Chapter 11

President, or not, in another existence, my life stretched out before me without any plan. As I approached my twenty-third birthday, I needed to grab onto it and make something out of myself. Being rich and living in another man’s mansion wasn’t enough to give me peace. Life needed to happen to me, and I wanted it to start right then.

Rather than dwell on my laziness, I prayed for action. Something needed to happen.

Later, when I reflected on that, I realized how naive I was.

Living in a great mansion was ... great. The staff were always on duty and always anxious to please. The downside was the boredom that comes from having people doing the things a man should do for himself. What I needed was something to shake up my routine.

Zachary had a utilitarian Ford Excursion. I decided on a whim to take it for a ride in the country. Once I was certain the vehicle was in good running shape, I should have realized the maintenance supervisor would never allow a vehicle to fall into disrepair, I hopped in and took off for the mountains to the north. The day was bright and sunny, with temperatures climbing into the low eighties by afternoon. You couldn’t draw up a better day.

As I left the city behind and entered the national forest, I allowed myself to relax, and just enjoy the trip without anything pushing me. Between the scenery and the quiet, I found something I’d been missing for a long time – peace. I felt at peace doing nothing more than enjoying doing nothing.

After a couple of hours, I pulled into a roadside gas station and filled up the Excursion’s twin thirty-five-gallon diesel tanks. With average fuel consumption of about twenty-six miles per gallon, I could run all day and not have had to fill up, but old habits die hard, and I have always wanted the odds on my side in case of trouble. The little diner a bit further on provided lunch and some unexpected, unwanted entertainment.

“Get your lazy ass back there and pay for my lunch, you worthless pig!”

The shouting interrupted my choice between apple pie and a piece of cheesecake. Such decisions required serious reflection and are not easily corrected, since once ingesting one, there would be no room for the other if one changed their mind mid-stream, or mid dessert, whichever the case may be.

Once I saw the target of the loud-mouthed lout’s ire, all thoughts about cheesecake fled from me. The brute was abusing an old woman of about fifty-five. She was rail-thin and looked terribly underfed. Her brown, gray hair was carefully piled on top of her head, and her work dress appeared to be a series of patches surrounding what once might have been a whole garment. The loudmouth was taking great joy in browbeating someone so obviously smaller, and weaker.

Bullies just love to bully.

He would have struck her but when he heard the shocked gasps of the diners, he pulled his hand down and started to shove her back out of sight, toward the restroom alcove, where he could no doubt, abuse her in private.

Something told me that he might want more from her than her fear. There are as many types of bullies as there are men. Some bullies love to physically abuse helpless women, preparatory to sexually abusing them. He was not going to beat this one up, then hold her down for rape.

“I think you need to take your hands off her,” I said, in a measured tone. My words were soft, but the threat was clear. The man turned on me and looked me up and down, trying to decide if he could bully me, too. “In case you have a hearing problem, only cowards hit women. If you raise your hand to her one more time, I’m going to make you stop and I will do it very fast so that no one here can stop me, and really hard so you remember it for a long time.” My voice was so soft he had to bend towards me to hear every word, but the menace was clear, even if the delivery was weak.

Bully-boy tried to bluff his way out of the potentially painful spot he’d gotten himself into. “Oh, yeah...” He never got a chance to continue. My foot made solid contact with his scrotum and the next sounds he made had very little to do with English.