Flames

"Because it's time; we or I need to try to make things right if I can. I know you hate me but I want to bring this to some kind of ending, the right way."

About that time, McCullough and the other men returned from the restroom and a furious McCullough came over to our table. He grabbed Linda's arm forcefully and yanked her back away from the table. I started to rise but Jake stopped me.

"She's his wife, not yours, Liam"

Linda stood behind her husband and cowered looking at the floor. The bastard spoke next.

"I catch you talking with her or just asking what damn time it is I'll have you gutted like a pig, you understand me boy?"

I looked up at him and said "Fuck off, you little short dick ball-less wonder."

Maybe it was the fortitude of having his buddy the Sheriff in close approximation or maybe it was his sense of invincibility. Whatever it was my comment spurred him to take his best shot as I sat there in the booth.

He threw a girly sucker punch than glanced off my cheek and in carrying himself forward with the punch I grabbed his head and slammed his face onto the edge of the table.

The spray of blood from what was left of his nose covered the end of the table and spewed onto the floor. He fell backwards and lay prone on the carpet. The Sheriff seized my shoulder in an attempt to arrest me for an assault but one of the fellows at the other end of the booth held up his camera and let him know it was all caught on video. McCullough clearly took the first swing and instigated the encounter.

The two men helped the emasculated fool to his feet and led him out the door followed by a totally disheveled Linda.

"Jesus H. Gonzales! Hahahah! That was unbelievable," Jake exclaimed and tipped up his beer. "Couldn't have happened to a more deserving prick."

Linda should have warned him. I've been boxing most of my life ever since my Dad threw a pair of boxing gloves at both my brother and me and started teaching us how to box and defend ourselves when I was 12 years old. A candy ass punch by a lawyer dressed up for a fancy gig was not going to do it and with witnesses around to back up the true events I was feeling pretty good.

I stayed feeling good until about three o'clock the next afternoon.

"One of the girls told me that they took Linda to the hospital this morning. She had been busted up pretty bad. Her husband told the EMS workers that she had fallen down the stairs from drinking." Sherri told me.

I knew that was bullshit. Sherri drank alcohol, no doubt, but only in moderation. I never knew her to have more than two drinks ever, even when we were dating and out partying. She was a social drinker only.

"How bad is she hurt?"

"Liam, she's in intensive care at Lane Memorial."

I didn't say anything to Sherri but I didn't need to. She knew I would go to see her no matter what the circumstances were.

"Be careful."

I pulled into the Lane lot, parked my truck and walked into Admitting and down the hall. I knew half the nurses in the place. It's a small town and the little girl on duty right then had a brother that worked for me. She and her husband had been out to my place a couple times for a BBQ.

"Annie, what room is she in? I'll be careful, I promise."

She didn't hesitate a bit. "Room 1202, just around the corner. Please be quiet, OK and you can't stay but a couple minutes."

I thanked her and walked around the corner and peeked into the room. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Her skull was bandaged and her mouth and nose were swollen. Her right arm was in a cast as was her left ankle. Her chest appeared to be bandaged up as well. She was also awake.

I took her small hand in mine and tried to smile at the woman who used to be my wife. I didn't love her like I used to but I still loved her in some fashion even if I hated her fucking guts. It had been by coincidence three years and three months and three days by my reckoning since she had let that bastard put his ring on her finger. I looked at it in my hand and bent down and asked her.

"Did he do this to you?"

I didn't need any other words. I knew that getting drunk and falling down anywhere just wasn't going to happen with this woman. She looked into my eyes and nodded yes.

"He's not going to do it again, ever."

I kissed her hand and left the room.

-----------

The crackling groans of a house fire as it builds a life of its own are an unforgettable sound. An occasional timber crashes to the cellar feeding the leaping flames even further. Firemen can race around to pump tanker trucks of water onto the blaze but living in the country has its infrequent costs. There are no fire hydrants to hook up to and 500 gallons of water or even two or three times that is no match for the beast with a 30 minute head start.

The house was fully engulfed and the orange hot streaks of fire had already broken through the roof of the large attached barn by the time any hose sprayed the first drop. All the volunteers could do was to contain the blaze to the house and attached structures. Other nearby out buildings could only be sprayed down with water to keep the intense heat and sparks from combusting them.

Sitting in the shadows among the tree line at the top of the hill, I watched as the fire consumed every remnant of what used to be the heart and soul of Daniel Patrick McCullough. His treasured farm, the automobiles, the precious art works, one hundred and fifty years of privileged history were all consumed in a wretched and fiery vengeance.

Smoke still poured from the burnt wreckage when the morning light hit the fields but I was long departed from the tragic scene. Sherri rolled over and snuggled up to me nudging me awake. I opened my eyes to see her peering into mine with a contemplative look on her face.

"Time to wake up, sleepyhead. We promised my parents we would do the BBQ with them this afternoon and there is a lot to get ready this morning. I think Mom said she was expecting around 50 people this time."

I hadn't forgotten but I was still tired.

"Jake and those yahoos should not have kept you out so late, baby. "

She was right, of course, and who was I to argue with the woman I loved?

We arrived at her parent's home to help with the set-up and by 1PM people started arriving. On everybody's lips was the story of the fire the previous evening and how nobody had been able to locate the owner of the farm. I took it all in, every morsel of it. It seems Daniel Patrick McCullough had not been seen since the EMS responders left the house to transport Linda to the hospital.

The rumor mill was in full swing. Several suggested 'on good authority' that McCullough set the fire and ran off. A few others piped in with the understanding that the old place was really a fire trap and they were not at all surprised it went up in flames. Most had an opinion one way or the other but nobody had heard anything about the whereabouts of the owner.

The BBQ wrapped up by early evening and Sherri and I hooked up with Jake and his wife along with a couple other folks at our usual watering hole.

"I heard from the boys down to the Firehouse that they located Daniel McCullough in the cellar of the old house; looks like he hung himself." Jake said in a hushed tone.

We exchanged glances for a moment and expressed faces of shock but if there was a single sorrowful soul at the table for that sorry bastard from hell, it was well hidden.

"So how did the fire start?" asked Jake's wife.

"I don't know. They think it might have been old wiring but the fire was so hot and everything collapsed into the cellar that they might never know for sure. The fellows said the Fire Marshall would be looking things over for the next couple days but they don't think there was any foul play like arson or murder, God forbid. No, it looks like the smarmy prick ended his woman beating life on his own and his fucking house burned down on top of him."

Jake burst out grinning on his last comment and we all lifted our mugs in toast to the dead bastard.

The Fire Marshall concluded his investigation and decided bad wiring was the cause of the initial fire with the possibility there might have been a lightning strike involved. The Sheriff's Department decided the death of McCullough was a suicide although I was questioned twice concerning my whereabouts on the night in question. There was no question concerning my alibi. It was rock solid with Jake and 6 other witnesses to back it up. I think it might have been my parting comment to the Sheriff at the last session that wrapped it all up.

"You either shit or get off your fucking pot. If you don't have anything else, I'm getting up and leaving."

My lawyer just nodded his agreement and the two of us walked out.

A couple weeks after the fire things started getting interesting at Ladson, McCullough, Sperry, LLP. Federal investigators and bank auditors showed up and began an investigation and audit into the firm's finances and investments. While nothing of a criminal nature came out of it, two months later the firm was in Federal Bankruptcy Court seeking reorganization. Instead, it faced liquidation when the Feds slapped a couple heavy fines on them for several irregularities.

All that activity didn't have much of an impact on the probate of Daniel McCullough's estate. Linda had been released from the hospital two weeks after being admitted and moved into the guest cottage on the farm while she started settling her deceased husband's affairs. Surprisingly he didn't have a will but he also had no other family except Linda as his widow. She basically would get everything after the state got its share. One of his ex-wives tried to make a move but the divorce settlement killed it off rather quickly.

Her reign as the ubiquitous queen of Setterville seemed to have come to an end the day her husband decided to inflict his irrational rage upon her. However, to one who sought the green grass of a better life she at least acquired something from the tolerance of her beatings; all his wealth whether ill- gotten or legitimate was now hers...

I sat down with Linda Harris Donaldson McCullough at last to get that closure I never had. There were some things she knew but a lot of things she had no inkling of. She never knew about the video being played in the lockup or his venomous boasting in his office building that long ago afternoon. Her face blanched some when I told her but it didn't really matter in the end.

"Liam, I know this won't change anything but if I had it all over to do again, I wouldn't have done it at all. I was ashamed of how I did leave you and once I did I regretted it immensely. I got caught up in the flash and glitter of a rich man and discovered it was all chaff and seed as far as the man was concerned. He wasn't a fraction of the man that you are.

"What I did come to find out was that I was just another of his acquisitions. Somehow because I was your wife, he decided to target you as some kind of enemy while he seduced me. When you beat him like you did, in hindsight I almost wish you had castrated the fucker but I was too blinded by the gold.

"It was fucking stupid, you know, all that wealth? There's no happiness in any of it. He was the most miserable son of a bitch I ever knew once I got to really know him. He started hitting me while you were in jail and he never stopped until he put me in the hospital the night he, well, killed himself."

She looked up at me with a slightly raised brow over one eye. I wasn't going there.

"Now, the real question is 'why', isn't it? There is no good reason, Liam. It wasn't you or anything you did or didn't do. It sure as hell wasn't his prowess as a man. Jesus, what a fucking fool I am. I threw away a beautiful man .. yes, Liam, you are a beautiful man and Sherri is damn lucky to have you. I threw it all away for what I thought was a great life, better than what I had, and now, I have to live with it."

"Did you ever love me, Linda?

She sat there for a while engaged in thought.

"You know I have asked myself that a million times but I did so out of the guilt and betrayal and if I could have convinced myself that I didn't I could then excuse what I did under the guise of something heroic or some such silly shit.

"I never stopped loving you, Liam, even when I was in bed with that man I called my husband for three years. When you are off and married to Sherri I'll still love you but I also know what I did to you and there is no going back from that is there?"

I shook my head.

She looked harder than when I was married to her. She was no doubt still a beautiful woman, more so than any other woman in town but there was an edge that had been instilled from beatings and guilt. She was a different woman and she certainly knew I was a different man than the one who sat at that table in my kitchen and opened the dissolution.

I did give her a hug one last time and I also kissed her with passion for the last time. I hated her fucking guts but I still loved her...

I toyed with the little box in my pocket, nervous as a church mouse looking out for the parsonage cat. Sherri looked beautiful as ever. I had asked her to get dressed up tonight because I wanted to go out on the town. We went to dinner at our favorite steakhouse on the edge of town, the scene of our first date almost four years earlier.

"Jesus, Liam, if you don't ask me pretty soon, I'm going to have to go pee."

We both burst into laughter and I dropped down onto my knee in front of all the other patrons and asked the woman I loved to marry me. When she said yes, I slipped my mother's ring onto her finger and gave her a long lingering kiss to the applause of every diner in the place.

Epilog

Linda actually attended my wedding, invited by Sherri, but she skipped the reception and left town for good shortly afterwards. She came into town the beautiful wife of a middle level manager at a small manufacturing plant and she left town as the rich widow of another man who never grasped the price of his thievery.

About a year after she left somebody wired a cool $1 Million dollars into my bank account with just a short note in the wire text field - 'Thank you for saving my life'. I'm not one to complain about money.

As for Daniel Patrick McCullough, he's just a memory and a footnote in the town's historical society papers. Somebody wrote a long obituary for him spelling out all his myriad accomplishments but in the end it was all dross. He died at the end of a short rope with all his precious belongings about to go up in flames around him.

My last words to him were... "That desirable piece of ass is somebody else's now."

MFH