All Things Return

The beauty of the early fall foliage failed to impress Howard as he drove along the winding back roads of southwest Missouri. His mind focused on but a single idea—finding another graveyard to add to the two dozen rural graveyards he’d already visited during the past week as he traveled southwesterly from his home in Harmony, Illinois. Howard made no time for idle thoughts now. Those times belonged to the past. His mission to exact retribution from the people he blamed for the destruction of his and Whitney’s lives demanded his full attention. Seeking out and searching through each of these backwoods cemeteries played a central role in his ultimate success.

  At the previous graveyards he visited, he found nothing close to a perfect fit. And that’s what he needed—a perfect fit. His plan allowed no room for error. His entire scheme depended on this part of the plan being done right. If he failed, the authorities or the cartel survivors would ensure that he either went to prison or was murdered. Therefore, he must keep going until he found the perfect information.

  In the distance at a bend in the road appeared a white wooden structure flanked by giant oak trees. Howard craned his neck attempting to spot a church steeple, but trees obstructed his view. Already late afternoon, he hoped to locate the cemetery that he drove these backwoods to find. Losing the sunlight meant coming all the way out here again tomorrow from Carthage, Missouri, some twenty miles away.

  Another hundred yards revealed what he hoped to see, a gleaming white spire with a large gold cross on top. “Good,” he said. That’s as much as he could do. Nothing would ever be great again, at least not during this lifetime. All the greats in his life were now forever buried with Whitney fifteen miles outside his hometown in Illinois. He parked the car in the deserted gravel lot beside the church and walked to the nearby cemetery.

  A quick estimate told him one hundred or more headstones awaited his quick inspection. It required only a second for Howard to scan the inscription on a headstone and move on to the next if the perfect fit didn’t appear. Already deep into the cemetery interior, he wasted no time. At this pace, he expected to cover the entire site within minutes, and then get back in his car and go on to the next burial site on the list. Only another thirty yards of weatherworn, sadly forsaken markers awaited his examination before he arrived back at the entrance. Looks like there’s nothing here either, he observed with disappointment. Right as he finished his thought there appeared, sitting off to the side, a small, unadorned headstone sitting beside two larger markers. Howard stopped dead in his tracks. He read and then reread the inscription.

  JOSEPH DAVID RIGHT—BORN APRIL 12, 1952—DIED OCTOBER 23, 1961. THE ONLY BELOVED CHILD OF JOHN RILEY RIGHT AND MOLLY MAY RIGHT.

  The words written on the small marker mesmerized Howard. “This is it, a perfect fit,” he exclaimed upon collecting his wits. Here before him lay a young boy who died before ever going out into the world and making a name for himself. He never held a job, never acquired a Social Security number, never attended high school, never dated or played sports. No one would remember this child but family, and there, right beside him, lay buried his mother and father. The marker read “Only Beloved Child,” so there were no siblings to worry about. He looked around the plot searching for other Rights in the area, but he saw not a one. Then he noticed the plot hadn’t been tended to for years—another indication of a lack of relatives close by. This was it. A perfect fit.

  This discovery represented a solemn moment for Howard. To honor it, he sat on the cool grass beside the boy’s grave and paid reverence to his short existence. If this young boy’s spirit was close by, Howard wanted to assure it that he had no intentions of bringing disrespect to the name Joseph David Right. He would, henceforth, honor it through a lifetime of labor for the benefit of his fellow man. “Thank you,” said Howard. “Joseph David Right will be a good man.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT