Eureka Spills

Eureka Spills

Vicki Williams

Copyright © 2013 by Vicki Williams

Smashwords Edition

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

About the Author

Introduction – The Circle of Time

Shea Rafferty walked into the Sagebrush Saloon dressed in faded jeans, a denim shirt, beat-up brown cowboy boots and a worn gray cowboy hat. This particular wardrobe was almost a uniform with Sagebrush patrons. It was a place where local ranchers and cowboys came to tip a couple cold ones when a hard, dirty day’s work was done.

Shea’s skin was the deep tan of a man who spent most of his time outdoors. Light brown sun-streaked hair hung down to his shoulders. He was medium height with a body that was hard, lean and graceful. He moved so quietly, he often startled people by appearing before they realized he was there. His chiseled face featured high cheekbones, a straight nose and an easy smile. But what was most compelling about Shea were eyes as gold and enigmatic as a cat’s eyes. As always, he was followed by his dog, Chivas, a blue merle Collie - not the smaller, silky-coated, needle-nose variety show Collie breeders preferred these days, but the larger, rough-coated working dogs of the past. Chivas took his place at Shea’s feet. Like Shea himself, Chivas tended to keep a low profile.

Shea had appeared at the Sorrel Canyon Ranch seven years ago, when he was only 16, and begged the owner, Mitch Lassiter, for a job, offering to work for half a cowboy’s wages until he learned enough that Mitch thought he deserved full pay. The boy was skinny and hungry and hollow-eyed, with the 1000-yard stare most common among combat soldiers. Mitch had fed him and taken him in and he’d never had any reason to be sorry he’d given the kid a chance. He turned out to be a hard worker and a fast learner with a special talent for training both dogs and horses. When people asked him how he succeeded in convincing the most recalcitrant animal to obey his commands, he said it was because he asked them rather than ordered them. No one at Sorrel Canyon quite understood that philosophy but it worked and that was the main thing.

Shea was friendly and even-tempered, although he often gave people the feeling that the placid exterior was a disguise for something more complicated...still waters and all that. Even when he drank, he wasn’t loud or boisterous. He never caused trouble. But so far as anyone in the small town of Ontesa knew, he’d never confided to a single soul about his life before he arrived at Sorrel Canyon. Not even to his women and there had been several. Those relationships never lasted very long but most of them had ended amicably. All his ladies would have been happy to connect with him in a more permanent way if he’d asked but he never did.

The Sagebrush wasn’t a tourist tavern just as Ontesa wasn’t a tourist town. It didn’t feature spurs and hats and six shooters mounted on the walls or saddles on the stools. There was no picture of a dancehall woman hanging above the bar and no player piano, just a jukebox featuring mostly country tunes. The floors were planked and the tables and chairs were plain wood and the decorations were mostly gifts from beer companies. It would have come as something of a shock to the regulars if a stranger had ever walked in the place.

Shea chit-chatted with the other patrons about cows and horses and weather while he drank his beer, then he and Chivas hopped into his old blue Dodge Ram pick up and headed the ten miles back to the ranch. Home was a three-room wooden cabin. He’d built it himself on five acres Mitch Lassiter had sold him, about three miles from the main house. The downstairs consisted of a living room and an eat-in kitchen. Upstairs was a loft bedroom. The compactness of the tidy house suited Shea. There was a gray leather recliner and a comfortable blue over-stuffed sofa in front of the stone fireplace in the living room with a flat screen t.v. mounted above it. There was a four-shelf bookcase in one corner and a desk holding a computer in the other. Besides the usual appliances, there was an oak table and two chairs in the kitchen. The bathroom contained a shower, a sink and a stool and upstairs was an air mattress on the floor with a pile of pillows and blankets that kept him warm on the coldest night. Two rocking chairs sat on a wooden porch with an overhanging roof that ran along the front of the house. There was a corral with a small barn in back for his personal horses – a black Quarter Horse named Mohave and a silver Arab mare named Sahara. He rode them depending on whether the day’s work was going to call more for speed (Sahara) or more for stamina (Mohave).

Mitch Lassiter had installed his own satellite tower at the ranch so Shea had good television reception, high speed internet and reliable cell phone service even though the ranch was located in the back of beyond in northern New Mexico.

He’d just pulled off his boots and jeans when his phone rang. He sat on the sofa in shorts and shirt to answer it. He saw from his caller i.d. that it was his twin sister, Megan. He loved Megan but more often than not, they ended up arguing when they talked.

Hi Shea.

Hi, Meggie, how’s it going?

Not good, she said. He could tell that she was trying for self-control but a sob escaped. Shea, Daddy is dying. He’s got pancreatic cancer. They say he may have two months, at best. He’s distraught about you. He told me he couldn’t bear to die without knowing what happened to you. I’ve abided by my promise never to tell him I know where you are even though I didn’t agree with it, but I’m begging you, please come and see him before it’s too late. Please, Shea.

He knew there would be tears running down her face and that made him feel terrible but he just couldn’t change his mind about his father.

I told you I’d never come back until that bastard was dead and in the ground and I meant it, Meg.

She’d got a grip on herself by then and her voice turned to ice. "Okay, let me put it to you like this then, Asshole. He said he’s going to change his will and leave everything to me since he

doesn’t know if you’re even still alive."

He interrupted her. I don’t want his fucking money!

Shut up for a minute, Shea. When we talk, you’re always going on about the wild horses out there....how much you love them...how their range is being depleted....how the government rounds them up and tries to sell them but there aren’t enough homes so many of them get butchered. You know how rich Daddy is, Shea. You could probably buy a million acres with your inheritance. You could start a refuge. Think how much you could do for those horses....and all you have to do is swallow your hatred long enough to give a sick old man some peace of mind. That sounds like a pretty fair trade to me, Shea....if you really care as much about those horses as you say you do.

Shea ran a hand through his sun-streaked hair and went momentarily silent. He could picture her on the other end of the line – slender, like him. Her face, the feminine version of his own except for green eyes instead of gold, would be pulled into tight, angry lines right now. Her mouth pinched and her eyes narrowed with disapproval. Finally he said, give me a couple days to think about this, Meg. I’ll call you back on Thursday.

When they hung up, he opened a can of food for his long-haired black cat, Clancy, then took a shower and made himself and Chivas each an egg sandwich. When he finished eating, he got himself another beer and went out to sit in one of the rockers on the porch, Chivas at his feet and Clancy curled up on one shoulder. It was a deep summer night. The breeze was warm and carried the faint scent of pine and sage, along with a hint of horse manure (which he considered an appealing smell). The sky was cloudless, blooming with the light of a million stars. He could hear the rippling of the stream that ran beside the house and coyotes singing off in the distance.

After the conversation with Megan, his thoughts traveled back in time to his childhood... if you could call it a childhood. He groaned and Chivas, sensing his distress, put his front paws on his lap and nosed him under the arm in sympathy. Shea ruffled his ears. Clancy nestled closer into the crook of his neck as if to provide his own kind of comfort.

I know, Boys, You’re always on my side and that means a lot. I expect this is the way of life. When you run away, you think you’re running in a straight line but the reality turns out to be that you’re going in a big fucking circle that brings you right back to where you started until you deal with it. Ah, fucking Christ, and here I thought I was home free.

He leaned his head against the back of the chair and let the memories flood in.

The first image that flashed into his mind’s-eye was the house in which he’d grown up, a grand brownstone in Georgetown, 11 rooms on three floors, full of priceless antique furnishings. He felt again his mother’s gentle kiss when she tucked him into bed. In his recollection, she was as beautiful and sweet as an angel, her pale blonde hair pulled back in a chignon, her melting brown eyes a’brim with love. He realized that, like most kids who lost parents young, he most likely attributed to her perfection no living human could have attained.

He barely recalled his father being around in those very early years. He was always out of the country on some secret and dangerous operation or other. When he did come home, he filled the house with his powerful, authoritarian presence, Shea and Meg tried to stay out of his way in order not to displease him. He was short-tempered and sarcastic and impatient with even minor mistakes, full of aggressive energy, like a tornado roaring through the house, assigning tasks to each member of his family. Even his smile seemed condescending rather than genuine. They could never wait until the tall, muscular, uniformed man with the blonde buzz cut and the glacial blue eyes was gone again.

Their lives had been more or less normal until his mother died when he and Meg were four. His father hired a governess/nanny/au pair, whatever you wanted to call her, to care for the children. Nancy was a nice enough, if impersonal woman, who took competent care of them. He and Megan liked her all right but, of course, she couldn’t begin to make up for the devastating grief over the loss of their mother and, at any rate, wasn’t interested in trying.

As Megan had reminded him, his family was, not just affluent, but rich, beyond rich even. They were definitely part of the top one percent, his father holding down a spot high up on Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. It was inherited money. Through wise decisions about whom to trust with his investments, their father had increased his assets substantially but Patrick Conor Rafferty (Captain Rafferty, that would be, and don’t you forget it) wasn’t about money. He took it for granted, spending it on what he wanted, but not much interested in the details of how it came to be available.

No, his life revolved around the Navy, in general, and his SEAL team, in particular. He loved his Team, the Navy and his Country, in that order. His family came in a poor fourth to that revered triumvirate.

A year and a half after Liella Rafferty died, when the twins were barely five, Patrick Rafferty was critically wounded in a rescue operation in Afghanistan. He spent his first weeks in the hospital in Germany barely clinging to survival, but he fought his way back, until he was released to be shipped home to Walter Reed Naval Hospital. Then came months in rehab. He showed the same dedication and grit in his therapy as he did at everything else but nevertheless, the navy retired him as no longer fit for active duty. He could have had a desk job in Washington had he wanted it but he didn’t. If the children had mourned the loss of their mother, the Captain was stricken over the loss of his vocation. Being a SEAL had been his world and he was left with nothing to replace it....until he decided to make turning his son into the youngest SEAL his new mission in life.

Chapter One – The Youngest SEAL

Shea could remember every word of the conversation in which his father had laid out his plan.

Being a SEAL is the highest calling any man can have. I was one of the best, Shea. You’re going to follow in my footsteps and be even better because I’m going to have you prepared within an inch of your life before you ever apply. You’ll be so far ahead of the game, no one else will compare. You’ll be the toughest, smartest, most well-trained recruit the Navy ever had.

Shea hadn’t the faintest clue what his father meant at the time but he soon learned, oh, yes, he learned. Patrick poured every bit of his energy and aggression into molding his son into the military man he wanted him to be.

First, Patrick enrolled Meg in a Catholic convent school while he home-schooled Shea. Ripping the two children apart was a brutal psychic surgery for Shea and Megan. They had always shared the bond common between twins and they’d clung to one another even more tightly after their mother’s death. They were one another’s best friend and main source of comfort and support in the face of their father’s intimidating authority. Both felt lost and alone without the other, Meg in her dorm room at Divine Blood and Shea, the sole target of Patrick’s attention.

Nevertheless, life went on. Patrick was a hard taskmaster. Shea often fell asleep at his desk trying to complete his assignments. He was laid over his father’s knee and paddled for missing a spelling word. He went to bed without dinner for the wrong answer on a math problem. Worse than those things was the disgust in his father’s voice when Shea disappointed him. In a short time, Shea was miles ahead of most students his age.

But his schooling was the least of it compared to the Junior SEAL course, Patrick created and implemented for his son.

It began with running with a pack. He didn’t have to run very far at first and his pack wasn’t very heavy though far and heavy are relative terms for a five-year-old. (As he got older, the distances got longer and the packs grew larger). He could still feel the deep ache in his calves

and the jagged stitch in his side as his father jogged beside him, encouraging him to keep going, keep going! until sweat was pouring down his body and his lungs felt as if they were ready to burst. He could remember collapsing on the ground, gasping and sobbing, when he was finally given permission to stop. He could still feel the hot tears running down his cheeks. And again, the scorching contempt in his father’s voice when he told him that SEALs aren’t pussies, Shea, they’re men, they don’t cry like little babies.

Some of his father’s training could have been fun if Patrick hadn’t carried everything to exhausting and painful extremes. Swimming, for instance. As with running, Shea would be ordered to do laps until he almost thought drowning would have been preferable to forcing his cramping limbs to go any farther. Or having his head held under water until he was choking in order to increase his capacity for holding his breath. It started with 45 seconds, then progressed to a minute, two minutes, and as he got older, three minutes. Patrick said it wasn’t uncommon for SEALs taught free-diving breathing techniques to hold their breath for nine minutes or even more. Shea hoped he never had to try to find out if he could hold his breath for nine minutes.

Before he was ten, he was proficient with every kind of firearm, including pistols, semi-automatic hand guns, sniper rifles, shotguns and assault weapons. He could field strip them and put them back together in the dark. He could change out magazines in a little over a second and reload a 30 round clip in half a minute.

Patrick took his son hunting in different environments. Shea learned to sit in a duck blind or a deer stand for hours without sound or movement. He learned to make every shot count. He’d killed water birds and upland birds as well as deer and wild boar and coyotes and bears by the time he was a teenager. His punishment for wasting a shot or wounding an animal instead of killing it was to drop his pants and do 100 push ups while being whipped with his father’s belt. By then, he no longer cried. He hated killing things even worse than his own pain.

At the end of the day, Patrick always came to his bed and gently massaged liniment into strained muscles or applied disinfectant to cuts or soothing salve to bruises, saying, I know you think I’m being cruel, Shea, but you understand, don’t you, why I have to do this. It’s for your own good, to make you tough so you can handle anything that comes your way.

And Shea would nod and think, I hate you.

They went camping in the woods and his father taught him how to build a fire and a lean-to, how to set a snare and spear a fish. He showed him what plants were safe to eat. They ate crickets and grubs because you might yourself in a position where that’s the only way to survive. Shea shuddered remembering how hard it was not to gag and vomit but knowing his father would make him do it over until he kept them down so it was better to get through it the first time.

When he was eight, Patrick took him to a swampy woods in Georgia so everything would be unfamiliar and dropped him off with a knife, a string, a canteen of water and a pack of matches. He was dressed in woodland camouflage, the clothing his father favored.

I’ll be back to pick you up in three days. Don’t worry about getting lost, I’ll find you. Shea watched him drive off, leaving him alone. He’d never felt so abandoned in his life, not even when his mother died. At first, he just found a dead log and sat and cried. The hell with being a man. He wasn’t a man. He was only eight!

Eventually though, the training he’d received under his father’s harsh tutelage began to kick in. He did, in fact, manage to build himself a rough kind of shelter with saplings and pine boughs he cut with his knife. He made notches in trees and noted landmarks so he’d be able to find his way back, then went off to investigate his surroundings. He didn’t see much, just your basic woods interspersed with some swampy areas. There wasn’t any wildlife that he could tell at first glance and he didn’t know how he’d catch it anyway with only a knife and a string. He did try to set a snare but it was a pitiful looking affair and he didn’t expect it would be successful. There was a fair-sized stream running through the woods. There were even some fish in it but no matter how hard he tried, they skittered away from the pointed spear he’d carved. He did find some wild blackberry bushes. The berries weren’t quite ripe yet but he picked some anyway, making a little basket out of the bottom of his shirt.

He went back to his lean-to and carefully built a fire as his father had taught him. First, he made a little pile of tinder, small sticks and dry moss and bark, and when that was burning well, he added some larger sticks and finally two larger dead logs that he thought would burn most of the night.

He gathered more pine boughs for a bed and snuggled into his shelter. Despite the fire, he was cold. Despite the few berries, he was hungry. He was also frightened and lonely.

His fire died in the night. He woke up stiff and chilled and starving. He still wasn’t desperate enough to consider eating grubs so he returned to the creek and forced himself to be patient. After many tries, he managed to spear a small fish. Besides that he turned over rocks and gathered a shirttail full of crawdads. He picked some more not-quite-ripe raspberries. They were tart and not very tasty but they were food.

He wrapped the crawfish in green leaves and buried them in the ashes of the previous night’s fire, then he got it burning again. He made a rough rotisserie on which to cook his fish. It wasn’t an especially satisfying meal. The fish was a little too raw and the crawfish were a little too done and the raspberries were a little too green but altogether, it managed to allay the worst of his hunger pangs.

That day, he carefully reconnoitered the outskirts of the swamp. He didn’t want to fall in and get wet. It was cold enough already without that. He sat for a while and simply watched. He saw frogs and turtles. He hunted until he found a forked stick. Then, although he hated to give it up, he took his shirt off and tied it to the separate branches of the stick