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A sprightly black dot in the air drones and flies whimsically in front of me, distracting me again. I lift my eyes to follow his frivolous flight. He darts down to the moist dug earth, alighting on a rocky mound. Distracted again, I scan the length of the green field dotted with man shaped stones. A barred fence keeps the progress and hectic activity and confusion of the world at bay, so the sleeping can absorb sublime peacefulness and beauty.

Beyond the fence I see children hopping and skipping, playing together in their youthful joy. How lovely little children are! I recall Margarita as a child. I was young and unshaking then. She was younger yet, much younger, with black hair flowing to her shoulders, and small square child's teeth glistening in her full child's face. She was a lovely child, flowing with activity and fun, asking questions in quest of knowledge about this grand world into which she was growing. I remember when Margarita lost a front tooth. The gaping hole in her mouth was black and disfiguring, but this only added to her delightful appearance. When she smiled, she made you smile. Children, especially little girls, are wonderful creatures filled with joy and hope and anticipation, so enjoyable for themselves.

Margarita grew to be a graceful girl. She grew quite pretty, with dark, dark eyes, and darker hair. Her adult teeth were not as evenly aligned as they should have been, but even this did not detract from her charm. As she grew older, Margarita was still always laughing and happy, cheering even the most dismal hours of those around her. Her very existence seemed to fill the lives of those about her. I witnessed all the years of her aging. I, too, was aging, but she helped the tiredness and frustration of life disappear with her laughter.

I can remember her as she was then, her almost mature body swaying provocatively. It was amazing to see this once little ball of giggly laughter become a soft, undulating almost-woman with a haunting laugh. True, she did not become the most beautiful woman, but she always had an irresistible effect on me. The years flow back so easily now, without order or sequence. They've passed so silently. I almost forget they are gone … until I feel my hands shaking.

Margarita grew older, and it was a joy to see her becoming aware of life, or blossoming into womanhood, tasting the joys of being youthfully alive. She began to go out with young men, not really men yet, and how handsome she thought they were, and what great and grave aspirations they had. She was very happy. Often, though, the young men made her sad too. They came into and passed out of her life with despairing silence, and she would be tearful and full of sorrow.

After a strange thing occurs, it is difficult to recall and trace its origin. Strangely and ever so slowly, Margarita changed. Not that everyone would notice at a glance. But one who had watched her grow, had watched her gay laughter, could notice hardness in her face, straight rough lines surrounding her mouth, her laughter now harsher. Who knew why it had come? Perhaps it was just an almost grown woman's way of frustration with her young men, I thought at the time. But it grew worse, and it was frightening. I made sincere offerings of friendship and companionship, which she threw down unceremoniously. It made me sad. Not that she wouldn't accept my offering, but that I couldn't help her.

She began to talk with men, not boys any longer. She did not want to be bothered with boys. When she was old enough, to the heartache of her mother, she would sit in a bar, not in a booth or anything ladylike, but actually at the bar with men of her acquaintance. Men, lonely and bitter men, who had a propensity to stay out of their own homes, and who enjoyed her youthful, female companionship. It was agonizing to see such a delicate flower amidst human debris. She was headstrong and wild, and would not listen to anyone. Her eyes would flash with anger, and her white teeth would glisten as they were bared in defense of her loose independence. Her mother suffered because of this wildness. She ached and worried and tried to appease Margarita's wild spirits, but to no avail. Margarita became more strange, more bitter, more intense in her worldliness.

I remember a party. I stepped out of the house in which the party was held, in need of fresh air and a cigarette. Standing in the dark, clear night, looking into the sky, I head a noise. It was a vague sort of noise, a rustle, a sigh. I turned and saw Margarita. Not that I really saw her, but I saw a couple leaning together in a darkened doorway, tightly embracing. It was she, her dark long hair hanging over the man's shoulder, stealing love. Silently I went back to the party. She returned later, saying she had gone for a walk by herself. I, if no one else, or perhaps it is just that like I, they did not say anything, noticed the faded mark of her smeared lipstick over-reaching her lips.

A detestation of her adult irreverence for the spirit of her innocence made me hate her then. I wanted to grab her by her hair and twist her into the ground. My insides ached with anger, but I said nothing. Her paramour, a married man, an ugly, sensual man, came back a few minutes later. He, I hated more. I wanted to murder him right there and then … but to what end? Was it his fault? Would that end it? If I had been sure that it would, I would happily have killed him. I remained silent and motionless. They party continued its strange cycle.

Margarita left home soon after that, and I saw her very little. When I did see her, and I hated the very thought of what she represented, the agony she brought to her mother. One day that good soul asked me to look for Margarita and bring her home where she belonged. I did. I found her living in a cheap rooming house, in a room filled with junky trinkets and cheap furniture, a thick fragrance of cheap perfume permeating the air. She was steady eyed, her jaw formed in challenge … but the fire had gone out of her eyes. They were dull and lifeless. She would not yield, and threw back in my teeth, the entreaty of her mother.

I raged and vented hatred for her until my voice gave out, but she was uncaring and emotionless. I wanted to throttle her. It was a feeling of utter loathing that filled my being. It was hard to tell her mother the coarse things that Margarita had said … and it was harder for that mother to accept the absence of Margarita. That mother who had nursed her, her first party, her first prom, that woman who took such delight in the most simple activity of her daughter, was now shunted aside to some ill remembered corner of the past.

Not long afterward, Margarita's mother died. It was a sad funeral, sadder because it was not well attended, noted mostly for the absence of the daughter. It did not rain that day either. My hatred of the girl began to turn to pity for her worthless existence. She was harsh, and I was reconciled.

I saw Margarita alive only once after that. A short while ago, when she was ill, just before her death. I was summoned, although I can't imagine how they knew to contact me. Now I am so old, so useless, so hardly able to help myself … but I agreed to go. Even in my contempt there was not a callousness. My legs drag slowly after my body now, and my arms shake, but for Margarita … wonderful, laughing, bright eyed Margarita, asking her childhood questions, I made the effort.

I found her in a bed. It was supposed to be a bed, covered with slick and dark-with-dirty sheets, in a room of pale green, and cracked plaster, a dripping sink against one wall, and a cardboard closet with cheap clothes and stockings hanging from the back of a spare wooden chair. She lived with a man there. He was filth, like the surroundings, filthy, rotten and hateful, degrading, his eyes haunted with drink, skinny, dirty clothes, hard working and ignorant. Cheap pulp romance books were strewn about the room.

Oh, God, how I regret that day. How I wish these eyes had gone blind, that I had ended my existence before I walked up those flights of stairs and entered that room. She looked at me almost unknowingly. Her eyes looked as if they were eaten away. There was nothing there, just dots, not dark, but milky brown, her hair was stringy, her skin pale and ugly.

She recognized me, perhaps, before she died. She smiled a little, just ever so faintly, and I could look back instantly on her youthful days. I could hear her long ago laughter, her bright smiling child's face, filled with glistening child's teeth. She had just a little smile left now. Just a very little.

She died with that little smile on her face. Quietly, without a sound, she left this life of which she had tasted both good and foul. She lay there dead, silence pounding pressure against my ears. Suddenly I almost wept. I could feel that slightly burning, slightly expanding sensation around my eyes. I could feel pressure in my nose. I thought I had outgrown weeping. I thought I had wept all my tears at my wife's funeral. But there were more … many more.

And now, the sun glinting off the casket as it slowly lowers, I can feel the welling of tears around my eyes. What a strange life. I cannot despise the girl. I want to wipe the tears, but I am embarrassed for my hands. I just lift my head and gaze out over the field again, drops of water rolling slowly down my face.

Blurredly I see the children outside still playing … wonderful children … reminding me somehow of my lovely, lovely, little daughter Margarita. The casket is in the hole, but somehow my life is not as shattered as at the parting of my wife. I look around at the peaceful trees, the sweet smelling lawn … it is not that I love her less, but that soon we three will all be together, at peace, again.

THE TRIP

I do not know when the inception for this scheme, which I am now in the process of fulfilling, came to be. I know not where or when or how or why. Perhaps in a hypnologic state of dazedness my clever and diabolical mind touched upon the idea in fantasy, or in a morose daydream of self-destruction I summoned, to my detriment, this weird plan, or perhaps in the unsteadiness of a venture with potent fermentation. No matter, … for now, whatever the reason for the inception, I find myself seated behind the steering wheel of an old, battered automobile, too old and unwanted in this present state of glittering fancy to be worth much to anyone. Anyone except me, who am about to use it to start a series of events which will ultimately lead to my becoming hundreds of thousands of dollars richer. Yes, I am going to use this car as a pawn in a game of wits, a game wherein the players know not yet they are playing, or at least the other players in the game do not know they are playing. I, as one of the players, have certainly devoted immoderate time and energy and thought and worry on this little game, on the strategy to be employed, on the
modus operandi
, to be well aware of the circumstances, to be well aware of the dangers involved, of the chances necessary, and of the ultimate success of my plan. I am quite sure that my plan is perfect, and without defect … and yet, … and yet, in my heart, an uneasiness is rocking nervously, quivering, warning me of failure, trembling with trepidation. Yet I go on. I must go on. I will not allow myself to desist. Am I trying to destroy myself? I do not know. I cannot think of that now. I have not the time for subtle and vague reflections. The only reflection I can be conscious of at this moment is the reflection of the road behind me in the mirror above my head. You'll notice of course, that even in the brightness of mid-day, this road is not overly crowded. Oh, an occasional car passes by on its way to the highway, but other than that, this part of the road, right here by all the wharves and docks, is not very traveled or peopled. As a matter of fact, I have a favorite spot on the end of one of the wharves where many pleasant hours of reflections and meditations have been lulled by the sibilant rolling of the waves against the pilings of the wharf. Conscious of reflections again, I gaze up into the rear view mirror. The road behind me is bare and sun drenched, with slight pools of dust, a glistening spectrum colored in the downbeating rays of the sun. A car is turning the corner, having on its metallic joints, and twists toward me. This is not he for whom we are waiting. The car rolls closer, the engine becoming droningly audible, and then it passes, whooshing the wind behind it, and again, I am alone, looking at the road. There really is no necessity for worry or apprehension or anxiety about the truck coming. I have approximately four minutes to wait, … four, perhaps five, … perhaps six, … but no more, … no more than six minutes from now a truck, not an ordinary truck, but a tow truck, will lumber heavily and powerfully around that corner, and roll toward the highway. It will not be just an ordinary unordinary tow truck either, for it will be the tow truck of the Allied Armored Car Corporation. No, not an armored car, just a tow truck for armored cars. Another of, shall I say, the pawns in this little game. As I've already said I cannot remember the exact instant I conceived this plan, but it has been boiling and heaving in my cranium for the better part of two weeks. Not too long a time for a man to become hundreds of thousands of dollars richer, you say? Quite true, by ordinary standards; but then, were I an ordinary man I would not be planning this little adventure. That's what it is, you know, an adventure. A scheme which is designed to bring to my otherwise, and unfortunately so, serene life, some excitement. Life is so, shall I say, tiring that I find myself constantly in quest of adventures, dreams which fill the void of this existence, mystifications which form the more memorable aspects of my life, the while I wait for the somber morticians in their ebon suits, whose dreary step I hear already echoing on my doorstep, the while I wait for him who is to cover my dirt with more dirt, to come and carry me away. Do I sound like an old man, waiting for death. No not really. I am quite young, as successful young businessmen are measured. I'm thirty-two. No matter. I was telling you of how I initiated this cabal for becoming richer. No, that is most certainly not quite accurate. Let me start out from the beginning, as one should always start, with a proper notion of the entire scheme of things, and through diligence, observation, and planning, surmount each step correctly so that when the end of our trip is reached, we need not even look back to check if we have made a mistake. This following then, is the “how” I have schemed my little schema, which I have just begun to correctly state. I started not only, mind, I did not say not at all, but rather, not only, not only with the idea of becoming rich, that is rather nice, but also with the idea that in undertaking this scheme I would enjoy very much the thrill of this battle of wits. A noble battle of honor and wits fought with the staid and very tried and true conventionalities of that most protective and most sacred and most carefully guarded protector of the commonwealth, the armored car.