The Road to Amistad Read online

  THE ROAD

  TO

  AMISTAD

  By

  Ken Dickson

  Although this novel is intentionally written like a memoir, the events described are purely fictional. Many of the characters are based on real people, but their names have been changed for privacy. A few actual names were used by permission. Many scenes and locations are real and described as they appeared during the snapshot of time in the narrative. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  Copyright © 2016 Ken Dickson

  In loving memory of my father, Dr. LeRoy David Dickson

  “When the Red-tailed Hawk seizes us in his powerful talons, we will awaken to who we have become and the veil of self-created illusion will fall. Only then will our inner truths shine.”

  Native American legend

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 : Verge of Tears

  Chapter 2 : Suite 103

  Chapter 3 : A Toast to Mia

  Chapter 4 : Awakening

  Chapter 5 : Just like Me

  Chapter 6 : For the Love of Puzzles

  Chapter 7 : Building Steam

  Chapter 8 : Unknown Caller

  Chapter 9 : Beckoning

  Chapter 10 : The Great Disparity

  Chapter 11 : The Money Train

  Chapter 12 : The Rise of Resilients

  Chapter 13 : Float like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee

  Chapter 14 : Roll the Dice

  Chapter 15 : Kiwanis

  Chapter 16 : Trouble in Paradise

  Chapter 17 : Life on the Street

  Chapter 18 : Landowner

  Chapter 19 : Comfort

  Chapter 20 : The Garden

  Chapter 21 : Taking a Stand

  Chapter 22 : Home on Wheels

  Chapter 23 : Second Son

  Chapter 24 : Walking in a Dream

  Chapter 25 : From Expertise to Passion

  Chapter 26 : Staking a Claim

  Chapter 27 : Treat her like a Lady

  Chapter 28 : A Woman’s Touch

  Chapter 29 : Rescue Mission

  Chapter 30 : Changed Men

  Chapter 31 : Embracing Primera

  Chapter 32 : A lLife of its Own

  Chapter 33 : Honor Thy Father

  Chapter 34 : A Favor

  Chapter 35 : The Patsy

  Chapter 36 : The Apparition

  Chapter 37 : Cut

  Chapter 38 : Zero to Violent

  Chapter 39 : From Freedom to Fortress

  Chapter 40 : In Search of Answers

  Chapter 41 : Goodbye, My Friend

  Chapter 42 : Ten Down

  Chapter 43 : Suite 103

  Chapter 44 : The Fruit of Hate

  Chapter 45 : Caspian

  Chapter 46 : On a Mountain Meadow

  Chapter 47 : Shifting Gears

  Chapter 48 : The Cross Test

  Chapter 49 : Beth

  Chapter 50 : Amistad

  Chapter 51 : Finding Hope

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  OTHER BOOKS BY KEN DICKSON

  Chapter 1

  VERGE OF TEARS

  On April 14, 2011, I admitted myself into Desert Hope Hospital near Phoenix, Arizona with horrific abdominal pain. So began the strangest journey of my life. Over the next twelve days, doctors removed ten inches of my colon, starved me for nine days and a hospital super bug nearly killed me. During my stay, I received twenty-seven different medications to save my life. I recovered and thought it was over, but instead, it was only beginning. The medications and surgery started an unstoppable reaction in my body that, at first, caused insomnia and then strange, paralyzing seizures.

  Mistaking my seizures for anxiety attacks, an emergency room doctor transferred me to Pinecrest, a psychiatric facility, stating that they were better equipped to handle my insomnia. Without consulting my medical records, the Pinecrest psychiatrist put me on three psychotropic medications the moment I walked through the door, making an already tenuous situation worse. Within days, my mind raced wildly with negative thoughts, and my body reacted accordingly with negative emotions, making me feel as though I was in a state of perpetual panic.

  At the time, I wasn’t curious as to why there were only negative thoughts, but looking back now, I can see that those are the thoughts that occupied my mind most of the time: regrets over the past, worries about the future, anger, frustration, heartache. The list seemed endless, and in the state I was in, every entry on the list screamed for attention like a petulant child. It felt like my head would explode if I didn’t find relief. As an engineer, I spent most of my life solving problems. Surely, there was a resolution for this one. I lay on my rock-hard psych ward bed and, despite the turmoil in my mind, brainstormed a solution.

  An idea eventually eclipsed the din: acknowledge the thought, and it will thrive; ignore it, and it will die. I realized in that moment that no matter how fearful or twisted a thought seemed, it only existed in my mind and was therefore of no significance in the grand scheme of things. Consequently, none of the negative thoughts spinning through my mind mattered. I applied this philosophy to each thought as it took its turn shouting at me from center stage by repeating this expression in my head: It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

  One by one, the thoughts vaporized, calming my mind proportionally each time. Over a period of hours, I succeeded in lessening the cacophony to a tolerable level. I could have stopped there, but the process intrigued me, and I wondered, what happens if I shut them all down? My curiosity overcame me, and even though I was sweaty and fatigued, I continued until no negative thoughts remained. Unknowingly, I accomplished the unimaginable. I separated from the ego that, until then, had defined me and ruled my life. By doing so, I inadvertently jettisoned a lifetime of baggage.

  Only weeks before, I was perfectly healthy and normal—a beloved father and husband, and a well-respected engineer at a local semiconductor manufacturing company. Now, with my identity wiped clean and my mind free of entanglements to the past and future, that life seemed like it never existed. I was born anew, much like a butterfly shedding its cocoon.

  I tried to explain what happened to me, but my story only served to reinforce everyone’s greatest fear: that I’d lost it. I bounced from psych ward to psych ward after that until I landed at the last stop—Gracewood, one of the highest security psych wards in the Phoenix metro area. Surprisingly, in a place where every patient was a danger to himself and others, I found safety from the chaos that had dominated my life until then. At the same time, I took a stand for myself and refused further medications, which allowed me to embrace my changes fully and see the world as if for the first time—free of anger, hurt, guilt and shame, and instead filled with love, compassion and enthusiasm.

  I experienced life then as a pure, simple human being. I was curious, alert, aware and unhampered by my former burdens. I wondered if perhaps the rapture had occurred as was predicted at that time by Christian radio host Harold Camping and if this is the way it was going to be for everyone. I was excited about life and about the potential for humanity if what happened to me was reproducible. I even speculated that it was contagious. I envisioned a world without suffering or disease and became obsessed with enabling that world to exist.

  At the core of my focus was an idea that I dubbed Utopia—a grand science project to study how people who changed like me would work together to prepare for the new world ahead, speed the process of change and quicken the end of human suffering. I wrote profusely and talked feverishly of my ideas, which made me
seem even more insane. Ultimately, a judge ruled that I was persistently and acutely disabled and filed a court order forcing medication upon me. If I refused, PAs would restrain me, a nurse would inject the medication, and I’d spend up to an additional one hundred and eighty days at Gracewood. Reluctantly, I capitulated.

  Within hours, my high spirits and visions ended as the medication catapulted me into an emotionally flat life I called the “verge of tears.” I no longer felt joy or happiness, and the slightest negative incident left me sobbing. Satisfied with my progress, Dr. Davis, my psychiatrist at Gracewood, freed me to return to the normal world with the stipulation that I undergo periodic blood tests to ensure my continued compliance.

  Despite the numbness of my existence, I never lost hope that humanity was destined for something greater. By day, I commuted in rush hour traffic, sorted through data at my job and patched up broken relationships—the collateral damage from my bout of mental illness. By night, I dreamed of Utopia and beyond, and of finding others like myself. Some day, I vowed, I’ll find them. It’s not over. It can’t be.

  Days stretched to weeks and weeks grew to months with every day blending with the next in dull monotony. It appeared as though everyone was right; my visions really were crazy. Then, hours after a gurney delivered me once more to a hospital emergency room, I had a dream, a dream that ushered in a new beginning.

  Chapter 2

  SUITE 103

  I lay reclined and loosely restrained in a threadbare recliner in the middle of what appeared to be an automotive shop. In front of me, set in a cinder block wall, was a rolling commercial garage door and to the right of that, a fireproof steel door. That door was slightly ajar, but I could discern nothing of the outside world in that thin sliver of light. A small folding table sat to the right of the recliner with an odd assortment of items: a stapler, a clear plastic box of thumbtacks, a soldering iron plugged into an extension cord, an X-acto knife and a roll of duct tape. Beyond that, a blue hydraulic automotive lift rose from the floor and a large, red, roll-around toolbox and various types of welding equipment stood against a wall. Behind me, on the other side of the recliner, were two cars protected by brand new gray polyester car covers. The place reeked of tire rubber, engine oil, anti-freeze and car exhaust.

  I evaluated my restraint—a tattered and stained seat belt bearing the unmistakable Cadillac crest. I could free myself from this any time and escape through that open door, I thought, but for some reason, it was impossible. I was frozen to that recliner.

  The steel door creaked open. As it did, I noticed the number 103 stenciled on its exterior in sun-faded numbers. A handsome and fashionably dressed man peered cautiously around and then walked stealthily toward me, stopping directly in front of me. His strong build, perfectly styled blond hair and chiseled features made me wonder if he were a celebrity. Tears filled his eyes as if something terrible had happened.

  “I’m so sorry for getting you into this mess. I wish I could help, but it’s out of my hands now. If you make it through this, I promise that things will be different. I’ve changed—you’ll see.” I heard footsteps behind me, and the man looked in that direction in panic. “Jesus. I gotta go.” He placed his index finger to his lips, whispered “shh” and then backed quietly through the steel door, leaving it precisely as ajar as it was before.

  A fit-looking dark-skinned man with a tight corn-row hairstyle and a shorter, gaunt, pale-skinned man with bloodshot eyes and sunken cheeks entered the shop from a back room and approached the table. “What the fuck is this shit?” the gaunt man demanded.

  “You told me that you wanted to hurt him, not kill him.”

  “Christ, you may be the smartest motherfucker I know, but you got short-changed on imagination. Let me show you how it’s fucking done.” He walked over to the toolbox, opened several drawers, slammed them closed and returned, tossing a large ball-peen hammer, bolt cutters and an ice pick on the table. Then, he rolled a cart with an oxyacetylene torch close by. Finally, he walked back to the room they had just come from and returned with a hammerless .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. “This doesn’t hold as many rounds as my other handguns, but it never fucking jams or misfires. I call it ‘Old Faithful.’” As he neared, he released the cylinder, dumped the five rounds into his left hand, pocketed four of them and returned one to the cylinder. He clicked it closed, spun it and then placed it on the table with the barrel facing directly at me.

  I should have unbuckled the seat belt and run through that open door, but I remained frozen to that recliner, my heart racing as I helplessly imagined the horrors awaiting me. The acetylene torch in particular eclipsed anything else.

  ***

  Barely a year earlier, a fuel line failed on a car on which I was working, soaking my right hand and the hot exhaust manifold with fuel. The heat ignited the fuel, and the flames spread to my hand before I could back away. I shook it, but that only made the flames burn hotter. Desperate, I ran for a two-and-a-half pound Halon fire extinguisher hanging from the wall near my workbench and quenched the flames on both my hand and the engine. The car suffered little damage, but my hand was a different story. I never forgot the oozing, raw flesh that never seemed to heal and the incessant pain. I suffered for weeks from that burn and had nightmares about gasoline-fueled fires ever since.

  ***

  I feared that I’d soon repeat that experience. As if he’d read my mind, the man reached down and picked one last item to add to the table: a red, plastic, three-gallon gasoline can. Fuel sloshed as he set it down.

  “I do like these thumbtacks,” the gaunt man said, picking up the box and shaking it. “They’ll make a fine appetizer.”

  “Just try and keep the mess down this time. I never did get all the blood out of the concrete in our office from that last guy.”

  “Stop whining and take off his fucking shoes and socks.”

  The man with the corn-rows complied, unlaced my shoes and dropped them one by one onto the filthy floor, followed by my socks. Then he backed away, leaving me in dread of what would happen next. With a sinister grin, the gaunt man dumped the box of tacks into his left hand and moved in front of me.

  “This is for my brother, you God-damned piece of shit.”

  I wanted to shout, “What are you talking about?” but my slack lips and stilled vocal chords failed to cooperate. While looking me straight in the eye, he thrust the first thumbtack into the tender arch of my left foot.

  Just then, I remembered how I shut down the cacophony of thought back at Pinecrest. In that moment of clarity, I knew what I must do to survive—block the thoughts once more. I didn’t know how that would alter my fate, but I followed my intuition regardless, repeating the same words: It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Each time fear attempted to take hold, I held it at bay with those words. When a tack pierced flesh, I felt almost nothing, only the slightest prick informing me that it indeed penetrated. It was the same with every tack he pressed into my feet until both of them resembled bloody pincushions and his hand was empty of tacks.

  A scowl crossed the man’s face. “Enough of this bullshit,” he said, reaching for the oxyacetylene cart. He turned both the oxygen and acetylene tank valves full-on and cranked up the gauge pressures, hefted the cutting torch, unwound its hose from the cart and twisted the gas valves on the cutting head. Then, he squeezed a flint igniter, causing an audible pop followed by the roar of a six thousand degree flame. If that wasn’t bad enough, he reached for the gas can.

  I panicked. I’ve got to get out of here. Move, damn it. Move! At that moment, warmth raced from my core to my extremities, and goose bumps sprang on my arms. Sensing that my paralysis had subsided, I released the seat belt and, despite the thumbtacks filling my feet, bolted for the door, never looking back.

  “Fuck!” I heard, followed by three clicks in rapid succession and then a deafening bang that caused my ears to ring. A .38 caliber slug ripped through the ai
r, narrowly missing my head, and a chunk of cinder block exploded from the wall in front of me. I threw open the door and ran so fast that I stumbled, fell and slid for several yards on damp earth. I scrambled to my feet, intent on continuing my mad dash, and then froze in disbelief of my surroundings.

  I expected to see row after row of small businesses identical to suite 103 surrounded by a sea of asphalt. Instead, desert stretched in every direction, even the one from which I’d just come, filled with saguaros, brittlebush, jumping cholla cactus and palo verde trees. The air was crisp, clean and smelled of creosote and rain. Ahead, a damp, rutty dirt road beckoned. A sliver of sunlight poured through parting rain clouds and illuminated it more brightly than anything else.

  I eagerly took a step toward that road, and that single footstep exhilarated me. I anxiously took another and then another until, filled with excitement, I was running at full speed down the road toward a beckoning mystery.

  I barely made it a hundred feet before I was out of breath. I stopped, bent over with my hands on my knees and gasped desperately. I looked longingly ahead, wishing I could discover what awaited me, but for some reason, I could not take another step. Color faded to gray as I gulped air ineffectively. Seconds later, the world went black as I lost consciousness and collapsed.

  I awoke feeling as if I was suffering an asthma attack. I inhaled deeply but could not get enough air. Initially, I was disoriented, but then the weight of reality struck me as I remembered where I was—in a bed at the telemetry ward of Chandler General Hospital, fighting for my life with only half of my heart functioning.

  Chapter 3

  A TOAST TO MIA

  “In closing, it fills my heart with joy to wish you both a happy and full life together, overflowing with God’s blessings. A toast to the bride and groom, my good friends, Luis and Mia, Mr. and Mrs. Luis Vega. Salud!” As Eduardo’s Reception Hall in West Phoenix erupted in cheers, Mia winked at the best man, Frank Stone. She’d always fancied him, but Frank had no interest in her in that regard. She was Rosa’s daughter and Jose Rodriguez’s favorite niece, a man who Frank thought of as a father. Besides, she was barely out of her teens. Frank longed for someone more seasoned: a fearless, independent woman who’d walked through fire and come out unscathed, someone much like himself. He was certain that one day, he’d find her.