The Second Fall is an offbeat account of the predicted Revelation. Lucifer, under
the guise of a high level political operative, uses the corrupt government and an
apathetic people to initiate the final fall of mankind into his long awaited grasp.
However, Christ gathers his newly chosen, a group of misfits who will become the
unlikely outcasts, to wage war against this impending evil and whose efforts will
determine the outcome of the world.

The Second Fall

Order the complete book from

Booklocker.com

http://www.booklocker.com/p/books/6074.html?s=pdf

or from your favorite neighborhood

or online bookstore.

Your Free excerpt appears below. Enjoy!

THE SECOND FALL
Copyright © 2013 Charles Hurst

ISBN 978-1-61434-909-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the author.

Published in the United States by Booklocker.com, Inc., Port

Charlotte, Florida.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to
real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the
author.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Booklocker.com, Inc.
2013

Second Edition
THE SECOND FALL

CHARLES HURST
Dedicated to my brother Michael.
 Chapter One
The sieve opened.

A cloud of dust scattered on the uneasy terrain of the

Painted Desert. As the disturbed debris cleared, a man dressed
in khaki pants, hiking boots and a black T-shirt emerged,
standing in the still morning heat. He opened his eyes and gazed
slowly across the sand, lightly littered with scrub and allowed
the equilibrium between his newfound ears a small chance to
collect itself. His desire was not to spend the first moment back
toppled from dizziness face down on a cactus. He took several
deep breaths, filling his lungs slowly with the rapidly warming
air, allowing himself a standard ten count before further
evaluation of the new arena. The Painted Desert, the Omega’s
moonlight as a street corner artist. Per the learned men in the
know, once a conifer forest a few hundred million years ago
since then reduced to a collage of volcanic ash, mud and sand
mixed on the canvass to produce radiant blue, red and yellow
reflections off the ancient sediments. A living and dead
testament to the world occasionally rearranging its furniture and
throwing out the junk.
“God, it’s quiet,” he said, testing his baritone to the mesas
and buttes.
You bet, a great place to start. A bit of time to reflect on the
upcoming journey, my lad. This is the big one, you know, future
of the universe as the saxophone plays. My old crusader. The
natives say this is where I come to think when it gets too hectic--
a little bit of solitude, even for the alpha dog.
He looked around in the midst of the earthly silence, feeling
the muscles of his legs, which pushed to the ground while he
gathered his faculties.

7
 CHARLES HURST

The return, the Voice of Itself said. Time to see if they

absorbed even a trifle. Last trip things went smoothly, sure, but
since the vacant tomb, the world has flipped and landed on its
tail. And they aren’t loutish clods anymore. Not to be taken in
by a collection of parlor tricks. They’ve conquered inner space
and outer space. They’ve got suburbs, they’ve got transport.
They can pass a note across the world in a click and travel it in
a day. Few hundred years ago, a couple of renegades grabbed
your two cents and tossed the coins across the fountain. And the
place you now rest your hat for a bit is their balance. Dedicated
and indoctrinated You into their life force, warred over it a few
times and finally hit the jackpot--the biggest slice of pie in their
species’ meager history. And everyone and their brother’s
cousin has been gunning for them since. They’ve traveled
through the Dark Age, the Light Age and the New Age.
But somewhere they got lost. Gluttonous on the mammon
and drunk on the nectar. Now they can’t walk a straight line.
Your word is a good tale but no bestseller. You’re a worn out
garb, replaced by digital T.V. And they won’t want to hear
about it--at least not during prime time.
The distant voice in his head rang true. It would be a
different voyage altogether.
Last time he had preparation--an entire childhood and
adolescence to be exact with prepackaged parents--batteries
included to boot. Now he was going to plop out of nowhere and
what? Broadcast that he bounced back like a soda shop super
ball, so drop your cocks, put on your socks and like the Patton
infantry by God follow Me? Might get him a round of polite
applause for comic relief in a world that desperately needed a
cone from the good humor man, or it might transport him to an
all-expense paid vacation in the soft-walled resort. Not to
mention the fact that if by some shift of karmic magic he did get
his point across, how long would they hold it? He kept a fan

8
 THE SECOND FALL

club last time for three years (well, at least until the last day) but
nowadays time is money and the world ticked to a New York
minute with no union breaks. Disciples? Be hard to find a few
good men this round. This new breed held an opinion like a
sandbox could grip a glass of water. They would sell their
convictions in a second to be in the style clique with a little
cash. They’d entertain him as a novelty, a tabloid bit until the
next piece of livery came around to spark their dead souls. Even
the ones who have been waiting will be hard pressed to leave
their three hots and a cot.
While contemplating his upcoming act, he noticed the
hardened trail, which stretched endlessly to the west. The
highway. As I said, times have adapted a bit in the last
millennium or two. They don’t like the scene or the in-laws,
gather up, hit the road and put a country between them in a few
days. Think of the marketing we could have done in the old
school. One day the blind see in New Jersey and the next
morning the dead rise in Ohio. Could have gotten Book of the
Month . . . or at least on the Springer Show.
But we gotta start the old fashion way with one foot in front
of the other, even if only for old times’ sake. Just follow the sun.
You’ll pick up some companions along the way and believe me,
the corner crew will be needed for the fifteenth round. He’s
already tracking you. Sharpening his knife and cleaning his
musket. You better get going. Miles to go before we sleep, you
know.
On that note, Christ did a slow right face and proceeded to
the road toward his children of the sun.
And over a thousand miles away, Lucifer awoke.

9
 Chapter Two
Doc turned the key to the door of “The Watering Hole” and
walked inside. It was 11:00 a.m. on a Thursday and soon the
regulars would be in to grab a cup of coffee, run over the latest
town rumor since the previous night, and then begin the all-day
(and often night for the serious professionals) affair of
saturating their brains with man’s oldest liquid vice.
The bar could simply be described as a great deal of
nothing special. A reprint and production of every escape club
in half-blink towns, which contained tiny populations and large
amounts of nothing to do. The tavern, which verged on constant
decay, however, wasn’t judged too harshly by the good
townspeople of Tuolumne. There existed no other available
place to drink yourself to conviction that your allotted years
weren’t being wasted in the most desolate place in Arizona and
in the opinion of many, the entire planet.
On the smoke-stained walls were two standard beer neons
as well as the poster girl with the high chest and low-cut shirt
who appeared more than willing in still life to take home any
one of the patrons in their buzzed amplified daydream but who
in real time wouldn’t be caught dead, neither in here or with
them. The Watering Hole served as a refuge for a town that, like
its inhabitants, was already considered lost by the world.
Doc wasn’t the proprietor of the establishment but
nevertheless was considered the town barkeep and boss man.
The actual owner was a seventy-year-old retired gent who rarely
poked his nose in, which was just fine with Doc. He had just
turned forty-five a month ago and had bartended in dust pits
such as these for the last ten years. Actually, Tuolumne, located
on the northeastern flat of the Arizona wasteland, was a record

10
 THE SECOND FALL

for him. When the old man had offered him a job as he passed
through, plus rent at a hundred a month for the outside
efficiency, Doc jumped on it. That was three years ago.
Doc was an alcoholic and had been a heavy one for the last
twenty years. The difference between Doc and his fellow
addicted brethren was that he knew it. Even in his youth, he
found it difficult to truly believe that one can kill a case of tin
soldiers a day and not realize that he has purchased real estate
and settled into the barley fields. So he resolved (or his cravings
decided for him) that the ideal occupation by obvious choice,
his greatest life skill, would be employment, which allowed
equal revel in his pastime. Of course, his employer silently
understood that any professional barkeep would drink a hundred
a week from the till. However, that particular fact was deemed
acceptable if he could keep his paws off the rest of the cash.
Which he gladly did. Doc found in his travels that most owners
considered the lost booze an extra acknowledged employee
benefit of the trade upon hire. In this case, Doc considered it
overtime pay, being he acted as a pseudo-security agent during
his nightly comatose sleep in the backyard room.
He ran the bar six nights a week and generally opened up
socially for select paying guests (he would have been there
anyway) on Sunday until 5:00 p.m. (which generally ran later).
His “overtime” was about a case a shift, which he usually
started with his fan club at noon and ended at close up around
2:30 a.m. After which, Doc would stagger across the backyard
gravel and plant himself on his one-person mattress next to his
pitcher of ice water for the impending cotton mouths, which
would awaken him several times a night. Around 9:30 the next
morning, he would arise with a throbbing head, trembling
fingers and a state a severe agitation, which by long experience
he knew would be soothed by his Dutch Uncle Buddy.

11
 CHARLES HURST

And agitated he was as he flipped the switch, which semi-

illuminated the bar. Like the other addicts, the first piece of
business would be to set the morning joe in order to combat the
withdrawal, already engaged in its daily offensive on his crying
organs and tissues. After which, he could begin his short
morning routine of stocking the coolers with a few cases of the
general domestics as well as a few packs of foreign beers for
those who perceived themselves a higher class, thus being able
to shell out an extra dollar for the import. As the club drew a
small crowd during the majority of the week, the most difficult
labor he may encounter during his shift would be to restock
periodically four or five cases from the back cooler. Next course
of action was to check the liquor supply. Generally, a few
bottles of the Beam and Daniel’s family under the counter
sufficed as akin to the harder connoisseurs. The few high rollers
would occasionally order a seabreeze or snakebite but as a rule
stuck to the basic shot and beer element common to this type of
clientele. Finally, he would restock the few juices and liqueurs
required for the occasional fuzzy navel or kamikaze ordered by
the girlfriends of those who may actually hold a minimum wage
job and be able to afford the juice and liquor. The entire ordeal
of opening usually took Doc a half-hour, largely enhanced by
his caffeine-aided body, which would slowly snap out of its
previous night’s drunk.
Like every establishment of this caliber he worked in, there
existed three types of customers. The first and usually the
minority were the drive home, three to four beer drinkers who
indulged not only in order to forget the past eight at the coarse
grind but in preparation for the entry into their white picket
cages as well. The bar served as a pit stop to refuel in-between
the lap from one prison to another. This was the group Doc
liked the most but who unfortunately stayed the least amount of
time. Although usually anxious to be social, they were more

12
 THE SECOND FALL

inclined to focus on payment of mortgages and to make sure

they stayed in good employment to keep that routine. The
second type consisted of retirees who simply had nothing better
to do and approached the time when it was now highly
irrelevant what they did to their livers and kidneys at this
particular juncture of their lives. Doc also held affinity for this
type as they were for most of their existence productive citizens,
in which long experience deemed them capable of carrying on a
converse that was reasonable and usually informative. The last
kind was the meat of low-class booze parlors. They were an
underclass, usually consisting of the generational unemployed
who spent most of their government awards right at his bar.
This was accomplished by packing themselves into filthy
apartments while each individually claimed needed benefits.
Since they rented cheaply via mass numbers and often collected
food stamps, thanks to the vast liberal crusaders who were in
fear of these poor, deprived citizens not being able to afford a
sandwich, they contributed a great majority of their unearned
entitlements right in his till. Although chummy with them, Doc
contained a daily, morning loathing for this particular kind of
patron, much like someone who takes home a swan and wakes
up with a coyote.
Although not a snob (hard to be uppity on his current rung
of the social ladder), Doc did value basic intelligence and
worldliness, which was in sharp decline in Tuolumne. Largely a
deprived welfare town, consisting of the third type, the residents
could be counted on for chronic chaos and desperation. One
item that struck him as annoying wasn’t that his guests used the
same bored bar clichés that were commonly used in every gig
he worked (HEY, DOC, MY GLASS MUSTA GOT A HOLE IN
IT, YUCKA, YUCKA), but that they used the same ones every
night and further found themselves and each other gorged with
novel wit and hilarity. Another thorn to his diseased pancreatic

13
 CHARLES HURST

side was the bar podium political savvy in which intoxicated,

jobless pseudo-intellects construed the highly dubious theory
that it was the politicians who kept them downtrodden. Most of
them held themselves on the moral high ground of those who
had success at their fingertips and were somehow cheated by
the unrelenting system of corporate greed, which dangled the
strings of the politicians’ voting arms to their will, thus
barricading Tuolumne somehow from the employment office.
Ironically, many of whom cried the loudest were the ones solely
supported with bi-monthly checks signed by the very same they
condemned. They complained about taxes when they paid none.
They lamented the healthcare system when their benefits were
free, compliments of those who actually had a reason to get up
in the morning besides to watch Judge Judy. They felt it their
duty and obligation to show the world through their nightly
intoxications that BY GOD THEY WOULDN’T TAKE IT from
the society that completely sustained them. And what always
fascinated Doc was not for an instance did they ever consider
that maybe, just possibly, the origins of their catastrophic lives
could be found in the fact that they spent all of their time here.
And if productive society finally got angry enough and began to
tug the rug underneath them, they would protest with furrowed
brows and hand-painted signs, demanding justice from a culture
that dared to expect they take responsibility for their own
survival. The difference, Doc realized, between them and
himself was first, he did hold a job and second, although acutely
aware of his own condition and position in his species’
hierarchy, he at least didn’t bitch about it.
And then interestingly enough, as Doc began his own
course of daily self-destructiveness, he would feel a shift
towards the very populace, which he despised only an hour
before. The power of alcohol has, since its beginning, not only
contained the talent to diffuse one’s own feeling of contempt

14
 THE SECOND FALL

and despair but can transcend to build a bridge of camaraderie

among men from any one of life’s paths. Only through
intoxication can transient friendships be made by those who in
the morning sun would not associate with each other. Doc found
it moved in stages. During his morning coffee, he was
thoroughly convinced he would not be able to stand another
night of absorbed drivel from those whose source of
entertainment relied mainly on him. By his third or fourth beer,
he could not only tolerate them but gave acknowledgement with
a slightly good humor. By evening, with a twelve-pack running
the mile relay in his arteries and veins, not only a tolerance, but
kinship would begin to blossom. He would start to see
redeeming traits, which he obviously missed in his brief
sobriety during the previous a.m. By late night, as the alcohol
unleashed the opiate dam in his brain, he found not only an
affinity, but a certain brotherhood with them. He felt his
position nothing less than sacred in this barren existence. An
achievement of knighthood, ruling over the untouchables. And
in the morning, as the tide of booze receded and his body traded
the late night euphoria for the morning shakes and anxiety, he
once again plotted the escape route from his life of despair.
As he finished the restock tasks and heard the spit-gurgle,
which signaled the completion of the coffee, the door opened
and revealed one of his regulars.
“What’s up, Doc?” Jim said good humouredly, barely able
to contain a snicker.Upon further thought, Doc opted to skip the
coffee and popped open a beer.
Yucka, Yucka, Yucka.

15
 Chapter Three
Lucifer awoke.
Actually, he sprang upright out of bed like a jack-in-the-
box.
Jarred from a deep sleep, he was slow to gather his
faculties. It had been a peaceful (as peaceful as the Dark Angel
can be) oblivion when suddenly in the depth of his
subconscious, a two thousand year alarm sounded in his cosmic
brain and snapped him up like a stone hurled through the magic
mirror. Between the perspiration and rapid breaths, one
panicked thought dominated his evil gyrus.
IT’S HIM, IT’S HIM , HE’S BACK BACK BACK HIM HIM
HIM!.
“Whoa Nellie,” he said aloud. “Calm oneself, shall we?”
Lucifer, aka Jack Reynolds for the last fifty-four years,
slowed his breath and heart rate and quickly evaluated this new
revelation.
Fine. You knew this was coming any time now. Two
thousand years is a bitch of a stretch, even on an eternal plane.
Not like any grand surprise in a crackerjack box, eh? This is
how it’s foretold to go, yes, my boy? Mano-o-mano for the
ultimate prize--a piece of dirt to reign in the galaxy, while the
loser gets an infinite plate of celestial crow.
Unlike his counterpart, who decided to abruptly flee the
scene a few millennium ago, leaving nothing more than a
paperback instruction manual, the Morning Star had made a
habit to shine brightly throughout human history. He came in
many guises--merchant, businessman, friend, lawyer and
recently, Chief Political Advisor. He had spent timeless effort

16
 THE SECOND FALL

engaged in the only job description that suited him--causing

chaos for the Omega’s children.
His children, Lucifer reflected. It almost wasn’t fair. They
were easy targets for one simple reason--earthly desires.
Personally, if a couple of decades of suffered church-going
granted an eternity in Paradise Hills, he would have sucked it
up. But them? They always amazed him. It was as if they really
believed in their own immortality. They just couldn’t fathom
that it would all end--and soon. Not to mention they couldn’t
take their toys with them or even place them in storage. They
did not reckon in their souls that in a quick hundred years after
their demise, even their own lineage wouldn’t remember their
names, faded on the stones. So they sinned and sinned greatly.
The Big Easy was money, of course, but even God might
understand that one as we all have to survive while we’re here
and at the very least should have an extra pair of socks or two.
But they went beyond their own comforts. Humans were just
plain mean. They spent most of their time shooting life’s
billiard version of Screw Your Neighbor. The animals maimed
and killed for their own existence--many of these young kittens
did it for fun, for Heaven’s sake.
It would start with the children. The parents gaze at them,
these wonderful beings, even with the terrible twos, the crying
and occasional upchuck of last hour’s Gerber. Then suddenly at
four or five, they’re plopped down in the middle of their own.
And good old Darwin throws his crapshoot and it’s on. The
bigger ones take notice of themselves and realize, by golly, they
can bully the others just for the sheer hell of it. Then with the
realized possibility of punishment, they learn craftiness as well.
Right in kindergarten, where education starts in the classroom,
but the real lessons are studied on the playground. And why?
Because it’s exhilarating to knock down someone else’s house
of cards, to cash in your power chip, to show your clout, man!

17
 CHARLES HURST

And the ones knocked on find someone else to play kick the
candy-ass with.
Then in adolescence, after a few years of primary school
practice, they finesse their art. They form their groups and their
friends and their cliques and their trends and the hate builds to a
kerosene fire that creates burning embers to cook for the rest of
their lives.
They grow up, get jobs but still practice a now finely-tuned
cruelty toward each other. They cheat on money and spouses.
They hurt their coworkers and even their families. They drink,
they smoke--they inhale the good stuff. And why? Because they
can’t follow the one simple rule that was given to them. The
essence, which can be summed in two English words. Be nice.
Simple as that. Be nice to each other and yourself and recognize
that possibly there’s a little more to your evolution than the
primordial soup.
But no, they choose the fast track, one opposite of the
schedule board. Wrapped up in their niceties, not even noticing
which way the train is heading or that it is about to crash.
And then when they are about to check out of this grand
hotel, do they ever get a case of the willies. They look at their
poor, prune faces and walk their cane-assisted gait and think,
Wow, is this all there was? You bet, brother, that’s it--a few
years to try to be decent and you blew it. And guess what? Most
weren’t as rich and powerful and successful and popular as they
wanted anyway. Should have walked the old straight and
narrow. It ain’t an exciting path, but it keeps you out of My
neighborhood.
Then as the curtain closes, the souls look around and try to
collect their pinstripes and Rubik’s cube only to find they are
gone. If they had the almighty moola, it’s already being diced in
probate and you can count on the remaining clan members
cutting each others’ throats for their piece of the rotting lime

18
 THE SECOND FALL

pie. If they died without, then sweep the street where you sat
and be on your way, friend. Either way, forgotten by sunrise.
Then smack into the abyss. Not the fire and brimstone the
old, black habit in third grade Catholic terrified you with, but a
claustrophobic sense of loneliness, which makes you plead for
even Beezel himself to pay a house call. Millions of souls,
which somehow were truant during The Cliff Note of Mark.
Holding on to the down under dream--that the Devil himself
gets bashed like a bongo drum at The End, and they’re finally
released with many apologies back to home base.
However, that’s if I intended to lose this little gentleman’s
match, thought Reynolds. He chuckled to himself that on his
periodic observations throughout the last two thousand, most of
them weren’t much higher on the bar scale than a night hired
cohort. The difference was at least the cohort was honest about
the endeavor. And now the stage was set for his one-man show.
The equation was simple. It took Lucifer thousands of years of
waiting, but finally he had collected all of the ingredients to the
recipe of the perfect storm. A tidal wave, which would drown
the world. The families were broken and vanity ran amuck. The
seeds of children grew without the moral fertilizer to nurture
them. Everywhere now. They sprouted into the weeds that
choked the remaining aged flowers of the universe’s garden.
Guided by Hollywood’s Tower of Baal, they forgot there ever
was a set of absolutes. Honor among thieves, as the saying goes.
Thus, the moral breakdown, which shatters the work ethic
followed in short sequence by the bellyflop of the capitalist
economy. Once flattened, the chaos ensues--poverty, riots and
fear. Then I step in with a garnished platter served by Marx and
Engels. Soothe their terrified hearts and ease their troubled
souls, he thought.
And they would buy it wholesale, just like they did on the
other side of the dirt ball in 1917. And it would have stayed that

19
 CHARLES HURST

way over there if not for those meddling kids in Leave it to the
Beaver land. For the enemy of Lucifer is freedom. If the English
brats hadn’t crossed over to sprinkle a handful of dust in His
name, this little experiment would have been long over by now.
Little tougher to compete when the idiots established God as the
originator for their scrapbook of rules and regs. However, that
was a few hundred years ago. Today their minds are softened
and their swords dull. Now he could mold them like a new set
of playdough. Take the precedent temptations, destroy the
individual, murder God, live for the state and put a tyrant on top
of the pyramid. You don’t need to visit the land of Beezels and
Bubs, you’ve got it right here, folks, with free admission and all
the vodka you can drink. And this time there won’t be a bloody
thing that pauper king of carpenters can do about it.
Reynolds rested easy now. He sensed his adversary was
advancing. He moved to the bathroom to arrange his three-piece
camouflage.

20
 Chapter Four
Candice gazed at the door of the diner with irritation.
Busily engaged in the monumental task of rolling silverware
into napkins, she was not ecstatic to be interrupted at the slow
time of day for what would be a dollar or two of tip for ten
dollars worth of aggravation from the incoming Bertha and
Ralph Jones.
She walked on the cracked, tile floor over to the fountain to
fill two water glasses. Maybe they’d drown themselves like a
couple of senile turkeys, she thought mischievously, and then
met them at the table.
“Morning, hon,” cackled Bertha as she plopped her port
posterior on the semi-ruptured booth seat. “Me and Daddy got
to be in a hurry, so let’s get the coffee and menus rolling, dear.”
“Leave her be, she just gaited up for God’s sake,” said
Ralph with a tone that stated divorce may be imminent at any
moment.
“I’M JUST TRYING TO HELP THE GAL ALONG!” an
agitated Bertha replied, oblivious to her gathering audience of
Longwood’s finest dining staff.
“It’s okay,” cut in Candice, trying to doss the flame before
it became a bonfire. “Coffee’s coming with cream, no sugar,
right, Mrs. Jones?”
“That’s right, dearie, no sugar, y’hear. My diabetes been
actin’ up, and Dr. Hansley said just last week . . .”
“For CHRIST’S sake!” Ralph bellowed. “No one wants to
hear your entire damn medical biography.”
“It’s fine, Mr. Jones, fine, no sugar--got it,” replied
Candice. She escaped behind the counter.

21
 CHARLES HURST

And it would go on like this for the better part of an hour.

Bertha Jones would forget their urgency for whatever is urgent
for aging retirees and spend the good part of her meal bickering
back and forth with her husband as they probably had since the
day after I do.
They could pick a fight over the menu, the weather,
politics--anything and everything. One would suppose that after
forty-three years of marriage at least a cease-fire would be
granted. But the Jones, like many couples, seemed intent on a
full-scale assault with no designated terrain left to conquer.
Candice wondered if perhaps retirement only worsened the
condition. At least when Ralph was working they could get
away from each other half of their waking hours.
Candice delivered the coffee (cream no sugar) and menus
to the Jones and strolled away to let them quarrel about the
specials for the next hundred years.
Is this really the pinnacle of it all? she thought. Best case
scenario is you work for one taskmaster and go home to
squabble with another until they finally put you in the ground?
Could they predict that in courtship? Did twenty-five-year-old
Ralph Jones realize that in a few quick decades the twilight of
his life would consist of a morning artillery barrage over
pancakes? The idea filled her with an unsettled apprehension
and dread.
In the small town of Longwood, Michigan, twenty-year-old
Candice Perry was already behind her small society’s eight ball.
Most of her high-school classmates were either married,
impregnated or looking for both. For Candice, the thought of
marriage had about as much appeal as a triple root canal. It
wasn’t that she had a terrible childhood--no broken family or
abusive uncles to speak of. It was that her life so far, in a mere
twenty revolutions, had been about as exciting as a wet sock.

22
 THE SECOND FALL

Her small-town life in southern Michigan as a child was

tidily summed up with school, chores, weekend barbeques with
family, holidays with family, and then back to school, chores
and repeat cycle. As a blooming teenager, she wasn’t
considered wild or prudish. An attractive girl of slender build
with auburn hair and dark, brown eyes, she had encapsulated
the attention of many of Longwood’s hormone-raged bucks. But
she spent the last few years of teenagehood with only sparse
romances and long, lonely interludes, largely to the deficit of
adventure in these candidates, a plague with every small town’s
inhabitants. Although the boys would line up in droves to date
her, they soon dwindled off when she revealed that possibly,
she didn’t consider the patter of little feet on an old floorboard
the best thing since sliced bagels in Longwood, Michigan.
Just ask her friend, Cindy, whose design of motherhood
rapidly unraveled. After a year, she and her high school
soulmate came to the stark realization that his job at the mill
wasn’t going to suffice a new wife and child. So Cindy got the
new deal, which was a lot less promising than the one the late
Roosevelt proposed. She got to work in the same diner Candice
did five days a week while the in-laws inherited the reveled
position as professional babysitters. Cindy also was granted the
luxury of tending house as well, being that Jason was a
traditional, old-school husband who never contemplated his
wife’s work of serving slop to pissy customers eight hours a day
could leave her without enough energy to have supper on by
exactly 6:00 p.m. Jason, however, seemed to veer from his
idealistic school when it came to the male acting as sole
breadwinner of the family.
Cindy graduated with Candice two years ago, but somehow
her high-school chum seemed to have aged to a tired thirty-
something these last months. Her only recreation was the
occasional shower party, which Cindy always insisted on

23
 CHARLES HURST

arranging for the other post high-school lasses who steadily

lined up to jump headfirst into the deep depths of adulthood. It
seemed to Candice that Cindy joyfully engaged in these events
for the sole purpose of mental self-preservation.
“It’s just going to be wonderful,” she had stated at her last
occasion with sad and tired eyes. “Motherhood is, well . . .such
a gift from God.” She rapidly nodded as to further assure herself
this was indeed the ultimate truth.
Candice wondered if the fine print of the package gave the
warning that the gift came with, free of charge, three hours of
sleep a night, an incessantly screaming baby who would evolve
into a screaming toddler who would one day blossom into a
screaming, rebellious teenager. The teenager who would only
unlock the key to Cindy’s prison after time served of eighteen
years--no parole negotiable. Not to mention added years for bad
behavior if you had more than one.
Then of course, once the kids are gone and you think
you’ve escaped it all, they have kids and bills and can’t make it
on one factory job’s salary, hence the tears flow and suddenly
you feel the ten generation stack of guilt with its booming,
ancestral voice, which insists that sacrifice is the worthiest of
virtues when coupled with family loyalty. Regardless of
whatever plans you may have retained all those years since
stepping into the world with your cap and gown. No wonder the
Jones bickered so much. In the base of their souls, they
probably held a hatred for the sale to each other of a peach,
which tasted like a lemon, forty-three years ago.
It was a nightmare.
“Well, what are you going to do, Candice?” her last
romantic contestant asked, upon learning that sleeping with her
a few times didn’t necessarily give him the ticket to walk the
aisle like his bud did with Cindy. “Stay single your whole life
and not have kids –ever?”

24
 THE SECOND FALL

“And what would be so wrong with that, Roy?”she replied.

Then she eagerly attempted to entice her companion into her
yearning to leave Longwood, to roam and explore the not so
brave, new world and realized as she gazed into his vacant,
confused eyes that it was comparable to explaining the wonders
of quantum physics to a chimpanzee.
As long as the neurons in her cerebral matrix could store a
memory, Candice had a deep-seated unrest with her limited
world of Longwood. At age six she had once ducked under the
barbed wired fence, which marked her father’s small slice of the
town’s pissing ground, to journey toward a wood line over a
mile away. She had clawed and scraped her way for an hour and
a half through cattails, thorns and bushes, which loomed over
her. Her parents, after several hours of agonizing panic, which
is known only to those who are suddenly uncertain of the
whereabouts of their offspring, found her sitting on a hill that
overlooked a creek. After several angry minutes, they asked
what provoked such an episode. Candice replied that she
wanted to know what was in the woods over the hill. And now
she did. That hill became her favorite spot as the years passed
and fourteen spins later was still where she sought refuge from
the dullness of her own related and unrelated kin.
Last week on a Sunday summer twilight, she spent over
two hours there. No panic existed now from her parents who
had long accustomed themselves with “her odd ways.” Candice
reflected that the creek, which had once served as her very first
venture for escape, had outlived its usefulness.
Am I going to be fifty and coming here after working a shift
at a place I hate that barely pays the bills? she contemplated
that evening.
So the obvious choice was simple. Leave. Leave the small
town. Leave the loved but nagging parents whose ten-year plan
was grandchildren to share the tiresome barbeques with. Leave

25
 CHARLES HURST

Cindy and her shower parties. Exit the small-town gossip at the
tiny church, which if you skipped because you had a better
recreational gig on your leisure day, you were scrutinized by all.
But most of all, leave this tedious slop shop that is destined to
keep you treading water with your head barely above the
surface the rest of your life while listening to the Berthas feud
with the Ralphs about the coronary dangers of that extra
sprinkle of salt on the eggs.
These thoughts had become more rampant as she reached
the end of her teen years and now constantly nagged, the way a
wisdom tooth does as it begins to push through the gum and is
eventually cured only by ripping it out.

***
Candice ambled out the diner at 4:30 p.m., hours after the
unsettled truce of the Jones, in the warm but not unpleasant
afternoon of Longwood. The sky was clear and signified the
imminent arrival of another scenic sunset, which she considered
one of the few positives of her domain. She came upon her old,
gray Bronco, which was equally weary of the daily strains
placed upon it. Candice pondered that the twenty-five hundred
dollars she had hoarded in the last two years could easily
vaporize in one coronary stroke of her twelve-year-old vehicle’s
engine. Being that her rated level of social respectability would
only allow her to purchase the car dealer’s version of a cheap
and worn hand-me-down, she foresaw a vicious cycle of
perpetual saving, which would be lost to the relentless assaults
that life throws at you, auto or otherwise, in the middle of your
plans.
Her plans? Upon graduation from high school two years
ago, Candice accomplished two things. First, she went down to
the diner and after giving a raving description of all of her
talents, which would only elevate their profit margin, was hired

26
 THE SECOND FALL

on the spot. The second thing she did was open a savings
account.
Candice pulled the door with a wince to an audible creak,
which alerted the rest of the parking lot of her rusty carriage’s
cranky voice. When she climbed in and closed the door, the
revelation dropped on her like a bucket of ice water thrown on
someone in a deep slumber.
It’s gotta be now, she thought. If I don’t go now, I’ll be
waiting for the right amount saved in my piggy bank, the right
opportunity and the right time. All of which Mama Life will
keep interrupting and interfering with potshots of engine
troubles, boyfriend distractions and the hopeless promise that
somehow sticking around from eight to five is going to make it
all better. And unlike the Jones, I probably won’t even collect a
measly social security check, where at least I could wait for the
big kickoff in one of the many stylish town trailers.
And instantly, as though thunderstuck by twenty years of
restlessness and pent ambitions, she climbed out of the car with
another creak. Even and surefooted, she stepped back into the
diner where Cindy and her worn eyes still rested.
“Came back to work the rest of my shift--how sweet it is,”
clucked Cindy who made a dramatic display of storming the
door.
Candice caught her longtime friend by the arm and gave her
a long hug. Her pal since they were put together in first grade to
color the apples red and the oranges orange. Friend through the
preteen boy-hating elementary days and the teen boy-crazy
nights in high school. Her shoulder to cry on, Longwood’s best
girlfriend at whose wedding, Candice helped sell the institution
of small-town U.S.A. And now her adult companion in the
world of harsh words and harder knocks.

27
 CHARLES HURST

“Good Lord, girl,” Cindy said, her banter overcome by this

sudden flood of emotion. “What’s wrong? Is it Roy? Because
y’know, Jason can talk to him and I know he’s not over all . . .”
“Miss?” one of the locals reared from a booth across the
room. “When you get a minute?”
“Just a second,” snapped Cindy in a tone, which meant
most likely more than one.
“No,” Candice said, her voice quaking. Say it now and say
it fast, the voice in her head told her. Say thanks for being my
rack mate and all round true sport on this monotonous voyage,
but now it’s time to jump ship and swim for paradise before the
boat passes the island and we are all lost at sea.
“No, it’s not Roy,” she began with gained fortitude. “Roy is
just a . . . a symptom of the disease that infects this place. It gets
in our heads and stays in our brains. It gets us, Cindy--until
finally one day we wake up and we’re Bertha and Ralph.”
“Oh honey, those two can try anyone’s patience and
once . . .”
“I’m leaving, Cindy,” Candice stated more evenly than she
thought she would. No dramatics, just plain statement, delivered
crisp and clear.
“Leaving?” Cindy replied softly as if someone had just
threatened to pull her life support. “What do you mean leaving?
Where would you want to leave to?”
And Candice, with a rising anger for her lifetime pal, who
should have, in all these years, grasped this basic trait in whom
she called her best friend, glared directly in her eyes.
“Away from Longwood. These people, this job, this life of
eking by on tips from a bunch of cowpokes who should have
better things to do than sit in this lousy diner while they gossip
about who’s sleeping with the reverend,” Candice said, her
voice climbing to a mild roar. “I’m leaving this idea that I’ve
got to be knocked up with a ring on my finger from some

28
 THE SECOND FALL

redneck who’s going to think it’s a swell treat for me to run on

my feet all day, and then serve him a casserole and six-pack of
beer because he doesn’t have the get up to think past whether or
not Longwood High Wolverines are going to State this year.”
Candice could tell she hurt her friend from the lake rising in
her eyes, but as she spoke, the anger took over. Even a rage at
Cindy for being too incomprehensibly programmed and stupid
to see it. Suddenly, Candice hated her. She hated what she had
done to herself. She hated that Cindy Owens didn’t even let the
moisture behind her ears begin to dry before life rammed her,
like a razor-toothed freight train and consumed her in one
gigantic swallow. She hated her for not being smart enough to
use the goddamn Philips Pharmacy a block away, which could
have prevented a chronic case of child at nineteen. She hated
her dimwit, just-past-adolescent husband who was oblivious
that his high-school love was creating a good old fashion case
of heart attack, forty years from now, from a life of nonstop,
eighteen-hour days. And most of all, she hated that Cindy
Owens, dreams cut short by the knife of Longwood, Michigan,
was ignorant to it all.
“Well,” said Cindy shakily. “Maybe you can stomp on me
and Jason and maybe we don’t got all the three-dollar words
that you learned in those books of yours on that shelf back
home, but let me tell you, girl, we got a FAMILY! We got
ROOTS here! That’s the problem with you, Candice, that’s
always been the problem and Roy says so too, ever since we
could barely peer over this counter. You’ve never appreciated
anything here in this town. Not your parents, not when our
school won the State Championship, for God’s sake, and surely
not Roy, who’s a good man with a good job and . . .”
“Roy . . . oh yeah, great . . . with an idiot job that will keep
him here forever in a trailer, ” shot back Candice.

29
 CHARLES HURST

“Roy is not an idiot. And any other girl in this here town
would be glad to have him,” said Cindy. The rivers now poured
openly. “But not you, oh no, not Candice, who’s too stuck up
for everybody! Candice doesn’t appreciate a man who works all
day with a good job that could support a family.”
“Like Jason supports his family?” Candice said evenly.
“OH YOU BITCH!” Cindy screamed, unknown to her that
the impatient customer had lost interest several minutes ago
about the specials and stared open-mouthed. “We got BILLS,
we got a BABY . . . but you wouldn’t KNOW about that, would
you? Candice is too GOOD for CHILDREN. TOO GOOD
FOR. . .”
“That’s exactly right, ” said Candice, abruptly cutting it
short. “ I am too good for this.” She spoke more to herself than
anyone else.
Then suddenly, the flash of anger was gone, and a serene
confidence overwhelmed her, which stated this was truly the
time to go. She brushed past Cindy and past the coffee-stained
counter and walked into the kitchen. She looked in Joe’s office,
the same office where she interviewed for this fabulous job two
long years ago. He looked down with the proper precaution,
which attempted not to know a major feline quarrel had just
occurred in his restaurant. She knocked on the glass window.
He gave the hand motion to enter.
“Joe,” she said, opening the door.
“What the hell was that about outside?” Joe asked with the
amusement every male exhibits when bearing witness to a good
catfight.
“That . . . was my last day.”
“Oh, c’mon now. Go on home and cool off, Candice.
Whatever that was will be water under the bridge by
tomorrow.”

30
 THE SECOND FALL

“No, Joe, that was me telling Cindy that I’m leaving--

tomorrow. Better put that HELP WANTED sign back on the
window.”
“You’re shittin me? C’mon now, this job ain’t that bad, is
it? I know it ain’t the Ritz, but I got a good place here and the
customers like you, Candice. Hell, everyone likes you. Well,
except maybe for Cindy out there just this second but generally
they do.”
“No, Joe,” Candice replied kindly to the middle-aged man
who had at least made a little something of himself in a town
where most couldn’t. “It’s not a bad diner if you own it, but it
sucks if you just work in it. Send the last check to my parents.
They’ll get it to me.”
“Candice I . . . ”
“You take care, Joe,” Candice said. She left the office.
She walked past the kitchen again and through the in/out
swing doors, unclipping the red-letter Hi, your server is
CANDICE button and tossed it on the counter.The tag bounced
once before it stopped to rest by a half-filled coffee mug. She
looked up at tear-stained Cindy and suddenly felt sorry for her.
This must be what kicking a retarded puppy feels like, Candice
thought.
She wondered if Cindy really was the soulmate and best
friend that she always regarded her as. It seemed that in the past
fourteen or fifteen years, Cindy, at some point would have taken
in that Candice and this dipshit town weren’t going to be joined
at the hip forever. Candice remembered when she was fifteen,
the first time she mentioned to her pal about possibly putting
Longwood in the past tense. Cindy promptly changed the
subject. Come to think of it, Candice couldn’t ever really
remember a deep, earth-shattered conversation with her in all
these years. Never once had Cindy mentioned anything about
the future, except how delightful being married with children

31
 CHARLES HURST

would be directly after graduation. Well, girlfriend, you got

your wish, Candice thought. Now the only thing you’ll be
wishing for is one night of eight-hour, uninterrupted shut eye.
Possibly Cindy was her friend for so many years only due
to the circumstance that there wasn’t anyone else around who
wasn’t an exact replica of her. And for Christ’s sake, she
couldn’t have spent her entire adolescence alone. Candice
realized, as she walked past her, that the friendship blossomed
out of the mere chance of being placed at the same desk at the
same time the first year of grade school. It could have been any
of her classmates and the end today would have been the same.
Suddenly, it became clear to her that Cindy Owens had
absolutely no idea who Candice Perry was and never had.
Cindy’s life, guided and prepped by home economic fudge
brownies, would never get the urge, the need, the great
Wanderlust to see what’s on the other side of the field.
“Sorry, Cindy,” she said while several customers anxiously
awaited round two. “I didn’t mean that about you and Jason.”
“So . . . you’re not going away?” Cindy asked.
“No, I’m going. You, Jason and Roy are okay with this
place and the people. I’m not. And you’re right. I couldn’t give
a rat’s bare butt whether the Wolverines win State or forfeit
every game.”
“But your parents will . . . ” started Cindy.
“They will just have to get it--or not. It won’t change my
decision. This didn’t happen today. It started years ago.”
“Can’t this wait a little . . . I mean, tomorrow? It’s kinda
sudden and all, don’t you think?”
“No, it’s got to be tomorrow. If I wait for the perfect time,
I’ll realize in thirty years that there wasn’t one. I’m sure that I
can wait tables anywhere.”
And she wondered why this revelation hadn’t occurred
sooner. She could at least get a job for the same pay in any area

32
 THE SECOND FALL

of the country and suddenly couldn’t figure her reasons two

years ago for staying here to begin with.
“Come by tomorrow morning and we’ll say goodbye,”
Candice said.
“Where?” Cindy asked, her eyes filling again.
“Where what?”
Cindy attempted to chuckle, which came out more like a
grunt. “Where are you going?”
Candice reflected on this. Actually, she had never really put
on paper this part of the plan and suddenly it pop-flashed in her
brain. She knew without a doubt where she was headed. She
would take off to the land of the free spirits, the terrain of fruits,
nuts and misfits, like the island for broken toys on that silly
Christmas show. As she pictured it, she grinned broadly.
“California.”

***
Driving home, Candice refueled her mental energy bank,
which was sapped dry from the row with Cindy. Of course, that
episode was an appetizer compared to the eight-course blowout,
which would occur in about fifteen minutes when she told the
senior Perrys about her future campaign.
Her parents couldn’t be considered as monotonous as the
rest of the town. At least they weren’t hatched here. However,
there existed differences. They were, well . . .old. At least to
twenty-year-old Candice. Her dad was fifty-five and her mom
fifty-one. They weren’t going to be climbing Mount Everest
anytime soon. They also could escape from the dullness of this
place within their family. Her dad actually had one of the few
union jobs with the electric company as a mid-level supervisor.
No great shakes, but it brought home sixty grand a year plus
health benefits. Her mom was employed at the bank. Not a
teller, but in one of the glass-walled offices. Both of them had

33
 CHARLES HURST

mastered the comfortable middle class and it was somehow

assumed that Candice would do the same. They also didn’t
expect a daughter who wanted to spend her life running like a
gazelle all over the planet.
When she graduated from Longwood High, her parents let
her stay on for a pretty reasonable couple hundred a month for
room and board. Lately, her mom had mentioned several times
about getting her on at the bank and working up the middle-
class stepstool they now stood on. Perhaps her mom also saw it
as a strategy to meet “the love of her life” as she put it. Coupled
with her dad’s incessant tale of his own personal climb from an
eighteen-year-old wire jockey to district management in the
county, the two of them made a dynamic duo for promoting
Americana to their one and only child.
Candice saw the good intentions of her parents. And she
couldn’t argue with the fact that their house was seven years
from being released as the bank’s indentured servant and soon
they would glide into a well-constructed retirement, which
hadn’t gotten gouged by corporate pilfering. However, she
wondered if on that last lap of life they would regret they spent
their time in a state of perfect ordinariness. She had to believe
that at one time they couldn’t have thought life would consist of
checking balances and power surges.
Even if she went to college and majored in business or
marketing, like the rest of the world’s young go-getters, she
couldn’t see herself bouncing out of bed in the morning to look
for a better way to enhance the profit margins for someone
else’s product.
Like Jimmy Little, who escaped Longwood via Michigan
State twelve years ago. The boy who made good, according to
the residents, who are always thrilled when they can elevate
themselves by being associated with the success of one of their
own. Jimmy, son of Bobby Little, one of the town’s many

34
 THE SECOND FALL

factory workers, and Susie, who worked at the grocery, not only
went to college but astounded everyone by his finish at the top
of the class. He later attended Notre Dame Law School, where
he also ranked in the top ten percent. Jimmy cashed in his
mental chips upon graduation for a velvet rope pass into the
high-rolling corporate stakes club.
As true as it was that his life now could be considered
wholly more comfortable than his former companions, whom he
occasionally mingled with during his brief visits home, Candice
saw the same weariness in his eyes exhibited by Cindy. And a
body that hadn’t seen the treadmill since the day he exchanged
his liberty for the luxury of the ruling class. Candice believed
that possibly the lavishness of his career in relation to Cindy’s
could be comparable to a house and field slave. The only
difference--one was better dressed.
Hence, the problem and dilemma, which revolved around
her gray matter, was the simple, harsh fact that she had to pick
one of these paths to eat and keep the rain off of her. And she
foresaw neither to be the thriller of the week at her deathbed.
Since she already set her course to action, Candice would
go now--keep moving like the shark, which continues to swim
or else sinks to the depths and dies.
She curved her car into Meredith Street, drove two blocks
to 7825, numbers stamped into her brain since as long as she
could remember, and turned into the driveway. Her tire
thumped into the pothole that her father was going to fix this
week for the last three years. She pulled up to the shed, which
offset the gray, two-story house and clicked the ignition off.
The engine gave a final encore feature of a roll and thud before
saying good night to its faithful fans.
Geez, she thought. I might not even get past the Michigan
state line, let alone reach the Pacific.

35
 CHARLES HURST

She opened the door with its lumbar creak, again

announcing her third-rate vehicle for the benefit of any
neighbors who may have been absent at the diner. She slammed
it shut and slowly shuffled to the house.
Looking forward to this like a case of bubonic plague,
Candice thought as she walked up to the door and suddenly
halted and stood there a moment. You’re going to just waltz in
there and drop the nuke that you’ve just quit your job, have no
intention of signing on at the bank or any other bank—and by
the way, after twenty years it’s been swell, but I’m due to hit the
road by this time tomorrow.
“Pretty much it,” she said aloud while turning the
doorknob. She walked in.
Before she got three steps past the foyer, one Mrs. Perry, a
senior type, sprung out of the kitchen and blocked the path,
almost knocking her down .
“Leaving? What the HELL is this leaving Longwood, I
hear?” barked her mother. Her hands were so far in her hips it
was a wonder she didn’t crisscross her kidneys.
Goddamn Cindy, thought Candice. Couldn’t hold it in even
an hour, you small-town twit.
“Mom,” she said, trying to keep a composed tone. “This is
something I’ve always thought about and . . . ”
“Thought? Have you thought about how you’re going to
live and the fact that you’ve got NO job or prospects now? I
told you that we were working to get you on at the bank as soon
as a space opens. Frankly, when I was your age I . . .”
That was it. Possibly the strain from the explanation to
Cindy and Joe had already worn her temperament down to its
last few threads. Or maybe she was sick of every mind-numbed
nitwit in this town telling her what she needed to do, per
Longwood’s mores code of smallsville.

36
 THE SECOND FALL

“MY AGE?” Candice yelled, taking her mother aback.

“When you were MY AGE, you sold yourself to a boring job for
rotten pay! You got to have your life spelled out for you by
some bald manager who spent half his time trying to get into
your pants! Then, after twenty years, they throw you a few glass
walls, plus ten hours overtime a week, and you’re still kissing
the nose of that manager’s son who’s a few years older than me.
Well, you know what? SCREW THAT, MOM!”
By now her father, who couldn’t remember the last time he
heard his little princess swear, was unable to ignore the full-
scale brawl. Hesitant to step in the middle of the firing range, he
cautiously emerged from the living room.
“Now, honey,” he said. “Wait a minute . . . ”
“No, you wait a minute, Dad,” Candice said, trying to
regain her composure. “I’ve now heard four people who are
somehow God-awful offended that I don’t want to spend the
next forty to fifty years of my life being bored to death, having
nothing to look forward to but the yearly farmers’ fair. You’re
all angry that maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to repeat your
lives. You know what that tells me? That deep down you’re
mad that I can leave, while you got stuck here because you
didn’t think outside of the box of Longwood until it was too late
with your mortgage and kids. So you have to take it up now,
and the only thing that makes you feel better is to talk someone
else into your club. That’s why Cindy is so angry, Mom. She’s
not angry because I’m going. A real friend would say, ‘Hey,
good luck! Vaya con dios. Come visit soon.’ She’s angry
because she can’t go. She’s angry because her parents didn’t
bother to tell her that if she really wanted to torpedo her life, the
best way to do it would be to get knocked up and married at
nineteen. To someone who makes twelve dollars an hour. And
she’s angry because it’s not one-tenth as great as she thought it

37
 CHARLES HURST

would be and she can’t take it back. She’s stuck. And she wants
me stuck with her.
“Well, you know what? That’s not going to happen.
Contrary to what everyone in this redneck county thinks, it’s
my life. DO YOU TWO GET THAT? MINE!
“That means if I don’t want to spend eight hours at the bank
window dealing with a bunch of petty people, I don’t HAVE to!
It means that I don’t owe Roy a thing--marriage or otherwise. It
means that I don’t have to stay here and be Cindy’s cry pillow
because she doesn’t have enough brains to vacate this place.
And it means I don’t owe you anything either. You had a child
and you had the responsibility to raise it. The kid doesn’t owe
the parents for keeping a roof over the child they created. And if
you’re worried about supporting myself, don’t. I’m twenty
years old and thanks to two years at Joe’s diner, gee, I even
have a trade. Believe it or not, twenty-year-olds have
apartments all by themselves. They can even enroll in school on
their own if they want. They can pay their bills and balance
their checkbooks. It happens all over the world every day.
“So this can go one of two ways. You can either tell me you
love me and wish me the best as I go out for my own
independence, or you can be pissed off at me for the rest of your
lives. Either way, I’m leaving tomorrow. Now, if you two are
done with the rules for running my life, I’m going upstairs to
pack!”
And on that note, with a surge of triumph over Longwood,
Michigan, Candice marched upstairs and left at the bottom two
parents who were too stunned to speak.

38
 Chapter Five
Christ had been doing the military route step for two hours
on the highway that headed toward the sea. Not in a hurry since
he wished to leisurely view sights he hadn’t ever seen, even
since his last visit two thousand years ago. He swung his arms
in easy stride and breathed in the muffled desert air. Clouds
began to form and moved from the west. The heat had already
switched courses and hightailed back to the horizon. Cars
passed him by occasionally. He marveled at what his kids had
come up with since the horse and hammer.
Think about it. Fifty-five hundred years ago, after much
chin scratching and forethought around the social campfire, a
dude from Mesopotamia chisels away at the prehistoric rock
until he finds in his hands a semi-smooth rounded sculpture.
And then he rolled it down a hill. The world’s very first show
and tell. The curiosity I installed got the best of them. Wheel
tumbles down a grade--great party trick but doesn’t help with
the bills. So they mesh their primitive wits and come up with the
log sledge that helps them get their favorite boulder from point
A to B. Another fine thought but not much in the way of high
speed transport. So they evolve the axle, and then put four
together. Kidnap an unfortunate horse and you’ve got haulage.
Few thousand years later with an intellectual brick stack of
physics, trig, and engineering, some cat named Cugnot turns
the axle with a shot of hot steam. Then another couple of wops
spin that baby with lit gasoline and the rest is history. Ships,
planes and worldwide commerce. Man is off to run a Boston
marathon and tries to get honorable mention into the industrial
age. Instead of a cave filled with nuts and meat, he’s filled it
with his two favorite school colors--green and gold.

39
 CHARLES HURST

The problem was my counterpart was out there too. Doing

the recon and laying the groundwork. The Necessary Evil. For
every Yin there had to be a Yang. The Other. He lurked in their
dreams and whispered in their nightmares. Enticed them to
believe that what they had wasn’t enough. He pointed out the
bigger and nicer Jones’ cave, equipped with digital cable.
A raindrop splashed on Christ’s face. He quickened his step
and lengthened the stride. He was lost in an eternal memory of
the test he threw down to earth so long ago. The delicate
balance of His message versus human nature, the dark against
the light. Good opposing evil--in a world, which had become a
giant game of Risk.
So Mr. Smith ambled down the street to Mr. Jones’
dwelling, beat him to death with a rock and took his T.V. Then
he sharpened that rock and tied it to a stick. Two neighbors
worried about Mr. Smith having the only rock and stick so they
made a bow and put a flying stick right through Mr. Smith’s
heart. Unfortunately, this action made Mr. Smith’s sons irate
since their chores doubled, so they had a block party where they
invented the bullet and musket. And that group was a grand, old
suburban neighborhood that called themselves countrymen.
And they formed regiments of bright, strong boys who believed
their party was better than anyone else’s. So they crashed other
parties.
The rain fell steadily now as if the angels themselves had
gotten a case of the sniffles at the tale. Christ neither noticed nor
minded that he was rapidly getting soaked as he watched a
spiny lizard, who was obviously prepared for such calamities,
retreat under a rock next to the road.
And the shady shadow of human nature only grew darker
as they advanced. The bullet was watered and grew to a missile,
which could be filled with certain ingredients from Mother
Nature’s kitchen. Shelf-elements that could eliminate the whole

40
 THE SECOND FALL

bash. The world spun on a tiny thread, that if ever broken,

would cease all the festivities. The end of the test, failed report
and no chance of summer school. Class dismissed.
Christ’s hiking boots squished with each step as the rain
filled his socks. His shirt was matted against skin. He had
reached the point where the attire was at max saturation in the
sudden desert storm. Intermittent lightening flashed, followed
by the crack of distant thunder. He wore a half-crooked smile in
his own created version of Heaven’s Fourth of July.
Ahead of him, on the rain-pattered interstate, he saw a sign,
which indicated he would soon encounter his first recruit. The
Voice entered his head again.
A tough acorn to crack. Outlook could be described on a
good day as cynical and on a bad one, downright irreverent.
Might have to reach into the magic hat and pull out the Easter
Bunny for him. Not only apathetic about You but stopped belief
in himself--a long time ago. An investment of twenty odd years
and now has a huge dividend in pity. Time to bring him out.
The sign read: TUOLUMNE 8 MILES.

***
Doc looked outside at the pouring rain.
Shit, man, they’ll still come. Wouldn’t miss their habit for a
cyclone. But in fairness, I sure as hell wouldn’t either.
“Damn, Doc, raining a cougar and a wolf out there,” said
Jim. He, like Doc, was greatly engaged in the genocide of tin
soldiers.
“Why do you care, Jim?” Doc said, feeling the first good
flood of liquid Yuletide. “You got a date to get to?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “With that one there.” He
magnificently pointed to the poster with one hand and made the
universal male gesture with the other.

41
 CHARLES HURST

“Hey Jim,” called another down the bar. “Let me know how
I taste.”
The whole tavern erupted into laughter as Jim flushed and
retreated to a bitter staring contest with his nearly empty bottle.
“That’s alright, Jim,” Doc said. “We’ll just prescribe a
painkiller for that heartache.” He popped open another and
placed it in front of him.
“Can’t argue with the doctor,” Jim replied and finished the
old one. He slipped the empty bottle toward the bartender.
“Praise be God!” shouted Doc. He raised his arms and
fluttered backward. “I declare this child healed by the
LOOORD’S love.” He shook all over for the effect.
The bar roared in its delight and neglected that Reverend
Holmes at their local Baptist would most likely not be amused
by Doc’s rendition.
Doc, with the help of his tin squad, slipped into character
like an actor on set. Over the years, he had mastered the trade of
serving booze, mending broken hearts, listening to lost dreams
and most importantly--keeping peace on the other side of the
counter.
As with most establishments of ill repute, Doc had learned
the majority of his clientele of the permanently stained collar, or
lack of one at all, could be diagnosed with a chronic case of
resentment due to their status on the American food chain. This
darkness would rise to the surface like a half-filled helium
balloon as they consumed the hops. Not content with their
position, their wife or life in general, plus the unending strain of
financial burden by the very offspring they intentionally or
unintentionally created, their minds gave way to a sullen
bitterness. It was contained during the day by a routine, which
kept reflection on themselves to a bare minimum. However, as
the sun dropped, the very substance that was to ease their
burdens also opened the floodgates of their discontent.

42
 THE SECOND FALL

Doc, from long experience, learned to feel these signals like

a telepathic jujitsu master. It always followed the same pattern.
One of his patrons would put away just enough to start feeling
not so thrilled about the universe and his role in it. Then he
would sit and stew about it for another hour or so, staring at the
bottle or bar mirror, which was more than happy to show him at
no cost what he really was. Then he would become quiet. At
this point it was only a matter of time for one off-color remark
from friend or foe, and it was on. Usually the fights were more
common on Fridays, after his working customers just completed
a full, nonstop week of being train-fucked by the world.
He had learned to diffuse these symptoms among them long
before they came to blows. Necessary craft to master, he found,
after catching a few stray punches himself from the fury-ridden
steel and factory workers in East Texas. The preventative cure
was simple--have a hell of a sense of humor. He found it was
pretty difficult for them to throw a cross when they were
laughing their asses off. And generally, they weren’t even
pissed at who they were fighting to begin with. They were just
burdened down by the relentless hate of the inescapable grind it
took to fry the bacon on the Saturday morning skillet. And they
hated even more the ones who never bothered to show up at the
grindstone at all.
And this was the key that Doc always believed he would
one day pass on to the next generation of barkeeps. His personal
Boy Scout Motto--shake their hand, make them laugh, give
them just a sample size of respect, and if all else fails, keep a
loaded gun under the bar.
Doc began to chuckle himself at the still giggle-ridden
counter. Jim had a smile and even one on ice from his comic
acquaintance at the other end. Peace was restored. Doc picked
up his own beer and drained it. He glanced at the favorite

43
 CHARLES HURST

poster. Twelve gone and twelve to go. Help me kill it, you
fucking hoe.
Oh yes, by God, all was right with the world.

***
One o’clock and we wanna rock. Being a weeknight, the
club winded down early as the drunks staggered out
intermittently. The smoke began to clear and the jukebox played
the low, sympathetic ballads of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s old, sweet
crash pad. Last two hours would breeze by as the few remaining
patrons had switched over to the slow lane with their long
driving habit.
Doc too had reached his fill. He’d kill a couple more in the
next hour while he chatted with Jim or whoever would be left,
and then give them das boot and lock the door. Then Doc would
proceed out back and crash into his meager habitat for the death
sleep. He’d save, as always, the hour cleanup for his morning
coffee and hangover, which would wait for him like a bad-
tempered loan shark. It had rained only lightly in the last hour,
and a cool breeze entered the open door and circulated through
the bar.
A man dressed in a black shirt and khakis stepped in,
pausing briefly. He was soaked. He observed the surroundings
with the eyes of a recon scout.
Jesus fuck, thought Doc. Just what I need at an hour to last
call--some imbecile who can’t figure out when to access an
umbrella.
The man, as if reading the thought, shot his head toward
Doc and stared at him intently. An almost snicker formed on his
lips as he embraced Doc with the kindest eyes the bartender had
ever witnessed. Ancient and full of mirth, as if the thunderstorm
was just but another delight in his merry existence.

44
 THE SECOND FALL

Great, not only grabbed a caboose when they were passing

out brains but snatched a pack with one beer short as well.
The man squished in his boots and left soppy footprints
behind. He ambled leisurely up to the bar, pulled the stool, and
sat next to Jim, who had been bored and heavy-eyed until this
recent interlude. The scant few who remained stopped their
conversations and ogled the stranger as all small-town bars do
when an interloper cuts through their backyard.
“Must have missed the weather report, hey, bud?” said Doc.
This sent a low ripple of cackles among his congregates.
The man’s smirk widened into a full grin, which took the
good Doc a little aback. This struck him as uneasy if one
considered the crowd he had grown used to. As a matter of fact,
everything about this guy made him uneasy. Doc felt like he
had just been caught in the bathroom jacking off to his father’s
Hustler collection.
“Can I get you something?” he continued, with well-
practiced friendliness of one addressing a lunatic.
The man stretched his arms backward and dripped a few
drops of rainwater around him. For the first time in two
thousand years, he addressed one of his children in their tone.
“I’ll have one of your beers, please,” the man said with
laughing eyes.
Doc only looked at him oddly, unable to part from the
stranger’s embracing stare.
“Um . . . what kind of beer?” he fumbled, now wishing for
last call to make its way around the track in double time.
“You pick.”
What in the fuck is the matter with this guy? Who tells a
barkeep to pick his brand?
“Well, I’m partial to good old American Bud,” said Doc.
He felt the madcap may not even be equipped to pay for a bowl
of peanuts.

45
 CHARLES HURST

“There it is, then,” replied the man who reached into his
front pocket and withdrew a ten spot. He gazed at it for more
than a few seconds before he straightened the bill and placed it
on the sticky bar.
Doc opened the cooler and felt for one of the frigid
longnecks, which he pulled out and popped with his opener in
one smooth motion, and then placed it on a coaster in front of
the newcomer. The man wrapped his hand around the bottle,
lifted it, and then looked at the bubbles slowly rise to the
surface. With cat-like patience, he examined the beverage
before it was finally brought it to his lips. The man scrunched
his nose as he took a hefty swallow. The bar, with an effort of
courtesy, common in the west toward passersby, tried not to
snicker at the stranger’s apparent severe lack of experience in
his gender’s oldest custom. Doc himself felt it may be unkind to
issue a minor guffaw at someone who was clearly mentally ill.
Feeling a sudden wave of sympathy, enhanced by the many
hops in his own physiology, he extended a hand to the stranger.
“Name’s Doc,” he said.
The man slowly raised his hand and gripped firmly, which
sent a mild surge down Doc’s spine.
“Jesus Christ,” he stated flatly.
Good God, he is crazy. Some drifter—or escaped from
Pleasant Hill down the road.
From long experience, he knew that faculty members of the
nutso department were generally harmless if you played along
with them. The key was not to get them agitated--which would
be a difficult task in a live drunk tank. Doc would now have to
make an effort to keep him from converse with the others left in
the tavern.
“Fine there, J.C., we got last call in about an hour so make
yourself at home until then.”
“Why do they call you ‘Doc’?”

46
 THE SECOND FALL

Great, twenty questions from one who jogged past the

cuckoo’s nest at near closing time with my fucking head starting
to swirl like a whirlpool.
“Jim, why do they call me ‘Doc’?” he asked. He grew
slightly amused in spite of himself.
“Cause you heal our pain with your fire medicine, yessir,”
Jim answered with the lopsided grin known to last callers in
every drinking establishment.
Christ smiled at this. He stood up and withdrew to one of
the corner tables. As he sat down, a sudden chill seized Doc. He
scrunched his bloodshot eyes together several times while he
stared at the newcomer.
His clothes are dry. What the fuck? He just stepped out of
the rain and his clothes are FUCKING dry!
“What’s wrong, Doc? You’re lookin like you seen a spirit,”
Jim said.
He glanced again to make certain. Yep. Sure as he stood
here drunk, that man’s clothes somehow became . . .
Maybe you’re hallucinating. Like other guys who drink
themselves away sometimes do.
Doc had heard about this from other chronic alcoholics. But
usually hallucinations happened during the DTs if you quit, not
when you’re in the middle of it. Besides, his system was so
accustomed to the booze, he hardly thought he was engaged in a
desert Hopi vision. He looked again hard. No doubt about it--
the clothes, in a matter of a few minutes, had gone from soaking
wet, to sure as shit dry.
“Nothing, Jim. I guess I just lost my sidecar of thought,”
mumbled Doc. He was badly frightened and now hoped the
sparse crowd would stay until this whoever he was left. Doc
drained what was left of his beer and quickly popped another,
feeling as nervy as he did in the morning withdrawals. The man
at the table raised his head and smiled that crooked grin he

47
 CHARLES HURST

came in with. He stared directly into Doc’s eyes, weakened him

clear down to his knees. Doc glanced up at the clock. It read
1:20 a.m.--forty minutes to closing time.
Ten minutes passed as the two locked eyes. Finally, Christ
drained his beer and stood up. The bar had become a low
murmur of few conversations among the remaining patrons.
Then slowly, the sound of their voices faded away as a dream
does upon awakening. The rain had completely stopped and the
desert’s earthly quiet infiltrated like a mist into the bar. Christ
advanced toward the desperate, alcoholic bartender. His eyes
shifted from the laughing mirth to a cold fury, which only could
be produced from the primordial wrath of God himself. A glow
began to form on his arms that radiated the eons of miracles,
long forgotten, as he closed in on Doc.
What’s happening? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Doc
glanced at Jim for help and saw that he had frozen in place, like
a Kodak snapshot, his drinking arm held halfway to his mouth.
Frantically, Doc searched the others, and they too had become
motionless--wax statues in the midst of last call adieus.
Then Christ was at the bar counter, his arms and shoulders
a glimmering, blue glow. Doc attempted to run but found his
legs leaded with terror. The stranger stood and looked into his
eyes--penetrated into Doc’s dormant remorse for his useless
existence.
“What do you want from me?” Doc whispered.
“The body is a temple. Your life, a gift from the Father.
And you . . . have made a mockery of both,” Christ said flatly.
“Who are you?”
“I,” he said, “am the Son of your Creator.”
“The WHAT?”
“The Son of your Creator,” Christ answered patiently.
“You died.”
“ I have returned. ”

48
 THE SECOND FALL

Doc tried to absorb this like a hand sponge that attempted

to sop up an ocean. His mind only reeled. Before he could
answer, Christ intervened.
“You were given gifts. Gifts not received by all men.
Intelligence. Charisma. The ability to persist. And what have
you done to better your fellow man--to honor your allotted time
of life? You pour poison to the ill and weak. You promote their
decay. You degrade yourself to continuous dependence--ON
THIS!” Christ roared, shattering an empty bottle on the wall.
Doc covered his face, which streamed with tears, decades
of pain rose up to his soul. He could hardly speak, muffled by
the anguish of the man’s words.
“I . . .can’t stop,” sobbed Doc. The sorrow of his existence
flooded him like a tidal wave. “I don’t know how it . . .started.”
“Yes, you do,” said Christ. “Every night as you fall into
your death sleep, you do. You do when you wake up. You do
every shift, in every bar, in every state you drift in.”
“But I tried to stop . . . ”
“No, you didn’t try. You could have gone to a help center.
You could have gone to a hospital. You could have prayed for
strength to the very One who created you in an image, which
you have badly distorted. Never once. You went to the bottle.
You went to the poison. But now it’s time. It’s time to
remember who you once were. It’s time to end it. It’s time to
STOP!”
And with that, Christ grabbed Doc’s wrists and looked
upward.
“Heal.”
His arms radiated the dim bar, the frozen patrons lit like
neon signs.
“HEAL!” he commanded.
The bluish glow surged out of Christ’s arms and into Doc’s.
It filled him with an electric static, which coursed through his

49
 CHARLES HURST

arms to the shoulders, to his head and down the back and lower
extremities. The glow encompassed the men and circled both of
their bodies--Christ’s, freshly given, and Doc’s, aged and
decadent. The light flowed into Doc’s midline and absorbed
into his dying organs. His kidneys and liver, which woke every
morning with sharp pain to be dulled by the very toxins, which
were killing them. His heart, which in desperate rhythm and
constant course, strained to push his diseased lifeblood to these
shattered machines. His pancreas and spleen, whose nutrients
were evacuated due to constant flashfloods of liquid hops. As
Doc stood frozen, the blue aura soaked with its healing potency
into every cell and fiber in his being. His mind faded as if given
a large dose of ether. The room became glossy, observed
through a fogged window. He felt himself fall backward, the bar
counter shrinking as if receding at the other end of a tunnel.
Then the tunnel closed and his soul floated in whiteness.
Then, like a retreating mist, the white opened into a long
forgotten scenario. He looked around in slow motion, like one
who tries to run in a dream, and recognized the room and
furniture, which had materialized around him.
My first efficiency. My God, I was nineteen. Two hundred
and fifty a month for rent, in which the floor slightly declined
from the back wall to the door--attached to a tiny kitchenette. I
was on college loans and working part-time just to keep this
shack and shoes while late nights were spent by my one-bulb,
powered lamp, proving my right to exist with people prettier
than me.
He saw his old, tattered couch and remembered the wood
worn through the cushion, bucked into the corner in front of his
1975 Sony. The television had three working stations from lack
of cable. He had subsidized a cheap antennae that was twisted
in a pair of deformed rabbit ears, which gained the two or three
slightly fuzzy channels. And on the couch he saw . . .

50
 THE SECOND FALL

Myself. A poor college kid with a hundred in his checking

account but a gold mint in ambition, wearing clothes that were
at least two years old. He’s sitting there, his brain roasted out
from the year and a half endurance race of struggle, week to
week competition against those who got to tee off from the
handicap spot. In classes, where the ones who snubbed him for
the monumental task of keeping a roof over his head, were those
who never had to pay for even one month’s rent.
Suddenly, the mirage of himself moved his arm and
reached to the dresser, which sat next to the couch. His hand
picked up Doc’s most trusted friend and oldest adversary.
My God, that’s how it started, the man made painkiller for
those who needed to exist outside of their lives for awhile. He
saw himself take a long swing from the beer can and close his
eyes as the liquid rushed to his brain and released a flood of
opiates that would allow a laugh at the privileged and a slough
off to the frat boys. Then he finished it and reached into his
second-hand mini-fridge, next to the ragged couch and popped
open another. It was Saturday night. A weekly ritual to allow
himself escape from his six-day rush of completion of another
seven suns in self-supported academia. The beer flowed freely
and smoothly, anxiety lifted from his shoulders and was
temporarily placed in the closet until he would start all over
Sunday afternoon. A few hours of bliss in a frenzy to make a
steeper grade than the rest of them had to climb. By the time he
was done, eight beers had met their maker.
When he graduated, it was nightly practice. However, his
performance wasn’t affected. He was able to succeed, to
achieve, to progress to the upper echelon he desired right up
until . . .
Until I lost it, Doc thought grimly. Right up until I fucking
lost everything. He looked at the illusionary remnants of the
past and saw Him slouched on his desk. A casual observer, who

51
 CHARLES HURST

had seen much and interfered little with his own pet project. He
gazed with sorrowful eyes at the young man who would win the
battle but lose the war.
They got the best of me. They beat me. They beat me at
nineteen and the kid sitting on the couch doesn’t even know it.
He doesn’t foresee in sixteen years he’ll be a low-class barkeep
and an addict. Socializing with the dregs of society because he
is one of those dregs now--only with a slightly better
vocabulary.
Doc put his face into his glowing hands and began to cry.
Christ came over and placed an arm around his shoulder.
“Heal.”
Suddenly, Doc’s mind fell backward again and the mist
returned as his old apartment faded into nothingness. He
squeezed his eyes tightly and as his mind floated back up, he
opened them slowly.
He was alone in an empty bar.

52
 Chapter Six
Shit fuck! thought Specialist Richards. The supply Sergeant
looked over his equipment issue that Richards had tried to turn
in for the third time now.
Staff Sergeant Remmy, like every Staff Sergeant or Buck
Sergeant or Master Sergeant he had ever met, considered it his
solemn duty, by the authority solely obtained from hanging out
long enough in the Army, to fuck with anyone and everyone
who was unfortunate enough to have less weight on their
collars.
“Poncho’s dirty,” remarked Remmy as if he had solved a
complicated matrix .
“Sergeant, I just ran it under water fifteen minutes ago,”
said Richards. He tried to keep his voice level enough not to be
court-martialed.
“Do it again,” he snapped and tossed him the camouflage
piece of Army issue. “And while you’re at it, you better square
away the short-time attitude, Specialist. You ain’t out yet.”
And from four years of experience of lost battles with the
higher-ups, Richards took the one avenue of escape that had
become as familiar as his combat boots.
“Yes, Sergeant,” he said and trotted away before his mouth
got the best of him.
He slowed to a walk once out of sight with his perfectly
clean poncho and marveled again, as he had continuously
marveled for four years, how he could possibly take orders at
the whim of those who would drive a cab back home. He
reached his barracks and climbed up to the second floor, which
was only beginning to lose its shine from the daily buffer that
ran across it every morning at 7:00 a.m. He entered his door,

53
 CHARLES HURST

which announced his last name and meager rank, and then
flipped the poncho on one bed and flopped down on the other.
The building was barren, being that everyone else was either
cutting grass or on “police call,” which in Army lingo was the
nice way to say the detail of picking up the trash on the
grounds. He, on the other hand, had obtained the last week
traditional privilege of “outprocessing,” which officially put
him off the bullshit list.
“Two fucking days,” he said to the bare walls. “Two days
and they still have to stick it to you for no other reason except
recreational backstabbing. How about thanks for serving four
fucking years without killing a General!”
Stephen Joseph Richards had entered the Army recruiting
station when he was twenty after a realization that two years of
hard labor for ten dollars an hour wasn’t exactly going to
warrant him early retirement. He had spent those pre-Army
years depositing paychecks and spending paychecks on the bare
necessities of life and found he had come out exactly even. A
big nowhere in his financial or social status.
So like many poor, young men, a sudden sense of
patriotism, largely induced by less than desirable circumstances,
filled his spirit one night while in bed, only seven hours away
from the return to the construction site. In the morning awaited
the oath of the adventurous and desperate. He would enlist.
The next day he called in, to a much pissed off foreman,
and went to the recruiter. Scoring high on their battery of tests,
which basically ensured you could spell your own name and the
word Army, he was offered a variety of the finer jobs given by
Uncle Sam. Not really fond of the idea of carrying a tank on his
back in some jungle, he chose Signal Communications. He
believed that service as an authority in this particular field
would qualify him for something besides a construction site
grunt later on. A week after swear in, he put his few belongings

54
 THE SECOND FALL

in a cheap storage bin, where they would stay for the next four
years and was on his way to the oldest manhood training known
as boot camp.
Richards, contrary to what one would expect, actually
enjoyed basic training. Two years of hauling bricks and boards
on the building sites in hot and cold weather had toughened him
physically and mentally. Being a worldly twenty-year-old
among all of the other fresh eighteen-year-olds, who decided to
skip two years of hard labor before enlisting, he saw the game
for what it was. In simple terms, getting through boot consisted
of shut mouth while being wrong for everything for eight
weeks. Then at the end of the cycle, they shake the dust off,
dress you up, and send you on your way. For Richards, he
completed four more weeks of skill training in Signal Corps.
After which, presto, he was officially a cog in the great soldier
machine. Yeah, the first twelve weeks were actually kind of fun.
It was the next long three years and nine months that he
despised.
Richards, once graduated from his skill training and now a
Signal Corps expert, had a brief elation of completing
something besides a ten-hour shift in the labor pool. Although a
lowly private, in his new eyes, he could say he was part of
something honorable and grand. He was a soldier, by God. The
title earned through eight weeks of eating dust and parade rest
on the drill field.
That elation ceased-fire when Richards reported to his
permanent base at Fort Williams, Pennsylvania (so much for
travel abroad). His first week consisted of daily formations so
he could be detailed off into cutting grass. To add further insult,
on his first Saturday morning the bellowing squad sergeant
banged on the doors in his barracks for “volunteers,” which was
anyone not smart enough to hide in the closet. Thanks to his
roommate, who answered the door, he got to spend six hours of

55
 CHARLES HURST

the weekend on his first police call, where he walked in a line

for trash pick up around the fort. Richards had worked plenty of
weekends, but the difference was in his last job he got paid for
the overtime.
He wrote off the first week as bad luck and tried to keep a
positive attitude, being he was only at the beginning of the four-
year hitch. But the lifers made the point of their careers to fuck
with the lower ranks. Boots were never polished enough,
uniforms never pressed right and brass never sufficiently shiny.
They fucked with you in the barracks. They fucked with you in
the field. And they even tried to fuck with you on your off time.
If you looked a little too relaxed on a goddamn Saturday, they
had a police call that couldn’t possibly wait until Monday.
Richards had decided early there were two types in the
military. One type were those like him, one-tour guys, who
would take the college money, a few good stories and get the
hell out. The other type stayed. They went to Sergeant’s school.
Then they went to Staff Sergeant’s school. Later, they had
another piece of gray matter removed at Sergeant’s First Class
school. After fifteen years or so, they believed that society gave
a rat’s ass whether you were an E-5 or E-6 rank. Some of them
were thirty years old and lived in the barracks, where by the
grace of the Army, they were allotted their very own room. And
they still couldn’t keep a beer in the fridge because those were
THE REGS. Completely programmed, existing inside of a tiny
mental box. And the reason they stayed was because they would
never gain this sort of bully power in the real world. Like
Sergeant Remmy at supply, they’d be driving that goddamn cab
if it weren’t for the uniform. And the career officers were the
same. College educated men, afraid to step in the actual real
world, where their history or liberal arts degree would most
likely land them a job as manager at the local Burger King. That

56
 THE SECOND FALL

was the problem with the peacetime Army. Without a war, the
warriors vacated and were replaced by the untouchables.
Richards, like most who found themselves surrounded by
the brainwashed, was under constant scrutiny for his failure to
adapt to the ways and traditions of THE ARMY. He engaged in
two minor rebellions during his first year. One, when he argued
with a buck sergeant, two years older than Richards, about the
state of his boots. Another, when he tried to dodge a weekend
work detail and was caught instantly by the First Sergeant, well-
versed in young men trying to escape indentured servitude as
Richards attempted to slip out the backdoor. Both had landed
him Article 15’s, the Army’s version of go stand in the corner.
He had accumulated a month’s extra duty at nights for his
efforts.
By his second year, Richards was thoroughly miserable.
His life had consisted of meaningless work details in the rear
and dull operations in the field, where some imaginary country
was fully and always intent on destroying the American
Imperialist. He would sit for hours in the fictional war, next to
his radio monitor, catching occasional signals from the agitated
force of another company in his fort. And the regs applied even
there as well, the lifers making sure while defending capitalism,
he had polished his boots before the sun rose. Lifers, the experts
on operations, most who had never been shot at, but from their
vast experience knew that a liability in war was the private who
forgot to shave.
To make matters worse, Richards couldn’t even find refuge
in town, being that most civilians were supporters of the
military as long as it wasn’t stationed in their backyard. A
young man wearing the uniform was a signal of decadence to
them, one to keep their daughters away from--unless the young
man wore the brass, which signified rank as an officer, and then
it was still questionable. He found that indeed there were few

57
 CHARLES HURST

professional soldiers who held the attributes of honor and valor,

which he had expected prior to the enlistment. Mostly, he saw a
mass of social undesirables who couldn’t get a job or wanted
one where nothing much was expected. Richards, at first, had
been angered by the town’s prejudice toward those who were
charged with protecting it. However, after a few off nights
surrounded by the loud, drunken vulgarity of his newly acquired
peers, he clearly understood the signs that read: DOGS AND
SOLDIERS KEEP OFF GRASS!
So he merely existed. The days blended into weeks and the
weeks slipped into months. He advanced to the rank of E-4 or
“Specialist” at the end of his second year, which meant at least
he wasn’t the first to get “volunteered” for every task the uppers
came up with to keep their people miserable. When his time
came to apply for the course, which would lead him to the
esteemed sergeant rank, he laughed at them, much to the dismay
of the First Sergeant, who couldn’t conjure that someone
wouldn’t want to spend his life checking boots and brass. Also,
Richards was in the fourth year by then and began his “short
timers” count of days left as a government issued servant.
So finally, the four years closed. With no intent on re-
enlisting, he would leave the military at twenty-four. Unlike the
other soldiers who ended their service with nothing more than
they came in with, Richards saved most of his pay. He didn’t
waste it on booze, loose women and gambling, like most of his
peers. Over four years he had actually amassed fifteen thousand
dollars in his bank account. And he had another twenty grand
coming from the G.I. Bill if he enrolled in college. These were
amounts he would never have obtained hauling bricks for a
living. So despite the drudgery of military life and being treated
like a peon by his own fellow downtrodden, Richards concluded
at the end of his tour that he was fortunate to reside in a country,
which would trade enough funds for an education for a mere

58
 THE SECOND FALL

four years loss of freedom. He would never be a soldier again,

but certainly he would never be a laborer either. His application
for college (much to the condescending gaze of his squad
leader) had been approved. In a few days he would leave for
California.

***
Sergeant Remmy had finally signed off his supply return.
He too realized the Army’s time to harass Specialist Stephen
Joseph Richards had run out. Richards had turned in,
untouched, the exact poncho he tried to turn in previously.
Remmy didn’t even inspect it, just tossed the item in a bin and
checked off SUPPLY on his outprocess sheet. Then he grinned,
shook Richards’ hand and wished him well in “the world.”
It’s just a game, Richards thought. A game and a tradition
that has existed as long as the Army. The uppers fuck with the
lowers. He knew my equipment was clean the first time. Just
had to keep the tradition going. Hell, if I run into him in twenty
years, we’ll probably laugh at all of it over a beer. Still though .
...
His last day they gave him a service pin. A small token,
however, significant in that for the rest of his life he could claim
to have done the deed for his country. He too now had stories
for his grandchildren about buffing floors, eating dust while
doing pushups and all of the other equivalent tales that veterans
relish. Like other prior service, in a few years he would look at
his servitude with a fondness that only those who have worn the
uniform know.
Richards, with his pin in one hand and his fully signed off
outprocess sheet in the other, walked one last time to his
barracks. A few boxes of his collected belongings would ship to
his brother’s address to be retrieved at a later time. This was

59
 CHARLES HURST

fortunate since his sole transportation was an old, 400cc

motorcycle.
The worn relic had passed through the hands of more than a
few soldiers stationed at the base over the last ten years. While
most of them purchased new cars upon arrival, Richards found a
small bike adequate for the times he needed refuge from the
military. It had cost him five hundred dollars and another fifty a
month in insurance. For that amount he had an avenue of escape
during the times when his company wasn’t in the field or on call
for the urgent military detail to pick up cigarette butts.
However, he was now presented with the problem of reliance on
this geriatric apparatus to transport him across the country to the
Pacific while having only enough room to strap a few changes
of clothes on the back seat.
He could rely on his brother to clear his storage locker back
home. Being that Richards didn’t own much in the way of
furniture before the military, he didn’t see the need to spend a
thousand dollars on a U-Haul to transport a mattress and a
couple of pieces of used chairs and end tables. He wondered
why he stored them to begin with. Anything personal could be
mailed at a later date.
So his one objective was simply to arrive at the university,
which waited even for a soldier’s tuition with open arms. If he
could plant himself at a small apartment within walking
distance to the grocery store and the college, he wouldn’t need
reliable transportation. Having only sparse romances with the
minority of women who would associate with the enlisted, he
had grown, in the last few years, accustomed to long periods of
solitude. Richards foresaw his situation unchanged until he
graduated and was knighted by society to a greater level of
respectability. Or at least until he owned a decent set of wheels.
His duffle bag was half-filled with the necessities for his
upcoming journey. He had packed it last night. The movers had

60
 THE SECOND FALL

grabbed the rest of his stuff the previous day, which left his
room impersonal and empty. He changed his clothes,
metamorphosing from camouflage commando style to blue
jeans and a red T-shirt, the mark of an average civilian.
Respectfully, he folded his last day’s uniform and packed it on
top in the duffle. Richards slung the bag on his shoulder and
inspected his barracks one last time. He had skipped buffing his
room floor this morning and decided it would stay as so. His
squad leader could come in a couple of hours and bellow and
rant as far as he was concerned. Richards’ civilian status now
outranked him. He was out.
He hurried with a hidden fear that the Army might change
its mind and keep him. Richards walked briskly to his bike and
strapped the duffle bag to the back seat with four bungee cords.
During the ride, he would at least have something to lean back
on. He looked around the barracks building. It was vacant, all
souls collected to feed the appetite of today’s police call or
grass-cutting monster. It seemed senseless to wait around to say
goodbye or good riddance, so Richards slipped into his gloves,
jacket and plopped on the bike. It was then when he looked up,
with a pang in his stomach, and noticed the darkening sky.
Christ, he thought. Sunny all week until the day I leave.
Couldn’t wait a goddamn day until I got out of here. Although
still in summer weather, cold northeastern Pennsylvania rain on
a motorcycle meant trouble, especially for one who didn’t obey
the Boy Scout Motto and come prepared with a set of
waterproof leather. And the military, eternally grateful for his
four years of dedicated service, had given him until the end of
the day to get the hell off the fort, per of course, regulations,
after the final sign off of his papers. Like every soldier, he
found that once no longer useful to his country, he was to be
discarded post haste.

61
 CHARLES HURST

So the only choice was to beat the oncoming storm. He

stuck his key in the bike (better he not lose it since he never
made a double) and turned it while he revved the accelerator
handle. The engine sputtered once, and then roared to life.
Squeezing the clutch and pushing the gear down with his foot,
he sped out of the parking lot. Richards rolled past the barracks
and down the block of buildings, which made up Company C--
his unit. He zoomed past the flagpole where he had engaged in
endless formations. Formation for the beginning of the day.
Formation after morning physical fitness training. Formation
after cleaning the barracks. Formation after breakfast and before
and after lunch. And finally, formation to lower the flag, which
ended it until it started again at 6:00 a.m. the next day. He once
estimated the military could knock the workday down to six
hours if they scrubbed the formations and required that
everyone simply show up where they were supposed to be. He
reached the gate and was waved through by the military
robocop.
Outside the gate, his bike gathered speed and showed no
signs of illness. Richards’ brain poured a rush of endorphins
into his system. He was free. Free and with prospects for the
first time in his life. Although apprehensive to the rigors of
academia, he was certain a day of classes and few hours of
study would be unproblematic compared to his previous
occupations. He rode toward the interstate that would take him
west when his newly tranquil soul was rudely interrupted.
A drop of rain hit his face. Then another.
He sped up and attempted to thwart the inevitable as the
rain began to drizzle steadily.
Goddamn it! It literally waited until the exact second I hit
the road, he thought with wonder on who exactly voted
Murphy’s legislation into law.

62
 THE SECOND FALL

Five minutes later as he entered the interstate, he was in a

downpour, his clothes rapidly soaked by the cold rain. Richards
slowed the bike to forty miles per hour. He stayed in the right
hand lane as the wind blew him from side to side.
Great, he thought. Few years of hard labor, followed by a
stint as an indentured servant only to be released and promptly
killed on the highway in a fucking rainstorm. Who put me on
God’s Christmas shit list anyway?
Then the cold set in. The wet and wind combination formed
a recipe for a nice batch of imminent hypothermia. Richards
looked at his watch. It was 1:00 p.m. He would try to get an
hour in before stopping. He’d been cold and miserable in the
field before. He could get at least an hour away from the fort
and more importantly an hour closer to the west coast. Possibly
outrun the storm and dry his clothes in the wind.
But the storm, with an obvious affinity for wayward ex-
soldiers, chose to journey with him on the western path.
Nevertheless, Richards, mentally checking off goals of ten
minutes at a time, made an hour, and then made another,
gripping his handle bars for dear life. He prayed his bike
wouldn’t skid out on the slippery, oil-stained highway. Finally,
he stopped for gas and hot coffee somewhere in mid-
Pennsylvania. His hands shook badly from the cold and spilled
half the steaming liquid down his pant leg and boot (which was
no longer polished to military standards). He considered that
possibly he should stop before he achieved the latest
Pennsylvanian Darwin Award.
He found a shanty motel run by a Pakistani man who did
not share Richards’ sense of humor of managing to nearly
freeze to death in the middle of summer. He ambled down to his
room, his entire body shaking from nature’s ice bath and
immediately stripped down and jumped into the shower. It took
thirty minutes under the hot water to regain himself.

63
 CHARLES HURST

First day out, and at least I’m still alive. At this rate, it will
take me weeks to get there.
He stepped out and grabbed a cup of complimentary coffee,
and then he came back to his room, flopped on the bed and
perused through the cable stations. Then Richards called out for
a pizza.
Cable T.V., free coffee, food en route and no one to bang
on the door. All certainly is right with God and the world.
He looked to the empty half of the bed.
Well, almost all right.
The pizza arrived. Richards, as he watched a sentimental
re-run of M.A.S.H., finished two pieces, and then promptly fell
asleep.
When he awoke it was 8:07 a.m. He had slept twelve hours
as if his entire system had taken a big sigh of relief at its release
from bondage. First item he noticed--it was still raining outside.
He now sympathized with Charlie Brown on that goddamn
baseball field. While reheating the coffee and leftover pizza, he
decided it made little sense to change into a new set of clothes,
which would be drenched in a few minutes. So he painfully put
his cold, wet jeans and shirt back on, followed by his
waterlogged jacket. Unconsciously keeping the military habit of
swift preparation for morning, he checked out twenty minutes
later. The same clerk eyed his wet clothes and gave him the
look given by most foreigners who are astounded America
remains the superpower of the world.
Re-strapping the duffle bag to the backseat, Richards
climbed on and set off. Using the same mental trick of enduring
ten minutes at a time, he kicked off another hour. He had just
crossed into Ohio and felt the cold again eating into his bones,
but noticed the rain had let up to a drizzle. A half-hour later, the
sky was still overcast, but the clouds had risen a little higher and

64
 THE SECOND FALL

finally recognized Richards’ tenacity and gave up their personal

vendetta.
The wind from the sixty mile per hour ride dried his clothes
quickly and again Richards was euphoric in his journey. He had
beaten the storm, observed now only in his side mirror, unable
to catch him. He crossed into Indiana where the temperature
was even warmer as he continued southwest. He thought he
could be as far as Texas by tomorrow, and then through the
desert and into California in a few days. Hell, this was going
just fine. Class registration started in a month. He had plenty of
time.
That evening as he settled into another motel, ( possibly run
by a cousin of the previous night’s inn) Richards fell into his
second contented sleep. His destiny was now his own. During
the next fully subsidized four years, he would choose his own
schedule. He would pick when he worked and when he didn’t.
If he didn’t like a class, he would drop it. He would have the
respect of an educated man from the society he had lived
beneath for so long.
And he would answer to no one.

65
 The Second Fall is an offbeat account of the predicted Revelation. Lucifer, under
the guise of a high level political operative, uses the corrupt government and an
apathetic people to initiate the final fall of mankind into his long awaited grasp.
However, Christ gathers his newly chosen, a group of misfits who will become the
unlikely outcasts, to wage war against this impending evil and whose efforts will
determine the outcome of the world.

The Second Fall

Order the complete book from

Booklocker.com

http://www.booklocker.com/p/books/6074.html?s=pdf

or from your favorite neighborhood

or online bookstore.