His parents were as dead as Lincoln’s dick. Dad, literally. Mom, figuratively. As dead as Chief Petty Officer (Retired) Jerome Wyatt. Who by the way had been born and raised but an hours drive south of his killer’s hometown in Mason City, Iowa. Talk about coincidences or a quirky fate.
New Richland, Minnesota had been a great town to grow up in. Less than two thousand for a population. A farming community set amongst the cornfields of southern Minnesota. Football games on Friday nights. Church socials. Summer carnivals. Mom and apple pie. All that happy horseshit.
Mohawk had a given name at that time. Long before he was given a new one by his government. His Christian name in those days was Jacob “Jake” Morrow. His parents were Rick and Sandy Morrow and they had lived their entire lives within ten miles of New Richland, with the exception of the four years that Rick had served in the army. Rick had been an employee of the local grain elevator while Sandy had been a stay at home mom.
When Rick returned from his stint with the army in Korea, he returned a different man. Something he had seen or done over there had gone horribly wrong, but he never would talk about it. To anyone. Not even about all the medals he kept in a cigar box on top of his stroke books in his sock drawer. Gone was the church going honor roll student that everyone had been so proud of. In his place was a bitter, violent, hard drinking, and at times, whore chasing individual. He was quick to anger and start to throwing fists, especially after a night with the bottle. He and Sandy had married prior to Rick shipping out for Korea. She had gotten pregnant almost immediately after his return and they settled into a small house just off the small downtown area of New Richland.
It was not a marriage made in heaven. After work, Rick enjoyed drinking with his buddies at the local tavern which had once been the towns bank, and on the weekends he got totally blasted while either watching the Twins, North Stars, or the Vikings in action on television, depending on what sport was in season. He also liked to hunt and fish, also while intoxicated. He was a rugged man’s man and even though he was incredibly obnoxious when drinking, he had no problem scoring with the town’s single and sometimes married women.
Sandy enjoyed staying at home and watching her soap operas while stuffing huge amounts of candy, cake, pudding, or any other sweet into her mouth. Along with her normal pregnancy weight gain she became enormous.
Things changed a little for the better after little Jake was born. Rick absolutely loved the little guy and had big dreams for his son. Being a complete Minnesota Viking maniac who drove a classic 65 Ford Mustang painted Viking purple with the Viking horns decal in the rear window, Rick naturally wanted his son to grow up to become a member of the Minnesota Viking football club. He became obsessed with it. The first toy put in Jake’s crib was an official NFL “Duke” football.
Rick threw himself hog wild into the upbringing and molding of his son. He taught Jake to catch a full size football by the time he was four and had him running wind sprints in the back yard by the time he was seven. He was playing in the Pee Wee leagues by the next year and on his tenth birthday Rick bought him a sand filled weight set so he could start bulking him up.
Rich himself gave up drinking after work and only got wasted on the weekends while watching his games on TV. Not all of this was voluntary. He had been banished from attending the entire season of Jake’s second year of Pee Wee football after showing up blotto and calling a referee (who was also a local minister) a "blind as a bat cocksucker.” He also had given up chasing women after narrowly avoiding been shot while dallying with a local married woman. Her husband had come home unexpectedly after leaving to go bowling in Waseca, he had forgotten his bowling glove, only to see his wife taking it from behind while leaning against the kitchen table that his parents had given them for a wedding present. He had rushed into the living room to grab his 12 gauge, which gave Rick the moment he needed to jump buck naked through a plate glass window. The enraged husband still took a wild shot at the fleeing Rick but succeeded in only killing seven of his neighbors homing pigeons nesting in their coop.
Rick now had a steady single piece, a truck stop waitress who lived over in Geneva. That was safer.
Sandy was by now a virtual shut in and weighed close to what a starting lineman would hit the scales at. It wouldn’t be too long before she could be the subject of an article in the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.
By the eighth grade, Jake had settled into his position as a defensive back on the junior high team. Along with the weight routine his father had him on (the family’s basement now had almost as much iron as the high school gym), three protein shakes a day, and his mother’s gigantic home cooked meals, Jake was now as big and buff as some junior college ball players.
And the boy could hit like a fucking mule kicks. He starched two wide receivers from Glenville in the first quarter of their game. One with a severe concussion. He had a natural instinct to go towards where the ball was being thrown. Interceptions didn’t matter to him. Only pure contact.
A hit was only good to him if snot flew out of both of their noses. He didn’t care if the receiver held onto the ball, if he fumbled, or even if his own bell got rang. He just wanted to hit. By his freshman year he was playing on the high school “A” squad and banging a cheerleader who was in her senior year. He didn’t bother to study, he had people doing his homework assignments for him.
Rick thought he was shitting in tall cotton he was so proud. After Jake was ejected in the game against Conger for close lining a running back who was stupid enough to run into Jake’s zone on a draw play, Rick went out and bought Jake a copy of Jack Tatum’s THEY CALL ME ASSASSIN.
His pre-game meal was two chicken breasts, a baked potato, a small side of spaghetti with tomato sauce, and after an hour or two of digestion, five white cross and three cups of coffee. Just like the pros.
Although Rick loved his liquor and beer, he had no time or patience for people who used recreational drugs. By recreational he meant marijuana, acid, heroin, or coke. Speed did not fit in this category. Speed wasn’t a drug to Rick. It was just something that kept you awake so you could drink more beer or helped you get through the work day after drinking . Or something that you gave to your teenage son before a big football game. That other shit was for hippies and other degenerates. Rick had no problems getting his hands on any zip anytime he wanted it. His little brother Billy, was the biggest methamphetamine, pot, and Quaalude dealer in the county.
Billy was a veteran too. Vietnam. Three tours. All in a row. He would have stayed for another tour if it hadn’t been for the cobra that had bit him on his left hand causing him the loss of three of his fingers. He had been pillaging a Buddhist temple at the time for souvenirs and the little bastard had been coiled up and sleeping behind a shrine when Billy had disturbed him by dropping a religious statue on his tail. He could have easily died but a chopper was already on its way to his platoon’s camp to medivac out a soldier who just had his testicles blown off by a bouncing betty. He still spent over a month in a hospital in Saigon before being returned stateside. It was there that began his lifelong affair with pharmaceuticals.
Billy had loved Vietnam. You could do whatever you wanted over there. You could drink, do great drugs, screw all the women you wanted, and on top of it all, kill people. And no one could do a thing about it. Not that anyone cared anyway. It all had given him an incredible rush of power and a feeling of invincibility. He called it the “juice.”
On the freedom flight home he had wept while everyone else had cheered when the pilot had announced that they were out of Vietnams air space. The stewardess had patted his shoulder affectionately. She thought he was weeping for joy.
After returning to New Richland, he had worked for a while at the corn cannery in Waseca to supplement his VA disability check, but soon found the monotony of a day to day job to be unbearable. Dealing drugs was much more fun and profitable.
Soon he had bankrolled enough cash to buy a beautiful brand spanking new Harley- Davidson and was running with a biker gang out of Albert Lea called The Grim Reapers. He was forced to take year and a day vacation in Stillwater State Prison for possession with intent to distribute, but his gorgeous wheel chair bound wife, Dawn, had ran the business for him while he was away. She was a natural with numbers and investing, and soon they owned a small farm, a four wheel drive pickup, the previously purchased Harley, and a Winnebago motor home which was specially equipped with an electric lift to get Dawn in and out of. She had had no problems dealing with the scrotum heads that they supplied their crank and downers to while he was away. Underneath the Mexican blanket she sat on was a chrome plate .357 magnum and after she had shot the dumb shit in the ass who had tried to walk out the door without paying for his gram of speed, word had gotten around fast. It hadn’t taken Billy’s fellow Reapers long to find out where the guy that was walking around with a .357 slug in his rectum lived and they had paid him a friendly visit by shining their boots on his rib cage.
Dawn was a tough nut. Billy had met her when she was dancing with a carnival strip show called Chez Paree at the Freeborn County fair in Albert Lea. Billy had gone to see the sprint car races that were held on the final night of the fair on its half mile horse track. The track was not maintained at all during the course of the year and for the the drivers it was almost suicidal to compete on it. But it drew enormous crowds who came to see if they might luck out and see someone get killed, so their racing association booked them for the fair on an annual basis. After the races Billy had gone to the beer garden and had gotten incredibly wasted snorting crystal meth washed down with Grain Belt beer. It was his desire for a corndog smothered in mustard that drew Billy to the midway and to Dawn.
They had brought the girls out on stage to pump up the audience for the final show of the night. When Billy saw her up on the stage shaking her money maker and grinding away, he had forgotten the corndog and had paid his six bucks to see the show. It had long been a custom for the girls of Chez Paree to get totally naked for the last show of the night, even though in Freeborn County the rule was g-strings and pasties at all times. Not to worry though since the local sheriff’s department had already been paid off. Getting naked for the last set really got the local farm boys and packing plant workers all fired up and it was easy to talk them into the twenty five dollar blow jobs, even though they had to wear a rubber, that the girls gave after the show out in the trailers behind the tent.
`Billy gladly paid the cash for a hummer from Dawn and after she got a taste of the dope he was carrying and saw the wad of cash in his pocket, it hadn’t taken him much to convince her to shitcan the glamour of the stage and to take off with him. Plus, he was a good friend of the owner of the local strip club, The Aragon, so she would never be lacking for employment. The carny boss of Chez Paree was a little pissed when Dawn gave notice but was calmed down by a fifty, a gram of crystal, and the sight of Billy’s .38 caliber Colt Detective Special stuck in his belt.
They were married a week later and while Billy dealt drugs, Dawn flashed her jugs (covered in pasties)for the local idiots of Albert Lea. It was easy work for her. Her own father had turned her into a prostitute at the age of thirteen by charging his drunk buddies for her and at eighteen she had taken off with the show when it passed through Cairo, Illinois. Billy treated her like a goddess and she only danced because she wanted to help contribute to their dream of living somewhere on the beach. After Vietnam Billy couldn’t handle the cold of Minnesota.
On a snowy Saturday night at the club she had unknowingly gotten the wife of a customer convinced that her husband was interested in more than just watching her dance. As Dawn had gathered up her clothes after her set and stepped down off the stage, the woman had come up from behind and stabbed her in the back with the sharpened end of a rat tail comb. Dawn had been confined to a wheel chair ever since then. The woman assailant had been sentenced to fifteen years in Shakopee State Prison. Her husband meanwhile, was shot eight times and killed when he was walking out the back door of a bar in Albert Lea called The Name Of The Game, almost a year to the day later. Billy was questioned for over ten hours but had an ironclad alibi. The murder case was was kept open for years.