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LIGHT OF THE ATMA – THE SPARK WITHIN
all, majestic cypress surrounded the mansion in columns like royal guards. English Oak, Norwegian Spruce, American Maple and Elm trees lay round the estate like a jeweled necklace.
The road on which Peter was walking, lay like a ribbon across a vast expanse. Mini forests of Shagbark Hickory, Chinese elm, English Hornbeams, and sections specifically devoted to Douglas fir, Serbian spruce and Scotch pine adorned the area with a regal air.
‘Parks within a park’ were his mother’s favorite theme. White wisteria, larch, dogwood, and white and pink crab apple trees created many of these special settings. White English daisies, crimson, pink, white and golden azaleas dressed the trunks of many of the trees like colorful skirts on a dainty girl. Rhododendrons seemed to be sprinkled throughout a variety of other flowers, creating interesting patterns. Every special area gave a feast of pleasure to the eyes, and a sense of paradise to the nose.
Gladiolus and daffodils danced in the wind as though they were celebrating the vibrancy of being alive. Soft, rolling hills were covered with a carpet of African daisies; and trellises and arbors bedecked with fragrant honeysuckle, acted as archways to the lilac fields, which seemed to invite man, bird, bee and butterfly into a world of intoxicating fragrances.
The arboretum was serene and offered over a sense of reverence for life and the Creator that gave it. It was a place to feel admiration, and it was certainly no boxing arena.
s Peter was nostalgically walking along the path, who came waltzing back into the mansion at this early hour of the morning, was Lefty and Knuckles. They had been on their fifteen-mile, morning jog.
“Shhhh,” Lefty whispered to Knuckles as he sneaked past the study. The study door was closed except for an inch. They crept past hoping not to be seen.
“If we get caught,” Knuckles warned, “da boss is gonna nail our hides ta da wall, ya’ know dat?!”
“Da only way we’re gonna be caught is if ya’ make too much noise!”
Lefty had come back for his wallet which he had left in their room. It had two-thousand dollars in it. Upon reaching the stairs, he took them five at a time. He hurried to their room, and was relieved to find his wallet just where he had left it, on the top of his dresser which sat adjacent to the back window. As he looked up after counting his money, he caught a glimpse, in the corner of his eye, of Peter walking down the back road.
“Come on,” Knuckles called to him as he poked his head into the room, “we gotta get outta here!”
Lefty called back in a whisper, “Yah, yah, you check out da stairs, make sure da coast is clear!”
Knuckels nodded and stepped into the hall. When he came back, Lefty was nowhere to be found. He walked out of the room then decided to search the nearby rooms, but with no results. He finally stood out in the hall, scratching his head. He went back into their room once more for a final look around.
Lefty had sneaked out of the room via an alternate doorway and was headed downstairs to chase after Peter. As Lefty ran across the lawn, Knuckles looked out the window and caught a glimpse of him. “What! Is he crazy?!!!! and he took off after Lefty.
SO SWEET – TO SO BITTER
Peter had strolled along the flowery, shady-tree by-lanes. He crossed a bluegrass lawn which was bordered by enchanting red and white flowers that stood waist high in front of a rustic, split timber fence. He walked across the breadth of the golf course size lawn and stopped at its edge to take in the view of the lake.
He passively watched the sail boats skim across the lake and became entranced for a while as a million specks of light seemed to dance on the waves as the sun reflected off the water. Sea gulls squawked out endless cries as they soared through the air. They rode on the wind seemingly so free and unbound by the cares of man.
There Peter stood, for the most part, alone in life. ‘What happened?’ he thought. ‘How did life go from being so sweet to so bitter? And why did sorrow choose to visit me?’ He gazed out at the water and wondered about himself. ‘Where am I going in life from here?’ he pondered. He turned around and looked at the arboretum spread out so gloriously before him. ‘So much love, so much work, and care went into the creation of this place. This is my home. How am I losing it? What did I ever do to deserve this pain?’ Endless questions as these seemed to flood into his mind. But he couldn’t even begin to answer them. Until this point in his life, he never knew that life could be – so tragic.
He ironically laughed within himself realizing the precarious position he was in. ‘Funny,’ he thought, ‘I’ve been told by so many people that if I wanted to be treated like a man, I should act like a man; and now that I act like a man, they insist on treating me as a boy and resent the fact that I’m trying to take responsibility for my own life. What hypocrites some men are. They tell you to follow their advice, but do they live by their own words of counsel?’
Dark, swirling clouds of confusion and despair subtly loomed over Peter’s life, blocking out the light of hope. His emotions were injured and were sporadically misfiring, sending his thoughts into random directions.
Every solution he chased within his imagination seemed to move away from him as fast as he approached it, just as a mountain appears to stay at a far range no matter the ground that is covered to near it. And as the thick fog of doubt rolled in, he groped about like a blind man alone in the wide open space with no sense of direction.
He turned around and looked out over the lake again. Suddenly a profound thought entered his mind. ‘Who ever thought enough to teach me how to deal with the confusion, grief and agony encountered in life?’
The thoughts in his mind drifted toward Boston. ‘Funny how relatives seem to go only skin deep when you’re in trouble.’ He wondered why he hadn’t heard from them. He felt both the attraction and the aversion to going back to Boston, but both forces were so great and changing places with such rapid pulsation, he simply could not tell what to do. This whole tragic experience made him painfully aware that there was much more to life than what he was ever told.
INSIDE THE MANSION
As Crogg was talking to Captain Montgomery, he wondered to himself what was delaying Peter.
OUTSIDE, DOWN ON THE PATHWAY
Just then, Peter felt a terrible feeling surge up, something from outside of him. He spun around and faced the mansion. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he thought. But what ‘that’ wrong was, seemed too elusive to identify. So much had already gone wrong, what more horrors would play out from here?
Feeling waves of anxiety, he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to go to England, and put all of this behind him. ‘I need a new start,’ he felt.‘This just might be the thing I need,’ and he re-traversed his steps and headed back toward the mansion.
efty had been watching Peter from the woods. As Peter walked back through the arboretum, Lefty jumped out in front of him, startling him.“Where ya’ goin’ Kid?” he asked in a rough-and-tough way.
Peter remarked, “I should have known better!”
“Known what?!“
“That you would try something like this.”
The six-foot two-inch, all-muscle, no-brain Lefty took some steps toward Peter, and shoved him, “Like what?!” he prodded with a challenging tone.
“Look Lefty, you’re not going to win any prizes out here pushing me around.”
Lefty grinned and shoved Peter again. “Dat’s all right Kid, I like pushin’ ya’ ’round.”
After regaining his composure from Lefty’s thrust, Peter stood there with a great amount of self-control. “What do you want?!”
Lefty got a mean scowl on his face. “I want ta shut yer face up!” he snarled, belligerently pushing Peter again.
Knuckles, who had been searching the woods and brush for Lefty, got tired of the hide-and-seek game. He yelled for him at the top of his lungs. “LEFTY! WHERE ARE YOU?!” his voice carried a great deal of frustration toward Lefty. Peter responded to his call by yelling back.
“HE’S OVER HERE, KNUCKLES!”
“He ain’t gonna do ya’ nooo good,” Lefty sneered, giving Peter another forceful nudge.
Just about then, Knuckles came running to the scene, and grabbed Lefty’s arm. “Where’ve ya’ been?! I been lookin’ for ya’ all over da place!”
“I been waitin’ for da kid ta come back.”
“Ya Numskull!” Knuckles growled, whacking Lefty’s chest with the back of his fingers. “Yer playin’ wit dynamite, ya’ know dat?!”
“Ah, what’s ta worry ’bout? I’m just havin’ a little fun wit da kid!”
“Come on, we’re gettin’ outta here!”
“I told ya, not ’til I teach dis kid a lesson!”
“Leave da kid alone, I said! Knuckles barked, giving Lefty orders. “Our ticket ta da good life will be cancelled if ya’ hurt him –ya hear me?!”
Lefty pushed Knuckles out of his way with a swipe of his arm, then lunged at Peter again, pushing him back. “What can yer money do for ya’ now, huh?” Lefty jeered .
As odium spilled from Lefty’s eyes toward Peter, Peter glared at Knuckles. “Get Mr. Crogg! I can take care of myself!”
Somehow, Knuckles instinctively followed Peter’s orders. Lefty laughed an ‘I got you now’ laugh at the very idea. “He ain’t gonna get here fast enough ta save ya’, Kid!”
“Funny,” Peter remarked with a stone face, “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
“Oh yeah?!” Lefty prodded, and he gave Peter a push that knocked him to the ground this time.
Peter, rising and brushing himself off, defensively warned: “You’re making a big mistake, Lefty.”
“Yer da one who’s made da mistake, Kid!” he asserted as he knocked Peter down again with a forward thrust of his hand. Peter stood up and brushed himself off again.
Right about then, Knuckles made it back to the mansion and into the study, huffing and puffing from pushing himself to run faster than he should.
He burst into the study without knocking. “What the . . .!” Crogg yelled.
Knuckles beckoned him with fast waves of his hands. “Lefty is fighting with his fists with the boy!”
“WHAT??!!”
The entire group of Crogg’s men were alerted.
“Come on, come on” he urged. “You got to stop Lefty before he kills da kid!”
This set Crogg off like a hot geyser. He slammed his cigar to the floor and cursed. “!@*#&!! I TOLD YOU TWO NOT TO COME BACK!!” As sparks bounced on the marble floor where the cigar landed, sparks between Lefty and Peter had already set off a fire of anger between them. Crogg summoned Stilts and Pint Size, and at least half a dozen other men to follow him and Knuckles.
Everyone spilled out from the study and through the mansion, and were running out into the back gardens.
Meanwhile, Lefty, the belligerent brute he was, had knocked Peter to the ground again, and again, derriving endless joy just from doing so. As Peter rose to his feet, he stared at Lefty with flames of anger leaping from his eyes. “I’m warning you Lefty, don’t touch me again!”
“Or what? Ya might hurt me?” he derided.
“I mean it Lefty, you’ll be sorry!”
Lefty laughed again, “Yer tretnin’ me? Oh – I’m scared – real scared. Can’t ya’ see my knees shakin’?” Lefty had the type of resentment in his eyes that spoke of smoldering hate. He took a fast, advancing step, and with a quick jab of his left hand knocked Peter down again. Peter rubbed his shoulder. “Ya’ tink dat hurts, huh Kid?!”
Peter lay there, hoping Lefty would give up and leave him alone. “Come on Kid, ya’ tink ya’ can hurt me? Get up ‘n try it!”
At this point, Peter thought it would be better just to wait for Crogg to come, and rescue him but Lefty also had that thought in his mind. He bent over, and with his right hand, grabbed Peter by the shirt collar, and lifted him into the air at face-to-face level.
Speaking nearly with his nose on Peter’s, he growled, “Ya’ know why I don’t like ya’ Kid? ‘Cause yer a rich snob nose who tinks he’s better dan everybody else!” Lefty smiled, like he was about to take a bite out of Peter, then tossed him to the ground. THUD! “Come on Kid, get up ‘n fight!” he demanded impatiently.
eter was doing all he could to hold in his ire. How he was managing was
anyone’s guess.
Lefty’s attention was diverted slightly as he saw something fall out of Peter’s pocket. He picked it up, and questioned in a taunting tone, “Who’s dis?”
Realizing what happened, Peter demanded, “Hey! Give me that!” and he reached to take it from Lefty. But Lefty pulled his hand back, then forcefully shoved Peter again so he could gape at the photo of Peter’s mother without hindrance.
“Hey . . .” his tone changed to a more obnoxious one, “who’s da classy dame?” he drooled.
Peter lunged toward Lefty, and snapped the picture from his hand. “That’s my mother!”
Moving as fast as he does in the ring, Lefty tried to snatch the photo back; in doing so, he tore it due to Peter’s tight grip on it. With a lightening-fast response, Peter took the ripped piece away from him.
“So ya’ tink yer tough, huh kid?! Ya’ know what ya’ are? Yer nutin’ but a pretty mamma’s boy.”
Peter, about at the exploding point, could feel a rumbling inside of himself. “What’s da matter pretty boy? Gonna start bawlin’ again?” Lefty jumped in place as if he were in a boxing ring. He taunted Peter with more pejorative words. “Yeah! Yer just a sissy, dat’s all, a wittle baby sissy who needs his mamma,” and with both hands, he thrust Peter back, causing him to drop the photo.
Lefty swiftly picked up the half with Peter’s mother’s face intact. “Ya’ know what I say? I say she’s a classy dame!” and he gave it big, slobbering kissesas though he were making animal love to Peter’s mother.
Peter turned red in the face. He jumped up, and like a raging bull, rammed Lefty in the stomach with his shoulder, knocking him down. Peter backed up, and prepared to defend himself. He whipped off his jacket, and flung it aside then rolled up his sleeves as hastily as he could while Lefty stood up.
As Lefty stood, he laughed an ‘I’m gonna pulverize you’ laugh as he saw Peter’s skinny arms. “Yer gonna box me??!” Lefty thought this was too funny to be true. He started laughing uncontrollably.
But when Peter took a jujitsu stance, and stood there with an expression on his face that spoke of a controlled rage burning deep within, Lefty became taken aback for a split moment. Like a dog, he tilted his head with curiosity as to what he was seeing. “Hey….What cha’ doin’?” he asked.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget, no matter how hard you try, if you put one more finger on me.”
Lefty’s pugnacious attitude always seemed to depose whatever small fraction of common sense that existed within him, and like a vicious dog, he yarred,“I’m gonna knock yer block off!”
As he came within striking distance of Peter, Peter spun around with a swift kick, and knocked Lefty’s legs out from under him. For the moment, Lefty was more surprised that Peter stopped him, than angry.
As he stood up, Peter issued a final warning. “Now, I’m warning you,” he flared through gritted teeth. His face contorted from anger as he spoke, “I’ve been patient with you so far. You come into my house, you lock me in my room, you insult me, push me around, and behave like a filthy animal and I’m not going to take it anymore! If you lay another finger on me, I’m going to lay you flat on your back, and if you get up, I’ll do it again and if you continue to fight me, I’ll put you out of business!”
The dunce-minded Lefty was caught between clashing emotions, but as to be expected, his anger got the worst of him. “I’m gonna punch yer face in!”he growled with furious feelings as he aggressed toward Peter with shaking fists.
As Lefty came at Peter like a runaway locomotive, Peter spun around faster than Lefty could throw one of his lightning-fast jabs; and lifting his leg in a thrusting kick, sent Lefty flying, using the momentum of Lefty’s own forceful actions.
“Ahhhhhhh!!!!” Lefty groaned as he hit the ground.
As Peter resumed his defensive stance, Crogg and the others, plus a group of servants who got word of the skirmish, were nearly at the scene.
As Lefty got up, dirt covering his better half, he roared like an injured bear. “I’m gonna tear ya’ limb from limb!” Lefty struck his boxing pose, and bounced, and jumped around Peter, throwing punches his way, but Peter was too fast for him. He jumped high, and kicked Lefty in the head sending him staggering backward a half dozen steps.
Crogg was just about on the scene when Lefty tried to hit Peter again. “LEFTY!” he yelled from a distance, trying to stop him. As Lefty thrust out his jab, Peter, using Lefty’s thrust against him, sent Lefty sailing again . . . this time down a small embankment.
Lefty climbed up, tussled and tirading, and tromped after Peter again, only to be sent in a flying tumble again, which landed him up against a tree trunk.THUD!
The fight continued until Crogg could manage to get up close on the scene, his injured ribs limiting how fast he could run. Seeing Lefty going after Peter, he huffed and breathed out hard, and was finally able to yell in a way to actually control the situation, “Hey! Hey! Hey! What in blazing thunder is going on here?! Leave the lad alone. Can’t you see he’s had enough?!” and he sent Stilts over to Lefty to help pick him up. Lefty was stunned. He wobbled from being dizzy.
Suddenly, Lefty caught a glimpse of Peter, and tried to push Stilts off but, Stilts held onto him tightly. However, Lefty proved to be too much for Stilts. When he got loose of him, he threw a series of hammer-hitting thrusts into Stilts’ stomach which took the wind out of him. Stilts was dropped to his knees, and then fell over.
Believing his life was now in danger, Peter yelled to Crogg as Lefty turned his angry red eyes on him one more time. “Call him off Mr. Crogg, call him off before it’s too late!”
Crogg did his best by yelling a Lefty to stop, but Lefty wouldn’t listen. “NO MORE LEFTY!” Crogg yelled to him again.
Lefty, looking at Crogg for a hundredth of a moment, yelled back at Crogg while he centered his eyes back on Peter. “No kid’s gonna push me ’round!”And Lefty, half out of his mind, went after Peter as though Peter were a heavyweight in the ring with him.
Crogg yelled to Peter, “That’s a million-dollar fighter you’re fooling with!” ‘Cough -cough- caugh!”
By this time, a crowd of servants and guests, and Crogg’s own men had swelled around the area to see the spectacle. Crogg gave his henchmen orders to put Lefty under control. As Peter sent Lefty flying to the ground again, eight large men jumped on him, and kept him down.
Lefty squirmed like a tiger caught in a net. Crogg walked over to him.
What am I going to do with you?!” And Crogg gave his men the signal. “Get him out of my sight before I do something I’ll regret later!” The men lifted Lefty to his feet, and hauled him off. He was swearing and threatening Peter as they dragged him from the area. Peter looked at Crogg with contempt.
One of Crogg’s men walked over to him and said, “What do you want done with him, Boss?”
“Have the boys throw him in the wine cellar. Just get Stilts on his feet, to open the door, and then lock it.”
With a look from Crogg, the entire crowd disbursed, leaving just himself and Peter on the wide-spread lawn. Crogg, holding his ribs, walked over to him.”Are you all right, Lad?”
Peter picked up his jacket ,and brushed it off, then searched around for his mother’s picture.
Crogg, seeing the picture lying on the ground, pointed to it. “Is that what you’re looking for?”
Peter leaned over and picked up the pieces. He said nothing to Crogg, not even a thank you.
“You may not believe this Lad, but I’m sorry this escapade happened!”
“What?! No wine cellar?!“
“I suppose I deserved that remark, but this time the right person is being put in there, that’s where they’re bringing Lefty as we speak. He won’t bother you again.”
Exhausted, Peter tossed himself on the lawn and sat back. “As far as I’m concerned, he deserves a lot more than that! What’s wrong with all of you?”
“I know you’re angry Lad, but . . .”
“Do you?!” Peter interrupted. “Do you really know how angry I am?” He stood up and brushed himself off. Raising his arm while holding the coat in his hand, he pointed, “I love my home!” Lifting the torn picture of his mother in his other hand, he burst out, “I love my mother! This was her home, she loved it; and everything I love is being taken from me!”
Tears were breaking forth as he continued to speak.” I’ve been mistreated! Ordered about to do this and that! I’ve had nothing but people bad-mouthing me, my home has been invaded by dozens of people I don’t even know; you’ve discharged all the servants most familiar to me, and I’ve had nothing but belligerent responses and stares from everyone ever since I’ve come back from Boston. Then I’m told by YOU, I’ve got to go to England for some cock-a-mamie reason! Well I’ve had it!” he grit his teeth, “You know that?!” and he started to walk back to the mansion.
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