FFXIAH Linkshell Ni

/puts on sunglasses /chomps on unlit cigar and waits for the explosion to light it

Backwoods Joe, even at an early age, was a true man's man. A rugged man for all season's that you could drop like Rambo with a faulty parachute into a jungle filled with commies and he could fight his way out and find his way back and smile the whole time... And he was my best friend at the time and it wasn't until much later in life that I was able to look back and see the chain of events that fell like dominoes when I bumped the table. You see I dated several girls he was interested in which is why I feel responsible for what happened next... He met Lori at the bowling alley, she was upset, a damsel in distress, in an unhappy marriage she was looking for a shoulder to cry on... An Joe had big shoulders and even though he was only seventeen he saw his future in the small town we grew up in, working endlessly in a job he hated, providing for his family, teaching his kids to hunt and track and survive in the wilderness. He had it all planned out and Lori fit in rather nicely. What Joe didn't know was it was all just a game. A sick, savage game where Lori seduces younger men and then edges them closer and closer to her mentally unstable husband. She had done it before, many many times and this time she would go one step to far. She loved the drama and the romance and the seduction and the mind games and the treachery and the betrayal and the insanity... The few kids at school that knew how sick she was, never ever mentioned it to Joe... He was in love. Head over heels for his one true love. He was planning to marry her and take her away from all the hardship she endured. He was coming to her rescue... I was supposed to go with them, to work on her car at the home she shared with her husband that she was supposedly legally separated from. But that was a lie. One of many huge ones. And when they dropped me at my house I saw his face in the back window of the car, smiling, always smiling with his goofy crooked teeth grin and waving. God I love that smile, I can see it now... waving through the window. And a sick cold wind rippled through me, though none of the trees moved near by... I remember I felt a little bit sick almost nauseous... What was that horrible feeling I was having? I was sixteen, I could have gone with him... Why didn't I go? It was winter, it was getting dark and the Joe had even gone into the house to clear a frozen hose with warm water... But after leaving they were all locked out by the husband. And Lori picked up a tire iron and started beating on the door. He opened the door quickly and took the tire iron away from her beating her on the leg with it and she cried out. He was wearing three handguns... I heard a story once that he was found unfit to serve in the army, something he had always wanted to do since he was a little kid. Perhaps he failed the mental evaluation or perhaps the medical I don't know, but it broke him. He still had a love affair with guns and camouflage... So of course Joe stood up to him, yelling from the bottom of the driveway. "If you want to *** with someone *** with me!" And he never backed down, not when Troy pointed the gun at him, not when he shot him two times. But the third bullet ripped his stomach and sent him down to the pavement. Joe was unarmed but Troy walked up cautiously behind him and put the last bullet into the back of his head... And Backwoods Joe, 17, a lover, a fighter, probably the bravest man I ever met, died alone on the street never knowing he would later be betrayed... when Lori admitted in court she never loved him and it was all a hideous game that went terribly wrong. I watched her say it. I watched her betray him. I watched her desperately try to save her husband that she as only trying to coax a little attention out of. And it changed me. In profound ways. My best friend, Backwoods Joe, died a hero, never knowing anything but love for Lori. His first love, his last love, his only love. At seventeen he was gone and with him went my hope for a normal life next door to him, out in the sticks with our kids playing together in the dirt and eating his mom's awesome squirrel chili and drinking Mickey's Big Mouth around a fire. We had simple plans, realistic dreams and a certainty about our lives that all died that winter.