The Night of the Memoir
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(Dr. Loveless & Wild Wild West do not belong to me in any way. I make no profit from my stories and only seek to honor a show I love with some stories that were crawling around in my head. J.E.G. Aka: LadyMarchHare)
This story is dedicated to the loving memory of Michael Dunn who portrayed Loveless in the series with a delightful delicacy and heart that always made me wonder what could happen in so bright a human's life to make them see the world as Loveless did. Michael Dunn was a talented, brilliant man. His IQ was, by some accounts, around 175, 180...he was a pianist until his arthritis took that avenue from him. He was a lovely singer and sculpted. He was also a wonderfully fascicle actor who was an inspiration for many people. He is sorely missed.
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I was the most loved and the most despised child to ever live. I have always lived my life by extremes so it is unsurprising to have had the extremes of it leech backwards into the time preceding my birth.
My mother was the center of the universe. She was the brightest star in the heavens...she was love.
She was Maria Esme Constanza. Young and bright and beautiful as a brown-eyed colt. Coddled and protected. She was the only surviving child of my grandfather Don Quixote Lorenzo Constanza, and he loved her more then life itself. Just fifteen and back to her father's casa on our ancient estates, she was a vision of lovliness at the fiesta her father threw for her birthday...that all important birthday for a young lady of Latin birth.
For 3 years she had been in Spain, in a convent school, learning and in prayerful devotion. But she was a romantic girl by nature...a dreamer. And her dreams took her away from a life as a cloistered religious and back home to find a love that would last. It was at her birthday party that she met my father.
Michael Liebnicht. He was 25. Handsome. Devastatingly so. Blue-eyed and brown curls with perfect teeth, posture and manners. Athletic, educated, and ruthlessly ambitious.
He was the product of an overbearing German household. Merchant class people who lived beyond their means, and above their station in life. They hovered on the outskirts of decent society, and waited like hyenas. And when my mother saw Liebnicht...she was in love. She was not as discerning as her father and like many young ladies let pretty words and pretty faces and strong arms and perfect kisses sway her. She became wiser, but only after time and pain became her teacher.
My grandfather was a far shrewder man then Liebnicht had ever encountered though. He didn't trust the handsome young suitor. He made it clear to him that no marriage between them would gain him any rights to my grandfather's inheritance. And my grandfather set in, iron-clad terms, a will that did not allow for his beloved daughter to EVER inherit his property or estates. She would receive a yearly stipend. A modest allowance. And if she ever divorced her husband would have no claim on his estates. These would be kept in trust...for her children when they reached the age of majority.
How that must have rankled Liebnicht! To see her fortune there like a glittering diamond before him and being unable to touch it. But where Grandfather had meant to dissuade the suitor, Liebnicht was an obstinate and vicious man. He wooed harder. He was a fool to still pursue the Don's daughter but his ego had been wounded by a better man then he and he was pig-headedly determined to ruin their lives, and gain the fortune he thought he could still taste. He promised my innocent mother the moon & the stars, and he took a fiendish delight in announcing my mother's pregnancy and requesting her hand in marriage under the circumstances, as though he were doing her a favor to spare her from the shame of it.
The shame of me.
The day I was born in the casa of my grandfather was a day of great extremes. My mother was barely sixteen and she labored hard to see me into the world. Too hard. Luckily my grandfather had the very finest doctors on hand for his beloved child's care and they were able to stop the bleeding and deliver me into the arms of love.
While the physicians shook their heads and made dire predictions of longevity or stupidity and urged the disgusted Liebnicht to have me institutionalized, my mother held me in her pale trembling arms and she loved me.
My grandfather was wary...I do not fault him this...for I must have been a shock to his constitution. Small and under-weight, stunted limbs which had little tone or movement. My cries were weak as a kitten. I was...not..normal. But my grandfather was not one to be put off, or have his head turned by appearances. He had measured my father's character from the instant he met him and he was correct. Mother told me that the dignified, sturdy, gruff Don reached a finger into my swaddling to see me more clearly. With trepidation he lifted my legs and let them gently fall into the warm blankets and he brushed the side of my head with his knuckles. My small hand caught his pinkie finger and I held fast. I held fast to him and Mother said he smiled and nodded. He saw past my withered shell. He saw the love my mother saw in me and he extended himself as well.
But Liebnicht was different. He saw me as reflecting badly on his perfect manhood. He saw me as a weak indictment of him...of his choice of wife...of his future. I was not a son he could show off. I was a blight on his ambition. He hated me.
He was prepared to hand me into an institution. To give me to the medicals to be prodded and harrumphed over. He nearly demanded it, and as my father he could have done it.
Grandfather saw my mother's distress, and he feared her weakened condition would make her die of grief if I was taken from her. He also saw me as his future. To be sure I wasn't the future he envisioned but I would be, according to Mother's doctors, his only grandchild and he was determined to give me the opportunity to grow. My grandfather knew what to do though it angered him to have to do it. He provided my father a separate allowance. A yearly stipend. But it was provisional. It could only be collected as long as I lived...and only as long as I lived as an acknowledged heir to him.
Liebnicht was not happy. But Grandfather knew his heart...knew his greed. He understood that the handsome face hid a corrupt heart and that he had his price. For a time anyway.
I was christened, hastily in case I should die, Michael Quixote Liebnicht.
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The gold. the stipend made to Liebnicht, and my grandfather's presence kept him at a distance from us. My mother's heart was broken...but as a good daughter of the Church she did not seek divorce. She turned a blind eye to him and he was gone. He pursued leisure & debauchery and troubled us little.
Mother & I lived in Grandfather's house in almost perfect peace for what seemed a golden age for me. While she suffered silently with a loveless marriage and through the humiliations of my father's infidelities, my mother poured her love and soul into raising me.
She saw no imperfection in me. She fed my imagination and she knew I was not the idiot the doctor's predicted I'd be. And she would sing. She would sing so beautifully that it would have made angels weep. I'm sure it does today.
And where I could never attach myself to Liebnicht in a way I could describe as a father/son relationship...I could find male guidance in my grandfather. He was not as encouraging as my mother but it was only because he had a man's doubts as to my physical capabilities. But for him I tried. I tried so hard. And he made sure the best doctors saw me. He loved me in his way. He taught me to fire a gun. He also taught me to play the piano. He was a daring and improvisational pianist, an image totally opposed to his brittle seeming nature. Grandfather also hired the best tutors to teach me and he and Mother were delighted when embarrassed teacher, after embarrassed teacher had to report that I had outstripped them yet again.
My mother would smile and say she was unsurprised because she already knew I was special and destined for greatness. For my grandfather it was a matter of pride, and, I think, a vindication...he had, once more, seen through to the heart of the matter and recognized the truth.
Encounters with my father were brief and unhappy. More often then not he would come when his money was out and he wanted more. In which case I could hear my grandfather and him shout from behind closed doors. And that frightened me.
If he saw me he would scowl bitterly to see that his misshapen son had inherited his blue eyes and his brown curls. I knew how uncomfortable the resemblance made him and as much as I hated being my mother's daily reminder of him, I relished these hate-filled, staring exchanges, even at a young age. For all he had done to my mother and the enmity he held me, in I enjoyed being the blight on his landscape. As I was my mother's success, I was my father's failure. His curse.
While Mother discouraged my hate for Liebnicht, for the salvation of my soul. Grandfather was careful to teach me the ways of the world. The unfairness of life. He told me of the way our family had been robbed of most of its land. Land we'd held since the conquistadors. Land sealed to us through marriage and blood to the daughters of chiefs, then California became a territory of the Anglos. We were robbed by handsome men telling pretty lies and broken words. Men like my father.
He was also honest enough to tell me that I would never be accepted. I would be judged by my size before I was seen for a man. My intellect would be underestimated, but if I were wise I could always use that to my advantage. Grandfather was correct. I would always be underestimated.
But for the most part life was rich...detailed...song-filled...a prelude.
Then I turned nine.
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I was my mother's Miguelito...little Michael. I loved that diminutive. I loved the fact that it was a diminutive...like me. I loved that by calling me Miguelito my mother didn't have to say, or hear my father's name. For he was still the poisonous snake in our garden.
Still Liebnicht would come for money, or to harass my family. His handsome features were becoming thick and heavyset with the excesses of his life. His nose and cheeks bore a thin web of red veins that spoke of drunkenness and his character had grown darker and more dangerous with the passing years.
He came home, not surprisingly, on my 9th birthday. He liked to appear at special family occasions. Not because he held any affection for us, but because with an abundance of presents on display, and good spirits to maintain, it was easier to extort money from Grandfather and leave until the next time.
It began as any visit did. A bleary-eyed cursing under his breath as he stared at me with open revulsion...my somewhat handsome features making a mockery of his imagined perfection. He chewed on a cigar and smiled maliciously.
"So it's your birthday dumbie?"
"Yes it is." I answered calmly, bristling at the insult, but maintaining a fixed stare.
"Yes it is...What?" Liebnicht demanded, fishing for a respectful recognition of his position over me.
I smiled just as maliciously back. "Yes it is...my birthday."
His handsome mask slipped and he threw his cigar to the side and clenched his fist at his sides. He knew that I knew I was deliberately sidestepping acknowledging him as a respected elder...and he didn't like it.
He drew back his hand and I suppose I should have been afraid. I was a fragile child and my bones would often break more easily then most. My joints would ache and my constricted organs would gripe at me for months sometimes. But instead I drew myself up and stepped forward. I was not a coward, I was as good as the next man...I would not back away.
He struck me a blow that rattled my teeth and sent me flying into the wall behind me. The reality of physical brutality had struck home. Pain lanced through me and I bit my lip. I could feel the bones of my broken collarbone grate against each other and I wanted to cry. Like any frightened and hurt child I wanted to cry for my mother. But I didn't. I stood and walked over to him and looked up and glared at him...I let the daggers I held in my soul fly at him through the glare and I lifted my chin.
He growled and lifted his hand again.
I would not flinch, and I could see that that made him furious and I was glad.
Then I saw him pulled off balance backwards and fall. He sat across from me. Below me in height...beneath me. Far beneath me in everyway possible, and he looked up as I did and saw my grandfather standing in the doorway. The gnarled, gray Don was not the fighting man he was in his youth, but he had grabbed the raised fist and dragged it back over Liebnicht's head and brought him low with his own drunken balance. Now Grandfather looked down on my sire with a rage I rejoice in remembering.
He looked so grand to me. So grand! He glanced at me, with his grave features softening slightly with concern, but I held my arm, ignored the bloodied nose and simply nodded. Grandfather gazed on me with pride. I will remember that pride. Grandfather had had reservations about my resiliency and I had proven myself to him by not backing away. I'll remember the look he gave me because it was the last moment of joy we would share.
My father, launched himself from his humiliated heap and barreled into my grandfather sending them both into the courtyard. Grandfather defied Liebnicht's attempt to knock him to the ground. Instead they both squared off inches from each other and they started shouting.
"Get out of here Liebnicht. Get out of here and never return!"
"Not until I get what I came for..." shouted my father.
"The second you struck MY Grandson you lost everything!" Grandfather's face was flushed purple with rage, he was a fiery man but I had never seen him like this. "You will get no more! I would rather see my daughter divorced then to see you ever get another coin after this!"
My father stopped his tirade and looked at Grandfather in an oddly calm manner. "I don't think so. I think you will give me everything I want. If you force a divorce I WILL take the boy away. You'll never see him again." He glanced at me where I stood in the dusty courtyard. "I'm the little freak's father. I would get custody....and then the ugly bastard would go where he belongs. An institution!"
I think I was more shocked to hear Liebnicht admit to being my father then I was to hear the threat. No...I was actually more shocked to see my grandfather's reaction to the threat. My gentle, grandfather raised his hand and roared at Liebnicht and charged him.
Liebnicht smugly turned aside the ill-considered charge and continued his threats.
"How long do think the runt would survive in a place like that? With the nuts and the drooling criminal perverts?! They'd eat him alive!" He laughed.
Grandfather was breathing heavily, and he stopped and looked at me. And tears began to fall and I was horrified. I had never seen him cry. I didn't understand why he was crying...then I knew. Time seemed to slow. I watched him reach his right hand to his chest...I saw the left at his side...limp...dead. Then he fell over and crashed in front of me and I screamed. I ran to his side. While servants and neighbors started to gather in the courtyard, Liebnicht hastily gave his version of events, Mother and I leaned in to hear Grandfather's last words to us.
"Take care of your mother Miguelito...take care of her. And you watch out. You get smarter. You learn everything. You will surprise and humiliate your enemies!" He said, forcing each word through spittle covered lips. "You be careful...you be very careful my son."
He turned to Mother. "Lean on him Maria...Miguelito is a man." Then he made a wheezing groan and coughed then fell silent.
I stared at my grandfather's body and shook my head. How could he be dead? How could anyone, as wonderful as he was, be dead? I felt a white-hot hatred ignite in me...I screamed...I raged...I tried to run at Liebnicht in the blindness of my grief. "You killed him! You killed Grandfather!"
Liebnicht stood back and shook his head sadly...but I could see the look in his eyes as they swept the crowded courtyard. He raised a fatherly, gentle head and soothed. "My Father-in-Law was a hard man, and we disagreed on many subjects...even on how to raise you...my son."
"You killed him!" I screamed again. I scanned the faces in the crowd. Some of the people were COMFORTING him! As though this was some tragic accident and he was as much a victim as my dead grandsire. They were listening to him as though he were an actor on a stage and they were falling for his performance...every single one of them!
Liebnicht let a crocodile tear fall. "If I'd have known his health was so poor I wouldn't have raised my voice to him. I will regret our last angry words with each other till my dying day."
"You will." I said. I know I sounded cold...older then my nine years. I felt a part of me turn brittle as burnt paper.
"You will regret everything."
He smiled at me, and his eyes which so matched mine, glittered venomously. "I think I have been away on business for far too long." My heart blackened further. "I think that I need to be here...to see my dear wife and son through their grief. Son...your Father is home to stay."
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Life changed. It became a bleak and painful road.
Liebnicht tried...I was delighted to see him frustrated from trying...he tried to have Grandfather's will changed. He tried to have the financial arrangements changed. He tried to have me sent away.
But Grandfather's ghost was a strong presence. If he sent me away he would lose his allowance. He could not sell any of the estate...the house...the land, because it did not belong to him. He hated this...he hated me.
To his benefit now he did have Mother's allowance which he stole to augment his own. No one was there to stop him now. No one...to garner more money for himself he dismissed our servants...all but one old gardener whom he retained so that he could tend the vegetables which consisted of our diet. And he started selling every thing he could inside the house.
But during his move into the estate I had anticipated his greed and I'd taken Grandfather's gold ring with it's ancient seal, and the very best and most expensive of mother's jewelry and all my books and many of Grandfather's and I hid them in the secret room beneath the stairs, behind the wine cellar that Grandfather had shown me years before. And even there I devised a second hiding place under a stone that could only be lifted if you touched other stones in a certain combination. Here I kept the jewels, original deeds, and the money I scraped together before he could steal it. I was very careful to leave enough...more then enough...for him to loot so that he felt he had gotten the better of us.
For a while he contented himself with stripping us of any comfort we had ever had. He stole the very food from our mouths. Gone were the doctors who had helped me manage the pain I endure. I would become sick for weeks...sometimes months. In the winter the damp would eat at me and inflame the joints. I laughed at the pain as I thought that if Liebnicht hadn't already sold the Grandfather's piano I would have had to give it up. I spent many days feverish and in feverish study with the books I had hidden.
Mother now suffered greatly as well. She was always a delicate creature, but now she grew thin and pale. She was no longer allowed or inclined to leave the casa. Her few dresses grew worn and shabby and she mourned her father greatly. She would spend long hours in prayer and her only joy was derived with me. We spoke for long hours into the night, and when Liebnicht was away we would sing. And then, for just a little while, we could pretend that life wasn't so bad.
Perhaps the worst part of our new life with Father was the brutality.
For my first 9 years no one had ever dared raise a hand to hurt me. Not my grandfather, never my mother. But this man took great delight in systematically torturing Mother and I.
To see that handsome, cruel face in a haze of pain after I'd been beaten like a dog is an image I will never erase from mind. Nor do I wish to. I was learning what Grandfather had tried to teach me. I would learn...I would learn and then Mother and I would escape.
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My mother had her secrets...her ways. She could be just as cunning as Grandfather. When I was eleven she convinced Liebnicht to send me to school in England for a time. I was languishing from lack of stimuli and she knew I had to be educated to survive the cruelty of life. She had also been keeping secret correspondence with a former doctor of mine who now lived in the British Isles. He had been impressed by my brilliance and was willing to take me as an apprentice...to prepare me for medical school.
I knew she did this not just for my future...but to make sure I lived to have a future. She was sure Liebnicht would kill me one day and since I did nothing to cow to him and was directly in opposition to him in all things I was at greater risk of his evil moods.
When she told me where I would be going I wept with joy. I stand astounded to this day at the guile she used to execute this plan. Because of her friendship with the doctor there was minimal cost involved. And she reminded Liebnicht that I wouldn't trouble him so much if I left and he would still receive his stipend because school was covered in the arrangement. As much as it irritated him to make either I or Mother happy for even instant, he leapt at the chance to be rid of me...for as long as possible.
What I hadn't taken into consideration was that this meant leaving Mother...alone...with him. I was in great fear of this. I wanted to ask...beg...that she go with me. But I knew that part of his pleasure would be the agony of our separation.
I wouldn't have left...I should never have left her...I should never have left her.
She insisted, with tears in her eyes, that I go...
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My mother made sure that all our hidden jewels and money and deeds and copies of the bank arrangements went with me. She also gave me the one piece of jewelry too poor to have been stolen by Liebnicht.
A silver locket on a braided red ribbon.
The locket folded out three ways to reveal small sketched pictures and three locks of hair behind small glass frames. I knew by the styling that my mother had poured all her love into these representations of herself, Grandfather and I...and I hold this memento of her as my dearest and most treasured possession.
She was allowed to see me off on the ship to England. Oh how she trembled as she watched me walk the gangplank. How fragile she looked from where I waved on the deck to her. She did not cry...she was trying so hard to be brave. But I cried. I did not hide my tears...I cried and I was afraid. For her...for myself. I must have looked impossibly fragile to her as well. Stunted, misshapen me...just a child...leaving her for a new land and new world. I must have looked terribly small to be placing all her hopes in. I was determined to learn. To succeed.
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The voyage was horrible. The sea air and my physical challenges were incompatible. I spent half the voyage sick with fever and inflamed joints. Luckily I had an ally. An aged sailor with bad teeth, grizzled hair and a mean disposition. He took a liking to me and when I was sickest he tended to me and unable to care for myself he guarded my belongings from his far less honest friends. When I 'd recovered some of my strength he would take me topside and show me all he knew about navigation by the stars and tell me about all the wondrous places he'd journeyed to.
I would sit in rapt attention to the old fellow. Probably the first time anyone had ever treated the gentleman with any respect. But I understood that...I understood being ignored because of what others perceived me to be. Just as others probably perceived this man to be stupid, uninformed or too unrefined to understand anything.
The man taught me sea shanties, which I loved...and he taught me how to defend myself with a knife and other weapons as well. I wanted so much to learn.
He taught me to use a blowgun he had picked up in some far away islands and he taught me to use a knife and where to strike a man to kill instantly...or to kill more slowly. It wasn't hard for me to imagine Liebnicht as I attacked the dummy that the old sailor made for me out of burlap and straw.
Once I parted from my new friend, I was met by Dr. Werner Otto. A serious, white haired man with wild hair and a neatly groomed but full beard. He met me with a grave handshake and a cursory assessment that made me uncomfortable. But something must have met his approval because he nodded bruskly and signaled me to follow him. At his pace.
Dr. Otto did not spare me because of my stature. He didn't make allowances for pity or age. His was quick and I was expected to keep up and he did not register any surprise when I did...it was just expected I would.
From the age of 12 until 18 Dr. Otto became my surrogate uncle. Much sterner then my Grandfather and not as demonstrative as my mother but he imparted to me something my other tutors never had. A true love of learning. Learning had once been a chore...a duty. It was easy because of my prodigious nature but it was never a love...never...fun. As a bachelor gentleman and having no family or friends the one thing Dr. Otto did have was a love of learning. He made me think...he made me adventurous in every educational endeavor I pursued...and he treated me with respect.
But you cannot transfer respect. As I attended medical school I was confronted by those who neither respected nor liked me. I was considered egocentric by teachers whom I challenged. Doctors who had been out matched by me at 14 years old, sought my expulsion at every turn. Jealously I was accused of undermining authority when all I had really done is presented a better theory or proposed an improved method. And I was made the target of jealous fellow students 6 or 7 years my senior because my mind-boggling accomplishments made their pedantic, plodding, mediocrity look bad. Still the beatings...the lack of respect...the jealousy was easier to bear knowing that Grandfather had already predicted that just such jealousy would occur, and I was content knowing that he had yet to be proven wrong.
Correspondence between Mother and myself was sporadic and desperately frustrating. Months would pass with nothing...once almost a year passed. The letters would reveal that she had tried to send other letters but Liebnicht had prevented her from writing. One letter disturbed me greatly because on the corner of the piece of stationary was a smudge of blood. I worried about how she was...I worried. The week before I graduated, at the age of 18, I was playing a game of chess with Dr. Otto when he handed me a letter which had arrived that morning. I was so eager to open it that it breaks my heart to think of that loving eagerness.
I knew before I read it that something was wrong. The course paper was not the fine linen stationary my mother preferred and hoarded and the pencil it was written in was already fading a bit by the time it reached my hands.
***My Dearest Miguelito,
I am writing to tell you what has happened before you hear what will surely be hurtful lies about me.
Your father is dead. And I have killed him. I pray to the Blessed Virgin each night that I will be forgiven for this mortal sin, but I fear I will find less favor in the courts.
I was so tired. I had begged him to let me sleep. I had worked so hard in the garden since he discharged the gardener and I had spent the day cleaning. When he came home from his evening's activities he woke me to make his dinner and I was too tired so he beat me again. He struck me again and again until I did as he asked. He fell asleep immediately after dinner and I cleaned again. I do not remember taking the kitchen knife and killing him as he slept. But I did. Perhaps I did in my sleep...in my exhaustion what I had wanted to do in my waking moments.
Now I sit in a jail cell, and my trial starts tomorrow and I have no doubt I will be found guilty. But the pain has ended for me...I am only sad for how much it will cause you.
You...my darling, dearest love, must go on without me. Michael Liebnicht cannot harm you now. He can never hurt me again. You are my legacy. You are what survives of me and Poppa. You must go on. The world is lucky to have you in it...I wish that everyone in it could be like you...make your mark on the world. Change it for the better.
Never-ending Love,
Mother***
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The voyage back to California was agonizingly long. I carried with me my mother's jewels, deeds & papers, and my diploma (which a mediocre medico handed me, delighted with the prospect that he would not have to share a stage with me). I also carried letters of introduction and recommendation from Dr. Otto.
What I carried most was a sense of horrible doom and overwhelming guilt. And a fury was welling in me that I couldn't describe. A frustrated, crushing feeling of disappointment. I was near to leaping into the ocean several times due to fits of despair.
And there was reason for despair.
I arrived first at the courthouse where my mother was tried. I wanted to free her...to explain the agony that Liebnicht had committed against her. Us. Some part of me held out the hope that if they only knew the truth they would understand and with Liebnicht gone, my mother and I could live in peace again.
The clerk seemed amused by my protestations on behalf of my mother. I was informed that my mother was dead.
She'd been hung two weeks before my ship had come in.
I stared. I didn't move for what seemed an eternity. The clerk continued to talk but I didn't hear him. My mind...my heart were frozen in ice. My icy brain tried to imagine my small, fragile mother dwarfed by men of law and lies...relying on the rules of fairness and chivalry that never really existed...that no man ever really followed if he didn't have to. I imagined her searching strange faces for understanding...mercy. I imagined her heart breaking and hope fading in her eyes as she realized she had once more been betrayed. I imagined her alone with a knotted rope around her neck and the horribly long fall that would have been needed to snap her neck. Or worse, I imagined her slowly strangling while picnicking spectators watched and laughed.
I had my mother's remains exhumed from their pauper's grave and took them to our family's plot on our estates. She was reburied next to my beloved grandfather and I erected a statue of twin angels to mark where they rest.
I had always hated my resemblance to my father...but as my heart hardened I recognized another inheritance of his. I recognized my capacity for cruelty...for feelings of violence so vile that they scared me as much as they comforted me.
I worked in isolation. Rudderless. I was without a focus for the first time in my life. It took a while to rediscover my purpose. In a way, my mother had stolen my purpose and I needed to refashion myself. I realized with bitter disappointment that almost my entire lifetime had been devoted to the goal my mother had robbed me of by an accident of exhaustion. Killing my father. My training... the learning I'd gleaned from any source....all toward seeing Liebnicht punished for what he had done to my family. And yet, I'd never articulated the desire and chances were that if I could have just rescued Mother I never would've acted in any other way then to humiliate, and let live, my father.
Now my imagination went wild with the punishments I should have inflicted on him. Of pain I couldn't touch him with now. My hatred and bitterness grew. He would never see the eyes that looked so much like his burning into him as poison or a blade struck home. He would never hear me laughing in his ears as Hell came to claim him. He would never know that it was me. His ugly, little namesake, who had gotten the better of him. I had nothing now...nothing but the nauseating viciousness I knew was part of me because of him.
Without this...this goal...what was I? I was nothing and the void had to be filled.
I became who I am today.
First came the Judge who sentenced my mother to death for defending her own life. I drugged him & I took out his beating heart since he hadn't needed it during the trial.
Second came the prosecutor. I shot him and liberated him of his scheming brain.
Third came the jurors one by one. I executed each of them dispassionately and removed their eyes, which couldn't see the truth.
Fourth came the witnesses who testified against my mother. INCLUDING the paternal grandparents whom I didn't meet until the day I killed them...using the knife tricks my old sailor friend had taught me, and took their lying tongues from their heads. I had hoped to find some solace in this confrontation but I felt nothing...truly nothing.
Each killing became easier and easier...I attribute this callousness to my father. He surely rots in Hell for the agony he still causes.
I took one last liberty and paid a small fortune to some less then savory men to dig my father's putrid corpse out of his rich crypt and deliver it to me.
I took my grizzly trophies...and the now mutilated carcass, and I burned them when I burned down my childhood home. Desecrated by violence and misery I wanted no one else to ever live there again and I wanted to make sure no one ever benefited from it again. I converted what I could of Mother's diamonds into coin...I purchased a ship's passage and prepared my paperwork
The papers made me new again...My father's legacy was to leave me with no one..nothing. No love. So his legacy became my name...Liebnicht, in a way. His name recognized the part of me that was hardened to the task ahead. I was not without purpose now. I saw it in my mother's last missive, I heard in Grandfather's last words...
I was to change the way things were...no matter how I had to do it. I was to change the world. I was justice now.
I was now the only hope of those who were hostage to the unfairness of law and life.
I was Mother's hope for a better future for children like me.
I was my grandfather's defender of the heritage stripped from us.
I was his daily proof that he was never wrong. I learned that I would always be misunderstood.
I became Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless
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Artemus Gordon closed the journal in the, now silent, railcar and sighed.
"I almost wish we hadn't found this in the strong box after the fire Jim"
James West closed the locket, which held the drawing of a woman with dark beautiful eyes and the child with the innocent expression and nodded.
"Now what?" asked Artie. "Do we pack it away as evidence?"
Closing his eyes and rubbing the space between them as he absorbed what Artie had finished reading. "We give it back." Jim decided. He gathered the items back into their charred box and he informed the train crew of their new destination.
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The sun was setting and the light summer rain didn't require cover. The patter of raindrops disturbed dust and the ground hopped with mini puffs of dirt. A small, dark clad, figure exchanged the roses he held for the sealed box laying on the remote graves. Large, brittle, hard blue eyes scanned the horizon...suspiciously sensing a trap. But nothing befell him. He was alone with his memories.
There were two kisses blown...a box tucked under an arm, and a Mother's hope receding into darkness.
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(Dr. Loveless & Wild Wild West do not belong to me in any way. I make no profit from my stories and only seek to honor a show I love with some stories that were crawling around in my head. J.E.G. Aka: LadyMarchHare)
This story is dedicated to the loving memory of Michael Dunn who portrayed Loveless in the series with a delightful delicacy and heart that always made me wonder what could happen in so bright a human's life to make them see the world as Loveless did. Michael Dunn was a talented, brilliant man. His IQ was, by some accounts, around 175, 180...he was a pianist until his arthritis took that avenue from him. He was a lovely singer and sculpted. He was also a wonderfully fascicle actor who was an inspiration for many people. He is sorely missed.
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I was the most loved and the most despised child to ever live. I have always lived my life by extremes so it is unsurprising to have had the extremes of it leech backwards into the time preceding my birth.
My mother was the center of the universe. She was the brightest star in the heavens...she was love.
She was Maria Esme Constanza. Young and bright and beautiful as a brown-eyed colt. Coddled and protected. She was the only surviving child of my grandfather Don Quixote Lorenzo Constanza, and he loved her more then life itself. Just fifteen and back to her father's casa on our ancient estates, she was a vision of lovliness at the fiesta her father threw for her birthday...that all important birthday for a young lady of Latin birth.
For 3 years she had been in Spain, in a convent school, learning and in prayerful devotion. But she was a romantic girl by nature...a dreamer. And her dreams took her away from a life as a cloistered religious and back home to find a love that would last. It was at her birthday party that she met my father.
Michael Liebnicht. He was 25. Handsome. Devastatingly so. Blue-eyed and brown curls with perfect teeth, posture and manners. Athletic, educated, and ruthlessly ambitious.
He was the product of an overbearing German household. Merchant class people who lived beyond their means, and above their station in life. They hovered on the outskirts of decent society, and waited like hyenas. And when my mother saw Liebnicht...she was in love. She was not as discerning as her father and like many young ladies let pretty words and pretty faces and strong arms and perfect kisses sway her. She became wiser, but only after time and pain became her teacher.
My grandfather was a far shrewder man then Liebnicht had ever encountered though. He didn't trust the handsome young suitor. He made it clear to him that no marriage between them would gain him any rights to my grandfather's inheritance. And my grandfather set in, iron-clad terms, a will that did not allow for his beloved daughter to EVER inherit his property or estates. She would receive a yearly stipend. A modest allowance. And if she ever divorced her husband would have no claim on his estates. These would be kept in trust...for her children when they reached the age of majority.
How that must have rankled Liebnicht! To see her fortune there like a glittering diamond before him and being unable to touch it. But where Grandfather had meant to dissuade the suitor, Liebnicht was an obstinate and vicious man. He wooed harder. He was a fool to still pursue the Don's daughter but his ego had been wounded by a better man then he and he was pig-headedly determined to ruin their lives, and gain the fortune he thought he could still taste. He promised my innocent mother the moon & the stars, and he took a fiendish delight in announcing my mother's pregnancy and requesting her hand in marriage under the circumstances, as though he were doing her a favor to spare her from the shame of it.
The shame of me.
The day I was born in the casa of my grandfather was a day of great extremes. My mother was barely sixteen and she labored hard to see me into the world. Too hard. Luckily my grandfather had the very finest doctors on hand for his beloved child's care and they were able to stop the bleeding and deliver me into the arms of love.
While the physicians shook their heads and made dire predictions of longevity or stupidity and urged the disgusted Liebnicht to have me institutionalized, my mother held me in her pale trembling arms and she loved me.
My grandfather was wary...I do not fault him this...for I must have been a shock to his constitution. Small and under-weight, stunted limbs which had little tone or movement. My cries were weak as a kitten. I was...not..normal. But my grandfather was not one to be put off, or have his head turned by appearances. He had measured my father's character from the instant he met him and he was correct. Mother told me that the dignified, sturdy, gruff Don reached a finger into my swaddling to see me more clearly. With trepidation he lifted my legs and let them gently fall into the warm blankets and he brushed the side of my head with his knuckles. My small hand caught his pinkie finger and I held fast. I held fast to him and Mother said he smiled and nodded. He saw past my withered shell. He saw the love my mother saw in me and he extended himself as well.
But Liebnicht was different. He saw me as reflecting badly on his perfect manhood. He saw me as a weak indictment of him...of his choice of wife...of his future. I was not a son he could show off. I was a blight on his ambition. He hated me.
He was prepared to hand me into an institution. To give me to the medicals to be prodded and harrumphed over. He nearly demanded it, and as my father he could have done it.
Grandfather saw my mother's distress, and he feared her weakened condition would make her die of grief if I was taken from her. He also saw me as his future. To be sure I wasn't the future he envisioned but I would be, according to Mother's doctors, his only grandchild and he was determined to give me the opportunity to grow. My grandfather knew what to do though it angered him to have to do it. He provided my father a separate allowance. A yearly stipend. But it was provisional. It could only be collected as long as I lived...and only as long as I lived as an acknowledged heir to him.
Liebnicht was not happy. But Grandfather knew his heart...knew his greed. He understood that the handsome face hid a corrupt heart and that he had his price. For a time anyway.
I was christened, hastily in case I should die, Michael Quixote Liebnicht.
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The gold. the stipend made to Liebnicht, and my grandfather's presence kept him at a distance from us. My mother's heart was broken...but as a good daughter of the Church she did not seek divorce. She turned a blind eye to him and he was gone. He pursued leisure & debauchery and troubled us little.
Mother & I lived in Grandfather's house in almost perfect peace for what seemed a golden age for me. While she suffered silently with a loveless marriage and through the humiliations of my father's infidelities, my mother poured her love and soul into raising me.
She saw no imperfection in me. She fed my imagination and she knew I was not the idiot the doctor's predicted I'd be. And she would sing. She would sing so beautifully that it would have made angels weep. I'm sure it does today.
And where I could never attach myself to Liebnicht in a way I could describe as a father/son relationship...I could find male guidance in my grandfather. He was not as encouraging as my mother but it was only because he had a man's doubts as to my physical capabilities. But for him I tried. I tried so hard. And he made sure the best doctors saw me. He loved me in his way. He taught me to fire a gun. He also taught me to play the piano. He was a daring and improvisational pianist, an image totally opposed to his brittle seeming nature. Grandfather also hired the best tutors to teach me and he and Mother were delighted when embarrassed teacher, after embarrassed teacher had to report that I had outstripped them yet again.
My mother would smile and say she was unsurprised because she already knew I was special and destined for greatness. For my grandfather it was a matter of pride, and, I think, a vindication...he had, once more, seen through to the heart of the matter and recognized the truth.
Encounters with my father were brief and unhappy. More often then not he would come when his money was out and he wanted more. In which case I could hear my grandfather and him shout from behind closed doors. And that frightened me.
If he saw me he would scowl bitterly to see that his misshapen son had inherited his blue eyes and his brown curls. I knew how uncomfortable the resemblance made him and as much as I hated being my mother's daily reminder of him, I relished these hate-filled, staring exchanges, even at a young age. For all he had done to my mother and the enmity he held me, in I enjoyed being the blight on his landscape. As I was my mother's success, I was my father's failure. His curse.
While Mother discouraged my hate for Liebnicht, for the salvation of my soul. Grandfather was careful to teach me the ways of the world. The unfairness of life. He told me of the way our family had been robbed of most of its land. Land we'd held since the conquistadors. Land sealed to us through marriage and blood to the daughters of chiefs, then California became a territory of the Anglos. We were robbed by handsome men telling pretty lies and broken words. Men like my father.
He was also honest enough to tell me that I would never be accepted. I would be judged by my size before I was seen for a man. My intellect would be underestimated, but if I were wise I could always use that to my advantage. Grandfather was correct. I would always be underestimated.
But for the most part life was rich...detailed...song-filled...a prelude.
Then I turned nine.
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I was my mother's Miguelito...little Michael. I loved that diminutive. I loved the fact that it was a diminutive...like me. I loved that by calling me Miguelito my mother didn't have to say, or hear my father's name. For he was still the poisonous snake in our garden.
Still Liebnicht would come for money, or to harass my family. His handsome features were becoming thick and heavyset with the excesses of his life. His nose and cheeks bore a thin web of red veins that spoke of drunkenness and his character had grown darker and more dangerous with the passing years.
He came home, not surprisingly, on my 9th birthday. He liked to appear at special family occasions. Not because he held any affection for us, but because with an abundance of presents on display, and good spirits to maintain, it was easier to extort money from Grandfather and leave until the next time.
It began as any visit did. A bleary-eyed cursing under his breath as he stared at me with open revulsion...my somewhat handsome features making a mockery of his imagined perfection. He chewed on a cigar and smiled maliciously.
"So it's your birthday dumbie?"
"Yes it is." I answered calmly, bristling at the insult, but maintaining a fixed stare.
"Yes it is...What?" Liebnicht demanded, fishing for a respectful recognition of his position over me.
I smiled just as maliciously back. "Yes it is...my birthday."
His handsome mask slipped and he threw his cigar to the side and clenched his fist at his sides. He knew that I knew I was deliberately sidestepping acknowledging him as a respected elder...and he didn't like it.
He drew back his hand and I suppose I should have been afraid. I was a fragile child and my bones would often break more easily then most. My joints would ache and my constricted organs would gripe at me for months sometimes. But instead I drew myself up and stepped forward. I was not a coward, I was as good as the next man...I would not back away.
He struck me a blow that rattled my teeth and sent me flying into the wall behind me. The reality of physical brutality had struck home. Pain lanced through me and I bit my lip. I could feel the bones of my broken collarbone grate against each other and I wanted to cry. Like any frightened and hurt child I wanted to cry for my mother. But I didn't. I stood and walked over to him and looked up and glared at him...I let the daggers I held in my soul fly at him through the glare and I lifted my chin.
He growled and lifted his hand again.
I would not flinch, and I could see that that made him furious and I was glad.
Then I saw him pulled off balance backwards and fall. He sat across from me. Below me in height...beneath me. Far beneath me in everyway possible, and he looked up as I did and saw my grandfather standing in the doorway. The gnarled, gray Don was not the fighting man he was in his youth, but he had grabbed the raised fist and dragged it back over Liebnicht's head and brought him low with his own drunken balance. Now Grandfather looked down on my sire with a rage I rejoice in remembering.
He looked so grand to me. So grand! He glanced at me, with his grave features softening slightly with concern, but I held my arm, ignored the bloodied nose and simply nodded. Grandfather gazed on me with pride. I will remember that pride. Grandfather had had reservations about my resiliency and I had proven myself to him by not backing away. I'll remember the look he gave me because it was the last moment of joy we would share.
My father, launched himself from his humiliated heap and barreled into my grandfather sending them both into the courtyard. Grandfather defied Liebnicht's attempt to knock him to the ground. Instead they both squared off inches from each other and they started shouting.
"Get out of here Liebnicht. Get out of here and never return!"
"Not until I get what I came for..." shouted my father.
"The second you struck MY Grandson you lost everything!" Grandfather's face was flushed purple with rage, he was a fiery man but I had never seen him like this. "You will get no more! I would rather see my daughter divorced then to see you ever get another coin after this!"
My father stopped his tirade and looked at Grandfather in an oddly calm manner. "I don't think so. I think you will give me everything I want. If you force a divorce I WILL take the boy away. You'll never see him again." He glanced at me where I stood in the dusty courtyard. "I'm the little freak's father. I would get custody....and then the ugly bastard would go where he belongs. An institution!"
I think I was more shocked to hear Liebnicht admit to being my father then I was to hear the threat. No...I was actually more shocked to see my grandfather's reaction to the threat. My gentle, grandfather raised his hand and roared at Liebnicht and charged him.
Liebnicht smugly turned aside the ill-considered charge and continued his threats.
"How long do think the runt would survive in a place like that? With the nuts and the drooling criminal perverts?! They'd eat him alive!" He laughed.
Grandfather was breathing heavily, and he stopped and looked at me. And tears began to fall and I was horrified. I had never seen him cry. I didn't understand why he was crying...then I knew. Time seemed to slow. I watched him reach his right hand to his chest...I saw the left at his side...limp...dead. Then he fell over and crashed in front of me and I screamed. I ran to his side. While servants and neighbors started to gather in the courtyard, Liebnicht hastily gave his version of events, Mother and I leaned in to hear Grandfather's last words to us.
"Take care of your mother Miguelito...take care of her. And you watch out. You get smarter. You learn everything. You will surprise and humiliate your enemies!" He said, forcing each word through spittle covered lips. "You be careful...you be very careful my son."
He turned to Mother. "Lean on him Maria...Miguelito is a man." Then he made a wheezing groan and coughed then fell silent.
I stared at my grandfather's body and shook my head. How could he be dead? How could anyone, as wonderful as he was, be dead? I felt a white-hot hatred ignite in me...I screamed...I raged...I tried to run at Liebnicht in the blindness of my grief. "You killed him! You killed Grandfather!"
Liebnicht stood back and shook his head sadly...but I could see the look in his eyes as they swept the crowded courtyard. He raised a fatherly, gentle head and soothed. "My Father-in-Law was a hard man, and we disagreed on many subjects...even on how to raise you...my son."
"You killed him!" I screamed again. I scanned the faces in the crowd. Some of the people were COMFORTING him! As though this was some tragic accident and he was as much a victim as my dead grandsire. They were listening to him as though he were an actor on a stage and they were falling for his performance...every single one of them!
Liebnicht let a crocodile tear fall. "If I'd have known his health was so poor I wouldn't have raised my voice to him. I will regret our last angry words with each other till my dying day."
"You will." I said. I know I sounded cold...older then my nine years. I felt a part of me turn brittle as burnt paper.
"You will regret everything."
He smiled at me, and his eyes which so matched mine, glittered venomously. "I think I have been away on business for far too long." My heart blackened further. "I think that I need to be here...to see my dear wife and son through their grief. Son...your Father is home to stay."
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Life changed. It became a bleak and painful road.
Liebnicht tried...I was delighted to see him frustrated from trying...he tried to have Grandfather's will changed. He tried to have the financial arrangements changed. He tried to have me sent away.
But Grandfather's ghost was a strong presence. If he sent me away he would lose his allowance. He could not sell any of the estate...the house...the land, because it did not belong to him. He hated this...he hated me.
To his benefit now he did have Mother's allowance which he stole to augment his own. No one was there to stop him now. No one...to garner more money for himself he dismissed our servants...all but one old gardener whom he retained so that he could tend the vegetables which consisted of our diet. And he started selling every thing he could inside the house.
But during his move into the estate I had anticipated his greed and I'd taken Grandfather's gold ring with it's ancient seal, and the very best and most expensive of mother's jewelry and all my books and many of Grandfather's and I hid them in the secret room beneath the stairs, behind the wine cellar that Grandfather had shown me years before. And even there I devised a second hiding place under a stone that could only be lifted if you touched other stones in a certain combination. Here I kept the jewels, original deeds, and the money I scraped together before he could steal it. I was very careful to leave enough...more then enough...for him to loot so that he felt he had gotten the better of us.
For a while he contented himself with stripping us of any comfort we had ever had. He stole the very food from our mouths. Gone were the doctors who had helped me manage the pain I endure. I would become sick for weeks...sometimes months. In the winter the damp would eat at me and inflame the joints. I laughed at the pain as I thought that if Liebnicht hadn't already sold the Grandfather's piano I would have had to give it up. I spent many days feverish and in feverish study with the books I had hidden.
Mother now suffered greatly as well. She was always a delicate creature, but now she grew thin and pale. She was no longer allowed or inclined to leave the casa. Her few dresses grew worn and shabby and she mourned her father greatly. She would spend long hours in prayer and her only joy was derived with me. We spoke for long hours into the night, and when Liebnicht was away we would sing. And then, for just a little while, we could pretend that life wasn't so bad.
Perhaps the worst part of our new life with Father was the brutality.
For my first 9 years no one had ever dared raise a hand to hurt me. Not my grandfather, never my mother. But this man took great delight in systematically torturing Mother and I.
To see that handsome, cruel face in a haze of pain after I'd been beaten like a dog is an image I will never erase from mind. Nor do I wish to. I was learning what Grandfather had tried to teach me. I would learn...I would learn and then Mother and I would escape.
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My mother had her secrets...her ways. She could be just as cunning as Grandfather. When I was eleven she convinced Liebnicht to send me to school in England for a time. I was languishing from lack of stimuli and she knew I had to be educated to survive the cruelty of life. She had also been keeping secret correspondence with a former doctor of mine who now lived in the British Isles. He had been impressed by my brilliance and was willing to take me as an apprentice...to prepare me for medical school.
I knew she did this not just for my future...but to make sure I lived to have a future. She was sure Liebnicht would kill me one day and since I did nothing to cow to him and was directly in opposition to him in all things I was at greater risk of his evil moods.
When she told me where I would be going I wept with joy. I stand astounded to this day at the guile she used to execute this plan. Because of her friendship with the doctor there was minimal cost involved. And she reminded Liebnicht that I wouldn't trouble him so much if I left and he would still receive his stipend because school was covered in the arrangement. As much as it irritated him to make either I or Mother happy for even instant, he leapt at the chance to be rid of me...for as long as possible.
What I hadn't taken into consideration was that this meant leaving Mother...alone...with him. I was in great fear of this. I wanted to ask...beg...that she go with me. But I knew that part of his pleasure would be the agony of our separation.
I wouldn't have left...I should never have left her...I should never have left her.
She insisted, with tears in her eyes, that I go...
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My mother made sure that all our hidden jewels and money and deeds and copies of the bank arrangements went with me. She also gave me the one piece of jewelry too poor to have been stolen by Liebnicht.
A silver locket on a braided red ribbon.
The locket folded out three ways to reveal small sketched pictures and three locks of hair behind small glass frames. I knew by the styling that my mother had poured all her love into these representations of herself, Grandfather and I...and I hold this memento of her as my dearest and most treasured possession.
She was allowed to see me off on the ship to England. Oh how she trembled as she watched me walk the gangplank. How fragile she looked from where I waved on the deck to her. She did not cry...she was trying so hard to be brave. But I cried. I did not hide my tears...I cried and I was afraid. For her...for myself. I must have looked impossibly fragile to her as well. Stunted, misshapen me...just a child...leaving her for a new land and new world. I must have looked terribly small to be placing all her hopes in. I was determined to learn. To succeed.
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The voyage was horrible. The sea air and my physical challenges were incompatible. I spent half the voyage sick with fever and inflamed joints. Luckily I had an ally. An aged sailor with bad teeth, grizzled hair and a mean disposition. He took a liking to me and when I was sickest he tended to me and unable to care for myself he guarded my belongings from his far less honest friends. When I 'd recovered some of my strength he would take me topside and show me all he knew about navigation by the stars and tell me about all the wondrous places he'd journeyed to.
I would sit in rapt attention to the old fellow. Probably the first time anyone had ever treated the gentleman with any respect. But I understood that...I understood being ignored because of what others perceived me to be. Just as others probably perceived this man to be stupid, uninformed or too unrefined to understand anything.
The man taught me sea shanties, which I loved...and he taught me how to defend myself with a knife and other weapons as well. I wanted so much to learn.
He taught me to use a blowgun he had picked up in some far away islands and he taught me to use a knife and where to strike a man to kill instantly...or to kill more slowly. It wasn't hard for me to imagine Liebnicht as I attacked the dummy that the old sailor made for me out of burlap and straw.
Once I parted from my new friend, I was met by Dr. Werner Otto. A serious, white haired man with wild hair and a neatly groomed but full beard. He met me with a grave handshake and a cursory assessment that made me uncomfortable. But something must have met his approval because he nodded bruskly and signaled me to follow him. At his pace.
Dr. Otto did not spare me because of my stature. He didn't make allowances for pity or age. His was quick and I was expected to keep up and he did not register any surprise when I did...it was just expected I would.
From the age of 12 until 18 Dr. Otto became my surrogate uncle. Much sterner then my Grandfather and not as demonstrative as my mother but he imparted to me something my other tutors never had. A true love of learning. Learning had once been a chore...a duty. It was easy because of my prodigious nature but it was never a love...never...fun. As a bachelor gentleman and having no family or friends the one thing Dr. Otto did have was a love of learning. He made me think...he made me adventurous in every educational endeavor I pursued...and he treated me with respect.
But you cannot transfer respect. As I attended medical school I was confronted by those who neither respected nor liked me. I was considered egocentric by teachers whom I challenged. Doctors who had been out matched by me at 14 years old, sought my expulsion at every turn. Jealously I was accused of undermining authority when all I had really done is presented a better theory or proposed an improved method. And I was made the target of jealous fellow students 6 or 7 years my senior because my mind-boggling accomplishments made their pedantic, plodding, mediocrity look bad. Still the beatings...the lack of respect...the jealousy was easier to bear knowing that Grandfather had already predicted that just such jealousy would occur, and I was content knowing that he had yet to be proven wrong.
Correspondence between Mother and myself was sporadic and desperately frustrating. Months would pass with nothing...once almost a year passed. The letters would reveal that she had tried to send other letters but Liebnicht had prevented her from writing. One letter disturbed me greatly because on the corner of the piece of stationary was a smudge of blood. I worried about how she was...I worried. The week before I graduated, at the age of 18, I was playing a game of chess with Dr. Otto when he handed me a letter which had arrived that morning. I was so eager to open it that it breaks my heart to think of that loving eagerness.
I knew before I read it that something was wrong. The course paper was not the fine linen stationary my mother preferred and hoarded and the pencil it was written in was already fading a bit by the time it reached my hands.
***My Dearest Miguelito,
I am writing to tell you what has happened before you hear what will surely be hurtful lies about me.
Your father is dead. And I have killed him. I pray to the Blessed Virgin each night that I will be forgiven for this mortal sin, but I fear I will find less favor in the courts.
I was so tired. I had begged him to let me sleep. I had worked so hard in the garden since he discharged the gardener and I had spent the day cleaning. When he came home from his evening's activities he woke me to make his dinner and I was too tired so he beat me again. He struck me again and again until I did as he asked. He fell asleep immediately after dinner and I cleaned again. I do not remember taking the kitchen knife and killing him as he slept. But I did. Perhaps I did in my sleep...in my exhaustion what I had wanted to do in my waking moments.
Now I sit in a jail cell, and my trial starts tomorrow and I have no doubt I will be found guilty. But the pain has ended for me...I am only sad for how much it will cause you.
You...my darling, dearest love, must go on without me. Michael Liebnicht cannot harm you now. He can never hurt me again. You are my legacy. You are what survives of me and Poppa. You must go on. The world is lucky to have you in it...I wish that everyone in it could be like you...make your mark on the world. Change it for the better.
Never-ending Love,
Mother***
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The voyage back to California was agonizingly long. I carried with me my mother's jewels, deeds & papers, and my diploma (which a mediocre medico handed me, delighted with the prospect that he would not have to share a stage with me). I also carried letters of introduction and recommendation from Dr. Otto.
What I carried most was a sense of horrible doom and overwhelming guilt. And a fury was welling in me that I couldn't describe. A frustrated, crushing feeling of disappointment. I was near to leaping into the ocean several times due to fits of despair.
And there was reason for despair.
I arrived first at the courthouse where my mother was tried. I wanted to free her...to explain the agony that Liebnicht had committed against her. Us. Some part of me held out the hope that if they only knew the truth they would understand and with Liebnicht gone, my mother and I could live in peace again.
The clerk seemed amused by my protestations on behalf of my mother. I was informed that my mother was dead.
She'd been hung two weeks before my ship had come in.
I stared. I didn't move for what seemed an eternity. The clerk continued to talk but I didn't hear him. My mind...my heart were frozen in ice. My icy brain tried to imagine my small, fragile mother dwarfed by men of law and lies...relying on the rules of fairness and chivalry that never really existed...that no man ever really followed if he didn't have to. I imagined her searching strange faces for understanding...mercy. I imagined her heart breaking and hope fading in her eyes as she realized she had once more been betrayed. I imagined her alone with a knotted rope around her neck and the horribly long fall that would have been needed to snap her neck. Or worse, I imagined her slowly strangling while picnicking spectators watched and laughed.
I had my mother's remains exhumed from their pauper's grave and took them to our family's plot on our estates. She was reburied next to my beloved grandfather and I erected a statue of twin angels to mark where they rest.
I had always hated my resemblance to my father...but as my heart hardened I recognized another inheritance of his. I recognized my capacity for cruelty...for feelings of violence so vile that they scared me as much as they comforted me.
I worked in isolation. Rudderless. I was without a focus for the first time in my life. It took a while to rediscover my purpose. In a way, my mother had stolen my purpose and I needed to refashion myself. I realized with bitter disappointment that almost my entire lifetime had been devoted to the goal my mother had robbed me of by an accident of exhaustion. Killing my father. My training... the learning I'd gleaned from any source....all toward seeing Liebnicht punished for what he had done to my family. And yet, I'd never articulated the desire and chances were that if I could have just rescued Mother I never would've acted in any other way then to humiliate, and let live, my father.
Now my imagination went wild with the punishments I should have inflicted on him. Of pain I couldn't touch him with now. My hatred and bitterness grew. He would never see the eyes that looked so much like his burning into him as poison or a blade struck home. He would never hear me laughing in his ears as Hell came to claim him. He would never know that it was me. His ugly, little namesake, who had gotten the better of him. I had nothing now...nothing but the nauseating viciousness I knew was part of me because of him.
Without this...this goal...what was I? I was nothing and the void had to be filled.
I became who I am today.
First came the Judge who sentenced my mother to death for defending her own life. I drugged him & I took out his beating heart since he hadn't needed it during the trial.
Second came the prosecutor. I shot him and liberated him of his scheming brain.
Third came the jurors one by one. I executed each of them dispassionately and removed their eyes, which couldn't see the truth.
Fourth came the witnesses who testified against my mother. INCLUDING the paternal grandparents whom I didn't meet until the day I killed them...using the knife tricks my old sailor friend had taught me, and took their lying tongues from their heads. I had hoped to find some solace in this confrontation but I felt nothing...truly nothing.
Each killing became easier and easier...I attribute this callousness to my father. He surely rots in Hell for the agony he still causes.
I took one last liberty and paid a small fortune to some less then savory men to dig my father's putrid corpse out of his rich crypt and deliver it to me.
I took my grizzly trophies...and the now mutilated carcass, and I burned them when I burned down my childhood home. Desecrated by violence and misery I wanted no one else to ever live there again and I wanted to make sure no one ever benefited from it again. I converted what I could of Mother's diamonds into coin...I purchased a ship's passage and prepared my paperwork
The papers made me new again...My father's legacy was to leave me with no one..nothing. No love. So his legacy became my name...Liebnicht, in a way. His name recognized the part of me that was hardened to the task ahead. I was not without purpose now. I saw it in my mother's last missive, I heard in Grandfather's last words...
I was to change the way things were...no matter how I had to do it. I was to change the world. I was justice now.
I was now the only hope of those who were hostage to the unfairness of law and life.
I was Mother's hope for a better future for children like me.
I was my grandfather's defender of the heritage stripped from us.
I was his daily proof that he was never wrong. I learned that I would always be misunderstood.
I became Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless
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Artemus Gordon closed the journal in the, now silent, railcar and sighed.
"I almost wish we hadn't found this in the strong box after the fire Jim"
James West closed the locket, which held the drawing of a woman with dark beautiful eyes and the child with the innocent expression and nodded.
"Now what?" asked Artie. "Do we pack it away as evidence?"
Closing his eyes and rubbing the space between them as he absorbed what Artie had finished reading. "We give it back." Jim decided. He gathered the items back into their charred box and he informed the train crew of their new destination.
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The sun was setting and the light summer rain didn't require cover. The patter of raindrops disturbed dust and the ground hopped with mini puffs of dirt. A small, dark clad, figure exchanged the roses he held for the sealed box laying on the remote graves. Large, brittle, hard blue eyes scanned the horizon...suspiciously sensing a trap. But nothing befell him. He was alone with his memories.
There were two kisses blown...a box tucked under an arm, and a Mother's hope receding into darkness.