FanStory.com - Ben Paul Persons, Ch 2by Wayne Fowler

In the last part Ben Paul and Slyvia decided to take an extended road trip, buying a vehicle for the journey.

Chapter 2

Suddenly a pick-up truck overtook them. Ben Paul and Sylvia had been on the road less than three hours. Just as it neared their side, a loud blast shook them from their reverie. Their car quickly became nearly uncontrollable, an obvious blowout on the left front. Ben Paul reached to help steady the steering wheel, though Sylvia had managed to get the vehicle to the shoulder. The pick-up truck pulled over ahead of them and was reversing to come to their aid, so Sylvia and Ben Paul thought.

As Sylvia and Ben Paul began to open their doors, they were kicked shut, spraining Sylvia’s wrist in the doing. Before Sylvia could even yelp, the man at Sylvia’s door shouted, your purse and his wallet!” The man at Ben Paul’s door motioned for Ben Paul to roll down his window. It was a wonder either Sylvia or Ben Paul could hear anything with the commotion Benji was making, barking and snarling as the two had approached their car. Benji tipped Ben Paul and Sylvia to the possibility that they were not there to assist with a tire change.

Before the man could break Ben Paul’s window glass, he it rolled down.

“Shut that mutt up, or I will!” Ben Paul’s man yelled, waving a short-barreled pistol about. As he leveled the sights on Benji, Ben Paul saw that without doubt, their money in the robbers’ hands, they would shoot Benji, if not themselves before leaving. “We just wantcher money. Hand out yer purse an’ wallet!”

Ben Paul handed Benji to Sylvia, nodding a coded message to her. Feigning slapping at his pants and shirt pockets, Ben Paul said, “It hurts these old hips to sit on it. My wallet’s in the back… in my jacket. Let me out and I’ll get it. Our travel money’s back there anyway.”

Knowing Ben Paul was up to something, Sylvia eyed her driver’s side thief, a young, skinny man of about twenty, pimply-faced with evidence of manic scratching. He did not have a gun in either hand, but stupidly kept his left in his britches pocket, his right halfway inside the car into the opened window.

Once outside the car, the robber on the passenger’s side backed up, out of Ben Paul’s reach. He was clearly the leader of the two, about forty years old, unshaven, roughly dressed in old and dirty clothes. He kicked uselessly toward Ben Paul. “Be quick about it! A car comes up, I’ll just plug ya, an’ take suitcase an’ all. Her too,” he added, waving his gun toward Sylvia.

Ben Paul opened the rear door, bent over, and reached to the seat where his jacket covered the shotgun that was pointed toward himself and the robber. “Here it is, our satchel of bank notes.”

Piquing the robber’s interest, he stepped to where he could peer into the backseat area.

Boom! Ben Paul, in one fluid motion, cocked the hammer and pushed the trigger, trusting that all the buckshot would travel between his legs and that some of them would find a part of the would-be hold-up man.

Before Sylvia’s man could even flinch, Benji’s teeth were deeply embedded into his hand. Ben Paul’s man dropped his gun as he grabbed his left leg. Ben Paul retrieved the pistol and corralled both men.

“Sylvie, come take the gun while I tie these two up.”

“You’re not gonna shoot them?” she asked.

Ben smiled. “I’m thinking we tie them to our car, take theirs, and leave them here.”

“You can’t do that!” the shot man screamed. I’m shot! Bleedin’!”

Ben Paul didn’t reply but finally found some twine in the bed of the robber’s pickup. “Police’ll be by for you before you bleed out,” Ben Paul finally said. “Like they say in the movies, “It’s just a flesh wound.” Using enough twine to tie a dozen hay bales, the two were secured to the passenger side front door where passers-by would not immediately see them.

Ben Paul nodded to Sylvia’s foresight to extract her car keys as he transferred their luggage to the thieves’ vehicle.
A mile down the road, Sylvia looked to Ben Paul, “You’re just full of surprises, Preacher Man.”

“Not the first I’ve put down with a shotgun.” Ben Paul turned his eyes from Sylvia. Closing them, he saw Al Fresco charging him that night when he was twelve years old, killing him.

Sylvia knew to offer Ben Paul his time. “Ben?” Sylvia asked several miles further on. “Can I ask about lying? I mean I’ve got no problem with what happened. Not at all. Or how… well, any part of it. But you had your wallet in your pocket all the time.” She turned and smiled at him. “And I know we don’t have any bank notes.” She snapped a quick wink as she turned back to the road.

“Situational ethics,” Ben Paul said after a moment.

“Sounds… I don’t know, like doing the right thing might be different to different folks.”

Ben Paul didn’t respond for a minute. “Let me try to put it into a nutshell.”

“Your doctrine into a walnut shell?” Sylvia asked, smiling.

Ben Paul smiled back. “David, in the Bible, ate and fed his troops the bread designated for only the Lord’s servants, the priests. Jesus directed his followers to pick and eat corn, or whatever, on the Sabbath. When they were called out on it, both, David and Jesus, justified themselves. Now a little closer to home. Over in Nazi Germany, there were many good Germans and other Europeans who hid Jews from the Nazis and lied about their actions. Now a woman who is being evicted, movers carrying out her furnishings as she speaks, tells her dying husband everything is fine, dear. It’s okay to go on.

“There’s lying to cover up a crime, or scheme, lying for personal gain, and there’s saying things that are not true for God’s good.”

“But…”

Ben Paul held up his hand. “It’s in the praying to live in God’s will before robbers ever knock on your window. And saying and doing what he would have you say and do in that moment. I’ll never recommend anyone lie, but neither am I saying that God might. Right or wrong, I’m at peace.”

“And so am I, my darling man. So am I.”

+++

A few minutes after five in the morning, Ben Paul and Sylvia’s motel room phone woke them, though they were both in the throes of beginning to awaken. Sylvia’s wrist was healing quickly. And with one of the would-be evildoers testifying against the other, Ben Paul and Sylvia were free to travel whenever they were ready.

It was Mary, apologizing for waking them, but would they come to her place as soon as they could? “Of course!” Within minutes they were sitting in Mary’s kitchen.

“I just don’t know,” Mary said, putting more bread in the toaster. Sylvia got up to set out plates along with Mary’s jam and marmalade. “He got up sometime in the night to use the bathroom. I didn’t look at the clock. I think it was early, not long after falling asleep. You know how the first half an hour or so you’re pretty much out of it?”
Sylvia and Ben Paul both nodded.

“Well, when I woke at 3:30, Slim wasn’t in bed. His side was cold like he hadn’t slept in it. I got up and… well it’ll be light soon, and I just couldn’t wait any longer to come get you. Something isn’t right, Slim going out like that, it being this cold out, too.”

“You’re right, Mary. And we’re glad you got us. You are absolutely right. Let’s give it another half an hour when we can see a little better and we’ll scour the countryside where he might’ve walked.”

“I’m just so worried he fell, or… well, you know how old he really is.” Mary's voice cracked, her eyes blinking back tears.

Sylvia stepped to her, offering a comforting hug. “Remember, Mary. In Slim’s world, he’s only months from being a prospector, a mountain man. We’ll find him.”

With three of them, they couldn’t quickly devise a plan, knowing that two search parties would be twice as effective, but Ben Paul was unwilling that any of them set out walking into the rough countryside alone, especially while it was still just barely twilight. “Let’s drive out toward the graveyard. That way two can watch each side. Then we’ll all walk the cemetery and all around.”

Sylvia shot a glance to Ben Paul, understanding that there was a chance Slim felt death’s approach and rather than Mary find him dead beside her… Where better place to lay down and die than in the graveyard?

Without any sign of Slim, Mary drove slowly back to town while Ben Paul and Sylvia walked the shoulders – to no avail.

“Let’s knock on doors at all the houses on the edges of town,” Mary suggested. “That old hoot might have decided to just wander. Who knows what might go on in that…” Mary stopped short of disparaging Slim’s ancient brain.

“I’m sorry to bother you so early,” Mary said at a house at the dead end of a dirt road. “Did you hear anything out of the ordinary in the night? Slim’s missing. Your dog barking… or anything?”

No luck at any of the homes. By then it was light enough that they could look for bootprints that might have been Slim’s, had he walked into the federal land surrounding Cerrillos.

“Let’s go back to the house and look a little harder around there. Might be something simple,” Sylvia suggested.

“Also look and see what he might’ve taken with him… like his rifle.”

None of them wished to think about what he might have done with the rifle in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, the rifle was where it stayed, in the coat closet. Nothing was missing but his light jacket.