Carne Vale - Flesh Farewell Chapter 2

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Rick Waters left town with a carnival to escape the sentence handed down on his twenty first birthday by a judge in Palmer. He was going to be free, but at what cost.

Chapter Two

The road from the courthouse to Ludlow was ten miles long and followed the Chicopee River West. It crosses water three times on its way towards Rick's home and the first bridge was just a mile down the road from the courtroom in Three Rivers.

Rick stopped to look over the edge. Below, the Quabog river meets up with the Swift and Ware, spilling together into the Chicopee behind the Tampax factory that many of the villagers relied on for a living. Below the bridge the waters of the Quabog were low and you could see much of the limestone riverbed that would contain the waters when they were high. There is no dam here, and the rivers cut holes and pockets into the stone as it pools above the flat surface of the limestone.

Trees cling to the sides of the river bank precariously situated in between the river and the village's buildings. Here, three rivers converge into one, on their way to Long Island Sound by way of the Connecticut River. The rivers were low because the winter had been warm. Each day the sun had come up and melted what ice had formed at the edge of the river at night and now it was gone. With the sun beginning to wane in the sky Rick realized that unless he got moving he would still be on the road after dark. He began to walk West, not wanting to stay at the edge of the railing for much longer unless to test his own will to continue now that his future was out of his control.

The youngest of four, Rick had inherited the best of both parents, one Irish and one French. His baby face was handsome and his thick black hair was unruly, like him. His eyes were blue and gray. Some days they were the deepest blue and on others they were a pale, slate gray. He had known that his eyes were special, they had captivated people in the past. Strangers would stop and say the nicest things or look deeply into them and smile.

His parents were each born into large families that had overcome the ravages of depression to achieve the new American dream. Irish, Portuguese, and Polish families moved to Ludlow to begin their own American dream and Rick's dad brought his young family to Ludlow for its schools and clean neighborhoods. When Rick was three his died in a car accident and as he grew up from child to boy he couldn't stop thinking about how different his life would be if only his father were still alive.

There had been a long list of counselors to get over the loss, or to get over drinking. His past was littered with appointments made and missed. The state had ordered his attendance at various group meetings to learn about his behavior and how it was affecting his life. The whole idea was to give a drunk something to do so he doesn't drink, right? After all, how good can it be for a guy to continuously talk about something in order not do it? It eludes me how that's supposed to work.

In the meetings he had attended in the past Rick would describe his past as if it were someone else.

"I have love in my life."

"I love ice cream, that's a love."

"I love my dog more than I do ice cream, there's emotion involved."

"I sometimes have no idea what love is all about."

"I heard it at home but didn't quite believe it."

"I love you."

"Your mother screwed us all." My oldest brother would say. he stopped loving too. He stopped so hard that he fell into depression and desperation and sorrow. He was, after all, only 12. He was in the car the night his father died, "Wasn't he?" You would have to ask him yourself if you can find him.

"Your mother is your Mother." That's my other brother, the middle child. Just enough opinion to hurt himself with his own words. The middle child goes unreported, undiscovered. This son made it. Made it through his life not without trouble, strife, fights, obscene drunkenness, but without the legal issues which can takes days, months, and years from those who do it differently.

"You just leave your mother out of this." There she is, the oldest child and only daughter. I do not care if you eat green eggs and ham, I just don't give a damn. She was lucky to be the first to leave the house. Ten years my senior, There's not much interaction, attraction, or loss. The opinion I have today is that she could have done better. On the inside.

No matter where we were there was loss for me. The days of my youth were appropriately filled with enough joy to consider it a happy childhood, but life is only as good as we believe it is and for me life was just a procession of days and nights and months and years where I wished for a moment that he was there. I had dreams and visions and pain that would fall upon me and push away my love. Push it back to a place where it became lust, where it became desire. My desire to never want to love again was strong.

My life as a teenager was spent doing what I wanted to do. By now, the home that I shared with my mother and my brother was more a hotel than a home. The rarity of having the three of us together at once inside the walls was staggering. While mom worked and my brother had his friends, I had mine. In the neighborhood, exploring around town, starting trouble with a neighbor or something like that, in a place where everyone knew your name I was nameless and the days progressed. I believe something was happening inside of me, or something was not happening inside of me. I learned to care less than I should. I let the lack of caring take me down paths I should not have gone. I could have been the best at something early on in life but I was not.

I was sixteen and on my way to Texas for the second time. It had been decided that a trip to Texas would fix all the problems I was dealing with at home. My grades were a mess. Summer school in Houston was supposed to fix me up and get me back on track. But my body was searching for my first experience, and during that summer I got exactly what I wanted.

It was a great summer for most of the time I was in Houston. I did exactly what I wanted to do outside of attending and passing the summer school program at Cy Creek. I did what was expected of me and I did more than that. That was the summer of my first sexual encounters with a woman. She had platinum hair and a funny smile and she let me in. She let me in whenever I could. She let me whenever I should not. She let me in and let me in and never thought about the day I would leave. Until it was close and the questions about what we were supposed to do were real. Now she says she's pregnant. Now she wants me more than ever before and I'm not sure what to want. My love was not for her but for the experience. I wanted to stay. I ran away and stayed in an abandoned house just wanting to stay. I did not stay though, and she was not pregnant. I was found and shipped home early. Love eluded for the first time.

Back home things quickly became usual again. By now it was just me and mom in the house. I was happy for that adjustment and I do not know if it happened before, or after I came home from Texas, but now that Brennan had been married and moved out, I began to notice that there was more that I wanted and had no plan to achieve than I ever realized before. Now was the time I should have been working on getting ahead, but I decided to stay the same. Just wanting something I could not have. My love deluded me.

I stopped caring again. It was easy to do. The things that should come naturally did not. Jobs, independence, friends, they all belonged to someone else. I worked and got fired for lack of caring, or lack of attendance. My first attempt at getting my driver's license I went the wrong way into the DMV parking and failed. These were the years that my path led me the most. But now I see it was me. I kept myself from achieving by not caring enough to succeed, to persevere. I had a crutch and I was using it on the inside. Whenever I could I would smoke to get high, drink to get drunk, and if I could do it with a friend I was satisfied. I had given enough already, and I just wanted to do what I wanted to do.

"As the arrival of a new year is approaching fast, I have been working hard to include you into everything that is important." "Get ready to have special access to the content that Powerfitz will be producing in 2010, and for anyone who subscribes to our content, you will get VIP treatment from all of the Powerfitz Publishing brands."

The Flesh Farewell Trilogy Began 11/01/09

November was National Novel Writing Month and the folks at Nanowrimo attracted more novelists than ever before, Powerfitz author FD Walsh included. Carne Vale - Flesh Farewell was created during the competition and since winning the event held at Nanowrimo, Powerfitz Publishing has been hard at work inserting chapters from the book on the web for free. To read Carne Vale - Flesh Farewell, Book #1 on Facebook