Wheelchair Moccasins



  Wheelchair Moccasins

  by David J. Wighton

  Book #10 in the Wilizy Series

  Copyright 2016, David J. Wighton

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy.

  Although this e-book might be sold at no cost to the reader at times, I retain ownership of the copyright and may elect to charge a small amount for its purchase at times.

  Thank you for respecting my copyright.

  Acknowledgements

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Dale, and to my other family members whose support made it possible.

  Cover design by Rita Toews at WordPress.com

  Editing assistance from Michelle Scoville who sees typos that mere mortals would never find unaided.

  Parent Advisory

  Chapter 40 in this book opens up a discussion on how some religions deal with birth control. No specific position on this is offered to the reader. Like the heroine of the book, the reader will have to reach his or her own conclusion.

  Wilizy Family Members as of July 2086

  • Doc and Granny, about 75 years old.

  • Hank (about 44) and Yolanda (about 40).

  • Wolf (21), Mac (21), Jock (1.5), Emily (3 months).

  • William (20), Melissa (20), Will & Izzy (1.5).

  • Yollie (19), TG (21), Liset (6), Yo-Yo (2), Hank (9 months).

  • Wizard (18), Lucas (15), Theo (14), Mathias (13), and Reese (11).

  • Winnie (10), Patella (3), Scapula (2), Fibula & Tibia (newborn).

  • EmmaGee (Maddy) (6)

  Also

  • Stu McKenzie (46) and Momaka (41).

  • Dreamer (16) and Wanda (56).

  • Brigadier-General Jock MacLatchie (51).

  Main Characters in Maasin City

  • Kashmira (13), her father Patrón Diego Diamante, Ramón, Paterfamilias.

  • Kierra (Kashmira's mother), Pablo and the Suerte family.

  Main characters in Chicago

  • Bean, Judge Ambrose, Prosecutor Squash, Detective Bertoia, Agents Dingle and Dangle.

  This page is to help you if you get confused about who is who in the story. If that happens, click your way back to the Table of Contents and scroll back one page.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Other novels by David J. Wighton

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  A solar powered copter was flying over the dense jungle of Southern Leyte, a province in the Philippines. The man in the copter – Ramón – was on a hunting expedition for his boss. The copter allowed him to prowl at will through the isolated, poverty-stricken villages scattered throughout Southern Leyte. The jungle made land transportation impossible.

  Ramón spied the little farming community that he had been seeking and began to descend. He had visited these people several years ago, but without success. He had a better feeling about his hunt this time. Ramón put the copter down in the middle of the squalid village and before he could get out, the farmers were streaming towards him. Copters were a rarity in these remote villages; Ramón always drew a crowd. He explained why he was here. The grizzled village elder was anxious to help. Within a few minutes, he was parading three young girls in front of Ramón.

  The tale of Goldilocks and the three bears had not made its way to this remote area of the world; nevertheless, Ramón found himself thinking the words. Too young, too old, just right.

  Well, almost just right. He dismissed two of the girls – not their lucky day. The third stood head down in front of him in her tattered, filthy rags and mud-covered bare feet. She also had a grimy face and blistered hands, but such conditions were normal for girls in these remote communities. She could be cleaned up. Ramón scanned the simple checklist from his boss. He would start with priority #1. [Narrator: In this novel, many of the conversations that occurred in the Philippines would be in Spanish. I have translated them into English for you.]

  "She is pure, yes?"

  "Yes. She is untouched," the girl's father bragged.

  "You understand that if this is not the case, I will return her to this village tomorrow and I will drop your dead body into the sea. Are you sure that she is untouched?"

  "Yes, Señor. No boys close to her age live in this village."

  "It is as he says, Señor," the wizened elder confirmed.

  Ramón looked at the girl. Moving on to priority #2 – she had a pretty face. Check. For the third and final priority, he had to lower his stare. What he saw caused him to frown. Or more accurately, what he didn't see caused him to frown.

  "One laying chicken," he offered the father.

  "Two laying chickens and a rooster," the father haggled.

  "Does she know how to read or write?" Ramón's boss didn't care about this. He wasn't bringing this young girl to Maasin City to read or write. For shrewd Ramón, this question was strictly a negotiating tactic to devalue the girl's worth in the eyes of her father.

  "No, Señor. We have no school here."

  "One laying chicken," Ramón repeated.

  "Señor, look at that face. Two laying chickens and a rooster," the father repeated.

  The face was quite remarkable actually. "How old is she?"

  The farmer shrugged. "She is a woman now." Although he was an unschooled peasant, the farmer knew why Ramón wanted his daughter.

  Ramón looked at the elder.

  "Perhaps 13 or 14," he said.

  That's where Ramón would have put her age too. He had made this kind of trip six times before. "One laying chicken," he insisted.

  "She can sing," the father added unexpected bait to the negotiations.

  "Prove it."

  She did.

  Ramón had no instructions about anything that this girl might do for his boss other than lie on a bed and look pretty. He might like the voice; he might not. Ramón decided to take a chance that he'd like it. "Two laying chickens."

&
nbsp; "One laying chicken and a rooster," the father insisted. The rooster played an essential role in the farmer's plans to produce baby chickens from that one laying chicken. I expect my readers know this about chickens.

  "No. She is too small." Ramón stated the obvious and patted his own chest.

  "Two laying chickens," the father conceded defeat.

  Ramon took the girl back to his copter and had her sit in the back with the livestock he had brought with him. He extracted a cage holding two chickens out of the copter, unlatched it, upended the cage, and shook the two chickens onto the ground. The father herded them back to his hut. He never looked back.

  "What's your name?" Ramón asked the girl.

  "Kierra."

  Ramón didn't ask for a last name. Villagers in the Philippines never had last names. It was only when they moved to a city that they added a last name. Like his boss had. He had been known simply as Diego in the little village where he had grown up. When he moved to Maasin City, and after his business started to grow, he called himself Diego Diamante. In English – Jim Diamond. Now people were starting to address him as Patrón. In English – Boss. In other areas of the world he might be referred to as Godfather.

  It was early January, 2072. On the other side of the world in a narrow valley in the Aboriginal Nation, Theo would be born soon. Here in the Philippines, El Patrón had just purchased his soon-to-be 14 year old wife for the equivalent of 18 cents.

  Back to the Table of Contents

  Chapter 2

  It's now the next day – Tuesday, January 5, 2072. Kierra had passed El Patrón's purity test the previous night. It was time to get married.

  Maasin City was a decent-sized urban center in Southern Leyte. It had three quality hotels, a bustling market center, five apartment towers, and a residential development on the side of the hill overlooking the water that held the houses of most of the wealthy and important people in the city. Included in this prestigious group were the mayor and the city councilors, the top brass of the city's Guardia, the owner and the editor of the city's media outlet, and the managers of the city's technology center. All of these people were living high on a hill and looking down into the slums of the city thanks to El Patrón's personal benevolence. The city's most vicious and powerful crime boss allowed these citizens to flaunt their wealth to less prosperous Maasin citizens provided that they demonstrated sufficient loyalty, gratitude, and respect to their benefactor – Diego Diamante.

  El Patrón was not the only criminal boss in town. One other focused on prostitution – a thriving industry for the people who owned the brothels. Not so good for the women who had to work in them. A third gangster focused on smuggling. Maasin City was not on the world's trade routes. It was a long copter ride to Cebu City – the closest major Philippine city. At one point, a ferry had linked the two cities but that route had disappeared during The Troubles. Some small cargo ships still sailed into Maasin, but irregularly. The smugglers ensured that the city's wealthy could acquire everything they yearned for. At an exorbitant price, of course.

  El Patrón was at the stage of his professional career where he had consolidated his power and was content to let others benefit from his magnanimity provided that they rendered sufficient respect. In crass terms, that meant that they would do the dirty work in stealing, extorting, and swindling. This meant that he himself would no longer run amuck through the city's coffers or filch whatever excess money the poor had accumulated. Others would do that for him. He would be their silent, but lethal partner.

  El Patrón owned all the influential people in the city. If he wished to, he could put the brothel owners and the smugglers out of business any time he desired by calling in favours from the city's power brokers. El Patrón reminded these lower class criminals of his importance from time to time. He was not a subtle man, so for now, I'll leave it to my readers to imagine how he did this.

  Most of the people in the Philippines were followers of what had once been the Roman Catholic Church. This religion remained dominant in the country's major cities. In Maasin City, a version of the Roman Catholic religion had sprung up after The Troubles. This variant religion met in the city's old cathedral that dated back to the 1700s. Other smaller, less important churches could be found in the city, but the ancient cathedral attracted the bulk of the city's religious followers. The head of the church was referred to as the paterfamilias, which when translated from Latin to English would be something like the father of the family. This church's paterfamilias still conducted mass in Latin. The bible he used was written in Latin. As the paterfamilias, he heard confessions and offered absolution. He also offered a mobile marriage ceremony to one preferred customer.

  This morning, the paterfamilias was in El Patrón's kitchen with his personal bible and assorted marriage documents in hand. The wedding party consisted of Kierra, Ramón, Constanza (the house cook), and Mariangela (the housemaid). Kierra had agreed to obey her husband and so it was now on to the document signing ceremony. Kierra put her X on the spot, after the paterfamilias showed her what an X was. The two servants signed their names and left to complete their daily work. The paterfamilias also signed the certificates and placed the church's stamp in the appropriate places. Ramón took the two copies of the wedding certificate into El Patrón's study – he was the only person in the household allowed to knock on the door and enter when acknowledged. El Patrón signed both copies and then filed his copy of the marriage certificate with the other six. Ramón returned with the original and gave it to the paterfamilias along with a mid-sized peso note.

  "You're now married," Paterfamilias said to Kierra. "Congratulations."

  "Go upstairs, undress, and lie on the bed," Ramón instructed. This Welcome to our Family speech was not normally part of a marriage ceremony in polite society but the paterfamilias was used to hearing it. Kierra had to be told what to do because she had no idea what had just happened here in this kitchen. She did know what would soon be happening on the bed, having been a frightened participant in the pre-wedding ceremony the previous night. Her newly wed husband Diego would sweat like a pig, grunt like a pig, squeal like a pig, and then leave the bedroom. Kierra didn't mind that. She had observed that her bedroom was full of fancy clothes. She had indulged herself in her own private bathroom with a tub serviced by running water. Make that running HOT water! She had two servants who would do whatever she told them to. She was in love. Perhaps not with Diego, but she was in love just the same.

  Paterfamilias was quite content to bring the two lovers together in this private ceremony. He charged only a small untraceable fee for his mobile marriage service because he knew that the marriage would last only as long as Ramón's wedding present lasted. The church's highest official was content to bide his time for the next ceremony at which point he would charge a much larger fee – one that would also not appear in the church's books.

  Paterfamilias' church frowned on birth control devices. Because of his pressure, no such abominations were allowed inside Maasin City's retail outlets. The rich bought their condoms from smugglers. El Patrón received his condoms directly from Ramón who coptered to Cebu City and bought them in bulk – thereby bypassing the smugglers. El Patrón's interest in his new wife would last about three months – exactly the amount of time that Ramón's wedding gift of condoms lasted. At that point, the paterfamilias would be called back to administer his mobile divorce ceremony. Divorces were almost unheard of in Maasin City. But the church could grant an exception if a wife had failed to produce a child after a reasonable period of time. To date, all six of El Patrón's previous wives had failed to produce a child. This should not be a surprise to my readers given Ramón's wedding gift. Since this divorce document was so rare, and since the deliberations on its issuance required so much resolute praying, El Patrón would pay through the snout for the impending marriage dissolution document.

  Back to the Table of Contents

  Chapter 3

  It is now one wonderful
month into Kierra's honeymoon. She was still in love with her life. Diego gave her gifts of new clothes and jewelry. She could have returned the favour with gifts of antiperspirants, but she didn't know that such luxuries existed in Maasin City. Kierra hadn't actually set foot outside the house. Even when El Patrón entertained, she was confined to her room. Constanza and Mariangela would care for the guests during the evening, clean up afterwards, and sleep upstairs in the bedrooms provided to them for such events. Returning home in the dark was not safe; El Patron's home was in an area of town dominated by the poor and the dangerous. Women could be attacked in such situations; the servants were better off sleeping upstairs.

  Kierra was getting along famously with Constanza and Mariangela. A naturally friendly person, Kierra would chatter with them as they went about their work. Early on, she had offered to help, but they had refused. They told her that El Patrón would punish them if he thought they were taking advantage of his wife's good nature.

  But the three did talk a lot. And it was in one of those conversations that Kierra learned that all of Diego's previous wives had lasted in that comfortable matrimonial position for about three months. Kierra had seen no sign that her husband was becoming bored with her. He had even held her hand one time when he took her upstairs to the bedroom. He seemed to like her singing, but never said anything to her about that. Constanza told Kierra that she'd probably last through a second carton of condoms. Kierra decided to improve her chances of prolonging her matrimonial bliss.

  # # # # # # # #

  In May 2072, Kierra announced to her husband that she was pregnant.

  Diego took the news calmly. "How far along are you?"

  "Two months."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  Diego told her to go upstairs, undress, and climb into the shower. Kierra thought he was planning a watery form of celebration sex. While she was excitedly slipping off her clothes, Diego was suspiciously checking the carton of condoms. He found pinpricks in the rubber. He undressed too and followed her into the tub.

  Kierra held up her arms so that she could be embraced. El Patrón clubbed her in the face instead. The first blow knocked out a tooth. She covered up her face with her arms; he turned his attentions to her belly instead. When she covered that up, he went after her face. When he was finished, she wasn't pretty any longer. Diego had heard that abortions could occur spontaneously if the sex was violent. He tried that too. Unsuccessfully. The reason for the bathtub? To keep Kierra's blood off the sheets.