Say Hello to the Broken-Hearted

Say Hello To The Broken-Hearted

Dervan Brown

Copyright © 2014 Dervan Brown

All rights reserved.

ISBN-10: 1495443426

       ISBN-13: 978-1495443428

Chapter 1

      
Many
times in this life we are fortunate to say hello to the one our hearts desire. We brush shoulders with them on the sidewalks, meet the eyes, but keep going nonetheless. You may get on a bus, take a seat beside her, but because of the newspaper in your hand, and the preoccupancy of your mind on the mid semester paper, you didn’t say hello before she got off, never to see her again. That’s when your heart breaks, with you not even knowing.

     
Other times love comes our way. Sincere love, but we make the shackles of society dictate to us who our hearts, which has no boundaries, knows no color, and respects no morals, should love. So we miss out on forever happiness, which by the way is real, real as the wind that travels through the valley and brings life to the birds, bees and trees.

However, this fellow by the name of John
Steelburg, understood that true love only passes by once or twice in this life. So the first chance he got, he caught the firefly and bottled her, to keep her light for the longest of time.

The
summer was young, but as dead as the heat that came with it, so was the boredom.

John had gotten s
ummer break from college, and had just arrived in the country hills of Sawyers. To spend the time with his mother Jennifer Williams, his older brother Kevin Steelburg, and his sister Kathy Warren, who he despised as much as she did of him.

The house had a lived in look
. The furniture was old, and was in need of dusting. The tiles were made of marble, and the walls carried dirty paint and childish graffiti. The house was centered on a hill. It faced the valley, and the road that separated the overlooking mountain. It was a fifteen minute walk from the town of the community. It is a town, or at least that is the simplest adjective to describe the haberdashery store, which was the community’s only source of food and household items.

        The antique
Methodist church was gardened with weeds, and shrubs from the steps covered with tattered tiles to the wooden cross that bared a Jesus looking down on the incoming congregation.  Also at the very center of the town was a wooden barber shop under the streetlight.

The hair cutting business was usually
very slow at that time of the year. So the older folks often sat on the piece of wooden chair at the front of the shop, passing the days circulating the latest community gossips, as the tobacco smoke lingered the air.

While they carried
on, the youngsters were usually found in the bar adjacent to the shop. Youthful exuberance without the help of gin or brandy echoed from within the bar. They carried enough pennies to buy water, but not enough for wine. Nonetheless the latest rumors made the subject of the bar talk.                 

John would often find himself among them in the midst of the chattering
. When there was a lunar eclipse or when Christ made a second arrival. His five feet two inches disciplinarian, and over protective mother would not palpitate hard enough before he was out of there and in his room, even at age twenty-one.

However, his mother wa
s least worried about the company John kept. He knew he was a way respected young man within the community. He was often applauded by the elderly in the village and his church brothers and sisters. Pity they knew not, he was more of a church goer than he was a Christian. He spent more of the time criticizing the gospel than finding the divinity within the paradox.

John used to be a
steadfast believer in the bible, but since he started his university education in General Science, a conflict of interest and belief between facts and faith have given new doubts and led him to finding favor with the rest of the bible leaf chewers within the church.

A maverick, one would call him and by all means justified.
If he was the president of the United States and happened to find himself in the Situation Room with all his advisers and consultants having a synonymous decision, he would disagree holding a controversial ground, and of course in the end, remained the only man standing on the moon. His intelligence complimented his physique. He was one of those guys you saw in a suit that looked sophisticated and smart and actually proved so when he spoke. He was six feet tall. He had black hair, which was always kept sharp, dark brown eyes, hypnotic enough to search your soul and find hidden secrets that you yourself didn’t knew exist. His face was well define, his cheeks gently layered his skull and carried dimples that radiated his smile which was complimented by white teeth and a bottom and top lip, painted with the juice squeezed from cherries.

God himself went to the garden of
Eden and picked the coca fruits and the vanilla beans, then went back to heaven to refine the beans and extract the dark brown paste which was then used by an old French angel gifted with hands to produce art of exotic and sweet mosaic, to color his body from his toes to the head of his temple.

John
was raised in Sawyers. Jennifer Williams left the small hometown when she was impregnated with him. His mother and father Peter Steelburg, wanted a much better life for them than what the remote town could have offered. However, his dad migrated to the USA when he was two years old, leaving just his mother to raise him and the two other siblings. Even though his dad continued to support them financially, it wasn’t enough to stop him from asking his mother, ‘where dad is, and why he is not here with us?’ He grew cold and numb of his father’s love. As such he wasn’t familiar with his father’s family and his mother who wasn’t accepted by them much didn’t bother to communicate. Thus John grew up without knowing them really. His aunt and uncle along with his cousins on his father’s side were only a figment of his imagination.

Jennifer Williams moved back to Sawyers in order to
take care of her parents. They later died from natural causes. It was by that consequence why John was trapped in this dead beat town without friends or much money. The wretched place has not evolved much, so cable television was also a thing of the light years future. But all was not lost. “Eureka!!!” He shouted whenever he heard the babbling from the Spanish programs on the AM band.

He had his college friends. That was enough for him. He didn’t
bother with friends from the community. He had accepted his mother’s dictates that it’s better to keep to self than to mingle with inbreeds and dull heads.

Chapter 2

     
Kevin
, John’s older brother had just returned from a five day trip to the city. He was a welder by profession and he often traveled to sites around the country for work. Kevin had been the alpha male in the family since their dad left. He always felt that the responsibility has been bestowed onto him to look after his mom and his younger siblings. Kevin had taught him a whole lot, from riding a bike to driving a car. He had also been the one to run to John’s defense in a fight or warned off the bullies that took it as a game to grub his bald head which he mostly wore as a child.

As John dusted the bedside table, something caught his interest. So he b
ent for a closer look at what had appeared to be blood and a piece of torn finger nail. Indeed it was the first inkling that could possibly lead to solving the hideous murder of the fifty-five years old widow…

“Hey b
ro!” Kevin greeted John.

W
hich was rather a surprise to him as he did not see when he entered the porch, as he was much busy playing the protagonist in the mystery novel he had in his hand.

“Yow!!” He shouted and embraced him with a warm sincerity as
if he had just gotten home from six months of war.

“How have you been Kevin
?” John asked.

“You know little bro, same old slave
ry, just trying to get my money right. How about you, how was school?”

“School has always been school, stressful. But I’m here now
, for the entire summer actually. The most I can look forward to are these riveting mystery novels, counting cars as they pass and watching the evening sunset above the hills”

“Well since you
will be here all summer.” Kevin urged, “We will have to find you a little girlfriend for the time being.”

“
Nahh! I don’t think that is necessary Kevin, these girls aren’t exactly my type, to be honest.” He bluntly stated with a scornful gesture to his face.

“Well if you say
so, but I’m going to Mahogany Hall tonight. One of our cousins, Andrew Steelburg is having a little party at his corner store. We can both go if you would like.”

“
Nahh I’ll pass, am fine really!”

“Suit yourself.” He added and walked into the living room in search of his mother to gr
eet her with the embrace she had long been waiting for.

Mahogany
Hall was a community twenty minutes by walk from the gateway by the road. It was relatively small in population and the houses were either made of wood or concrete blocks, mostly having two or three bedrooms on a nice patio, located close enough to the road to feel the stretching vibration of the windows and furniture when a truck passed by. 

John may have heard that he had family members there but wasn’t at all interested in the likes of them. He held his head high in condescension and walked the thin line of being a proud
Steelburg and was just another stuck-up lad of the generation of want to be Joneses.

The
mid-day slowly approached the evening with silent wind and the chirp of yellow belly birds singing, and dancing into tree houses after a productive day of feeding and dispersing.

John
had almost completed the investigation in the homicide case and had found two main suspects in the killing of the wife of the late business man Anthony Young. One was believed to be the first son of Mr. Young, who would have had a motive to kill her since he was the default owner of the multimillion dollar estate if the wife was out of the picture. The other suspect was a well-known hoodlum who had a series of related robberies on his criminal record. He was out on bail for the attempted murder of a detective connected to the area two police division.

H
e already knew from clues, which one was the killer, and that meant for him, the suspense and the thriller was done, so no point in seeing the last blank page. As the boredom started to overwhelm, John started to contemplate the harm in going to the party his brother told him about earlier. At least it was something to pass the time and would be much more eventful than listening to the hums of crickets and fireflies. With a deep sigh, followed by a smirk on his face, it was enough to tell that he had made up his mind to attend the party that night.

The sunset faded and the darkness consumed the day. The clock didn’t lie as it
struck quarter to seven. It was also winning the race against John to finish dressing. The blue jeans fitted his brown Sperry Top Sides neatly to a ‘T’. As he reached the last button to the collar of the pink and white Ralf Lauren topside. He paused and stared into the mirror. He looked into the eyes of the man in front of him with a fierce gaze and searched the bottom of his soul as if the man had stolen his last piece of dignity and identity of what defined him as a man.

“Are you ready?” Kevin pushed his room door open
and asked him with a smirk that slightly turned into a jeer. It was something different for him to see his little brother getting dress for an event that didn’t have a church as the venue or people purporting to be on a mission for Christ.

“Yes I am ready.” He affirmed, “
Let’s do this!”

“Alright then,
it’s going to be an awesome night!” Kevin supported and they both gathered their cell phones, money and headed out to the party.

They arrived at the house topside the road that had the little shop on the same
patio. There were a few people seated on the grass yard, but it appeared as if the party hasn’t started as yet. The music wasn’t loud enough, but the boom boxes sung clearly the classical Reggae music which usually commenced a party.

Kevin
went into the house to greet his cousin, while John remained on the patio closer to the road. He had preferred to remain isolated. Besides, he is no more than a stranger to the family and the rest of the people there. In addition, he didn’t want at any instance, to come across as an intruder. His self-consciousness had started to get the better of him and he felt a slight loss of composure which gave him an impulse to get a beer from the bar within the store.