Chapter 2

DAY ONE, NEAR GOLDEN, COLORADO, AFTERNOON

Having made his mind up to go into town, Marc went to the barn and flicked the switch to the generator. It whirred, rumbled, and then caught with a steady roar. After a minute, it settled down. All of the outbuildings were hooked directly to this generator, which was only used when normal power was down.

"Shit. I should have noticed the house was on generator power," he said. The house had a separate generator with feed line going from the barn to the house. When he had first started renovating he had brought the main power leads into the large barn with an auto trip switch for the house. It was an 'on demand' unit, which meant at low demand; it barely was running at all. When it switched over to generator power, you could not tell from sound unless you were in the barn.

Marc flicked on the overhead and bay lights. He walked down to his favorite form of driving, an old '55 Chevy pickup. It had a 321 mill, with a Holly 4-barrell carburetor. The standard "H" box (4 speed, 4 on the floor) had an #8 billiard ball for a shifter knob. The pickup did have a fairly new 'Rhino Liner' in the cargo bed, hiding the dents, dings, scratches, and scrapes made from loading and unloading all sorts of equipment and what-all.

The rest of the truck also looked like it had seen more than its fair share of usage. But when you looked closely, there was no rust, even though the blue paint was quite faded. He'd had the pickup for nigh onto 40 years. He inflicted it on whomever he was with, or wherever he was living. Every six or seven years, he would strip it down. He'd fix whatever seemed to be worn, rebuilding the engine. Then he'd strip the paint down to the primer, and repaint it the same pale blue. The odometer had turned over so many times, that he no longer knew how many miles the truck now had.

As he walked along the left bay to the pickup, he had passed a 2005 Chevy Malibu with only 16,000 miles on it, and a '53 Studebaker that still had all of its original equipment (even if most of the items, and many of the parts, including the engine, needed to be reworked). Across in the other bay, were a reworked and extensively modified deuce and a half (2-1/2 ton ex-Army truck), an ancient John Deere tractor, and an older Airstream travel trailer.

Marc got into the '55 pickup, and cranked the engine over. At first, it did not catch. He tapped the gas pedal twice, and re-cranked the engine. It caught, even if it did sputter a little bit. After letting the engine idle for a minute, he pulled out of the barn.

When he pulled up by the house, he realized he had forgotten more than a few things that he was going to need. Things had changed.

He went through the back door of the house and down into the basement. Unlocking the safe storage room, he went in and opening up one of the gun cabinets. He pulled out a 30.06 rifle with 20x scope, a 30/30 Winchester lever action rifle and a .45 caliber Glock 21 pistol. He took extra clips and ammunition for all.

'Better safe, than sorry, ' he thought, remembering the dog pack. "I don't know what-all is out there, anymore."

Marc then went into the open storage area. He pulled out a bedroll, small camp stove, and a knapsack loaded with other camping gear. He loaded this all up into the pickup. The bedroll and camping gear went into the bed of the pickup. The rifles he put into their boot holders, and fastened the Velcro latches to hold them securely. It was too damn much trouble to use the rear window rifle racks, and having to bend and twist around to get one of the rifles down.

He liked the Velcro hold-downs, which could be dangled aside when not needed or required. Then all he had to do was lift the rifle up out of the boot and stick it out the window to be ready to fire. Locking the cabin up and walking back up to the large barn to lock it up he decided to leave the generator running, which kept all the outside lights on, since he didn't know what time he would be back from town.

Two of the dogs were jumping and running around the pickup, so he opened the tailgate and both dogs jumped up into the bed. Marc looked up to the porch and the Basenji and the wolf were still lying there on the burlap bags.

"Hell, they can stay here and guard the place from intruders," he said to himself. "I'm pretty sure they will be okay since I killed most of that dog pack."

Without another thought, he jumped into the pickup and headed down to the highway to drive into Golden.

As he turned onto Highway 46, he realized how good he actually felt. He rolled down the window to get a little fresh air, as the heater was a bit warm. But the warmth on his legs felt good, so he decided to leave the heater on. As he drove, he began thinking back on his life. His mother he vaguely remembered in just a fragmentary memory of someone bending over him and tucking him in.

That in turn, was followed by images of a tall and stern elderly man and his wife. The only thing he could remember about them, were the beatings, apparently for something he had done wrong. But he also remembered the wife arguing with the man. Sometimes the man would turn on her and hit her, and more arguing would start. One night the arguing started and the man was beating his wife. Then there were cops and ambulance attendants.

He was taken to some sort of juvenile center.

For the next eleven years or so, it was foster home after foster home. Finally, he ended up in an orphanage in Fort Worth. The orphanage was home to about a hundred and twenty or so kids, ranging from five to sixteen or seventeen years of age.

One of the things the orphanage taught was teamwork. They all learned how to work together in pairs and groups. While all the kids went to public schools; the after hours were spent in working around the orphanage, in some form of job or chore, for four days of the week. Friday evenings and Saturdays were free from any responsibility but school work.

Both the older girls and the older boys were encouraged to take dancing lessons, art study courses, judo, and various sports activities. For the boys, there also was boxing. While Marc excelled in sports, he found that he also enjoyed helping to build things. He found he was good at organizing. He organized teams, groups, and even entire events with seemingly little trouble.

Eleventh grade found him playing football for the varsity team, as a linebacker. He was third string, but still got to play in several games. That year his team was Bi-District champs. Most of the players on that team were seniors, though. When football season rolled around for his twelfth and final year, there were only five seniors that had any experience, and only one of them was a starter.

When the season started, he was up to 6'2" and weighed 215 pounds. He had added an inch of height and thirty pounds of muscle over the last twelve months. A lot of this muscle mass Marc attributed to Dante, the returning senior starter. He was a defensive end. Dante had worked with Marc on weights after practice in the eleventh grade, and during the winter and spring. He had gotten Marc a job on a road crew during the summer.

Dante had also introduced him into his family, and had exposed Marc for the first time to Black life, and Black humor. Marc already knew the prejudices of being an orphan: unwanted and only tolerated. Now he learned about racial prejudice. What surprised him at first was that many blacks were just as prejudiced; either against whites, Mexicans, or Orientals. It seemed that each group picked on or belittled the other groups. He began really to notice that prejudice of some form also entered political, religious, social, and sexual groupings.

Dante and he ignored all of it, unless one of them was pressured. Then the other would always come to the rescue, or provide assistance of some form.

At the end of their senior season, the football team was 2-8. It was not exactly a good season. But, in a way, was an extraordinary season. Of the eight losses, only one was by more than ten points. The other seven were by seven points or less. The main reasons were Dante and Marc. The sportscasters were always calling, "Tackled by Marc Haines, Tackled by Marc Haines and Dante Jackson," and "Tackled by Dante Jackson".

By the fifth game of the season the cheerleaders came up with a new cheer, "Black and White, Fight, Fight, Fight." One of the sportscasters started referring to them as the "the Spice Brothers, Salt and Pepper" which got their names into the newspapers. As the season progressed, more and more of the cheers began when the defensive team took to the field. The other defensive players fed on it, and stepped up their level of play also.

After their seventh game, the coach called the two of them out of practice, and walked with them, up to the field house. There they met the "good old boy" coach of Texas Tech. He looked at the pair.

The coach said to Dante, "You don't know me Son, but I've got more black players playing for me, than any school in the South West Athletic Conference." Turning to Marc, he said, "Son, you are the opposite side of the same coin as Dante. You both ignore the outside world and enjoy each other's company, and playing football. I want the Spice Brothers to play defense for the Red Raiders and add a little spice to it. We sure can use the help, and you'll get a good education," Dante and Marc both signed Letters of Intent to Tech; each thinking their future was assured.

Marc grinned, thinking about Dante. In their freshman year, they were the holy terrors on the freshman team. It wasn't possible to separate the two of them. Dante in his sophomore year made Honorable Mention All-American. For the following two years made Consensus All American Defensive End in almost every poll or awards group. He then moved up, and played pro ball for the Cleveland Browns. In his second year, he went to the Pro Bowl. Following that, for the next eight years, he was All-Pro. Shame was that during most of that time he played for Cleveland, Cleveland couldn't remember what the word 'offense' meant.

Dante met his wife, Angie, during his second year in Cleveland. For several years, it caused him problems. Snide comments kept being made by both blacks and whites. His wife was a very wealthy and socially prominent white heiress. The two of them had an enormous respect for each other, and their love was just as deep. They both kept their chins up, and refused to make responses to any type of derogatory remark. Acceptance came in time and they became even closer.

Dante once told Marc that he had thrown a little black humor at this wife, Angie, about her sticking with him and she just couldn't stay away from that 'Big Black Meat'. Angie had just looked him straight in the eye.

"If I want 'Big Black Meat' so bad," she had said, "I can just call up my daddy. We do own several herds of Black Angus cattle and there are a lot of Big Black Bulls in the herd, packed with a lot of Black Bullshit."

Dante told Marc that after she had said that, he never again tried to tease her with racial humor. In fact, he avoided prejudicial jokes or humor, of any sort. Marc and Dante had kept in touch over the years, though each had widely separated in their paths.

Marcs' course in life changed radically in his sophomore year. Over the previous year and a half, he had noticed that he had less and less tolerance of prejudice and ignorance. Marc began to make comments back every time he heard a racial slur or bigotry in any form. When this branched into intolerance of even ignorance or ignorant statements, he just accepted it as part of himself.

That, however, was not acceptable by the professors and 'academia' of the University. Everything came to a head in late September of his sophomore year. One of his economics professors made the statement that in Early British civilizations, there were no monetary exchanges. Goods only exchanged hands by the trading of goods, or by seizure of goods, gold, and jewelry.

Marc had raised his hand upon that statement, and the Professor had ignored him. Marc again raised his hand after another comment was made, and again was ignored. Finally, Marc had had enough. He stood up and spoke in a loud voice, that all of the one hundred and eighty odd students in the auditorium could clearly hear.

"You, Sir, are obviously confused. Roman coins were constantly traded and accepted as payment for goods. As well, the Romans taxed different goods, and services. They also charged for the usage of the improved roads. Further, they accepted silver pieces as coinage in payment of taxes, and for trade goods."

The professor immediately expelled Marc from the class, and went and talked with other professors about Marc's comments on many different subjects. Several others had had minor problems with Marc. Several had essay questions and tests, which Marc had in several instances questioned rather heatedly.