Adultery When We Were Married by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

OCTOBER 5, 2005 -- WEDNESDAY - NOON


Bad things happen in threes.
I stood behind the widow, in the second row of mourners. We were standing as the security officer honor guard fired their rifles into the brilliant cloudless skies. She wore black, as did her daughter. It looked like half the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was in attendance.
I caught some hard looks when people thought I wasn’t looking. Some of them didn’t bother to look away, just stared at me when I caught them. Sheriff Knight stood in the front row. He had looked at me as I walked into the church filled with blue uniforms. I stared right back at him. I didn’t blame him for his feelings, but I had gotten James killed. The least I could do was attend his funeral.
I had driven my own car to the Evergreen Cemetery on 45th Street. Traffic was blocked for miles as the funeral procession filed into the cemetery. I had to walk nearly a half mile and I was hot and sweaty by the time I got to the burial site. They had chairs for nearly a hundred people, and there must have been another 400 standing.
I made my way through the crowd of blue and they melted away as I walked among them. When I got to the row of seats immediately behind Elexus James I stared at the cop sitting behind her. He didn’t have to, but he got up and moved away. I sat behind him and tapped her on the shoulder.
I hadn’t seen her since that day in James’ hospital room. He had fought a good fight. It had taken him another four days to die. It looked like she’d aged ten years in the four days.
“Mrs. James, I’m sorry I was out of town when your husband passed. I didn’t want to talk over the phone. I couldn’t get back any sooner, but I wanted to come and express my condolences in person. He was a good man.”
She just looked at me for a moment. Her eyes were red, but dry. It looked as if she didn’t have any more tears in her to shed.


She still didn’t say anything but the pretty teenager sitting next to her started crying and said, “You....you...”
“No, Conisha! No!”
She looked from her daughter to me.
“She’s young, Mr. Maitland, and this has - hit her hard. Please, forgive her.
She’s young, and we’re...”
I was wrong. She had a few tears left.
Knight stood beside her and put his arm around her. He sat down beside her and held her through the funeral. She never looked back at me again. Neither did he.
As I sat there and listened to the minister my mind wandered back to the previous Thursday. It looked like the same group of men in blue had surrounded Howser’s wife, daughter and son. His son wore the Ranger uniform he hadn’t even changed after arriving from Afghanistan via Jacksonville Naval Air Station on a straight fly-in.
Howser’s parents had flown in from Michigan and he had a brother and sister who had flown in from Alabama and California respectively with their children. I had deliberately come late to the Oaklawn Cemetery on San Jose Boulevard, but the cops knew who I was, as did the television and press photographers who took my picture.
This funeral took place under an overcast sky that threatened to rain at any minute. The relative darkness seemed more appropriate for saying goodbye than watching men carrying the casket containing your mortal remains to your final resting place on a day when you should have been going to the beach. It was a typical Jacksonville October day, unseasonably warm.
Back on Thursday, I had waited until the minister had finished, the security officer squad had fired into the sky and Howser’s friends had said goodbye to his widow. Knight just nodded at me. I had a feeling he was going to be a long time, if ever, getting over the hard feelings he had for me.
Finally, there were only the television crews waiting a good distance away with the still photographers, Howser’s family, a few cops and myself. I walked up to Mrs. Howser and she held her hand out. Her son and daughter stared at me with unreadable expressions. I don’t know what I would have felt looking at the man in some way responsible for the death of my father.
“I’m glad you came, Mr. Maitland. I wanted Molly and Bert to be able to meet you. I’ve told them about what happened and why, and I’ve told them that their father admired you. I didn’t want them to have any false impressions of what happened.”
Molly Howser just stared at me, shook her head with the tears running down her face and stumbled away. Her mother followed her, grabbing her by the


shoulders and pulling her to her.
Bert Howser was almost a younger carbon copy of his father, rail thin, six-foot-two, but with a full head of sandy hair. He put his hands behind his back, as if he was on parade inspection. His uniform was rumpled, but his shoes were shined.
“My mother has told me....about what happened, Mr. Maitland. I appreciate your coming by here. Dad would have appreciated the gesture.”
“He was a good man and a good cop - it’s Sergeant, isn’t it?” “Yes. I...uh....if...”
He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.
“I’m a soldier, Mr. Maitland. I enlisted knowing that I might not come back. I’ve got a fiancée and she’s....she knows what the deal is. But, you don’t expect your father ”
He shook his head and looked into the distance beyond me.
“He loved what he did. He was a little disappointed that I decided to make a career in the military - but he understood and I understood him. I’d never tell Mom but, I think if he knew he was going to die, he’d rather have gone out this way than die slow with cancer or something.”
He looked down at the ground and rubbed his lip with his forefinger.
“The doctors told us they found heart problems in the autopsy. In a few months or more he probably would have had an attack or had symptoms. They’d have taken him off the street and given him a desk job, if they didn’t put him out to pasture. He would have hated that.”
I held out my hand and he shook it without looking at me. I walked away leaving him standing alone near the place where his father would be buried. I thought that at least he was lucky in that he would have a grave to visit. I hadn’t been back to the mine where my father lay buried since I was eight years old, and I probably never would.
I’d heard the clicking of cameras as I’d shook his hand and figured they’d appear somewhere.
As I walked away from James’ funeral the same cameras were clicking. I knew the stories that were coming.
“Maitland’s deadly touch continues.”
People died around me. Good or bad. It had seemed almost humorous when I’d first been tagged as the Angel of Death and people started treating me differently. It had stopped being funny a while back, especially because I’d begun to wonder myself.
Oh, and the third bad thing...
Two hours after I’d walked away from Bert Howser I drove down the paved road under the arch reading Old City Cemetery. It was a smaller cemetery in the


largely black section of downtown Jacksonville. It was seemingly deserted except for Channel Four and Channel 12 television trucks parked just inside the entrance.