Without Wax (eBook)

The Tale of Carrie McKinsey

Richard R. Koebbe (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
274 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-8137-0 (ISBN)

What happens when Kevin Connelly, a handsome traveling salesman who is an atheist, meets the beautiful, charming, and irresistible young Carrie McKinsey, a new age woman who has amazing psychic abilities? Despite their differences, sparks fly, and romance blossoms. Kevin's belief system is shaken to its core when Carrie begins to channel his departed grandmother Emma. After a series of psychic revelations, Kevin slowly buys into Carrie's occult world. He witnesses her unbelievable abilities and learns of the location of buried gold coins on his old homestead. Locating the treasure is not exactly what Kevin expected and takes him on a journey he did not anticipate. What is buried on the old homestead? Who is actually is Carrie McKinsey?

Kevin Connelly, a handsome traveling salesman who is an atheist, meets the beautiful, charming, and irresistible young Carrie McKinsey, a new age woman who has amazing psychic abilities? Despite their differences, sparks fly, and romance blossoms. Kevin's belief system is shaken to its core when Carrie begins to channel his departed grandmother Emma. After a series of psychic revelations, Kevin slowly buys into Carrie's occult world. He witnesses her unbelievable abilities and learns of the location of buried gold coins on his old homestead. Carrie is not who she appears to be and in fact, is leading a double life. When Kevin discovers Carrie's shady past he is angry and devastated and they split up. Despite that, he proceeds to search his old homestead to search for the buried gold coins but finds a body instead. Fearing reprisals for his family's reputation he investigates to determine who the corpse was and when she was buried. That process takes him on a journey down an occult path. Later, Kevin mellows and reunites with Carrie to forgive her, only to find she is dying. Kevin locates Carrie in Peru and on her death bed, he pledges to fulfill a promise to her, one that leads him full circle, back to his old homestead and trouble.

WITHOUT WAX

CHAPTER 1 Going for the Gold

Tuesday, May 28th, 1991, Cincinnati, Ohio

The rain was pelting down. The din reverberated on the roof of the old Chevy van. Dooley wiped the condensation off the passenger side window with his shirtsleeve and peered out into the darkness. “Bitch of a night,” he said. This crazy scheme did not make much sense to Dooley. He wondered why a successful guy like his buddy Kevin would risk so much for a mason jar of gold coins that might not even exist.

“Let me get this straight, Kevin. We’re out here in this godforsaken place, in this horrible weather, with our lives in danger because some psychic chick told you that a mason jar of gold coins was buried on your old homestead.”

“That is right, Dooley. I’m confident that it’s buried right where Carrie said it would be.”

It was not a good time for two white men to be in the middle of Fairmount. Race relations were strained. Recently a black man was shot by a police officer. Even though things had settled down, tensions were still running high in Cincinnati.

“I cannot believe you talked me into this,” Dooley muttered. “Why am I doing this?”

Kevin responded with a sly grin on his lip, “Because

Dooley, you are a friend, and friends help friends. This endeavor may seem risky, but the rewards will be worth it. Trust me.”

The real reason Dooley agreed to come was that Kevin had promised to loan Dooley his boat for a month.

Convincing Dooley was not all that difficult. After all, Kevin was a salesman extraordinaire and could talk almost anyone into just about anything. Even when he was in grade school, his grandmother, Emma, would pack his lunch in a brown bag. There were always cookies in it. By the end of the day, Kevin would barter back and forth in the schoolyard until he turned a one-cent cookie into a quarter or some neat toy like a Yo-yo. Now Dooley was feeling buyer’s remorse.

Dooley was not the sharpest individual around, but he was one hell of a hunk of humanity. You would not want to tangle with him in a bar fight. While he was only six-foot-tall, he had broad shoulders, long arms, and big hands. He must have weighed two hundred and twenty pounds or better, solid as a rock, and loved to brawl. Kevin and Dooley were friends since they were in high school. While Kevin played quarterback on their high school football team, Dooley played on the defensive line. He just loved to run over people and leave bodies in his wake, but he could not play offense. He kept jumping offsides.

“What time is it?” Dooley asked. “Is this rain ever going to let up? It is black as hell out there. We’re going to get soaked.”

Kevin glanced at his watch. “12:36 PM. Quit yer’ bitchin’. We have played football in worse than this.”

“That’s different,” Dooley retorted. “I cannot believe you ever lived in this neighborhood. This place is the pits. We could get ourselves killed. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“I’m sure.” Kevin sensed that Dooley was getting cold feet but knew exactly how to push his buttons. It had always worked on the football field. “Hey Dooley, since when did you become such a wuss? You’re not afraid of a little rain and the boogeyman, are you?”

“Hell no. It is not of boogeymen that I am afraid. What I am afraid of are drug dealers with guns. Dooley then quickly changed the subject. “What was this neighborhood like when you lived here?”

Kevin took a deep breath and reminisced for just a few seconds. “It was a nice place to grow up. A blue-collar neighborhood. Lots of hard-working people. But that was thirty years ago.” That is not what it was like now. It was now part of the Hood.

They had parked the van on Maplewood Street. The only thing that had not changed was the name of the street. Thirty years ago, at the end of Maplewood was a vacant lot where all the neighbor kids would meet, choose up sides, get some rocks for bases, and play baseball until it got dark. The thought of those carefree days brought a smile to Kevin’s face. At the end of Maplewood, where the vacant lot once was and the wooded area beyond, was now a section eight housing development. Kevin peered out through the fogged-up glass. There was nothing but degradation now; dilapidated housing in need of paint, an abandoned car, lawns overgrown and strewn with junk. It made him sick. “It wasn’t always like this’” Kevin muttered. “It used to be nice.”

Dooley turned and looked straight into Kevin’s eyes. “Look, I don’t mind helping you pull this off, but let’s not get ourselves killed. Let’s not do something stupid.”

Kevin almost chuckled, with Dooley talking about not doing something stupid. Kevin recalled him once on a fishing trip swallowing a nightcrawler on a dare. Now that was something stupid. Recovering buried gold coins was not.

The van blended into this neighborhood well. It was ten years old, dull, and slightly rusted. It was a panel van, the kind that painters and plumbers used. It was the kind without windows on the sides. Kevin had bought it three years ago for $2500 to pull his boat to Lake Erie and back. While it looked bad, it ran well. The derelicts and drug dealers that lived here would not notice it parked among the other run-down cars on the street. Behind the front seats were two shovels, two Army ponchos, and a White metal detector. The White metal detector was one of the better models. It was the kind that could tell the bottle caps from the coins. It could even discriminate between coin denominations. The doors of the van were all locked.

“When are we going to go?” Dooley asked. “I’d like to get this over with and get the hell out of here. Don’t you know this is a section where they deal drugs?”

“Of course, I do.”

“Drug dealers carry guns!”

“I know,” Kevin responded.

“Did you bring a gun?”

“No. I don’t like guns.”

“How come? As I recall, you used to do a little hunting.”

“I had my fill of guns in Nam. I don’t care if I ever see another one.”

“How come, Kevin? Did you see any action in Nam? Did you ever have to shoot any Viet Cong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I have a lot of bad memories that still haunt me. I’d just as soon forget I was ever over there, so just drop it.”

“Okay, okay, but I’d feel better if we had a gun. What the hell are we going to do if someone catches us?” Dooley paused, “Besides crap in our pants.”

Kevin was surprised to hear Dooley say that. He had never been afraid to mix it up. “No one is going to catch us.”

“And why is that? Dooley queried defiantly.”

“Because only a fool would be out in weather like this. Why do you think I chose this night? It is just the perfect cover for which I have been waiting. Believe me; we’ll be in and out of there so quick, no one will be the wiser.”

Kevin had no intention of tangling with drug dealers. They played rough, especially on their turf. And they do carry guns. It was not only the drug dealers about which he was worried. It was this whole neighborhood. After all, hadn’t Cincinnati just had an uprising, and some Afro Americans had rioted in the street, burning and looting? It would not be wise for a couple of white guys to get caught in the Hood. They might be mistaken for Narc agents. That would not end well.

Just then, someone tried the latch handle on the back door of the van. Kevin and Dooley panicked. Kevin looked in the rearview mirror to see a pair of hands cupped around a face, nosed pressed tight against the glass, trying to look in through the fogged-up rear window. The latch rattled once more, then silence. Kevin and Dooley froze, sitting perfectly still, barely breathing. A moment later, they saw a shadowy figure pass weaving back and forth as he staggered up the street, bottle in hand. Now and then, he paused to sample its wares. A flash of lightning lit up the place, revealing an old gent, probably in his sixties. He had a baseball cap turned backward with water running in a stream off the bill and a gray sweatshirt with large letters F U B U across its back.

“Jesus! That scared the hell out of me,” Dooley whispered as if the old geezer could hear them. “Where in the hell did he come from?”

“Probably from Gators, the bar down on Beirmann Street.”

“F U B U? What is that?” Dooley asked.

“It’s a Black thing.”

“What do you mean, a Black thing?

“It’s a brand name like Nike or Calvin Kline. A Black garment entrepreneur makes the F U B U clothing. It means ‘for us, by us.’”

Dooley thought a moment. “How’d you know that?”

“One day, on a plant tour of a company I represent, I noticed a lot of Black production workers wearing stuff with F U B U on it. I thought it was a company softball team name or something like that, so I...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	7.7.2021
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
ISBN-10	1-0983-8137-8 / 1098381378
ISBN-13	978-1-0983-8137-0 / 9781098381370

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