The Wages Of Thy Sin by H.L. Dowless - HTML preview

The Wages Of Sin

The day was a bright and sunny October. There was no work down at the office, there had not been any now for the past four or five days. The puffing bursts of wind even held more the feel of gentle springtime than the cool compelling coax of fall. Some have said that mass layoffs in our business enterprise were soon to be upon us, but I continued to hope for the best from the future that lay ahead.

I must admit, however, that these periods of layoff without salary, were strangely becoming more frequent. There was even talk of us losing all of our remaining benefits that had been gradually chipping away now for quite some time. To think about it though, only gave me another situation to despair over, when in reality, there was simply nothing that could be done to neutralize these situations, even if they did occur. What I was really in need of was some rest and rejuvenation, far away from the surrounding situation.

I arose from the bed and commenced to prepare an aromatic, healthful breakfast of freshly buttered grits, cheese, eggs, sausage, and pumpernickel toast, smeared with homemade peach preserves, all served up with rounds of thick, jet black coffee. The luscious aroma soon awoke my dear wife.

“John!,” she called in a voice that sounded half asleep. “Are you up already, at this time in the morning?”

“Yes, I certainly am, my darling. I have a nice dandy right here for you, all ready fixed up just right!”

I soon heard the sounds of movement from the bed room as her feet hit the freshly waxed hardwood floor. I could hear her as she haphazardly placed her slippers upon her bare feet.

“I'll be there in just a moment, dear,” she replied.

I perceived a sleep induced shuffle of her feet as she stumbled down the hallway toward me.

“Mm, mm, boy,” she said, as she paused in her night gown, with her hair all rolled up onto huge, light blue rollers. “I could just taste it as I moved down the hallway, before I even walked up!”

“Well now, you had better come on ova here and get it. Grits are not very good when they cool, even if they are warmed over,” I replied with in my raspy, asthmatic, morning voice.

“So whats on for today?,” she inquired as she took her seat at the oval oaken eating table.

“I thought that we would ride out and take a three day trip. Maybe it will help me forget about my employment situation, these waves of bills, and all of this other garbage piling up that I cannot seem to get a handle on,” I replied in a sighing gasp.

She suddenly glanced up at me as she took her seat.

“I understand, honey. I have told you over and over to just stop worrying about all of it. We will just take it as it comes. If we lose our home, then we could move in with my auntie over in Dallas county. She has already informed me that we have the go ahead. She has a hundred acres of land, farming tools, and the like; we'll never go hungry, John. She needs help on her place anyway. We would still be earning our keep, if feeling like we are not doing so would bother you any.”

“Oh, I know,” I replied in a release of pent up breath, “ but I just cannot seem to get this mess and the fact of my inability to control our decline, out of my mind. It just keeps popping back up about the time that I have put it all down.”

I spoke to her as I took my seat at the right hand end of the table; the King's throne, everyone all sarcastically referred to it as. She warmly glanced toward me again.

“I understand your feelings in this matter, and I am with you all the way. Where was it that you had in your mind to vacate toward?”

I glanced down at my steaming plate before me, then cautiously glanced up again before reaching down to scoop a spoon full of the semi-thick cheese grits.

“My old hometown,” I replied.

“You mean the place that you were raised in? With all of those frustrated cranks and weird Os?,” she snapped with a snarl on her face.

“Yep, that's the one,” I replied as I placed the heaping, steamy spoon into my mouth, and began eating. “That's the place that you have so aptly described.”

She cut her narrowing eyes at me sharply, then suddenly laughed in a way that appeared as if she were attempting to withhold it from my notice.

“I just cannot believe it, John. There are better places to visit than that old depressing, boarded up relic of a mill town. Only ghosts from a now dead past still inhabit the place.., and the few people remaining all have employment far away. Most, way off in the Dakota oilfields, I have heard. All that remain inside that dilapidated time worn town are a bunch of locked up, antiquated homes, and the old folks just waiting to die. Why not the beach or the mountains, for Pete’s sake here, dear John?”

I smiled as I completed working my mouth full of fresh grits, carefully swallowing before I spoke in reply.

“I just feel compelled to make one last trip. You are right, not much remains to be seen there . The mill closed down some twenty years ago, and nothing has ever returned to replace it. The barrel factory and the goat slaughtering plant closed soon there after. There exists nearly a zero employment base in that dying place. Locals call the entire district well-fare row, or Social Security alley, in dark sarchasm of what is amounting to a perpetuating reality.”

When Walmart went up on the other end of the county, all of the time honored mom and pop businesses simply shut down, not being able to compete with the poorly crafted foreign imports that people preferred to purchase in the name of saving minuscule funds, even to their own future detriment. Now their antiquated storefront windows stood not only as just boarded up reminders of a splendor once dearly held, but as timeless monuments to a glory that was now lost for what was beginning to feel like an enduring eternity, with the talk of any new golden restoration being only idle speculation that was reaching farther ahead into a future that never materialized. These relics only loomed on to give a future generation that same feeling of a past enlightenment, glory, and wealth, that the old plantation homes and estates always have generations now passed.

The wife’s warmly glinting brown eyes abruptly glanced back up toward mine. A sudden comforting smile streaked across her face..

“So what compels you to make this trip? I don't understand, John.”

“I do not know if I can find the words to describe my inner feelings about it all, in such a way that anyone else would understand, Maria. I would never expect people to be able to. All that I can say is that I just want to return one more last time, only to see where the great journey of life began for me. I am hoping to find maybe one remaining elder who can speak to me of those blessed days of yore, now forever gone by. Otherwise, strangely as it sounds, I don't know,” I gasped in my bluntly honest reply.

I paused as I gazed blankly out the kitchen window, searching for the words to describe my repressed feelings. Another warm smile streaked across my dear wife's face, then cracked into a slight laugh.

“I understand,” she replied all of a sudden as she glanced down. Her face then shifted back up toward mine. “If that is what you want, then such is what we shall do; starting today, if you would like. I am at perfect ease with it all. I only want you to find that inner peace in your life., that much is all that I intend in my agreeing with this trip, dear John.”

So we sat and continued speaking for a while longer, talking, laughing, reminiscing about the day that we met, the adventurous trips that we have made over the years when we really couldn’t afford to do so, how much the kids had all grown up now, and the like. Before we even became aware of the time passage, we had both completed our breakfast, and I had collected our plates, then commenced to wash them in the sink. My wife walked back into our bedroom and began to pack our suitcase, being much more careful than myself to make certain that all of our needed articles were carefully wrapped in plastic, and placed in the most accommodating, efficient position within our antiquated tan, leather bound carrying case.

In what seemed like moments, I soon found myself walking with the suit case in hand, down the steps, and out toward our economical Nisan Ventura. I carefully raised the trunk lid and placed the old well worn suit case firmly inside, side down, then slammed the lid down tightly. My wife checked the stove to make sure that it was turned off, locked the door of the house, then carefully walked down the stairway toward the car. Before we knew what was going on, we were both on our way out of our quiet little community.

The trip was not all that lengthy of a trip, but certainly a long enough one, as far as I was concerned. Maybe it would last just over four hours or so, I would guess. Soon we were heading out of our community and making our way slowly down the somewhat crowded narrow side street called the Zebra pass. As we slowly turned from our neighborhood street onto Fish-rock road, beside the corner created by Beaver road and Fish-rock road, sat the local community school.

When we first moved into the neighborhood just a few years prior, a homeless, dirty, sun browned drunk who lived in the graveyard behind the school building, used to come out just after the dark of evening, terrorizing the kids and the adults who attended the night school sessions. The eyewitnesses claimed that he was clothed in very revealing rags, rising up from the graveyard looming in the forested backdrop, swinging a lantern and proclaiming in a loud, very obnoxious, extremely inebriated voice..

“Hark there, ye young bastions of dark iniquity.. The day of reckoning is upon you all! Hear me out now...! Your day of reckoning is upon you all! All evil will be certain to fall most solidly upon ye false teachers of thy satanic iniquity, spreading thy fallacious lies, speaking only of evil in all forms as being good, and all forms of good as being evil. You'll all pay for your vain blasphemy, thy fornication, and thy adoration of the great satanic abomination! I know thy evil masquerade that thee so mockingly stage for the crowds laughing pleasure, as ye shove thy center finger into my astonished face! You will all pay for this...! You'll pay for thy iniquity.. You all will pay so dearly, and suffer a certain divine retribution in thy forthcoming destruction..! You are all doomed, I shall say again, doomed to death and certain destruction!”

He would run about draped in rags, covered with fresh dirt from the surrounding fields and wooded yards, behind which stood the graveyard, as he screamed his words of condemnation while racing wildly toward the teachers, adults, and the horrified children. Many residents were terrified all around, and the talk began to race throughout the neighborhood.

So it seemed, he enjoyed coming out every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday night. The police and anyone else who made the effort, could never seem to locate his exact place of abode on any given day. About the time that the churches got all into it, and the preachers began making mention of it to their Sunday congregations, the old man strangely disappeared. Even the best trackers among the local police failed to locate any sign of him, as did their concealed trail cameras, airplanes, and such. I never heard what eventually happened to him. As I motored on past the school, I could not help but just chuckle to myself in recollection to this now long since past event..

Truthfully speaking, there was a shockingly blunt honesty in the old mans spoken words. The wife and I made mention of the scenario in delightful recollection, as we motored on passed an obvious middle aged man dressed in a woman’s summer dance dress, holding another man's gently clutching right hand. The state owned schools were guilty of contaminating the minds of our impressionable youth by claiming that obvious acts of indecency and sick perversion were positive, and that wholesome lifestyles and Christian accommodations, were evil.

Maybe the true sanctioned authoritarian intention in it all, was to bring about a calculated destruction of our beloved nation, its heritage people, and its culture, both morally and increasingly, economically. Elders had been saying these sorts of things for many years now, since degeneration has been noticed in social culture at large with the youngest of children in schools being ordered to interact with the lowest forms of base humanity on earth, the representative films glorifying what amounted to social degeneration, similar literature, even the so called “modernist” architecture, and virtually every other form of artistic expression. Laws and rules of every sort commanded the public at large to accept this obvious degeneration as “modernist,” and “progressive,” rather than the true source of destruction for cultures, people, and empires all the way into the farthermost reaches of human history. The lies in this command were clearly obvious in the fact of being, but who specifically was pushing it, was the obvious question being asked behind closed doors by a numerical minority in the general population?

The more that I gazed about at the landscape and upon the people, the more that I strongly desired to return back into the days of righteous bliss and wealthy enlightenment, now gone for all eternity, so it was appearing, all bearing a shadow of reluctance on part of those whom analytically observe. Maybe that realization was what I was really in search of here.., a return back into what was not so long ago, and all of the positive opportunistic advantage that have been lost in the last thirty years alone.

“You O.K?,” my wife glanced back and inquired of me, as I sat quietly enveloped in my own deep thought.

“Yeah, sure,” I replied. “What do you think that this world here is all coming to?”

“I don't know,” laughed my wife. “I guess it is all like asking the question of why was that man with another man, rather than a woman? What does that sick looking thing have that a woman doesn't, and a man wants, needs, or even gives a damn about? Something there about the entire bloody equation is just obviously not right. Maybe the doctors are putting something in this so called medicine that they are so quick in prescribing to everyone? Maybe the babies are being injected with this negative element that is promoting this emerging homosexual state of mind, in the name of population control, eh? Something is corrupting the world around us, and the devil damn sure has to be in the mix somewhere, since it is so unnatural.”

She laughed as she spoke the last sentence of her inquiring words.

Both of us chuckled as we continued to motor on down the road, plugging along in our destination. As we rode down main-street, even here it was all apparent that our own present town, called Prospect Mills, had dramatically deteriorated in a relatively short passage of time. Most of the storefront businesses had boarded up tightly, radiating the feeling that the last nail driven in was intended to hold for all time forward into immortality. On the right hand side had once stood the dance studio; on the left, a funeral home business that had dominated for over a hundred years; all now boarded up for many months past now.

Out from where it was that our car ran past, on the left hand side, once sat a very small majestic lake, complete with a surrounding lakeside neighborhood, extending wooden piers and boat docks backward into an enveloping lake draped lovingly in the arms of adoring weeping willow trees…; all now standing on dilapidated, completely dry land, that seemed to be enjoying a reclamation by the young towering scrub oaks, bamboo briers, and towering lob-lolly pines. A deteriorating dam that had collapsed in the center seemed to be the source of the problem, but the funds for it's much needed repair seemed to loom in what was becoming so dramatically apparent.., a disheartening mirage in the distance beyond.

“What do you make of it all, my dear?,” I sarcastically inquired of my wife as we both glanced out of the car window.

“All of it comes from taxes, and taxes come from people being gainfully employed in secure jobs that pay realistic living wages. Just take a look at how many factories have all closed down, and been closed now for a number of years, without even as much as an attempt at bringing in any enterprise to replace them. At least I still have my job, John boy, and for that much, I am very thankful,” she replied.

“ Yeah, I know, and most local business people tell me that the real reason that they are going out of business is because of these extortionist taxes, expensive mandatory permits, and all of these gross mandatory insurance requirements. They say that they are all operating only on thirty cents out of every dollar earned. This negativity is about the same for a workers wages nowadays as well.”

My wife chuckled aloud at my words as we continued to motor on down the road toward our destination.

“ And when people try to reduce their overhead so that they can live on those few cents remaining, there is always some sort of a regulatory mandate that tries to prevent them from doing so. You can't rent your rooms out in your own house. You can't use your own crafted lumber to build with. You can't put an attic room in your own damn home. You can't even build a tool shed on your own damn property. Yet these pathetic, greedy pigs running this town and the state, all do absolutely nothing to create real jobs; the situation at large is simply insane to me! If people want proof that God exists, then examine the fact of an economy holding up as long as this one has, when leaders have violated every law known to economic and moral science.

“ What is the real sense in continuing to live in the US anymore, if the entire country is so corrupted and ruined now by the outright incompetent fools who are in control, with the authority that we elect on the pretense of safeguarding our own interests, supporting our extortionist adversaries once they attain office? Hell, we didn't tell them to take out huge loans at the Federal Reserve, so who do they think that they are forcing the installment payments for these loans back down on us, the proletariat? I just don't see the advantages in continuing to live in the US anymore for those that have accumulated assets, to be frank about it,” she said as we rode along.

As we cruised on down the highway, both of us could not help but to take notice of the overgrown farms, dilapidated corn silos in front of entire fields that had been overgrown with scrub and dog fennel, with small maple trees sprouting up here and there throughout the low growing area. All of the fields gave the appearance of being allowed to lie fallow for two or three years, maybe even more. The sight was absolutely shocking. An overwhelming majority of the homes appeared to be overgrowing with vines and grass, long since out of control. Most were boarded up tightly, giving the appearance of have been so for innumerable years. Not even a shivering skeleton of a single dog ran about, as far as I could tell from the passenger seat of our car, as the wife drove along skillfully dodging the ridiculous number of pot holes in the road.

“Wonder where all of the people are?,” I inquired with a sarcastic air in my voice, just trying to make light of all these negative appearances surrounding us.

“Couldn't stay here,” replied Maria. “ The farming administration crashed, and people simply could not make a living from doing it any more. All of the factories shut down and went overseas, so that they could employ slave labor instead of paying living salaries in America to US citizens. The few corporations that did remain on US soil cried that they couldn't compete with entrepreneurial citizens starting their own businesses, so they paid the politicians to pass regulations raising costs dramatically to discourage self employment. How were the people going to make a living here?”

“Yeah, that just tells you how sorry the pigs are who were elected to run this place, now doesn't it?,” I snarled.

“Well, what is really disturbing is when one considers that the people here all tried to get home based businesses going on their own property. But the regulators, meaning the zoning boards, the local police and so forth, swiftly moved in to shut them down for not paying all of those extortionist taxes, permit fees, insurances with rates that suddenly leaped upward, and all of that. When these authorities imposed their prohibitive mandates with direct armed force, door to door, there was a huge firefight over this ridiculous mess, and the troops moved in, eventually… You mean that you have not heard about this? It was all over the news, the computers, and everywhere.”

“Can’t say that I have,” I replied.

“Where have you been living at then, inside a cave? Darn!,” she snapped with a sigh and a smile.

“What happened to all of the people who remained, then ?,” I solemnly inquired.

“They were all rounded up, and delivered into the containment facilities. The order was to surrender, give up your weapons, come with us, or die right were you stand.. You did not hear about this, John?,” she snapped.

“So the people slugged it out with them, huh?,” I asked. “ Seems like I did hear about it.. I am shocked that the same has not happened to all of us in our town,” I replied.

“Well right now it is just in certain places, not everywhere, and the information about it is being suppressed by the state and locally owned owned media,” my wife replied. “ The authorities are telling us that these contests are over discrimination of one demographic by another, one being shot by the other for no reason, supposedly, or some other such ridiculous claim soaked heavily in appeal to emotion. But our area has suddenly begun to deteriorate, I know that much.. It all makes me wonder..,” replied my dear wife, Maria, as she slowly shook her head from side to side. “It all just makes me wonder and gives me this shifting, sick kind of feeling, deep down inside the pit of my stomach.”

We continued to pass through the surrounding country side. Where once had been wide open spaces planted with long rows of rich leafy green tobacco, green, then yell