IN THE FIRST MONTHS after buying the convenience store, things seemed to be working out okay. However, my mom kept mentioning the liquor inventory that was oddly missing and the possibility that an employee was stealing the profits.

The new house also was okay. It was closer to my high school friends, and all seemed to be going well.

Except for the yelling.

Which always escalated into crying.

Which often escalated into screaming.

“Mom, what happened to your eyes?” I asked, surprised that she walked into the kitchen one morning entirely disheveled and in a severely grumpy mood.

This was a woman who’d normally shower and apply makeup before being seen by anybody. She’d regularly hum and sing, and her typical nature was positive and happy.

“Nothing,” she stated flatly.

“They both look pretty black,” I observed innocently.

“I don’t know what happened.”

It was the early 70’s. There was little societal awareness of domestic violence beyond what nosy neighbors could decipher when a police cruiser pulled up in front of a neighbor’s home. Same for child abuse. It’s not that it wasn’t happening; it just wasn’t getting coverage by any news outlet.

Awareness of such things was generally beyond my comprehension. My blood surged with a daily supply of freshly minted hormones, and my mind was engaged in current girlfriends and those who might become such. I had no time to take notice of other people’s concerns, even my mother’s.

Until it escalated one time too many.

A few weeks prior to her two black eyes, I finally came to the realization that Chuck was hurting her in some way. Abusing her. That the arguments were not just two people yelling at each other any longer. This was a six-foot-three, two hundred fifty pound monstrosity tearing away at my one hundred twenty pound mother. But I had school, sports, friends, homework. Girls. I hoped it was a temporary thing.

Besides, when inhuman events occur, it’s easy to wallow in a state of disbelief. I had heard of spousal abuse, but you always think it’s a corner case and applies to other families in lower socioeconomic classes.

At first, I rationalized in my mind about the screams I’d heard. In fact, it was not even clear to me how two married people interacted since I was entirely unaware of how my dad and mom got along in the prior years.

One evening, however, the violence finally sucker-punched me. It may have taken my slow-acting brain a few months, but hearing your mother screaming behind closed doors thirty feet away eventually has an impact, even on testosterone-laced gray matter.

“Chuck, stop it!” she pleaded as he wrapped his large paws around her skull and pulled viciously at her hair. The screaming and moaning continued for a half hour.

My heart was pounding with anger, and my teenage mind went to work. “Wait. This is my mom he’s hurting. I have to stop him. I’ve had enough. I don’t care what she thinks, this needs to stop!”

I had decided to maim him, even kill him, as necessary. Whatever it took to stop him from further harming my mother.

My desperate mind quickly concocted a plan. My bedroom door was closed, but I was afraid to open it without a weapon in hand since I would need to walk past their bedroom where the abuse was happening. I knew if Chuck saw me right then, given our mutual disdain for each other, my life would be instantly in jeopardy as well as my mother’s.

So I couldn’t easily stride down the hallway and out to the storage room where I kept my baseball bat. I assessed that he couldn’t react quickly enough to my swinging at his knees. Once he was kneecapped, my mother and I could both safely exit the house.

I had not considered other consequences of my actions. It’s hard to do that in the moment, when the woman who loved you more than anyone else in the world is screaming at the top of her lungs. Sensing the bat was high risk if I missed on the first swing, I threw back the closet door and stared at my .22 caliber long rifle.

It wasn’t mine, at least initially. My dad and mom were hunters in Williams, and having guns and ammo around the house was normal. Frantically, I searched for bullets and found none. I tore everything out of my closet, from shelf to floor, hoping for even a single, unspent shell. Failing that search, I sat on my bed to determine my next move, fearful that each new cry might be her last.

“What good would it do anyway if I had bullets? I’d need to shoot him directly through the eyes. He’s a big horse, and a lousy .22 caliber will only make him angrier and give him an excuse to kill me. Worse, it’s a bolt-action. What if I don’t kill him with shot one? He’ll grab it from me, a puny hundred pounder, and smash my skull with its butt.”

Whatever it was, whatever neurons might have been speaking to me at that moment, I was frozen in indecision. Few kids in those days would have had the training or courageous wherewithal to initiate a call to the police from a phone in the kitchen. Getting caught making that call would mean a painful death for me, I believed. So I sat there on the bed and cried until her screaming subsided.

That night I may have slept some, but I can only recall wondering if the vile beast would barge through my door and attack me since he likely had just killed my mom. I kept hoping he’d at least call the police and then run, assuming he had a modicum of decency not to sleep next to the body of the woman he had just murdered.

Morning finally came. I sat in bed wondering if I could exit from the house alive, go to school, and check if she was still alive when I came home. So I rolled off the mattress and looked out the window to see if Chuck’s car was parked in front.

It was gone. Having some confidence he left, I slowly crept out my bedroom door, being careful not to make noise. I quickly threw a breakfast tart into the toaster and wondered if I should knock on her door.

But I couldn’t. I was afraid of what I’d find. She was either lying dead on her blood-soaked bed, or nursing her wounds and too ashamed to have me witness the beast’s damage.

While waiting for the toaster to pop up, I heard the inner door to the family room open. The kitchenette where I was standing was just out of sight.

My heart was beating wildly. “Is it him? Did he not leave? Should I even look at him? Will he grab me next? Head down. Head down! He knows last night was his most vicious of all. He knows I heard everything, and my knowledge of this event will convict him for murder, so he’ll need to do the deed on me as well.”

I prayed that I would not see Chuck’s fat, milky, white calves once the kitchen door slid open.

“Mom!” I shouted, unconsciously spouting a mixture of milk and breakfast tart onto my plate. She was alive.

Her cheeks were heavily bruised and both eyes were again blackened. The poor woman’s hair was matted and tangled as if she had survived a tornado. Multiple black and blue marks covered her arms.

She plopped onto the dinette table in a chair, peering down at the white tile floor, unable to look me in the eyes.

“It’s over.”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“That bastard won’t beat me any longer.”

“Beat you? I heard you screaming. I’ve heard it before.”

“He normally only pulls my hair,” she confessed, her lip quivering. “Like this,” she said, grimacing as she clenched her hair in a fist and pulled upward. “The coward does this because it doesn’t show. It means I can go work and nobody knows the asshole is abusing me. No legal evidence.”

“What do you mean about not doing it any longer? Did he say he was going to stop?”

“Oh, he’ll stop because he won’t get the opportunity to do it again. I told him I’m divorcing him; that this will never happen again. Then he continued hitting me.”

“God, Mom. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“God’s not involved in this, but that son-of-a-bitch better not ever come back here again. If he does, I want you to immediately call the police or get out the back door and go to a friend’s house and call. I told him I’m visiting our neighbors this morning, to Jerry the attorney, and filing for divorce with a restraining order. That’s where I’m headed right now.”

“Mom, is there anything I can do?” I was in shock and just wanted to get away from the raw emotion and guilt I felt.

“No. Go catch your bus. I’m taking care of this right now. It stops today. This devil will no longer hurt me.” Then she stood up proudly and walked across the kitchen and through the carport door to visit Jerry.

***

Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the end of this encounter with personified evil. Chuck had yet to conclude his master plan.

Get her to sell her substantial assets and convert them to cash. Check.

Convince her to use the cash to buy assets in both their names – a convenience store, for example. Better yet, a convenience store giving you an endless supply of spirits for your alcohol addiction. Check.

Convince her they needed a fresh start and the current house just wouldn’t do. When the new house is purchased, insist that both names are on the title. Check.

Do the same for her bank accounts, automobiles, and any other assets worth stealing. Check.

Then, execute the next stage of the plan, but give it a year so a judge won’t think you’re just some scum who rode into town to take advantage of an unassuming widow and her assets. Check.

In the next stage, start treating her badly. Don’t make it obvious because you might look like the criminal you are. That’s where the hair comes in. Check.

Abuse her so badly that she files for divorce. Check.

Employ a guileless attorney who appreciates fine spirits from the convenience store for his social events. Check.

Despite the fact that you recently came into the marriage with no assets to your name, not even an auto, make the attorney petition that you deserve seventy percent of the estate because you were the wizard who helped monetize her assets and realize substantial gains and benefits from them. Check.

Then, sit back with enough money and alcohol for a good while before it comes to a bankrupted end. At that juncture, foist the same plan again on another sucker. Partial check.

Despite retaining one of the top divorce attorneys in the state, the gracious judge saw through the demon’s devious plan. Chuck was granted his car and a four-figure sum of money. So no full ‘Check’ on that element.

Yet there was one more ‘Check’ that may have successfully been executed by the demon.

Sitting at that same dinette table some months later, my mother walked into the kitchenette and sat down to speak to me. She usually didn’t do this, so I knew something was up.

She stared out wistfully at our dog in the back yard.

“I got a call last night,” she said, a distant look in her pale blue eyes.

“Who from?”

“Oh, the lady’s name is not important. Suffice it to say she lives somewhere in Arizona. She has a small daughter, and she’s a widow. Her husband had a business worth a lot of money, apparently.”

It was not clear to me why she was bringing this up, but my stomach was starting to churn. My mind otherwise was on school, homework, and girls, not necessarily in that order.

“She had to call me to see if I was as evil as he made me out to be.”

It finally clicked. “Chuck?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He found another woman who bought into his lies. She called me because she couldn’t believe anyone on Earth could be as horrible as he indicated. And, guess what.”

“What?”

“He’s working on her like he did me. Trying to connive her into selling her husband’s business. Schmoozing cozily with her daughter, so much so that the lady feels very uncomfortable about their relationship. ‘Maybe he’s just a really sweet guy to children,’ she says. Isn’t that a laugh?” she wondered, unsmiling.

“So, what did you say to her. Did you tell her?”

She puckered her perpetually red-painted lips outward with uncertainty. “Of course. I can’t say I convinced her, however. Not right then and there. She’d been fully immersed in Chuck’s guilt, pity, and propaganda machine. So confused by his lies, she couldn’t tell if I was actually so evil that I’d make up such a terrible story about what happened to me, or if maybe my version had some truth to it. I honestly don’t expect to hear from her again because I believe she’d prefer to pretend he’s the angel he claims to be. But you and I both know he’s seated firmly at the anus of the devil, perhaps even sitting under his lap. I can’t help her any more than I did, but I fear she won’t seek any help and prays to herself that my painful story is completely untrue."