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Authors: Gary Williams Ramsey

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BOOK: The Spirit Survives
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Cesar could not figure out a way to combat this development. Elezar Fernandez, who was the real brains in the operation, came up with a brilliant plan. His plan would not only bring the lost business back to the Salazar cartel, it could lead to the destruction of the Flores cartel.

Cesar listened intently as his second-in-command outlined his plan.

They were aware that Bo Lopez contracted with both cartels. Sergey also knew Lopez, but he had the indestructible Petrov to do his killing.
 

Everyone in the business knew of Sergey’s orders to keep his daughter Veronika insulated from all the businesses. Fernandez’s plan was brilliant in its simplicity. He would hire Bo Lopez to kill Veronika. Behind the scenes, he would set up the scenario. When the time was right and the hit was accomplished, he would kill Bo and plant false evidence that Bo had been hired by the Torres cartel. Sergey would be forever grateful to Fernandez for informing him about who had killed his daughter and then he would destroy Rodrigo Torres.
 

In order to successfully implement his plan, Fernandez knew that he required the permission of the Benefactor. Cesar was the leader of this cartel, but the man known as the Benefactor was the kingpin behind all the cartels located in the United States. None of the leaders knew his actual identity, but he ruled the cartels with an iron hand and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of money to finance the operations. More importantly, he provided them with unprecedented police protection, warning them of raids and other difficulties. He was a man to be reckoned with. If a cartel crossed Sergey, he would try to kill them. If they crossed the Benefactor, he would call down the law enforcement on them with a vengeance. His power of destruction was equal to Sergey’s.
 

The only way to contact the Benefactor was to call an unpublished number and leave a message with the code. The Benefactor provided a different code every month. Sometimes it was a word, other times a number. This month the code word was “shadow”. It was known that the Benefactor was not pleased with the Torres cartel’s payments to him. Fernandez called the number said, the word “shadow” and left his phone number.
 

After about twenty minutes the phone rang. The muffled voice of the Benefactor came on the line. “What do you want Fernandez?”
 

The Mexican told him of his plan and waited for his response.
 

“You have my permission to proceed. Make sure it is handled efficiently, or I will hold you personally responsible. I’ll wire $100,000 dollars to cover all the expenses to your Swiss account. Good luck.”
 

The click on the other end of the phone indicated to Fernandez that the phone call was over.

Fernandez had hired Lopez for half the amount that the Benefactor had sent him. He figured that he would use the other $50,000 to deal with Lopez later. The flies in the ointment were that Bo had been observed killing the girl, and he had hired Cherokee Hernandez without Fernandez’s prior knowledge. Fernandez had to depend on Bo to kill the witness and to deal with Cherokee. When that was accomplished, he could move forward with his plans. He knew that Bo was relentless, so the waiting time would be short.
 

All he could do now was wait.

 

Chapter 20

 

Staring into the cold darkness of the cave, I felt a sharp pain in my left leg, near where the rattlesnake had bitten me. Something was pulling on it, so I grabbed my flashlight. Shining it in the direction of the stabbing pain, I saw a pair of eyes looking back at me—those of a large timber wolf. I remember thinking that the wolf appeared to be grinning as it bit down on my leg again, trying to rip off a chunk of flesh. I attempted to scream, but nothing came out, and I was utterly unable to move as I watched the wolf feed on my flesh.
 

I heard another sound, a man laughing. Moving the light, I saw my father, grinning and nodding his head yes, up and down, up and down. “Help me, Daddy!” I cried, but he just sat there and watched the wolf tear at my leg while drool ran down the man’s chin. He looked as if he wanted to join the wolf and start feasting on my flesh.

My father mumbled, “Eat him, eat him. Tear off his legs. Tear out his guts. Eat him, eat him!”

“Daddy, why won’t you help me?” I pleaded. “You’re my father; you’re supposed to protect me. Please, Daddy,” I cried, “don’t let the wolf eat me!”
 

I woke up screaming. I sat up and wiped the cold sweat and tears from my face. Bright morning sunlight flowed in through the hole at the top of the cave, and I looked back to where the wolf slept, unmoving, dried blood around its mouth. I glanced at Cherokee’s body and could see that large pieces of flesh had been torn from his legs. His left calf was practically gone, and I could see exposed bone and sinew. No point worrying about anyone trying to save him; he was well on his way to hell by now.

There were now four stones in the area I had cleared to keep count of the days. It was the morning of my fifth day, trapped.

I recognized that my mind was playing tricks on me. I hoped my spirit could survive. I inspected my supplies. The only food that I had remaining was one can of Vienna sausages. The packet of cocaine was there with my two empty water bottles. My mouth was dry and my lips were cracked as I picked up a water bottle and crawled toward the puddle below the opening. My leg throbbed. I think the poison was localized, and it wasn’t
spreading to the rest of my body. When I reached the puddle, it was almost empty. The water was pink from the residue of Cherokee’s blood from the wolf’s mouth when he drank. I filled my bottle with the pink liquid and crawled back to my place to get the second bottle. I filled that bottle with the remaining water left in the puddle. When I was back in my space, I drank some of the pink liquid. The blood made it taste sweet. I don’t know what the wolf and the snake and the rats will do with no water. My supply would last no more than two days, and then I would probably die
.
My mind was at the point of breaking down. In my weakened state of mind, I thought about the fact that
during
mental crises most people go to their base, something that is given to a child by loving parents. The base contained hope and love and togetherness. To a boy, this base is given by the father and nurtured by his mother.

I felt sadness knowing that I had no base. I only had my spirit to see me through.
 

I lay there thinking about my childhood in which
I had no father and my mother was so filled with self pity that she didn’t even try to teach me about life. I learned for myself by trial and error. Maturity brings self-reliance, but the void stays in the heart forever.

 

Chapter 21

 

My father left us when I was two years old, and I don’t know much about the man other than what Mother told me. I never heard his side of the story, so I don’t know how much Mother exaggerated in her berating of him and telling me what a horrible person he was.

He married my mother when she was seventeen, and he was twenty-two. He joined the army shortly thereafter and was sent overseas. I was born eight months after he left for the army. He didn’t list my mother as a dependent and didn’t send support money until she contacted the army. According to her, he was a liar and a cheat, withholding support for the two of us. For some reason, not known to us, he was discharged after two years of service. He told my mother it was for “medical reasons.”

He returned home for a few months and then simply left without saying anything. She divorced him for abandonment a year later. I never saw or heard from him again. She had no idea where he was for many years. All the memories that a normal child has about experiences with his father are simply a void for me.

We lived in a run-down rental house near a cotton mill in Monroe, NC. My mother worked the third shift in the cotton mill. An older, partially crippled lady lived in the house with us, so I would not be alone at night. Mother didn’t have the money to pay her anything, but she just needed a place to live. Her name was Maybelle. She had stringy grey hair pulled tightly into a bun. When she grinned, which was seldom, she exposed rotten teeth. I remember her breath smelled so bad that I avoided getting near her face. Maybelle used a walker because of her advanced arthritis, and she groaned every time she moved. She wasn’t unkind to me, but only did what was necessary for my existence.
 

While my mother slept during the day, Maybelle would prepare boiled eggs and toast for breakfast every morning. Lunch was usually something on the order of a tomato sandwich with onion and mayo, or a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Occasionally, she would open a can of ravioli or soup. I considered that a treat. My mother would be up in time for supper. Maybelle usually prepared cornbread and pinto beans for supper. On other occasions, she would cook collard greens and biscuits. The only time we had meat was on Sunday. It was either chicken or rabbit. She kept what we called “rabbit boxes” in the yard. The contraption had a trap door with lettuce in the back of the box for bait. Occasionally, a rabbit would venture into the box. Maybelle would kill it by hitting it on the head with a hammer. She would skin it and put it in the refrigerator. Mother would fry or boil the meat with rice.
 

My favorite dish, which she would prepare sometimes on Sunday, was called “chicken or rabbit bog”. She would fry fatback meat in a pot to get the grease. She chopped onions and dumped them into the hot grease. To that mixture, she would add a pot of half cooked rice and a boiled chicken or rabbit. She cooked the concoction until the meat fell off the bone. After the bones were carefully picked out, it was stirred together and served with cornbread.

Occasionally in the summer, when people would give us tomatoes, we had sliced tomatoes with the chicken bog. I loved that dish, especially because I could sit at the table with my mother and eat it.
 

My mother rarely smiled. She was consumed with self pity for her plight in life, with no husband and a dreadful job. She showed me little love, but I worshiped her.

Finally, after three years of this existence and after my fifth birthday, she met a man who had just been discharged from the army and came to work in the cotton mill. He was an uneducated plain-looking man. His name was Heath and he was short with curly red hair and freckles around his pointed nose. He had a nice smile, and he thought that he had found a princess in my mother. After dating for about six months, they decided to marry. I don’t think she loved him. I think she married him to get out of her miserable life and to have someone to help pay the bills and deal with me. I went with them to a Justice of the Peace to get married. I slept in the car while the ceremony took place. He moved into the old house with us and Maybelle. Sadly, God took Maybelle out of her misery six months later.
 

While going through her things, my new stepfather found enough money to bury her. The money was stored in a shoe box hidden in the closet under a rug. There were four people at her burial, the three of us and a strange looking grey-haired man we didn’t know.

Heath didn’t know how to be a father. His own father was killed in a car wreck by a drunk driver when Heath was six years old and his mother put him in an orphanage. He was raised there and joined the army when he was seventeen. The only interaction Heath and I had, during the early years, was when he would beat me with a belt if I did anything that he didn’t like. I don’t hold that against him because he didn’t know any better.

To his credit, Heath moved us out of that broken-down house and into a small new home in a better part of town. My half-brother, Keith, was born two years later. After Keith was born, my mother went back to work on the third shift at the mill. Heath worked during the day, and Mother worked all night and slept during the day. I was left to fend for myself and go to school when I wanted to, and stay out when I wanted to. Neither of them really cared, one way or the other.

A turning point in my life came during my fifth year in school. For the first time, I received straight A’s on my report card. My friends called me a genius and I felt special. I never made another B during grade school and high school. With my new-found confidence, I became a leader in high school. I was President of the Honor Society, the Monogram Club, and during my senior year, I was President of the Student Body. I was voted Most Dependable, Friendliest and Most Likely to Succeed. My mother and my stepfather neither understood nor cared about my success in high school. I did it on my own, without notice or attention from them. They didn’t provide me with a base.

There is one thing that I learned during my childhood of neglect. When things got bad for me emotionally, I would go into my “survival mode.” When I was in this mode, I blocked out the world and retreated inside myself. I kept my sanity by living in this mode until things got brighter. This world was my refuge, and I still use it when necessary.

In the cave, alone, hungry and thirsty, after five days trapped, it was time to go into my best “survival mode.”

 

Chapter 22

 

It was a rainy day in Chicago. Steam rose from the hot streets. The beggars, who stood outside the train stations and on the street corners, were sweating and cursing as pedestrians rushed by on their way to air-conditioned offices, stores, and apartments. The muggy air was still, with no sign of Chicago’s famous winds. Most people were in a bad mood but none as dark as Sergey Ivanova. Stone silent as he exited his Mercedes limo in the shadow of his private condo at Walton on the Park, he was dressed in black, the perfect reflection of that mood. He briskly brushed by the surprised doorman, who hurriedly recovered and said, “Welcome back, Mr. Ivanova,” expecting his usual generous tip. Sergey continued, saying nothing, offering nothing.
 

BOOK: The Spirit Survives
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