Part One.

Chapter One.

Like many journeys this one began with a woman. She was pale and ethereal and in a moment of fancy I thought she might be an angel, fallen to earth at Notre Dame in Paris, among camera toting tourists from forty countries, buskers, peddlers and pickpockets. Her sky blue scarf caught the morning light and framed her face with a luminous halo, a slender woman who had once been a pretty girl. Something had burned the prettiness out of her, leaving her with a worn womanly beauty, the look of Botticelli’s Venus drawn thin, life lines around her mouth and eyes, honey colored hair cropped short as a prizefighter’s. She wore tan slacks, a light jacket and carried a small backpack slung over one shoulder. As I watched she swayed slightly from side to side. Her face was damp with perspiration and I realized that she wasn’t well. Her pallor was sickly rather then celestial. She looked lost and alone.

I introduced myself as Logan Montana, my work name, stage name, name by which I now lived, and asked if she was all right. Sandra Livingston shook hands weakly, her hand thin and cold in mine.

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’m fine, just fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Logan, really, I’m as fine as I can be.”

After chatting for a few minutes we wandered away from the crowd near the doors of the cathedral to a wrought iron bench. It was early spring, morning sky like the inside of a pearl, scent of damp pavement from street cleaners, buzz of motor scooters, women in bright dresses and high heels tapping along the sidewalk.

Sandra dropped her pack on the bench and I noticed a small seashell attached to it. We sat in the shade of Napoleon’s plane trees and made small talk. She was from San Rafael California. I also was from California. It was her first visit to France. I had been here many times. Yes, Paris is even more beautiful than could be imagined. She studied my face as we chatted, deciding whether to trust me. Then she told me her story.

Sandra had lost her husband, John, to a stroke two years ago. Randy, her fifteen year old son, had been killed in an auto accident while she was undergoing chemotherapy last year. The therapy had been pronounced successful, but there were doubts. The cancer might return. Nothing was certain.

A friend had given her a book while she was in the hospital and she read about El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, The Road of Saint James that led to his cathedral in the city of Compostela in Spain. Sandra had been intrigued by the idea of a centuries old pilgrim’s path that had fallen into disuse but was now renewed and followed by thousands each year. Many of the pilgrims were not religious but motivated by personal reasons. Surrounded by tubes and monitors, pierced by IV’s, she had decided to set out for Compostela when and if she was able.

“In medieval times,” Sandra told me. “The pious believed the path of Saint James led to certain salvation. If they completed their pilgrimage they would be forgiven their sins and could start their lives fresh, free of their past.”

“And do you have some great sin that needs forgiving?” I asked, with a smile.

The light that came to her eyes while talking about the Camino faded and she looked down and then up into my eyes, “Don’t we all?”

She seemed to see inside of me and I flushed with shame. Then she looked down again and I realized she was simply answering my question with a universal question, one I chose to ignore.

“So you’re Catholic?” I asked.

“No,” a slight headshake.

“But religious?”

“Not at all. Are you?” Catching my eyes again, a small challenge.

“Hardly. But I’m not walking to Spain.”

“So you just cruise Notre Dame to pick up stray women,” this with a touch of the devil in her smile.

“Actually, I was on my way to work. Maybe I should get going.” I moved as if to get up.

She put her hand on my arm. “Oh stop. I was just poking at you a little.”

“So tell me, why are you doing this?”

She leaned against the back of the bench, as if too tired to sit without support. Her lips were colorless and she pressed them thin for a moment before speaking. “I will not sit and worry and wait for tests. I’ve lost most of the people I love. Losing John, and then Randy… He was so young. My parents are gone, my daughter Susan is grown and married and we never talk. After the insurance ran out our home went for medical bills, along with all of our savings. I have nothing left to lose and no one to take care of except myself. Really, the question is, why not?”

Like many women, Sandra had spent much of her life caring for others. The assumption that this was understood to be a woman’s life was unspoken, but there. She told me there were many roads leading to Compostela and that each person’s path begins at their own doorstep. In a sense Sandra’s pilgrimage had started at her home and brought her here to Notre Dame. Most pilgrims began their walk further south, only a few started here, on the compass rose of kilometer zero – the center of Paris. From this point she intended to walk a thousand miles to the cathedral of Saint James and possibly even further to Cape Finnestere, a point on the coast of Spain the ancients believed to be the end of the world.

Her blue eyes were soft and frighteningly vulnerable, her eyelids almost translucent. Could she possibly make it, walking for months in all kinds of weather, through frozen mountain passes, across sun-hammered plains?

“Why must you walk? Surely there are trains to Compostela.”

Sandra patted her forehead with a white linen handkerchief edged with lace, “It’s not just the destination. It’s the road. It has to be the road. I have to walk it. I know it doesn’t make sense but something is pulling me towards the Camino. I dream about it night after night.”

Her eyes went inward. “I guess it’s become an obsession. After what I’ve been through it would be stupid to talk about magic or miracles. But in my dreams Compostela is a magical city washed in golden light at the end of the world and it can only be reached by traveling the Camino on foot. There’s also something…I don’t know, intriguing I guess, about Cape Finnestere, the notion of it once being the end of the known world, a jumping off point to the unknown. Maybe because I’ve been on the edge of the unknown.”

“But what do you expect to find?”

Sandra ignored my question and told me about the Camino itself. There were refugios along the way, sometimes in monasteries, more often in ordinary buildings. These hostels were manned by volunteers and provided a place to sleep and simple meals for a small fee, some of them for whatever donation the pilgrim could afford. The refugios were a day’s walk from each other so she would not have to camp and carried only her small pack with essentials and a change of clothing.

Even with the hostels this journey would be a challenge for a person in good health, perhaps an unachievable goal for a woman in her condition.

“Are you sure you can make it Sandra?”

She looked down for a long moment, biting her lip, fiddling with her pack straps. Then she closed one hand into a fist and put it in her lap. “I’ll make it or I’ll die along the way. No matter what you want or wish, death comes when it comes. If it comes to me on the road I’ll be with my husband and son.”

“So you do believe.”

She opened her fist, turned her palm upwards and lifted her chin, “I guess I believe in something.”

Her spirit was strong, but Sandra was emotionally drained by her losses, and her body was weak, wracked by disease and scourged by treatment. I raised some practical issues: minor injuries, blisters, weather, adequate water, finding her way – familiar matters to any long distance walker – and again, the more serious matter, her physical stamina.

She shook her head slightly but firmly, putting aside my concerns, “If I’m supposed to complete this pilgrimage it will all work out and the strength will come to me. If not…” she shrugged. “And I won’t get lost. I have this to guide me,” turning her pack to display the seashell. “It’s a scallop shell, the symbol of the Camino. There are signs along the path with the shell pointing the way.”

Stories about miraculous healing are not part of the Saint James legend. But Sandra wasn’t seeking a miracle cure.

“I don’t expect the heavens to open,” she said, “or the cancer I might still be carrying to mystically evaporate. It’s just… I need a fresh start.”

Sandra thought that putting one foot in front of the other for months and miles could be a form of meditation that would bring her strength and courage, and at the end of the road she might find a purpose for the rest of her life. If her life was to end along the way, that end would be better than dying in a hospital hooked up to tubes and wires.

We talked for an hour or so with little held back, the way travelers who meet on the road sometimes do. We talked of what ifs, might have beens, family and work, wishes and regrets. She told me about her husband and family and their former comfortable life together, the country club and big house and how it all disappeared in a tsunami of pain and medical bills. She told me childhood stories: her dog named Brownie who slept in her bed, the lemon tree in her yard she climbed to hide from everyone, her red bicycle with a bell on the handlebar that pinched her finger when she rang it. It’s dangerous when a woman’s childhood stories make you smile and you find yourself leaning towards her. You could slip right over the edge.

I told her how I had accidentally stumbled into the world of high fashion and had built an idea and a chance meeting into an international menswear company. And then sold it

“You regret selling. Don’t you?”

“I’ll be glad to get the money.”

“What has the money cost you?”

I sat silent for a few minutes.

“Look, I’m just a suburban housewife and don’t know anything about international business and less about the fashion business. But I can see when someone’s unhappy.”

I looked at her earnest and well meaning face, then away to the streets of this city I loved, and said, “Isn’t Paris lovely this time of year?”

She laughed at my clumsy attempt to move away from an uncomfortable topic and said, “Okay, I’ll drop it.”

After a moment I had to laugh with her.

“Oh look,” Sandra said, pointing at a balustrade of the cathedral where a ray of sunshine had broken through and turned the cold gray stone to warm umber, the light and stone seeming to transfuse into one another. The tower bells began to ring. A breeze swept through the open plaza rustling the leaves above us, a wren fluttered to ground at our feet and time seemed suspended. Sandra’s eyes caught mine and for that narrow slice of time we were joined in perfect communion, the changing light, the wind in the trees, the dust colored bird, the bell’s lingering reverberation, all part of a fragile crystalline moment. Then a horn honked, tires screeched and the world rushed in.

As we talked I had thought it was simply a traveler’s link growing between us, a slight connection between strangers who meet on the road. What I now felt was something more, a tender subterranean bond being formed. One that might… But we were out of time. The morning was passing and Sandra had miles to go. We exchanged contact information and stood together. I hugged her carefully; so frail was she, her arms around me weak and thin. I kissed her cool cheek, wished her well on her journey and said good-bye.

“Don’t say good bye,” she said with that slight headshake and a warm smile. “Say, ultreya.”

“You speak Spanish?” Ultreya in Spanish means onward.

“Only a little. Ultreya is a special word that pilgrims use to encourage each other when the going is hard. When they’re frightened of a mountain pass, or tired, or footsore and thinking about giving up they say to one another, ‘Ultreya.’ Most don’t walk alone you know.”

She tilted her head forward and looked up from under her brows. Her eyes snapped with a trace of mischief and she showed me a little more of the woman she had once been, the woman still inside, “Maybe I’ll meet someone to walk with along the way.” That devilish smile again.

I was struck silent for a moment and imagined myself walking with her through Spanish hills and remembered times past when those hills were home to all that I had loved. I had work to do, but none I wanted to do. They had bought more than I had known that I sold. Drop everything? Go with her? The Paris show and the fashion world could go on without me. But there were other matters that held me back. There was Diane.

I let go of her hand, “I’m sure you will.”

Her smile faded and she looked towards the street. She turned away, took a step, then another. I watched her walk across the plaza. She reached the curb and I called out to her, “Ultreya.”

Looking over her shoulder she gave me a last small smile, waved, and then looking ahead stepped into the street moving carefully between cars and scooters, a little unsteady on her feet but going forward with her head up and the heart of a lion.

My own heart swelled as she walked away and for that moment I loved her a little. I thought of calling out to her, catching up and going with her. But I didn’t. Where did he go, that younger me who would have gone with her, with the moment? A door had opened, and closed. And I returned to my meetings and measured days.

Business kept me in Paris and Sandra remained in my thoughts. During a restless night I dreamed of her and in my dream confused her with another fair haired woman named Sandra, a woman I had loved in my youth as only a young man can love, an older woman who discarded me along with her sandals and sunscreen, as she would any summer toy when the season was over and it was time to return to her husband.

Frantic preparations for the runway show went on around me. My attention drifted. In empty moments I closed my eyes and saw Sandra walking through the deep green heart of France and across the Spanish plain, getting stronger step by step and coming at last to her magical city, Santiago de Compostela.

Chapter Two

Sandra hurried around the corner and walked fast for a block, then slowed. She was too shaky to continue at a fast pace, but had wanted to get away from Logan before she humiliated herself by asking him to please, please come with her. She was not as fearless as she pretended. Her weakened body could fail in a remote place with no one to help. Her talk about dying on the road sounded brave, but it could happen and she was scared.

This was the first time she had traveled alone and her first time abroad. She had talked about walking a thousand miles through France and Spain as if it were nothing more than a summer vacation. But it was more, much more than that. For her it was an epic journey through strange countries, well, strange to her. Walking across France and Spain wasn’t like trekking through Africa or China. But for her it might as well have been. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. Anything could happen on the road. Europe was lovely, what she had seen of it so far, but it wasn’t paradise. Most pilgrims walked with a group.

Logan was nothing like she had imagined a fashion designer to be. Of course she recognized his name, she had bought some of his clothing. But she wasn’t going to be a fan girl and tell him that. Logan projected easy confident masculinity and competence. He could handle anything that might happen along the way. He obviously knew Europe well. She would be safer with him. And he was an attractive man, handsome even, well dressed, but not vain or fussy about his appearance. And there was something about his eyes…

She should have asked him to come with her. But then, she had asked as obviously as her pride would allow. He understood what she had meant. For a moment he had wanted to come with her. He seemed to be at loose ends. But something held him back. Did he have a wife? He was attracted to her. You could always tell. But how could he be attracted to her in her present condition, skinny, almost bald, half sick? Maybe she didn’t look so bad? Maybe she was kidding herself.

But she had felt it. He had been totally focused on her, his intensity like the heat from another sun, raising feelings she had not experienced since John’s death. She had thought that sex had been burned out of her along with the cancer. But now… And not just that. She sensed that he truly saw her – saw her as a person. He had been genuinely concerned for her, concerned that she wouldn’t be able to complete her journey, that something bad might happen to her. So rare. Most men just wanted a quick lay. And that one moment, almost magical, when the bells were ringing and they were somehow…together.

Well, the notion was absurd really. Couldn’t expect anyone to just pick up and walk away from his life, least of all a successful man like Logan. He seemed to carry a deep melancholy, but that didn’t mean he was ready to walk off with some half crazy woman one lovely morning in Paris. She was being silly. Best to get on with it. She had to face her fears and learn to deal with solitude. She had rarely ever been alone. It would be easy to join up with a group. But she couldn’t do that. She had to face this journey on her own.

In the hospital Sandra had come face to face with her own death. She had thought that she understood death. But her understanding had been that of a grieving and bereft wife and mother. Faced with the horror of nothingness she had been terrified by death’s imminence and even if given a temporary reprieve its eventual inescapability. She was secretly ashamed of her own terror and lack of courage. She was going to walk this path, see where it led and face whatever was to come.

Sandra thought she had spent too much of her life doing what was expected of her. She had been a good girl, got good grades in college, maybe played the field a little too widely. Had played well the roles of wife and mother, had been a good wife and mother, an attractive young matron who kept her figure, played tennis, took yoga. She had flirted a little at the club, but didn’t let things get out of hand…until… Best not to dwell on the past. Best to think about the future. Spain. The Camino.

Sandra walked for an hour or so, glancing at her map occasionally but lost in thought and paying little attention to her surroundings. She had crossed the ring road that surrounds Paris and was now in a shabby neighborhood of concrete high rise buildings as gray and cheerless as the lowering sky had become, overflowing trash bins smelling of rotten fruit, littered streets, graffiti covered walls, groups of young men idling on corners. She stubbed her toe on a curb and when she looked up noticed two of the young men staring at her. They were dark skinned and unshaven and wore hooded sweatshirts.

She began to walk faster. But then realized she had no idea where she was going. Confused, she stopped, checked her map and knew she was lost. Where now were the scallop shell markers, where her previous bravado?

One of the men said something to the other and they left their spot near a lamppost and started walking towards her. A frission of fear ran through her. But this was silly. They were just two men. This was Paris, nothing could happen here. Then she remembered reading that crime that was endemic in certain parts of Paris, the riots and violence by Algerians. Or was it Moroccans? For a moment she was tempted to run. But that would be useless. She could barely walk fast. They could easily catch her. She certainly wasn’t going to scuttle away or cower in fear.

Sandra remembered her martial arts classes and the teaching of her instructor. The classes had been years ago, but she remembered some things and they were all she had, and commitment. She took a deep slow calming breath, and another one. By the third breath she was…not exactly calm, but focused and determined to defend herself if it came to that.

The men had crossed the street and were coming straight towards her, and now they were close, very close. The tall one with a thin face an eagle’s nose and bloodshot eyes smiled and said, “Bonjour Madame J’ai l’impression que vous ete perdue.”

Sandra had enough French to realize he was asking her if she was lost and stammered something in what she thought might be French. She realized now they were quite young, probably middle teens, no older than her son Randy when he…

The short round faced one switched to English when he saw how little French she had, “You are from America, yes? Not English I think.”

“Yes, from America.”

“And a pilgrim, yes? Your scallop shell tells me.”

Nothing in their body language was threatening. They asked her where she was going, looked at her map and offered to walk with her to show her the way to the marked pilgrim’s path. Relief flooded through Sandra. These were two nice young boys offering to help a confused passerby. She had let her fears run away with her for a moment.

Twenty minutes later, after finding the right road, the tall one gave her his cell number and told her to call if she got lost again. They parted with waves and smiles, “Bon voyage,” they called out. Sandra said, “Au revoir merci,” and continued on with a quiet glow of pride – mixed with a bit of embarrassment at her slight prejudice. Would she have been afraid if they had not had dark skin? Never the less, she had done well in her encounter, had faced her fear, been ready to fight if things had turned bad, but had not overreacted and so made the acquaintance of her first Frenchmen, well, boys.

Chapter Three

The Paris opening was a success, much applause for the runway show, large orders from the major stores. There would be good reviews in the trades. One of the models, a lanky French girl with hair like a raven’s wing and enormous eyes outlined with kohl had been more than flirtatious, making sure I was watching her, turning towards me while she changed. There was something particularly lovely about the line of her thigh… But there had been too many models and too much trouble because of them.

Years ago I had needed comfortable civilian clothing for meetings in a South East Asian country. While in Hong Kong I had a tailor make a couple of outfits with the easy fit, comfort and tropic weight of my old field uniforms. A buyer from a famous American store had approached me in the lobby of the Peninsula, the legendary Hong Kong hotel – a remnant of colonial days – and asked where I got my clothing. “A unique approach,” he said. “A blending of dress and casual clothing, obviously comfortable. A new look.”

An hour later I was in business with a six-figure order and little knowledge of how to fulfill it, only the confidence that I somehow could. I had become weary of who I was and what I had been doing in Asia and was ready for a change. I wrapped up my immediate affairs and jumped into this new world of high fashion without first looking to see where I might land.

Although I made men’s clothing with no concessions to a woman’s fit, half of my customers were women. A ‘revolutionary collection,’ the fashionistias called it. The structure of the so-called collection was modeled on army issue uniforms. There were no brass buttons or epaulets, but the underlying concepts were there for anyone with an eye to see. The look had caught on and I had become moderately well off by international standards, rich by the measure of my hometown. Although I hated having to appear at these shows be interviewed and play designer, the rest of it had been absorbing and I had welcomed the independence that came with the money.

The after party required my presence, at minimum a walk through. I had refused to do yet another runway appearance. Bobbie, my road manager had rented a private reception hall at the Pompidou Center. I stopped in the men’s room, splashed cold water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair, long and over the ears, three days of beard, tired eyes, hollow cheeks. A silk evening jacket that looked like I had slept in it, rumpled linen shirt and loose fitting linen slacks, fencer’s shoes – all black, a white rose bud in my lapel. I looked the part, even if I no longer wanted to play the part. I took a deep breath and downed the double espresso shot the attendant held out to me. Curtain up.

In the reception hall the usual scene: a banner – Logan Montana’s Sempre Primavera – a buffet with Champagne and lobster, a bank of flat screens running a loop of the runway show. I moved slowly through the crowd, fragmentary conversations, buyers touching my sleeve, dropping hints about how little they were paid and how large the orders they had placed with my sales reps. I smiled, waved to strangers across the room.

Jerry, one of my lead salesmen snagged me by the arm. “You look really beat Logan.” He reached into his jacket pocket, came out with a little bottle and offered me a hit of cocaine from the tiny attached spoon.

“You do know that stuff’s illegal?”

“Aw man, everybody does it.”

“Not in a room with half the industry watching. You want to read about Logan Montana doing the White Lady in the trade news?”

Jerry looked around, seemed to wake up, “Oh. Right. Sorry man.”

Roseanne, the buyer for a major department store on Manhattan’s East Side was a few feet away and watching us closely, her greedy eyes on Jerry’s bottle. As I moved away from Jerry she headed straight for him, running on tracks like the Midnight Special.

The jazz combo took a break and the deejay spun an old Roy Orbison song, ‘Only The Lonely.’ In the center of the dance floor three slender young men in Armani white slow danced together, arms around each other’s waists taking turns sipping Mumms from a large goblet. Models, photographers, PR people, sales people, assistants. The Pack – a flock of fashion groupies who slipstreamed designers during the semiannual migration from factory to fashion shows – Hong Kong to Milan, Paris, New York – nudged and jostled each other for favored positions, pigeons after bread crumbs, all in the season’s latest plumage. I smiled, murmured meaningless pleasantries, shook hands, patted shoulders and pretended to be an important person, a celebrity.

A nice woman from the U.S. Department Of Commerce waved and I stopped to chat for a moment. Marcia struggled to get by in Paris on her government expense allowance and I occasionally took her to dinner along with a couple of other friends, a well-read, serious young woman in a sensible suit and large glasses, a wise little owl surrounded by a flock of chattering parrots. I took Marcia’s hand and we went to the floor, dancing slowly, our bodies touching lightly, the first time we had been so close, new awareness awakening. She wore an unfamiliar spicy scent, not what I would have thought a government employee might choose. The song ended and we stepped away from each other, surprise and speculation between us. I had to go. Now. I smiled, said, “See you again soon.” I glanced over my shoulder as I walked away. Marcia was watching me, bemusement in every line of her face.

As I made for the door Cynthia, a journalista for one of the fashion rags, cornered me, her hair bleached and spiked, blood red lipstick and nails. She put her hand on my arm, nails digging in.

“Oh Logan. Your collection is just so fabulous. I just love the pale voiles and white linen, and everything so free and loose and comfortable. It’s just all… just so…I don’t know… so…something. What’s your underlying theme?”

“Theme?”

“You know. What does it all mean?”

“The clothes are for summer. It’s hot during the summer.”

I was headed for the exit with a couple bottles of the Mumms when Bobbie intercepted me, a small trim woman with short cropped chestnut hair, sharp featured and unselfconsciously pretty, bright, psychology degree, drifted into music then fashion. She wore a gray silk shirt and slacks from my collection the way they were meant to be worn – casually, no fussiness or posing, get dressed and forget about the clothing. Bobbie was quietly efficient and mothered everyone who needed it, and some who didn’t

“I thought you only drank the private stock Bollinger.”

“Oh Christ, have I become that much of an ass?”

“Two bottles? Are you meeting someone?” Raised eyebrow.

“Now don’t start.”

“Well you can’t drink champagne from the bottle.”

She held out a Baccarat crystal flute engraved with my initials, a gift that had come with a best of show award last year. There had been a pair. The other one had been lost somewhere on the road, maybe broken.

“Here let me hold that,” she said reaching for one of the bottles as I tried to take the glass and shift both bottles to one hand. Somehow I wound up with the glass in one hand and one bottle in the other. She held on to the second bottle, “I think this bottle is too warm. You won’t like it warm. Why don’t you take just the one…”

Bobbie meant well.

Finally I escaped with a single bottle and walked to the Seine, where I sat on the riverbank drinking the wine and watching the life of Paris – the bateau mouches – sightseeing boats – lighting the water, strolling musicians, lovers walking hand in hand, a group of backpackers and the scent of marijuana, a couple embracing in the shadows.

My thoughts drifted to that model, the one with the beckoning eyes. And to Marcia, the memory of her inner thigh against mine. But no. Couldn’t think about either of them. I wanted Diane to again be my wife in more than name. Or did I? Could I change that much, be someone I had never been? Diane had known from the beginning, known who I was, how I am. I had not lied to her. We talked about it, talked it to death. We thought we could manage. And we did, when we were together. We would lose ourselves for days in an envelope of sensual haze, unending days and nights of lovemaking when all the world fell away and there was nothing but us.

I had believed it would work out when we married. And it had – until the second trip. I made it through the first journey of two months, barely. The second trip I lasted for over a month, but then looking at the long weeks ahead… When I returned home Diane knew. She had been silent for a while, until that pain filled evening three months ago when she was blinded by tears and I stood silently while she slapped me hard enough to rock me on my heels and clawed at me, tore my shirt open and ripped my chest bloody, sobbing and crying, “Why, why, why?”

I had no answers for her or for myself. My actions had taken the light from her face and I hated myself for it. We both now grieved, separate in our grief, for what we had together been, something more than either of us alone.

I’m easily seduced by a woman’s scent, by a sideways glance or a bold look, a bare shoulder, a throaty laugh, stray strands of hair that just won’t stay pinned in place, the curve of a hip, the delicate line of a lip, a whiskey voice, thick heavy ink black hair, dark eyes, green eyes, chipped fingernail polish, a run in a stocking, those little lines at the corner of the mouth. I am drawn to women’s vulnerability and strength and awed by their courage in the face of all that life inflicts upon them. Anything of beauty will tip me over the edge and all women possess beauty and there’s nothing more beautiful than their courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

Until this uncertain and shaky moment I could no more turn away from a beautiful woman than a broke down alcoholic could refuse a double shot of whiskey and a cold beer back on a bright and blinding Sunday morning.

I had to stop accepting what was so freely offered, what I so desired, so needed. I had to turn away from the world of women if I wanted Diane back, if there was any hope at all. Maybe it was time to change other things too. I had been playing the role of Logan Montana glamorous international designer for so long I had forgotten who Michael Logan was – the boy who had fled the small town Midwest on a freight train one summer night when he couldn’t take it anymore. And one day found himself in a far away place with no friends or family, only allies and enemies.

I left the empty bottle and the crystal glass standing on a stone bollard and wandered night streets, which in Paris is always a pure pleasure no matter how the day has gone. I drifted for a few hours: shop windows with toys and last season’s fashions, wine shops, an art exhibit on the fence around the Luxemburg Gardens, light reflected in small pools of water from street sweepers, cafes with chairs upturned on tables, glowing street lights. A large stone house built around a courtyard, saxophone jazz notes drifting from within – Dexter Gordon? Alleyways and cats, narrow streets, a shaded window concealing a dimly lighted room, a woman’s silhouette on the shade. Parisian secrets.

Chapter Four

In late afternoon, the sun now burning through the afternoon’s dreary skies, just past the far urban fringes of Paris, Sandra slumped on a bench by a high stone wall. She was exhausted. Her back and shoulder muscles ached from carrying her pack. The long muscles on the front of her thighs ached. Her calves ached. Her bones ached. Her feet hurt and she had blisters on her heels.

What had she been thinking? Walk across half of Europe? Where in her chemo addled brain had that come from? What made her think she could do this? Maybe she should consider taking a train to Spain then walk from there. Yes, that’s it. She would walk later. Most pilgrims started their walks further south. There was probably a train station nearby. Images of sitting in a comfortable train while the countryside flashed by the window took her into a reverie. Then a tiny spark deep in her fatigue fogged consciousness ignited and flared. What made her think she couldn’t do this? Low blood sugar? A little pain? What was it that Zen guy said? ‘Pain is inevitable, suffering optional.’ Enough whining.

She roused herself to rummage through her bag and find a fragment of Boursin and the corner of a baguette she had bought in Paris. Weary as she was, she still noticed the food, how simply good the bread was, so much better that the ‘French bread’ at the bakery in Palo Alto. The cheese and bread revived her and made her thirsty. Water bottle in hand she found a fountain splashing into a stone basin next to a wrought iron gate in the wall. While filling her bottle she noticed the sign: Cimetière Saint-Jacques. Her mouth turned down in a rueful smile, ‘Not yet,’ she thought. ‘Not just yet.’

The water was cold and tasted of stone and she remembered from the Camino guidebook that there were water fountains at all French cemeteries. Cemeteries with water fountains? Interesting, the French. There was no hostel nearby and she could not, would not, walk another mile. Well, okay, maybe a mile. Sandra continued on, footsore, weary, pushing herself onwards, looking for a place, any place, to spend the night. She had not yet reached one of the secluded footpaths of the Camino or one of the refugios and so walked on the side of a busy road, cars and trucks speeding by, grit thrown up by their passage, drivers staring at her, no other pedestrians in sight. What was she doing here? This wasn’t at all like she had imagined. Where were the soft paths, the green fields, the sunny days?

When she thought she couldn’t go another step, with night closing in, she found a small Norman style building, timbered white plaster and pitched roof, with a sign: Auberge de Sud. Benzes and Jaguars parked in front and from an open window came the scent of…what was it, roast duck? This was it, as far as she was going this day. Forget the budget. She could pinch pennies later.

Sandra opened a heavy wooden door, went inside and passed by a high wooden counter with no one in attendance. She stood at the entrance to the dining room waiting for someone to notice her, stomach growling, feeling out of place, the well dressed diners, the quiet clink of silverware and china.

A trim gray haired women wearing an expensive silk dress came from a back room and greeted her with a smile, “Bonsoir. Je suis Mme Foucault. Puis-je vous aider?”

Sandra once again tried her French, asked for a room and dinner. Mme Foucault switched to English. “You look exhausted mon cher. This is your first day as a pilgrim, oui?”

“I’m about to fall on my face. How did you know I was a pilgrim?”

“Few stop here but many pass by. Also, I see by your scallop shell.”

“I’m afraid I’m not dressed for your dining room.”

Mme Foucault reassured Sandra that she was welcome regardless of her dress, handed her a menu and asked her what she would like to eat. Her dinner would be ready for her when she came down from her room. She would like to freshen up first, yes?

After a quick shower and changing into a fresh blouse and slacks, slippers replacing her hiking shoes, Sandra came downstairs and found a table set for her. The dining room’s soft lighting illuminated the rough plaster walls lined with watercolors and oil paintings. Tables were covered with crisp white tablecloths, candles glowing over silver and crystal. The polished plank floor looked a hundred years old. The other diners were intent on their food and conversations, all of them well dressed and at their ease. No one raised an eyebrow at her casual clothing.

First came a slice of country pate with warm bread and a glass of burgundy – delicious burgundy – then the duck she had ordered was presented with a flourish by a black jacketed waiter who refilled her wine glass and disappeared from Sandra’s awareness as she attacked the food.

The pate had been rich and earthy and the wine was luscious, but this duck… Sandra was a fair cook, actually a good cook, but this duck was the best she had ever eaten, so savory it redefined roast duck. She had no idea how to make duck taste this good. This would be the duck that all other roast ducks would forever be compared with. How did they do this? Subtle flavors, but she couldn’t identity any particular seasonings. Maybe it was the duck itself, how it was raised. And the vegetables. Escarole sautéed in olive oil and garlic, but so fresh, as if it had been picked this afternoon. Turnips? Yes, turnips. But turnips like she had never tasted. She didn’t like turnips, but she loved these turnips. They had been marinated. In what? Who cared? She was going to eat every least morsel.

Oh God, I’m eating like a pig. I’ve never eaten so much. But everything is so good. Could I pick up the duck bone and gnaw on it? She glanced around the room. No one was paying any attention to her. But that would be too much. She had to get hold of herself. She had not noticed when the waiter had silently and unobtrusively refilled her glass. She had three glasses of the deep red wine without realizing it, more than her usual limit. She looked up from her dish to see the waiter pouring the last of the wine from the bottle into her glass. Wine taken and overcome by sheer food lust, she drank the last of the lush burgundy and agreed to a pear tart and cognac. What the hell? She’d walk it off tomorrow. And if not, so what? She could stand to gain a few pounds. It had been so long since she had enjoyed food, and this was without doubt her best meal ever.

After the pear tart – tasting of fresh pear not overwhelmed with sugar – how could I eat so much? – Sandra relaxed with the cognac and let it fill her with warmth and cast out worries about tomorrow and regrets over the past. She was in the moment, content and happy to be alive.

Sandra stopped to talk to Mme Foucault on her way to the stairs and told her how wonderful her dinner had been.

“I’m pleased you enjoyed your dinner,” a shrug, a smile, “mais c’est normal.”

Swaying a little Sandra made her way to her room at the back of the building and flung open the windows. The room was flooded with the scent of freshly mown grass. She threw off her clothing crawled under the down duvet and was immediately asleep, sleeping the sleep of the weary and well fed, deep and undisturbed.

First light came pale and thin and washed across Sandra’s face awakening her. She was comfortably warm but felt as if someone had beaten her with a stick. As she itemized her aches and pains from the previous days walk, her thoughts went to the past.

At the first meeting the marriage counselor had said, “Maybe you need to do more things together.’ After a dozen meeting she had said, “Possibly you’re fundamentally a mismatch.” What did that mean? They had been happy for many good years. Why had she slept with Tom? Was it loneliness? He had not seduced her. Seduction was mostly a male fantasy anyway. Women made their own decisions about those things. No point in kidding herself.

She had been lonely. How could she have been lonely with John and the children, extended family, friends? But she had been, lonely and bored with her life. Was that all it had been, an affair begun and continued out of boredom? Thankfully John had never found out. She had loved John, whether they were a mismatch or not. Nothing was perfect. Enough. She had worried over this enough. The past is past. Sandra drifted back to sleep and awakened again with the sun in her eyes.

Sandra’s window looked out onto fields bordered by thickly leaved trees. It was a new day and time to get moving. After a hot shower she did a few yoga poses to loosen up and ease her aches, then sat on the edge of the bed and plastered moleskin over the blisters on her feet. She dressed quickly, slung her pack over one shoulder and made her way down the narrow stairs. Breakfast was flaky fresh croissants, rich café au lait and a boiled egg.

Sandra went to the desk to pay her bill. Mme Foucault was waiting with a package wrapped in foil folded to resemble a duck. Her lunch. “This food has good strength. Find a nice shady tree and eat well.”

A mile down the road Sandra found a Camino sign with the scallop shell and turned away from the busy road onto a smooth footpath bordered by trees and arched over by branches grown together. This was how she had imagined the Camino. She straightened her shoulders settling into the weight of her pack and with sunlight filtering through the overhanging leafy canopy stepped out, walking though a green tunnel and into the day.

MORE TO COME

Prologue

A road runs through the center of my heart. It begins near the English Channel and makes its wandering way to the Mediterranean, encompassing a good bit of my past and much that I hold dear. We followed that road together one summer, my son and I.

Justin was searching for his life’s direction and a road out of an unfocused, discontented adolescence. I hoped to find some fragments of my previous life along the way and piece together the shattered mosaic of me. While recovering from a severe illness during an eternal dark winter at high latitudes I had lost my sense of self, dragged my anchor and confused my bearings, or maybe I was simply losing my mind. I was drinking too much, even if it was good wine, the wolves were circling the cabin at night and that Ishmael mood was coming on strong. The geese had left for the south months ago. The cure was the road.

I had a few assignments, which gave our journey some structure, but mostly we let the road take us to little visited corners of Europe, to people who we hadn’t imagined and places we had never dreamed of, some of them wonderful, some surreal and others not on any map I have found.

We encountered a witch complete with familiars and the evil eye in a stone village near the Spanish border. A real witch? What’s a real witch? I don’t know. I don’t think I believe in real witches but whatever she was she scared us out of our wits one moonless night, turning us from our path and sending us back towards lighted streets and people with ordinary pets and cars speeding on the autoroute, touchstones of reality.

In Florence we met a circus strongman and the Countess who loved him, a woman I had once known who had married an Italian Count and everything that went with that, until she couldn’t take it any more. In Amsterdam at the very beginning of our journey a long forgotten lover again touched my life, a woman I had wronged. Maybe that’s why I had forgotten her and why it took so long to recall our days together in a village by the sea when we were young.

All this was before Prague and the former KGB assassin and before Justin threw the stowaway out the window. The vampire came later. I don’t believe in vampires either. But if such creatures exist in anything other than legends and flights of fancy I met one. A strange fierce woman who appeared in a fey moment during a soft rain next to the Dom in Koln where the Magi rest. She returned to haunt my dreams. I thought then they were dreams. Now I’m not so sure.

We got lost a time or two and had a few dark days. But we drank champagne from a bottle slashed open with a sabre, walked the stones of Roman roads laid down millennia ago and were transformed by music that brought tears to our eyes and joy to our newly opened hearts. We argued some and laughed a lot and drove each other more than a little crazy before we discovered our truest selves, and at roads end on the shore of an ancient sea each of us found what we had sought.

It has often been written that you take yourself with you wherever you go and that you will be no different in another place. In my experience this is not so, except in the most limited of circumstances and for the most limited of persons. People do change when they travel. It’s almost unavoidable. For many, change is the reason for travel. I think it’s in our blood. We’re nomads by nature and need to see what’s over the hill and around the next bend in the road, and we need to find that other self, that possible person, the one we might be, the one who waits for us out there somewhere.

Who returns unchanged from a journey? Only those who are unfortunately thick skinned and dense, or those who have been sealed inside the tourist bubble that imprisons would be travelers. If we travel with the slightest amount of openness and courage we cannot help but be affected by new surroundings and, at least in some subtle way, become a different person than the one who left home.

So it was for Justin and me. When we returned to wife and mother and sons and brothers we appeared the same. But we were not at all the same. If you would have looked very closely you might have seen that the two who returned were not the two who had departed, that we had changed in important and irrevocable ways. And that’s what our story is about; not only the places, but also things that happened in those places and the people we met and what it all meant to us.

Prior to our departure I rummaged through trunks and chests until I found a pocket sized leather journal I had bought years before in a small shop in Milan. Its pages were fine cream colored rag paper and unmarked, the cover a soft tan leather darkened by the passage of time, an artifact from a former life and exactly the thing to record our journey. In the midst of chaos, straight lines on paper and words in a row can bring order and clarity.

In the Italian journal I pasted train tickets, restaurant receipts, small photos, crushed flowers, a feather from a blue jay, scraps of this and that, detritus of the road. I also made notes as events occurred. That journal became the foundation for this story. Some things may seem too fantastic to be believed. But as a working journalist I long ago learned to make accurate notes and to trust them. So I can tell you this; it’s all true.

In the interest of the narrative I trimmed a little here and stretched a little there. I also changed some of the names, for reasons that will become obvious. But I didn’t make up anything. Memory is fragile and mutable, and reality… Well, as anyone knows who has ventured out to the edge, the borders can get blurred. For me, it all happened just this way.

Chapter One

The Hotel Splendide

We escaped the mob by ducking into the lobby of the Hotel Splendide. A mud colored, beat up Formica counter squatted in the center of the room. To the right an open door led to a café. Dirty green linoleum covered the floor and rippled across the lobby like a storm-rumpled sea shot through with wrack and flotsam. Shabby chairs with crooked legs formed a conversational grouping with a sagging sofa. A half dozen twenty somethings in ragged jeans and t-shirts sprawled on the chairs and couch in states of consciousness ranging from dazed to comatose, none of them taking advantage of the furniture arrangement to make conversation.

A wasted brown dog lifted its head from the floor and half-heartedly thumped its tail. The air was thick with humidity and the greasy scent of rancid fried food seasoned with a hint of hash. It was unseasonably hot for early spring. A TV in the corner squawked about a low-pressure zone forming. Rain was coming. Maybe it would bring cooler weather. We were sweating, jetlagged and overloaded with far too much baggage. Rain sounded wonderful. Maybe rain would also clean the streets.

We hesitated inside the door, unwilling to go forward but reluctant to dare the streets again. Outside all was broken beer bottles and heaving crowds, pasty white men throwing drunken sloppy punches at each other and scuffling on the sidewalk. Thousands of them, slamming into each other and anyone in their way, jamming the sidewalks and streets, screaming and waving banners with the emblems of their soccer teams. One team had won. Another had lost. Apparently this was an extraordinary outcome.

Justin nudged me, “Is this one of those places where they sell hash and marijuana? What do we do if it is? Do you think Ash was here?”

Like many college age travelers Justin’s older brother Ashley had returned from Europe the previous year with tales of dope soaked Amsterdam, cafes with various types of weed and hash on the menu along with espresso and cappuccino, all fascinatingly legal and irresistible except for the espresso.

“Nah,” I said. “It’s just a hotel. A dump, but just a hotel.”

Due to the soccer mobs, football hooligans as the English call them, there was no room at any other inn. Trapped, we approached the registration desk and dropped our bags in front of the counter. A slight, rumpled man squinted at us with bloodshot eyes from behind the counter and asked, “Do you want some hash?”

Justin glanced sideways at me and smirked. Not one of those really annoying teen-age smirks, but still a smirk. A signal of my future parental trials on this trip?

“Ah, no.” I said. “Just a room.”

Mr. Ahmed introduced himself and leaned over the counter showing us a yellow-toothed smile, “You are English or Americans?”

His arms trembled and he was stretched thin to the point of transparency. Behind the counter was a much used reclining chair. I suggested that he would be more comfortable in his chair but he waved my concern aside.

I tried a smile in return and lofted him a softball, “We come from a country across the sea and far, far way in the distant west.”

He wrinkled his forehead, straining to understand, “What you say? From where?”

“California.”

“Ahh, you are Californias.”

“Yes, Californias.”

Mr. Ahmed’s arms were now openly shaking with the effort of holding himself up. He really needed to sit down and perhaps drift away on a magic hash carpet over minarets and green oases. But he was intent on business.

“You want only a room? No hash? I have Blonde Maroc, Afgan, Amnesia, many varieties. Best quality. Best price. Most serious stoning.”

“Can you get me on the Marrakech Express?”

Justin eyes popped. The smirk disappeared replaced by a look of alarm, which was something of an improvement over the smirk.

More forehead wrinkling and confusion, “What you say? Maroc? I have Maroc.”

“Just kidding.”

“No hash?”

“No hash.”

After much fumbling and confusion of papers Mr. Ahmed managed to locate a key. We followed him up narrow stairs covered with stained and faded red carpet, likely bought second hand from one of Amsterdam’s brothels. He stumbled and bounced from wall to wall as we climbed.

Squeezed together in the narrow staircase Justin whispered, “Is that hash, Marrakech Express? How do you know about it? Have you ever…?”

“Just an old song son, a train that left the station a long time ago.”

Mr. Ahmed opened the door to a room and waved us in with a slight bow, as if ushering rock stars into the George V. The narrow room reeked of dirty laundry, weed and hash. Plaster peeled from the walls. Rumpled linoleum covered the floor except where it had chipped away exposing splintery plywood. A bare light bulb hung on a frayed cord from the slanted ceiling. A small creature made scuttling sounds under one of the beds. The bathroom was down the hall and could be located by smell. Justin and I stepped into the room in stunned disbelief.

On a previous visit to Amsterdam, MaryLou, my wife, and two of our sons had stayed in a wonderful old hotel built in the shape of a triangle at the confluence of two canals. Our third floor room had a window on each side of the triangle’s apex. The floors were oak planked, scrubbed clean and waxed. Old timbers braced the white plaster walls and ceiling. It was like being in the bow of a sailing ship breasting slowly through thick leaved trees green as deep water waves. We hung out the windows on either side of the bow and waved to people passing in the streets and they smiled and waved to us, like dolphins who come to greet you when you lie on the bow of a fast moving sailboat.

For some reason beyond my understanding I hadn’t been able to locate that lovely little hotel. I had lost the reservations and couldn’t remember the hotel’s name. Still, I should have been able to find it. Once I’ve been someplace I can always find my way back to it. I never get lost. Yeah, I know, every male over the age of eighteen says the same thing. But in my case it’s true. Really. Somehow the location of our wonderful little hotel eluded me. It was a mystery.

That nice little hotel was then and this dive was very much now. It was this or a park bench. And our bags were a misery. In the store they had looked like just the thing: sleek, black, presentable in the lobby of the Principe in Milan or the Lotti in Paris. Then, like magic, unzip a zipper pull out some straps and you had a backpack suitable to climb Mt. Blanc. That’s what the salesman had said.

As packs they bit into our shoulders and sucked at our backs like monstrous leeches. As suitcases they wrapped around our legs and tripped us. Neither of us wanted to drag the miserable things another step. I looked at Justin. He mimed helplessness and shrugged. We dumped our nylon marvels on the narrow sagging beds. Dust rose from the bedspreads.

“We’ll take it,” I said, surrendering us to the luxuries of Mr. Ahmed’s Hotel Splendide.

* * *

Newly motivated we went in search of Charming Rene and his Camper Emporium. Rene would have our shiny Volkswagen camper waiting, sanctuary and mobility in one package. The VW camper is the Swiss Army Knife of vehicles. It can be parked anywhere you can park a car, gets good gas mileage and provides Spartan accommodations and cooking facilities. A home on the road without the overbearing presence of a motor home, the VW would allow us to travel unencumbered by hotel reservations or schedules.

We could free camp almost anywhere in Europe, often at the edge of a field, with the farm family coming to say hello and offering a glass of wine or beer, or at one of the free municipal campgrounds in the center of hundreds of French villages. Europe’s commercial campgrounds, frequently located in city centers, were islands of luxury undreamed of by American campers, with good restaurants, jazz bands, swimming pools and relaxed people on holiday and open to meeting new friends.

Around the corner from the Splendide I spotted a narrow building with a sign in the window: Vacancy. It was worth a look. The tiny lobby smelled of furniture polish and fresh cut flowers. The front desk was polished dark wood, the black and white tile floor shiny and clean. We could retrieve our bags and move here, forget about the room paid for in advance. The money spent would be fair ransom for our escape. I rang a polished brass bell on the counter top.

A round, biscuit colored man with a pleasant white smile came from a doorway behind the counter. He was neatly dressed in a green corduroy jacket and a buttoned up blue shirt.

“Good day,” he said. “My name is Mr. Banerjee. How may I be of service?”

I asked about a room. He had no vacancies. I pleaded, telling him where we were staying.

“I am very regretful,” he said. “I should have taken down the sign. I have not even the corner of a room. I don’t like to talk about my competition but I do understand how you must feel, being stuck at that place with your son. I know what goes on there. It’s all legal you know.”

Mr. Banerjee was happy to chat with us, but he couldn’t allow us to sleep in the lobby, which I suggested.

“The Dutch are very liberal you know, which is why I came here. I came first to Germany from India, but Germans don’t like foreigners, at least some of them don’t, especially if they have brown skin. One day, for no reason at all, a man said to me a word in English I didn’t know the meaning of. Later I learned that it was an insult word for a black man. As you can see I’m actually brown but I suppose that’s close enough for him to insult me. No one here has ever said such a word to me or made me feel as if I was being looked down upon. So I can’t actually complain when my neighbors take drugs. It’s their own business so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.”

We said goodbye to Mr. Banerjee, and hurrying now headed for our appointment. Soon we would have our camper and be free from hotels. A sign, Camper Emporium, hung above a door leading into a white painted brick building, the office up a flight of stairs.

Rene came from behind his paper-stacked desk to shake hands, a tall man with expensively barbered blonde hair, blue blazer, gray slacks, and shiny black shoes. His handshake was firm, his blue eyes bright with good humor and fellowship.

He was waiting for a call from the garage. Our camper should be ready this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest. We chatted while waiting for the call. I told him about our wretched hotel and our conversation with Mr. Banerjee.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rene said. “I don’t think we’re so very much different than the Germans. Maybe we try a little harder to be accepting. Politically we’re a bit more liberal. I expect he just ran into a bigot. You can find them anywhere. We have bigots here in Holland also. Perhaps you have them even in America? Yes?”

The phone rang. Rene picked it up, listened for a few minutes and hung up.

“We’ll have everything ready tomorrow,” Rene said.

Our beautiful camper would be delivered as promised, serviced, waxed and ready to go. No need to bother with paperwork or details now. The sun was shining. We should enjoy Amsterdam today. Not to worry. All would be prepared for us. Tomorrow our wonderful adventure would begin. We would set out on the open road, wandering the highways and byways of glorious Europe, traveling as free as the wind. Rene was as charming in person as he had been during our transatlantic phone calls.

A thin woman with mouse colored hair, a lined face and a businesslike cardigan, and the harried but resigned look of the overworked, stamped and stapled papers at a desk near the door. She rolled her eyes at me. I should have taken closer note. Every successful small business has a woman at the center of it, a woman who knows what’s going on, does most of the real work and runs things while the men talk a lot and go to lunch. Clearly this was that woman.

On the sidewalk in front of the Camper Emporium Justin said, “Can I do it now? We have time. Come on Dad. You gotta let me. It’s Amsterdam.”

Justin had been nagging me for days. He was getting old. Life was passing him by. He wanted to dye his hair green, or bleach it. Or get a tattoo or get some part of his body pierced. Something. Anything.

“OK, you can do it.”

The shop was small, one upholstered chair for customers and two cane chairs for those waiting, a cabinet with the tools of the trade, blue and green striped wallpaper, white tile floor. Neat, clean, chic, it was perfectly suited to its owner. Freddy was slender and sharp featured, pale with straight blonde hair waxed and standing on end. He wore tight black jeans a starched white shirt and stood with one hand on his hip the other waving a comb back and forth.

“I simply won’t do it. No. No. No. Your hair is a wonderful natural color. I would have to strip out all the auburn and bleach it before dyeing it. And green is just impossible. It would ruin your hair.”

Justin’s frustration mounted. He pleaded, palms raised, “You gotta do something. I can’t come all the way to Amsterdam and leave with my hair all dorky.”

Freddy reached out and ran his fingers through Justin’s hair, considered the situation, “I’ll tint it and give you a great cut. With a red tint the highlights will stand out. It’ll be gorgeous. You’ll love it.”

I waited in the sidewalk café next door. Leafy shadows lay across the table. I had coffee and watched the street life, mothers pushing baby carriages along the brick walkway, men and women on black businesslike bicycles with bells tinkling.

“How does it look?” Justin said, collapsing in the chair across from me.

“It’s cool.”

“It sucks.”

“No, really, it’s cool.”

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t do what I wanted.”

“He probably cared about his work and wanted you to look good.”

“How about if I get my nose pierced?”

“Sure thing, no problem.”

“Can we go do it now?”

“Later.”

“When?”

“When you’re thirty.”

A deep sigh, shoulders slumping, “Can I at least have a beer? It’s legal here.”

As we talked Freddy came out and locked the door to his shop. I waved. He dropped a black canvas shoulder bag on a chair and ordered a Kir from the t-shirted waitress.

“I know you’re disappointed,” Freddy said. You wanted that surfer look. Are you a surfer?”

A rueful headshake from Justin, “No.”

“Are you planning to be a surfer?” Freddy asked with a raised eyebrow, his head tilted slightly to one side.

“Not really. It’s just a look.”

“I remember being a teenager. It’s tough. But just be who you are. Don’t worry about looking like anyone else.”

Freddy had been born in Amsterdam and had traveled all over Europe and to San Francisco and Bali. We shared reminiscences about the beaches and bars and some of the weird scenes in Bali. Justin sipped his first legal beer, listening with one ear and watching the young girls in jeans walking by.

“Do you like that beer?” Freddy asked.

Justin shook his head, “Not really. It’s bitter.”

“Why drink it? Life is too short. Order something else, on me.”

We talked travel, art, music, and fashion among young people, a topic on which Freddy was an authority. After a pleasant hour Freddy waved goodbye. As the day started to fade Justin and I wandered away from the center of town and into a neighborhood of narrow three story homes, quiet streets and arched bridges. We ate dinner in a tiny patio restaurant; cobblestones under foot, red brick walls overgrown with ivy, curlicued iron tables with thick white tablecloths, a handwritten menu. The crowd was local, artsy, much laughter, loud greetings and cheek kisses.

From a nearby table a woman watched us closely, her hair the color of India ink and skin pale as a winter moon. She was dressed all in black with a slash of blood red lipstick. Her eyes were shadowed under deep brows. Twilight crept over the patio. She watched us with intensity, first focused on me, then on Justin, her food forgotten, absently talking with her table companions and watching, watching. I couldn’t imagine what drew her attention, an ordinary man, a teenaged boy. Did I know her from someplace, a show, an opening? I considered going to her table but I was tired and not that curious.

The food was… Dutch. Amsterdam, after all, is not Paris, or Rome. There was a fillet of white fish that had been successfully grilled, some boiled potatoes and a carafe of straw colored wine, nothing really to complain about. Excitement and wild abandon at the table would come later, further south. On second thought, who was I kidding? This was a better meal than I would have found in all but one or two restaurants within a ten-mile radius of my home in Southern California, where we get a good deal of pretension but very little good food, unless we’re willing to pay an absurd amount of money for a simple meal.

Justin ate quietly, his eyes busy, watching the other diners, many of them in their twenties, young enough for him to see himself in them. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering a childhood journey across Europe, wishing he was at home with his girl friend, wishing she were here?

From the next building came the faint sound of music, Janis Joplin singing her life away, a little piece of her heart at a time. Her wrenching gut strong voice seemed out of place. Amsterdam was smoky jazz clubs, Django Reinhardt’s gypsy guitar, Chet Baker’s drifting moody sax. Baker had died not far from here, falling from a high window, or pushed rumor had it by a heroin dealer to whom he owed money.

As we were leaving the woman who had been watching us contrived to pass close by. She wore a floral scent and her skin looked soft to the touch. Her eyes were dark indigo with flecks of violet and that watchful intensity.

“Have we met? I asked.

“You don’t remember?” One eyebrow raised, a tone of mocking indignation.

“I’m sorry. Who…?”

A small shrug of one shoulder, a moue, “Memories fade. And anyway vous semblez perdu.”

She turned away, leaving a slight cloud of perfumed air and a name for the scent drifted into mind, L’ Air du Temps. She walked down a narrow hallway and looked back, a small wave over her shoulder, chin down, eyes slanting up to mine, “Au Revoir.”

Maybe she was right. Maybe I was lost. Not a flicker of memory came to me. Paris? The way she held her body, the way she moved, her accent, all said French. Certainly she didn’t have a Dutch woman’s straightforwardness. Her manner suggested something more than a casual contact. I searched through distant memories, still nothing. Early onset Alzheimer’s? One of those Sixties things where the things you were doing made you forget the things you did?

We avoided main streets where the mobs still roamed and walked slowly, neither of us anxious to return to our garret. Justin scooped up a handful of pebbles and we sat on the edge on a canal, dangling our feet as he dropped the pebbles one by one, sending smooth ripples across the moonlit water. I remembered a summer night when Justin was eight and we had sat together on the banks of the Seine until near dawn watching the riverboats and the life of Paris at night. He had held my hand as we walked back to our hotel stopping along the way to look in the windows of toy stores.

The years had changed us. I didn’t laugh much anymore and Justin had entered the foreign land of the teenager. We were no longer as close as we had been. He was not sure about this trip, not sure he wanted to travel anywhere with one of his parents and was angry at leaving his girlfriend. MaryLou and I were secretly glad about the separation. The two of them had become entirely too humid and hermetic.

Eventually we trudged back to the Hotel Splendide and up the narrow stairs. A haze of hash smoke drifted from an open door and hung in the hallway. A procession of young Americans stumbled from their room into the hallway and to the communal bathroom and back to their room. From their room came howling, yelling and thumping. They were all muscular and healthy looking. Maybe they were a mixed soccer team from some Midwestern liberal college come to play in the ongoing games.

One of them bumbled down the narrow hall towards us holding out a pipe. He had long blonde hair and the loose muscled walk and manner of a good-natured Golden Retriever. “Have some hash,” he said. “It’s really good shit.”

I held my breath, fighting off a contact high and hoping Justin was doing the same. What were they were mixing with the hash? That much dope they should have been comatose. I was anxious to get Justin out of the smoke cloud. I smiled and mumbled something and shouldered Justin into our room. Justin stumbled against the bed and said, “You don’t have to push Dad. I don’t want any of that crap.” Smoke crept through the cracks around the door and seeped under the walls where the floor was warped.

Justin swung the dormer window open and crawled out onto a wide roof. I followed. A fresh breeze swept the roof. City lights formed a hazy yellow dome over us, stars shone dimly. We dragged our mattresses onto the roof and sat cross-legged watching the city at night, lights shining from apartment windows, a couple walking below holding hands.

Justin was restless and wanted to roam some more. It was midnight but I sensed some secret mission he wanted to carry out on his own. He needed me to trust him and so I let him go with a promise to return in an hour. I started pacing the roof a minute after he was gone and torturing myself for letting him roam alone at night in the streets of this city. There was a nasty underbelly to Amsterdam’s openness. It was his first night on his own in another country. I told myself that I had to give him some room. He was fifteen now. But he was the baby, the youngest.

Some years ago MaryLou and two of our sons had spent the summer jumping on and off trains from one end of Europe to the other. Justin had held hands with each of us in turn as we raced through stations to catch our trains. As we left each station I stopped the boys and had them turn and look at the front of the station buildings and again when we were some way from the stations. In this way they could see where they had been and be able to find their way back. If separated we would met at the information desk.

In a small town in Denmark Justin had so blithely and happily ignored my instructions I was sure he wouldn’t be able to find his way if lost. He was so happy and in the moment I was reluctant to intrude, but parental duties over rule all. I stopped him at the end of the platform and said, “I bet you don’t have any idea where you are.”

He thought for a moment and then replied with full confidence, “Oh yes I do.”

“Tell me then,” I said. “Where are you?”

He beamed, triumphant, “I’m with you.”

But now he was not. The promised rain came at 03:30. I brought our mattresses inside.

Next door the Americans were yelling and slamming into walls. Our empty room reproached me. Justin’s things were spread across his bed as if his bag had exploded. I was a rotten parent. Justin had been sheltered by the closeness of our family. He was not as streetwise as his older brothers. Anything could have happened. Maybe he decided to experiment with some of the readily available drugs. Christ, you could buy heroin on any corner. Maybe he got mugged. Where could he be in this rain? I was an idiot. I should have followed him. He wouldn’t have spotted me but it would have been a violation of trust. I couldn’t wait any longer. I grabbed my jacket and clattered down the stairs. And ran into Justin on his way up.

He was soaking wet, his face flushed, “I got kind of lost.”

“You got lost?” Justin had later taken my route finding lessons to heart, as had his brothers. They could find their way through any city or unknown forest or mountains.

“Yeah, I know. But it started raining and my glasses got all fogged and wet and it was dark and then there were some weird crazy people and I got confused and…”

“Never mind. Lost is going around. Were you scared?”

“Maybe a little. But then I was OK.”

Justin hung his wet jacket on the edge of a door and moved his things to the side of his bed. He sat with his back against the wall and his legs folded. He wanted to talk but was nervous. I had to be cool. No heavy parent stuff. Finally he started and was able to tell me about his nighttime adventure. He had been on a mission of his own. At first he was embarrassed then it started coming easier.

“The women were sitting in rooms with big windows and almost no clothes on. Really. It was just like everyone said.”

I sat on the edge of my bed and took slow deep breaths, nodding, noncommittal, “Uh huh, right, and then…” The party next door continued with much squalling and yowling and banging like they were kicking over the furniture and taking turns beating each other with a sack full of cats. Maybe they were practicing for an athletic event or engaging in vigorous group sex, anything seemed possible. More smoke seeped under the walls. Someone yelled, “Motherfucker!”

“There was one in a red corset thing with garters and stockings and the lamp had a red light. In another window one was dressed like she was in a grade school uniform with a blazer and a pleated skirt and pigtails. But then she flipped up her skirt and she didn’t have any panties. There were windows all along the street and all of them had a woman sitting or dancing or reading or something. There were doors where you could go inside and some of them were fat and not pretty at all, and old too. Some of the windows had curtains pulled so you couldn’t see. Why do you think the curtains were closed?”

“Maybe that meant that they weren’t available,” I said.

“Oh. Like she was with someone? You mean like actually just doing it in the window behind the curtain.”

“Or maybe she just went out for coffee or something.”

“They weren’t all in windows. Some were walking or standing around. One of them came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go with her. She opened her shirt and showed me her breasts.”

“And you said?” I’m still pretending to be the blasé parent while mentally yelling at myself, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

“Dad! She was old. Maybe thirty. How could she come up to me?”

“Well, maybe for her business is just business.” Still trying to keep calm. “Was she pretty?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. It was just so weird. Just the idea. That she would… really would… I mean with anyone. Just for money.”

“What did you say to her? You weren’t rude were you?”

“I didn’t say anything just shook my head and kept walking. Why?”

“Women in that position are especially vulnerable. Never say anything hurtful.”

He needed to talk and so I let him get it all out. He had imagined some erotic fantasyland, but the gritty reality of commercial sex had wiped away his illusions.

“She smiled at me. But not really. She wasn’t really smiling, not a real smile.”

The rain stopped. The racket next door had died down, but the air reeked and we agreed that we felt like we were locked in an insane asylum. We drug the mattresses to the roof again found a dry spot under an overhanging eve and fell into the sleep of escaped prisoners.

I dreamed of Justin lost and wandering in dark streets with shadowed shapes looming at him, of a bare breasted woman with red nails, sharp eyes and a false smile following him. Then I too was lost in the winding streets in a strange city. My wife was far away and my sons all lost to me. And then my dream self remembered that I was only traveling and that my family was safe and well. I awakened and saw Justin curled under a blanket the city quietly humming around us, and knowing that all was as it should be slept without dreaming.

* * *

Morning, a clear Delft sky and small storybook clouds. I sat up and stretched. Across the street an open window into a high ceilinged room, white walls, blond wood and skylights, a perfect artists atelier, and a girl in her late twenties with long honey hair and pale skin. She waved and smiled and we called, “Hello,” to one another. I watched her making coffee in a tiny modern kitchen until the smell of fresh bread drew me to the front of the roof where I looked over the edge. A thin man in a ragged overcoat slept on the sidewalk, scabby ankles, run over shoes. Across the street people were leaving a bakery with white paper sacks.

In the room Justin was showered and ready to go, “Hungry,” he said, “Hungry, hungry. Need food. What do they eat for breakfast around here?”

“Creamed herring, jellied octopus, maybe some cold liverwurst, not much else,” I said.

“Yeah. Right. I smell the bread.”

Mr. Ahmed ambushed us as we crossed the lobby. “Have you pay for your room?” he asked, forehead wrinkled, eyes squinting, querulous.

I produced my scribbled receipt. He held the scrap of paper up to his face. His eyes looked like they were going to start bleeding at any moment. Something like relief appeared. His wrinkles smoothed. His voice was almost hearty.

“Ah yes, of course you have pay. You are the Californias. You are gentlemen. It’s the others who try not to pay. You like your room?”

We went through this routine every time he saw us cross the lobby. Mr. Ahmed was totally stoned at all times but well mannered and pleasant. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we were sleeping on his roof.

“Lovely room,” I said. “Very atmospheric. Memorable.”

“Would you like some hash? I have new shipment. Very fresh.”

We fled before he got further into his sales pitch.

I wondered what errant tide had brought this frail almost used up man to this place. Powerful currents of humanity’s global sea were washing people up on all shores, changing lives and continents in a vast roil that showed no sign of ending. What had brought Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Banerjee, two so very different men, here to this red brick city where the sea was held back from sweeping it away only by diligent effort? What events in their lives had led them each to the same city geographically, but to worlds so far apart they may as well have voyaged to different continents?

Mr. Ahmed was a Muslim from Pakistan. He had no involvement with or interest in any religious or political activity that I could see. Only if a bill came before the Dutch high court to outlaw hash could I imagine him rousing himself to action. He appeared to be focused entirely on his next hit of hash and on moving enough product to make that possible as a continuing way of life.

Mr. Banerjee was Hindu. He didn’t eat beef, but other than that had little or no interest in the religion of his birth and no patience whatever with religious fundamentalism. He was making a decent living and raising his daughters to be western. “All nonsense, that stuff about keeping women locked up,” he had said. “Fearful ridiculous men.”

After steaming café au lait and croissants at the bakery we walked the few blocks to the Camper Emporium and climbed the stairs to Charming Rene’s office.

“Your camper is ready for you,” Rene said. “In fact you have your pick of three. They are all in excellent condition and waiting for you to choose.”

The thin, serious woman by the door pressed her lips together, caught my eye and shook her head slightly.

Rene drove us to a storage lot in his Benz. The sky turned grey and started leaking, first a fine drizzle, then opaque sheets dropped over us as we sped through the semi-flooded streets. Rene parked inside what appeared to have been a World War II airplane hangar. We waited beside an open door for the rain to slacken looking out over a large muddy field scattered with various cars and trucks. The sky ran out of water and Rene led us to the far side of the lot stepping carefully in his shiny shoes.

Three VW campers slumped forlorn and tired, facing each other in a small huddle. One of them had once been bright orange. Now its brave color was faded and blochey. Rust edged the driver’s door and rocker panels. We climbed inside and I slipped the key in the ignition. Justin adjusted the mirror so he could inspect his new haircut. Foam poked through the upholstery. The starter ground a couple of times before the battery gave up.

The next one had once been white, now scabrous with rust. The rain started again. We ducked in the side door and sat in the rear seats. Rain dripped into a puddle in front of the cabinet that housed the stove and sink. The upholstery was worn thin and water stained. Everything smelled of mold. The puddle grew deeper.

The third camper leaned to one side with a broken spring. Its windshield was cracked. The side panel had a long deep crease. It was a broken relic. I didn’t have the heart to try and start the poor thing. None of them looked like they had ever had a good time with a happy family. Or if they had it had been long ago and since then they had been run hard, abused and abandoned.

“Yes, that’s right,” Rene said. “A full bumper to bumper warranty covers absolutely everything, except the engine and transmission. Oh, and the brakes. Guaranteed for a full week anywhere within fifty miles of Amsterdam.”

“But we’re going to France and Spain and Italy.”

Rene smiled a brilliant, cheery smile. “Completely worthless isn’t it,” said with a confidential air.

I remembered our shiny new VW camper when the boys were little, the California coast, splashing in tide pools and wandering our way up the coast to Vancouver and then back south through the Sierra. We were supposed to be on the road for Paris today.

“I think the white one is best, don’t you?” asked Rene. “I’ll have it cleaned up and serviced for you. It will be perfect. Tomorrow the sun will be shining. You will have your home on wheels. The road awaits you.”

Charming Rene agreed to wait for us in the hangar while Justin and I sat in the white camper and talked, the water from the wet seat seeping through my pants.

“What do you think,” I asked.

“Dad? Are you nuts? We’ll be on the side of the road somewhere in Spain with a blown engine.”

“But what about the trip? We’ll have to run from hotel to hotel. Summer crowds, no rooms, you remember. It’ll be totally different than we planned.”

“We have the sleeping bags and the tarp.”

We had packed ultra light sleeping bags and a tissue weight nylon tarp in our miserable luggage, planning to use the sleeping bags in the camper. The tarp would serve as a sunshade or “just in case.” It looked like “just in case” had arrived.

“You OK with that? A tarp in the Sierra is one thing. Europe is different.”

“Don’t get this sorry wreck for me. I’ll be OK. We can still stay in campgrounds.”

True, we could. Free camping would not work without a camping car, and then there was the thought of the hard ground and my old bones…

“It won’t be what I wanted it to be. I wanted the trip to be…”

“Dad, you told me a hundred times, ‘It’ll be what it’ll be.’”

Wisdom from the young, words I had forgotten. I was pushing too hard.

“You sure?”

“Dad. Are, you, nuts? Let’s get out of here.”

We left Charming Rene at his office and returned to the hotel for our bags. Mr. Ahmed waved goodbye to the Californias from the threadbare couch in the lobby. The rental agency was next to the train station. I gave the girl behind the counter a credit card and twenty minutes later we were in a tiny mussel-shell of a car with the awful bags in the trunk.

We fled through the streets of Amsterdam as if werewolves were snarling at our heels. I hit the on ramp and got my foot down and kept it there. The omens were not clear. We had no camper and no sure plan. But no matter, we were headed south and the sun was breaking through. We were on our way.

The Jaguar’s Heart opens explosively during the assassination of a U.S. presidential candidate and takes the reader an a high speed ride into the world of Sangre de Dios, a shadowy cult steeped in Aztec and Mayan mythology and sorcery. Jesse J. Rideout, former covert operator now a fugitive and artifact smuggler, must undergo a mind-bending transformation to destroy an ancient horror and avert a war that would cause the deaths of millions. Katarina Castillo, daughter of the aristocracy, is Jesse’s partner in their desperate attempt to stop the cult, which has subverted the highest levels of U.S. government. Their only ally is the secretive Society of the White Rose, sworn enemies of Sangre de Dios, whose demonic leader promises immortality for the chosen few and slavery for the rest of mankind. This riveting thriller contains a love triangle and the story of a young woman facing unimaginable horror and discovering new depths of courage, and the development of a young, patriotic, covert operator into a mature, self assured, independent man.

• Prologue And First Three Chapters
• Reviews

Some of us are gun nerds, like computer nerds into the intricacies of guns and having no real application for them. Some are professional soldiers or law enforcement officers, some are military or former military, but the great majority are regular folks who enjoy the shooting sports, or who collect guns much like others collect art, stamps or French wine.

This book goes a fair distance beyond the basics and introduces the first time gun owner, or the gun owner with limited experience, to the many uses of the gun, such as hunting, sporting competition and self-defense. Given the critical nature of self-defense this book contains considerable detail on effective self-defense with firearms.

Also included are resources for additional information on the legal aspects of gun ownership, manufacturers of guns and related products, and other helpful hints and directions for new gun owners.

I have been a gun user for a half-century and either carried a firearm or kept one close to hand more or less daily for over thirty years. I have never yet had an accidental discharge. I generally hit what I aim at and have never shot anything I didn’t mean to shoot, although I’ve regretted some of the shots I have taken. I’ve successfully hunted large and small game and have been obliged to defend myself and others in armed conflicts in various countries around the world.

My intent in giving you a little of my history is not to impress you with my background and knowledge, which is undistinguished and meager compared to many others. Rather to let you know that the information in this book comes from someone at least minimally qualified to write on the subject. There are experts on various aspects of the gun and its usage whose opinions differ from mine. I cannot say they are wrong because their experience has led them to their own conclusions. But based on my own experiences I can, and do on occasion, respectfully disagree with them.

Stories are often remembered long after facts and figures have drifted away. So I have included a few stories meant to illustrate certain points and possibly to entertain and stimulate reflection, all of them taken from true life events. I hope you find the information in this book to be helpful if you decide to take to the field in pursuit of game or to the range in pursuit of that perfect score, and that you never have occasion to use any of these skills in defense of your life or that of your loved ones.

Sincerely,

James Morgan Ayres

Self Defense With Firearms

Introduction

The subject of armed self-defense is one of the utmost seriousness, one that is too often treated lightly. Doing violence to another person in the real world has nothing in common with ballet like choreographed movie violence. Violence is an ugly thing, a thing that will remain in your memory if you have the misfortune to witness or take part in such events.

I will discuss this subject based on my experience and observations and will do so in a realistic manner. Therefore, some of the language that follows will be, of necessity, a little rough, in some cases graphic, but no more so than needed to make certain points. It in not my intention to shock and I do not pander to those who enjoy vicarious bloody “war stories.” I recount certain events to instruct only and do so only in consideration of the possibility that such instruction might save the lives of good people.

When Native Americans first encountered Europeans with guns they concluded, based on their observations, that the European’s guns killed by producing a loud noise that killed by shock. Although good observers the Indians were incorrect in their conclusions. They simply didn’t have enough information or experience to reach the correct conclusion. That came later.

Many people today have beliefs about firearms that are equally erroneous. Few peaceful civilians in our culture have witnessed someone being shot. Fewer still have taken part in a gunfight. Most people get their impressions from movies and television. Based on these fictional depictions many seem to think that a handgun functions as some sort of paralytic device. The actor pulls a trigger, the movie gun seems to make a loud noise and someone falls down, often with no evidence of injury, or perhaps a small smear of fake blood. In more graphic films there may be a lot of movie blood, there may even be some simulated effects and some acting that simulates real world wounding.

We all know that movies and TV are fiction. We may even know that the movie gun is a prop incapable of firing live ammunition and that the noise is stripped in when the sound track is added. But repetitious viewing creates the unconscious belief that this is how guns work in the real world. They do not. This belief is as incorrect as the one held by first contact Native Americans. Guns are basically highly sophisticated rock throwers. They are not instant paralytic rays.

When a person fires a handgun at another person they usually miss. If they do hit their human target the bullet makes a hole in them. This usually results in a great deal of pain and much blood, more than you might imagine if you haven’t witnessed such events. When someone is wounded they often thrash around, scream, curse, cry, and run away, or perhaps fall down depending on a universe of variables. Various body tissues are sometimes exposed or ripped from the body. An expression, which seems to popular these days in movies about criminals is, “brains on the wall.” This is not in fact a metaphor. When a powerful bullet breaches the cranial vault brains do get splattered on walls, and elsewhere, along with bits of bone and other body tissues.

It is far more traumatic to witness this sort of thing in real life than to watch a sanitized, choreographed movie. If you do have such an experience the odds are you will experience a post traumatic psychological effect, whether you are the person who pulled the trigger, the one who got shot, or a bystander. If you are the agent of such violence you will find that the only way to live with having brought this to a fellow human is if you were totally justified in your actions. If you have fired to save your life or the life of a loved one or to prevent rape or other violence you will have the consolation of knowing you acted righteously. But you’ll still carry the weight and the memory.

As a moral person trying to defend yourself you do not shoot with the intention to kill. But it is impossible to shoot with the certainly you will only wound. No matter how much skill you have, once the bullet leaves the muzzle it can bring death to another. Your intention should be to simply stop the assailant, but things happen fast in violent encounters and there are no guarantees. Moreover, it is virtually impossible to effect such a stop without risking a lethal result.

I often hear rough and casual talk about shooting and killing, usually by people who have no experience of being shot at, or shooting at another person, or in fact of any violence other than the schoolyard variety. Such talk grates on my sensibilities, as it should on yours. Soldiers objectify their enemies in order to function and do what their duty requires of them. Rough dehumanizing talk is sometimes part of a soldier’s life. It should be no part of being an armed civilian.

Five hundred years ago John Donne wrote:

“No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me… and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

This comes down to us as literature, and like much great literature it contains a simple truth. If you have the great misfortune to be placed in a situation where you must take another’s life in order to survive, the experience will change you, and in not in any movie macho way. It will diminish you.

We live in a random and sometime violent world. Any of us might be forced to violence to protect a loved one or ourselves. The only thing worse than being forced to do violence is to witness the death or violation of a loved one, or to have such done to oneself. The decision to arm or not to arm yourself is yours alone. It is not mine.

I am neither an advocate nor an opponent of armed self-defense. Arming oneself is a moral issue with legal consequences, an issue that each must decide for themselves. If you have made your decision, and if the decision is to arm yourself, the following information may be of some value to you.