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Second Wind Publishing, LLC 931-B South Main Street, Box 145 Kernersville, NC 27284 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are either a product of the author’s imagination, fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Copyright 2011 by J Conrad Guest All rights reserved, including the right of commercial reproduction in whole or part in any format. This book is free for personal use. Running Angel, and all production design are trademarks of Second Wind Publishing, used under license. Cover design by Tracy Beltran Manufactured in the United States of America
Do You Like to Kill? by J. Conrad Guest I relish playing God, having within me the power to give or take life. To take away everything it embodies, everything it is and everything it ever will be—that’s power. As a boy my dream was to play major league baseball. I idolized Tigers Hall of Fame right fielder Al Kaline and dreamed of roaming right field at Tiger Stadium making spectacular catches, of hitting for average and homeruns, of setting records and winning a World Series. Watching Mickey Mantle launch a blooper intentionally served up by Denny McLain in 1968, just a few months before Mantle retired from baseball, only inspired me further. But I never had the chance to see if I had it in me to play in the majors. Fearing I’d get hurt, my parents denied me, discouraged me and dissuaded me. “Baseball is for only a privileged few,” Mom advised me, perhaps thinking she was saving me from disappointment. “Learn a trade,” Dad said, “and get a job at a Union shop.” Dad had joined the Marine Corps, avoiding the drudgery of a mundane life, but that was exactly the path down which he was advising me to go. Bad advice that, coming from a man who’d chosen to avoid working an assembly line to become a walking zombie and retire in forty years with a gold watch. And then fate struck in the name of Sgt. Schreiber, who’d served with my dad in the Pacific Arena, on Okinawa where some of the bloodiest fighting in World War II took place. Schreiber showed up at our house in June 1969 to attend a Marine Corps reunion with my dad. I was seventeen and hadn’t seen Schreiber in maybe five years. He was colorful, larger than life, and had made a life of the Corps. He looked approvingly at me, already over six feet tall, and although I was skinny as opposed to muscular, he looked at my dad and proclaimed: “Jim, we’ll make a Marine of him, eh?” Then he asked me: “Do you like to kill?” I stammered something about mosquitoes being the only things I’d ever killed and that while I couldn’t say with any degree of certitude I enjoyed it, I enjoyed a certain gratification in succeeding with my first strike initiatives. Schreiber left shortly after the reunion and I never saw him again—he was destined to die many years later the result of being given HIV tainted blood during open heart surgery—but his question stayed with me, haunted me to the point that, after I turned eighteen, I didn’t register for the draft but instead enlisted in the Marine Corps. It’s strange how sometimes small events impact us in big ways; how a simple question often results in life-changing decisions. From my crèche high in an outcropping of rocks, I watch the lone Viet Cong approach the crossroads. Turn left, I think, centering my crosshair on his chest, and I just might let you live. Turn right or keep coming and you will die. At the crossroads he stops a moment, his rifle clutched across his torso, and glances furtively left and right; after a moment he continues straight ahead. He’s maybe six hundred yards from my position. He’ll be dead before he even hears my rifle’s report, I reason. I draw a slow breath, hold it, listen to Schreiber’s voice—“Do you like to kill?”—and squeeze the trigger. I feel my weapon recoil against my shoulder, and a moment later the VC falls heavily onto his back and lies still. That would be a yes.
About J. Conrad Guest In 1992 a man approached me to tell his story. His name was Joe January. A private investigator from the South Bronx, circa 1940, January can best be described as an indignant Humphrey Bogart. That encounter resulted in January’s Paradigm. I’ve since written the second volume, One Hot January, and the final volume, January’s Thaw. Combined, they paint a profile of a man out of place out of time. January’s story is anything but just a story, despite spanning two centuries and dealing with time travel and alternate realities. The denouement is less than happily ever after (but such is life), and January at times comes across as a sort of comic book superhero. But in youth we often view ourselves as invincible, only later seeing the global repercussions of our actions. Yet given the chance to live life over again, who would turn their back? Hence the meat of January’s story is largely about regret: how, through his own foolishness, he lost the two women who meant the most to him. In One Hot January, Joe January, an emotionally aloof private investigator from the South Bronx, unwittingly uncovers a seemingly impossible plot of time travel and an alternate reality in which Germany has won World War II by grudgingly agreeing to help a pretty young woman locate her missing father, a Professor of Archeology from Columbia College who must prevent the secret of Hitler’s location from falling into the wrong hands. By the end of the novel, January is transported one hundred years into the future where, in the sequel, January’s Thaw, he must survive by his century-old sagacity in our modern world. Set against the backdrop of an alternate reality in which Germany won World War II, January’s tale is compelling, and I couldn’t be more pleased he chose me to tell it. I think I’ve managed to capture and remain true to his story as well as his voice. Several of my short stories and non-fiction pieces have appeared on Internet publications, including Cezanne’s Carrot, Saucy Vox, River Walk Journal, 63 Channels, The Writers Post Journal and Redbridge Review. Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine published in November 2005 Mother’s Day: Coming to Terms with the Cruelty of Parkinson’s, a memoir chronicling my mother’s battle against Parkinson’s. Visit me at www.jconradguest.com.
Photo courtesy of Sommerville Photographie