A World of Possibility

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  At the supper table on Saturday night, Tom turned to his wife. “Sam and I have business to attend to tonight. We’ll be late getting back, so don’t wait up for us.”

  Martha, being a dutiful wife, nodded and didn’t say a word. She always wondered where her husband went so late at night to take care of business, but he never told her and he made it clear it was not her concern. She hoped what he was doing was honorable, but she had serious doubts.

  The late afternoon sky had been heavily overcast. The air was damp, and the wind had been coming up since around three o’clock. All signs that told Tom there would be a meeting of his friends this night. It had been planned that on the next appropriate night, they would gather at their meeting place ten miles to the south. The men would be traveling on wagons this time and taking their lanterns with them.

  Leaving right after they ate, Tom and Sam road hard to get down the shoreline and meet up with the other men. Tom was driving the team through the water packed sand where they could make better time. It was getting dark and sure enough the cloud filled sky blocked out the dreaded moon. It would be a good night for business.

  The band of wily men split up, they took the lanterns to strategic points where they set them up to look like safe havens for a ship in the dangerous waters.  Crisscrossing the area on foot, the men watched for a boat in distress. When one was spotted, the nearest decoy lantern was picked up and waved back and forth, beckoning the distraught sailors closer to the shore, as well as signaling in the other mooncussers.

   Once the ship wrecked, the mooncussers rushed aboard. Again, Sam followed his father, just as he’d been told. This time; however, what the group was doing was not helping the sailors at all. Instead, they had tricked them into running aground on the wicked rocks, ripping a gaping hole in the cargo ship and totally disabling the vessel. Sam was appalled by this turn of events. Standing back, he was horrified to see his father, along with all of his cohorts, viciously attack the crew. Pistol fire reverberated deafeningly into the otherwise quiet night, gunpowder hung thick in the air, smelling strong and deadly. The brash scoundrels overtook the sailors, shooting most of them before they even realized what was happening. Other’s grappled bravely with the intruders, fighting for their lives. Hand to hand, they wrest savagely, trying to get the advantage. Fists flying, hair pulling, eye gouging, foot stomping, anything was fair game, as they tried to tear each other apart.

  Sam stared wide-eyed, finding it hard to believe that what he was witnessing was really happening.  A tough looking, knife wielding sailor rushed toward one of the attackers only a few feet away from Sam. The nimble landlubber saw him coming. He skillfully darted out of the way. The hand with the knife went on past with a wicked thrust. The broad-shouldered mooncusser grabbed the man’s wrist, and in one slick movement bent the arm behind the sailor painfully until a bone snapped. The knife clattered to the deck.

  Without skipping a beat, the hulk of a man twisted the fellow’s head with a mighty jerk, breaking his neck. He let the lifeless body drop to the wood floor and moved on to his next victim.  Sam was sickened by the horrifying sight, nausea churned from his belly to his throat. How could his father, and these men he’d known all his life, turn into such savage beasts? He wondered how he’d ever face them again without hearing their foul language or seeing murder in their eyes.

  The experienced men worked so agilely that soon, the captain and all of his men lay dead on the blood soaked deck. Working fast, the mooncussers emptied the deep cargo holds. Sam, in a daze of disbelief, helped the others carry off all the valuables. They loaded the waiting wagons and when they were done, the ship had been stripped and gutted. They wasted no time setting it on fire and erasing all signs on the beach before they high-tailed it out of there.

  “Come on, Son! It’s time to be off. We have to be quick!”

  Sam joined his father on the wagon seat. They drove through the surf, leaving no telltale prints behind them, and they only stopped long enough to pick up their lanterns along the way. When they did ride up to solid land, they stopped and got off the wagon. “Take some brush and backtrack, we have to wipe out any tracks in the sand,” Tom instructed.

  Feeling like he was having a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, Sam didn’t utter a word all the way back to the clearing. Once there, all the men camouflaged their wagons and riding the horses bareback, they left for the night.

  It was the wee hours of the morning when Sam fell into bed. He lay there, staring up at the ceiling. I’ve always looked up to Pa, he thought to himself, but what we did tonight was just plain wrong. He rolled over on his side and worried over what was the right thing for him to do. I gave my word to Pa, it would be wrong to break it. On the other hand, isn’t it wrong to do nothing about the crimes being committed? I can’t turn in my own father. They’d probably hang him for what he did tonight. Darn it Pa, how’d you get mixed up in such? And why did you drag me into it?