schweinfert replied.

“I see, just another mindless brain dead white piece of trash,” Kennedy dismissed.

“My ex threw herself in front of him. I couldn’t believe it, my Lana doing that for a dumb fucking nigger.”

“Believe it,” Kennedy again scolded him. “It’s happening all over,” he told Steve, standing up, turning, and glancing out the window at the world. “They’re hitting on white women all over, not just in California. It’s even worse in the Midwest. I’m afraid you’re becoming too hot for our group,” he turned and faced Schweinfert. “I’m asking you to pack and git outta here.” It was a hostile tone and Schweinfert realized that he had turned on him.

“What do you mean?” he questioned in a gruff tone, hoping it might not intimidate Kennedy.

“Just what I said,” Kennedy responded, only this time with a more vicious stance and tone. “We do things more quite like, not with sudden gunshots, not yet anyway. You’ll have to go.”

“I see,” Schweinfert became meek, his voice cracking, the coward that he had grown down to. “What about her?” he questioned in reference to Lana.

“She’s already gone son, only thing you can do is scram out of here.” Kennedy stood up as two big white guys entered through the door. He glanced over his shoulder at them and nodded at them as they stood by watching. Then he turned again to Schweinfert. ”It’s over for you and us as partners. I will grant you this,” he told Schweinfert as he slowly walked around the desk to him. “I say that one day, things are going to get nasty, but white people will receive the respect they’ve been deprived of in this century…it’ll happen.” Then Kennedy extended his hand and with an ever-so-slight grin.

Schweinfert denied him that handshake for one last glance into the head Klansman’s eyes before turning and walking out the doors, without ever looking back. The two big guys watched him go as Kennedy wiped his chin, put his hands at his sides and just shook his head in disbelief.

 

It was a dilapidated part of Bakersfield, a slum if it could even be called that. A low-life area where crime could be had and the scum of the Earth found their crevices to deal business in.

This was the place the cops kept an eye on, where there was most of the trouble, and it was the place where Damon pulled up in his car and parked it in an alleyway. He checked his pistol, and then tucked it away in his leather bomber jacket. He had his classy black and white, high gloss shoes on, and he waited for a bit until he saw someone enter the other end of the short alley.

He checked his watch; glanced in the rear view mirror, slowly looking around to make sure the coast was clear. Then he cautiously opened the door as the other black man approached him. This other guy looked like a skinny piece of crap that stereotyped the appearance of your typical druggie, but he was far from that, a shrewd and ruthless businessman looking to make sales, even if they destroyed his fellow American’s.

It was always about the money and the thrill of the sale, and those be damned that either got in his way or didn’t pay up when the cash was due.

Damon was bigger than this guy was as he approached him. “You got the money?” Damon asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered sarcastically and rather casually, “I got the money. What about the stuff?”

“Yo man, I got lots of stuff, but first show me the money.” Damon waited as the guy pulled out the money.

“See, cash in hand,” he bragged to Damon who dawned a grin.

Damon took it and counted the wad of bills. “Okay,” he told the guy. “Here is your stuff.” He pulled out a pistol with a suppressor on it and popped four shots into the guy, then dragged the body beside a trashcan.

Damon pocketed the wad of bills, glanced around, quickly getting into the car and drove off. He had hoped nobody had seen what went down, but that was not entirely the case.

A young Latino boy emerged from near a broken fence to the alley and studied the dealer whose dead body lay there.

 

Wesley sat quietly behind his big desk pouring over the figures in their revenues, when the CEO entered. He glanced up, stood up and shook hands, a polite smile between the two men. “This is an unexpected pleasure,” Wesley told him.

“Yes it is. I have been talking with my wife and I considered stepping down. Remember our chats a while ago that awful evening before the cornfield event?”

“Yes I do, but please don’t tell me your leaving is anything bad.” Wesley had become quite disconcerted at the fact that his boss might be going, as the two of them had grown close for the time he had performed his admirable duties to the corporation.

“No, it’s not that,” his boss replied. “I’m getting at that age,” he sighed, “where I need to slow down, spend more time with the Misses and the rest of the family. Besides, I have found my replacement within the company, to carry on with the operations, confidently.”

Wesley sat back in his seat and held his pen in hand while his boss sat on the edge of his desk glaring down at him. “You have?” Wesley responded.

“Yes I have,” he beamed down at the black executive, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to make an announcement via the network to the fifteen hundred employees at our other offices.”

Wesley appeared stunned by the decision, but not all that surprised, for he knew it was coming. “This is a big move, but I am sure it’s what you feel is best.” In some ways he respected the guy greatly, understood things and how they were, the way they were supposed to be.

Wesley had grown all his life with harmony and balance and he was polished, had matured into a fine human being; and as near to perfection as anyone could be in their existence on the globe.

“I’m naming you as my replacement to CEO of corporate operations,” he told Wesley who swallowed a hard lump and gasped a moment for air to catch up with the amazing news. Then his mouth dropped open and he became speechless.

On one hand, Wesley had been expecting this, on the other hand he hadn’t known when it would be here and yet he just heard it, now it was a reality.

The news also meant a brilliant future above and beyond where he had only hoped to be, but he also realized it wasn’t going to be easy. He would be busier then he had ever been, and that meant taking time to grow, and grow well over the coming years. “Well, that’ll make your day,” his boss added with a big smile.

“Yes sir, it sure will,” he choked on the words, rising from his seat, shaking hands with the CEO as his replacement on the job.

“Good, let’s head out of here to the pub, we’ll discuss the details of this in a more relaxed setting.” The CEO then looked around the office, its neatness and at the door. “I never cared for business in small offices,” he murmured.

Wesley pressed the button on his phone getting the Secretary. “Hold all calls and take messages. I’ll be back in a few hours,” he instructed her.

“Okay Mister Houston,” his secretary Stella replied.

The CEO smiled at Wesley. “Mister Houston, I certainly wished my Secretary addressed me in that fashion.” He patted Wesley on the back and the two men exited the offices together.

 

Fred exited the office building where he worked. He was nice and neat and dressed in a suit. He walked across the road to the nearby Taco stand and ordered two fish tacos, his absolute favorite.

He got a cola drink and sipped it while chewing down the tacos and sitting at an outdoor table beside the food place. It had started out a fresh day and all seemed to indicate that this wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

While he munched down the food, he relished his growth, for considering everything Fred had been through, life had actually worked out well, and still his mind drifted back to Kerry, her beauty and innocence that he missed, her eyes and her inner qualities.

He wondered why it had become the way it did and why he lost her? Questions he quickly found no answers to. Ironically, it had not been as painful either. He had grown as a better person and had gotten on with his life and he thought of her as being happy with the moves she had made in her life.

Fred held no resentment towards her at this point. In fact, Priscilla had only taught him that life can turn and you can live it and never stop living it, and yet each time he saw Priscilla, his thoughts turned back to Kerry, as if a cosmic and distant bond was still left unbroken in her life and his.

Fred felt his shoulder where the wound had been during that hiking trip. Then suddenly, a shadow cast over him as he wolfed down the second fish taco, and he turned and glanced up at Steve Schweinfert.

Steve’s appearance was a bit ragged, his eyes dark, face unshaven. Fred glanced at him with a scowl of hatred as he finished his taco. Steve thrust a wad of bills at Fred. “I’m sorry man, I didn’t mean it,” and he began to break down shedding a small and single tear.

“It’s over, over, over…leave me the hell alone.”

“I need help, I need your help to win her back,” Steve pleaded.

Fred stood up after taking another sip of the cola. “You’ve lost her, its over. Haven’t you done enough damage already?”

“Please, you’ve gotta help me,” Steve continued his desperate plea, shoving the wad of bills at Fred.

“You did this to yourself, when you took your hand to her,” Fred replied, getting in Schweinfert’s face, explaining it to him with a hot ugly breath of anger.

“But all I did was love her,” Steve replied, looking down and away. He didn’t even have the guts to face Fred.

Fred realized that he couldn’t take Steve down in a brawl, because of his arm, and that meant he had to fight him with hard words.

“That’s not love. Love is when you’re committed to taking care of the person, not beating em down. She’s a real woman, couldn’t you have respected her?” Fred stepped back as Steve glanced up at him, Fred holding his hands at his sides. “The reason you don’t respect her is because you lost your own self respect a long time ago, look at ya.” Steve glanced downward again.

“You need to go and leave us all alone. You’re nothing but a thug and you’re not even a good one at that.” Steve looked at him again, but this time Fred could see anger building in his eyes. “She’s probably going to have his baby,” Fred continued.

This brought a rage in Steve as he hold off and belted Fred, knocking him to the ground, then took off, yelling “No, noooooo.”

Two bystanders ran to assist Fred and helped him off the ground. “Get the police,” one of them called to the server in the taco stand window.

“Its too late, he’s gone,” Fred told them as he sipped that Pepsi again, then gathered himself together and brushed off the sidewalk dirt from his slacks.