Chapter 1

There are those moments in life that you honestly regret for about a few minutes, thinking that you’ve gone too far and pressed your luck. Then you remember that if you didn’t make what one might consider a mistake, you wouldn’t be the person that you are today. That moment came for me, most keenly in mind, on April 23, 1977, some forty years ago, oddly enough, the day that I died and was reborn from the ashes of the old self. At the time I was just a thirty year old, unhappily married man, already well past the seven year itch with my then wife Elaine, who I had wed eight years before just out of the Navy (no, I didn’t join to avoid Vietnam, but I didn’t see combat, either). I was frustrated with our marriage and I suspected that she was, too.

The incident that dramatically changed me and my life for good (or for evil in some people’s minds) was the evening that I came home from a parent-teacher conference to find my wife Elaine training a shotgun on me and dumping a bunch of my clothes and other personal belongings onto the lawn. I was in no mood for that kind of bullshit after a long-ass day of teaching idiot teenagers history and civics and meeting their myopic parents, so I glared at her and started to walk past her crazy ass to grab a few things that I wanted for myself that she hadn’t thrown at me. I didn’t even want to hear her stupid, fucked-up reasons for disrespecting my rights to the marital home and my property. I just snapped, done with her and her usual crap.

That was when I felt it ... the intense pain in my right arm, as the buckshot scattered and tore into muscles and ligaments as well as capillaries and veins. Elaine had shot me, treating me as an intruder in my own damn home! My own damn, motherfucking wife had shot me, by God! I was furious now, and in my enraged state, I didn’t care about my pain or the risk of infection from the wound. I just grabbed what I wanted from the house, feeling that the saying was true that “possession was nine-tenths of the law.” I started to leave with a few things, including my sword, a few knives and daggers, and my Colt .45. I also took my precious coins, which she barely knew or cared about, but I left all of the jewelry, not giving a shit, even dropping the wedding band on the kitchen counter as I departed.

That was when Elaine blocked the door, facing me with the shotgun again, but I brushed past her, not afraid of what she had already done to me. She dropped the shotgun and slapped me, but I spat on her and she really coiled up like a snake when I did that. I didn’t think that she ever expected that of me. She started to slap me again, but I stopped her with my free hand despite the intense pain and weakness that I instantly felt as a result.

“Feel lucky that I don’t press charges for you shooting me, you crazy bitch!” I snarled at Elaine, “I did nothing to do deserve being shot or having some of my stuff dumped on the lawn. You’ve lost your ever loving mind, sweetheart!”

“You refused to leave my home with your stuff and you tried to rob me. You deserved to be shot, burglar!” Elaine shouted at me, as if I were far away.

“I took only what was mine, and this is still my motherfucking home! I paid for the damn house! What gives you the right to kick me out?” I snapped at her.

“It’s going to be mine in the divorce, and you’ll be lucky if all you have to do is pay for it, once the police hear that you broke and entered into it! That stuff that you claim is yours, fine, perhaps it was yours, but you could have arranged to pick it up or something. You didn’t have to trespass, Jack! As for dumping out your crap onto the lawn, that’s what it took to get your fucking attention, so deal with it, plus it’s worthless junk, anyway! I don’t know what the fuck you even care about it! Face it, Jack, our marriage is done!” Elaine tried to reason with me from her irrational logic while I stood there bleeding from a bullet wound that she gave me.

“Hell, yeah, our marriage is done, after you shot me for entering what is still legally my own damn home and will be until or unless there’s a goddamned settlement, you stupid, ignorant cunt! And after you violated my property rights by kicking me out and dumping out my possessions. See your sorry, prudish, snobbish, bitchy, uptight ass in court!” I gathered my stuff and put it all in the bed of my Ford truck, preparing to speed away.

That was when I realized that I really had nowhere to go, except, of course, Rosita’s Inn. If I had been thinking rationally, I would have gone to the hospital instead, given the extent of my injuries, but I was in no mood for twenty questions from the doctors and nurses, and my adrenaline high kept me from noticing the pain as much. I wanted to just bandage myself up, down several shots of my Jack Daniels (one of the things that somehow survived the trip to the lawn), and watch a few movies or shows on the boob tube as I fell into a drunken slumber.

I didn’t make it that far, as the pain in my arm made my driving very erratic and I saw someone waving me down. It wasn’t Elaine, I didn’t think, hoping that she at least had better sense than that. I stopped the truck to find out who it was who hailed me before I could leave the cul-de-sac. I hated the damn neighborhood, in fact. It was Elaine’s taste in homes, decor, and everything, that I appeased because those things didn’t amount to a hill of beans. I personally loathed this particular piece of suburbia with a real passion, just as I hated the way that she acted at a disco, like a drugged or drunken moron.

“What the fuck is the matter with you, papi?” Penelope Adkins, my next-door neighbor, cussed at me as she opened the door and stopped the wheel.

“I’ve been shot! Didn’t you hear the damn gunshot when my wife fired on me with her shotgun?” I asked her, a bit angry at her now, but also realizing that she was right ... I was a danger to everyone, trying to drive like this ... my adrenaline high had faded, letting me think more clearly.

“No ... I didn’t wake up until after sunset, papi. Which was just a little while ago. For some reason, I’ve been sleeping in later and later, and staying up longer, too. I still can’t figure out why, but it’s driving my husband nuts, because I don’t stay up all day and cook and prepare his drugs for him. I don’t even care for food as much, and as for booze or weed or coke, forget about it! I just don’t see the appeal anymore. Is that weird, papi? Then again, who gives three fucks? I don’t even like him anymore. What’s wrong with me that I don’t care about the things that I used to love. Well, I do still care for a few things, but only a few,” Penelope told me with her delightful Tejana accent as she pushed me toward the passenger side of my Ford and took the driver’s seat, “You’re not a drunken, junkie pendejo like my old man Bobby, but you’re still in no fucking shape to drive. He uses acid, gin and tonics, and coke, while you let your crazy self get shot by your pigheaded wife!”

“So, you agree that Elaine is a crazy bitch, then?” I grinned as I let Penelope take the wheel, since she was in better driving form than me ... at this point, I didn’t even care where she took me ... yet.

“Are you fucking kidding me, papi? Look, vato, it’s really quite simple. Elaine’s an idiot. You are crazy, my dear, but you are my kind of crazy. She’s just plain stupid. She let you go? I am literally ready to risk it all, get excommunicated, tell the Church and the Pope and such to kiss my culo, just to drop my Bobby and take up with you, papi. It’s really quite obvious. I’m your woman now, stud. You’re my man. Haven’t you noticed me calling you ‘papi’? What do you think that is about, anyway?

“I’m in love with you and have been since Bobby and I met you two. I don’t know what he likes, maybe Elaine and he deserve each other, but I don’t want him anymore. I want you and now I’ve got you. Face it, papi. You’re stuck with my brown Tejana ass, honey! Think that you can live in sin with a Mexican girl? Or is that not Anglo enough for you? Now, let’s get that wound of yours treated, baby!” Penelope insisted as she led me to Rosita’s Inn, in fact, and helped me get my stuff out (in fact, she did most of the heavy lifting, given my condition).