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LIGHT OF THE ATMA – THE SPARK WITHIN
“ME? JEALOUS?”
s Peter’s carriage was headed back home, all of the men in Crogg’s group of sophisticated thieves had left the library with grumbles of uncertainties, and were traveling back to the city in a long caravan.
Judge Walker had lingered on to talk to Crogg. “Take my advice Elmer, make amends with the boy. Beg his forgiveness, then get down on your knees and ask God to forgive you for all your sins.”
Crogg gave him a foul look. “That’s really good advice coming from a man who weaseled his way up to the top!”
“I will have to make my amends! I may burn in hell, but my stay won’t be as long as yours!”
“Look!” Crogg snapped in a gruff and raised voice as he slapped the desk top with the palms of his hands. “I’m sick and tired of your self-righteous talk! Your soul’s as black as mine . . . if we have one at all! I don’t see wings on your back, nor a halo over your head so stop preaching to me, you got that?!”
The judge who was sitting in the middle of the cigar smoke-filled library, amidst all the empty, folding chairs surrounding him, stood up. “Yeah, I’ve got it!”
Crogg was anything but pleased with the judge. He was aching to send him on a, ‘journey to nowhere,’ but also knew that the judge had him over a barrel.
“Now Your Honor . . .I suggest that you go back to your, ‘inner sanctum,’ and do me up the rest of those papers I told you about. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow, and I’m going to need them!”
Puffing on his cigar, the judge asked, “What does the boy want?”
“I already told you, he wants to call his own shots. He wants to be the master of his own vessel. Now that this little incident with Lefty has happened, he’s up in arms, and he’s determined to look under each rock to see what crawls out and peer into each closet to see where the skeletons are hidden.”
The judge ventured a question. “Do you have any way to realistically slip him out of town for a short while? You know, ship him off to a remote relative somewhere and just conveniently forget about him so we can work here without anymore concern?”
“No, not really – nothing short of drastic!” and he looked at the judge for a response.
“No – no violence. I like that boy. He’s going to make a good upright citizen someday!”
“Oh brother!” Crogg bellowed.
“You know what your problem is Elmer? You’re jealous of the boy!”
“Me? Jealous?! Why would I be jealous?”
“Because he’s genuine and you’re not!”
Crogg stood up. “Hey! His ol’ man didn’t exactly earn his way to the top honestly! He’s pulled a shady maneuver a number of times to get what he wanted.”
“You’re a sick man, you know that Elmer? You’re keeping that boy around here just so you can take your hate for Michael out on him, aren’t you? Just send Peter to Boston for crying-out-loud.You know as well as I do, that we control the situation, not his grandparents – not anyone! You make it sound as though they are some match for us, but there’re not!”
“Oh, believe me, they are a threat!”
The judge shook his head in disagreement. “No. That’s the story you keep telling yourself, but it’s not true. There’s not a thread of truth in it! All you want to do is keep that innocent boy for the purpose of revenge and nothing more, and you’re making us all a party to your chthonian act.”
Crogg grew aggravated. “You fish brain Walker! You’d have nothing if his grandfather got a hold of the kid!”
“Really?!”
“Yeah, really!” And they both stood there in the room, ten paces from one another like two gun fighters in a street ready to draw on each other.
“Who do you see when you look into the mirror Elmer, Napoleon? You think you can become emperor of this town by force? You’re nothing but a common gangster.”
“Gangster maybe – but common, never! I run most of this town Judge, and I’m about to control the rest of it. Nothing moves without me knowing about it, and nothing gets done without my approval – you get that?!”
“Yep – I get it!” and the judge walked toward the door, his heels soft on the oriental rug, until he reached the wooden floor where they sounded loudly with each step. Turning enough just to see him, Walker remarked, “You can get only so far with your hoods, and the guns, and your lily-white pretense of a reputation but the two don’t go together, or haven’t you noticed?”
“Listen Judge,” Crogg said as he walked over to him, “a bullet in your head wouldn’t satisfy me. Do you know why? Because you want to die. You egg me on, and on, and on, because you want to die. For you, death is the only way you can escape me. But Judge,” he added squeezing the judge’s face as he pushed him against the door, “I’m not going to let you out that easily. And if you don’t cooperate with me, I’ll have you shipped to the Sahara and staked to the sand dunes. I hear they have ways of keeping a man alive while he sears in the sun! Unless you’d rather being shanghaied and brought to China. I hear they have a little method known as the Chinese water torture, dripping one drop at a time on the forehead until after a while, that tiny innocent drop becomes like a hammer stoke. And there’s more on the adjenda with that. You see Your Honor, I’ve got an entire vacation package I can plan out for you.”
The judge spoke through a quashed mouth.”I get your point,” Crogg pushed the judge’s face with his hand so that the back of his head hit the door. Thud! “You make sure you keep assisting me [trouble free] and I’ll make sure your last days will be pleasant!” The bodyguard unlocked the door and opened it, allowing Walker to leave the room.
Peter studied the caravan that passed him as he made his way back home. He stared at his mansion as the wheels of his carriage brought him closer to it with each revolution they made. A dozen thoughts flew from the interior of his mind like a flock of pigeons as he neared it. All he could do was stare!
The kathexis,* [ the psychic current ] that charged the atmosphere around Peter’s mansion radiated pain much like a thumb would throb with pulsating aches after being hit with a hammer.
The circumambience also reeked with deleterious feelings that radiated from the foul impurities these men kept in the vaults of their hearts. Such were the poisonous gems which made up their vile treasures.
And where could these men spend these putrid coins of delusion, and their glittering, worthless stones of greed? They could only spend them to get to hell.
Echoes of past indulgences shouted in the ether, and the very air which man breathes for life had been contaminated by vile and wicked emotions. Was it any wonder why Peter cringed when he finally reached the front steps?
Judge Walker was just stepping out of the mansion as Peter’s carriage was rolling up the long driveway.
The judge stood on the steps shaking with nervousness after his encounter with Crogg.
If the judge was smart, he would have just gotten into his carriage, gone to his abode, packed his bags, and left town, or just plain left. Of course, he would have to give the men tailing him the slip, but he was smart enough to do that. So why was he hanging on the way he was? He felt he was a half-dead man as it was, and Crogg took all the joy out of the remaining half of life for him, so why did he even want to stay around there another day? Did he not have a hide-away already picked out for himself . . . enough money? . . . so why was he drifting back and forth like a duck in a shooting gallery?
Apparently, he was concerned for Peter. If that was the case, why didn’t the judge just come right out and tell Peter to go to Boston? Why did he continue to act out the script Crogg wrote for him? Instead of warning Peter, he put on airs of authority, and stood before him playing the stooge. He was a man whose favorite spot was the very middle of the fence.
The judge hailed to Peter, as he stepped from his carriage. “I’m glad I ran into you. What’s this I hear about your not wanting to go to England?”
Peter was on the ball with his defense. “You knew my father fairly well Your Honor. You knew his moods as well as his feelings toward things. You also knew him as a man of his word. Remember when he promised you his support when some men tried to have you recalled? Did you need a written contract with him to, ‘seal your deal,’ for him to help you stay in office?”
“Ummm – no.”
“As I remember Your Honor, you accepted his word on a handshake.”
“Well… yes!”
“And you did it Your Honor, because you felt as though my father was a man of his word, and his words were as binding as a contract; is that correct Your Honor?” The judge nodded, always persuaded by the greater force of confidence.
“Well Your Honor, my father and I had a gentlemen’s agreement also. He promised me I would not have to go to military school if I graduated at the top of my class. I not only left school at the top of my class, but I scored perfectly on my college entrance exams, now that, Your Honor, has earned me the right to make my own decisions.
I made a deal with my father, and a handshake sealed the agreement, just as a handshake sealed your agreement with him. Can you tell me that my father’s handshake and word was less for me than it was for you?
Now, my father’s most recent will doesn’t seem to reflect the agreement I had with him, but at the sometime it doesn’t mean the agreement didn’t take place.”
The judge was the one to know because it was he who Crogg had reword the will, and forge Michael’s signature.
“As I told Mr. Crogg,” Peter said pounding his words out hard at the judge, “my father was a busy man. He could have forgotten, but whatever it was that caused him to neglect writing our agreement in his will, it does not invalidate his word to me. And because I’ve lived up to my side of the bargain, know this: I’m not going to England.”
“I admire your tenacity Peter, but there are complications that are not going to allow you to live here in your home alone, as a minor. And you mustn’t live with your Boston grandparents.”The judge looked at him with bewilderment written on his face. “Just where is the court supposed to place you? No, no, no, the only safe place for you is in England until you’re old enough to take care of yourself.”
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