As Told To Theodore Roosevelt TwoHorse
From the Diary of
Alexia Martina duCota
Please note, this is not the full Diary, just an excerpt of Mrs. Alexia duCota's diary. The full account has not been released and may not ever be released. Ms. Cindy duCota is maintaining it intact for her children.
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A Personal Note From Cindy:
I found Momma's hidden diary as I was getting her stuff ready to move to our other house and secretly read it through. Most of the stuff was dull and boring stuff, some of it was just plain racy. This part is the part concerning me and my conception. She had it all down, from meeting my father to my conception and pictures that she and Tantie Bree and Tantie Katie had taken of each other. We are not going to show those, they're private pictures of a nude and pregnant Momma. All in all, however, this part is an amazing and moving story of a woman in love and lust with her man, her own father, and within these few pages is that story, for better or for worse, it is the story of my father/grandfather and my mother/sister. Keep in mind that The Good Book says, "Judge not, lest ye be judged and found wanting," so I'll let you form your own conclusions.
Prologue:
His sister's funeral was going to be in four days, but he'd come when his sister had been hospitalized with this last stroke, so he'd been here about two weeks. The stroke had affected her badly, and she'd had another in the hospital not too long after the first one, as well as a blood clot, an embolism I think they called it, that had hit her heart and stopped it. The second stroke hadn't been too severe, and had it not been for the blood clot, she'd have survived to fuss and cuss another day, but not anymore. She was gone.
His full name was Dauphin Martíne duCota, better known as Duke, and he'd been gone a long time, almost the entire length of the Iraq war up to now. Operation Enduring Freedom had been his ticket back into combat. He'd contracted with KBR and gone back to what he knew better than the back of his hand. He had made it through several tours of duty in Viet Nam and made it into Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War before he was unceremoniously put out to pasture, as he put it. He hadn't been out for long, when the action in Afghanistan heated up. He tried to re-enlist to get in on this one, too, but they had let him know in no uncertain terms that he was no longer fit to fight. KBR, however, was looking for security people, so he took a contract with them, the next best thing to being a soldier, and went off to make some money. This was as bad as he'd ever been hurt, so he'd come home to recuperate.
At first people didn't notice his missing foot, then when they did, they'd treat him like an invalid. Sooner or later they forgot his missing left foot and treated him normally. A lot of his mobility had gone, by then, and he blamed it all on his missing foot. In spite of his injury, he'd lost none of his taste for a good fight, lost none of his love of the adrenalin rush that it brought. In between Iraq and Afghanistan, he'd made several of million in pay and bonuses which he'd put into a foreign American Express account and he hadn't spent much of it, except for the child support. He still had a couple of piles of money left since you can't exactly take off and go shopping in combat. At the age of fifty-nine, you could say he was retired from the military but never from combat. During his convalescent leave, he went back to look for his family. He had just found his brothers and sisters again, when this happened. Family gathered from miles around. People and cards of condolence came from all over the country, as well as from overseas, and not just from the insurance companies. He'd never realized how well she was thought of, he'd just thought of her as a crotchety old broad, a lot like him.
He had married just before retiring from the Army at the ripe young age of forty-seven, a month shy of his forty-eighth, to a very young woman who'd fallen for his older warrior looks and status. Carmen Inocencia Fernandez had been nineteen, a young Tejana, barely out of the cradle, they teased him. It was true, he was an older guy with a 'way too young wife and a baby girl. Their marriage, like so many May-December marriages, ended in divorce. Their marriage may have been doomed to failure but it wasn't because of problems in the bedroom.
He had done his best as a father for her, although he was always traveling with the many various jobs he'd held. His little girl loved him, but she didn't go for long periods without seeing him, until KBR came along. He'd always been close enough to go see an occasional ball game or school play and play with her take her to Mickey Dee's or that cheesy old mouse's pizza place, you know the one. The KBR contract, however, had been a long, tedious thing and he hadn't seen, nor hardly thought of, his little girl in five years or so. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been a gawky thirteen, falling in love with one boy band after another. He'd been afraid she would run off to be with one or another of them, but the few letters he received from her mother reassured him that she hadn't. He and Carmen were still on friendly terms with each other, overnighting on occasion, usually at her request when he'd been in town. She still missed him there. That had stopped when she re-married, but she still let him know about Lexi, that she was still at home and still behaving like a good girl.
His next project after his sister was buried was going to be to re-connect with some of his family, maybe renew his ties with his daughter and speak to her about inheritance. As was said before, a lot of people came to see his sister off, among them was his own darling daughter, Lexi. He had kissed his sister good-bye helping to get her to Briggs Funeral Home and signing some necessary paperwork as next of kin. Her ex-husband hadn't been around in a long time and her kids weren't sure about what needed to be done.
He was staying at the St Francis Inn, your basic dump, since he didn't believe in paying a lot for a place to sleep, and what with the Shriner's convention in town, even they were about out of rooms even at the minimum four hour rate. It had a tavern by the office, and it was thirsty work putting people in the grave, so he went there to have a couple.
He stood at the bar and drank the first beer thirstily, nursing the second while thinking and staring vacantly into space. He was contemplating the shortness of life, when he was rudely bumped from behind. He moved over and ignored it, in this tight little honky-tonk, people were always jostling each other.
"I said, hey!" he became aware that somebody was hollering at him, "are you deaf or are you stupid!" he felt the hand shove him on the shoulder again and turned to look.
"I guess, I'm stupid," he answered turning back to his beer.
"No," the loudmouth continued, "you think I'm stupid if you think I'm going to let you stare at my woman and get away with it!" he shoved Duke's shoulder again.
"Look, ass-head," Duke spoke without turning, "all I want to do is drink my beer and go to my room. One funeral at a time is all I care to handle."
"Funeral!" the loudmouth yelled grabbing his shoulder.
Duke came off his stool swinging the beer bottle, with any luck, he'd connect, but he knew that this loudmouth had probably fallen for this one before. The bottle whizzed through empty air as Duke's assessment proved correct. He figured a knife or a club was the other man's weapon, so he let the bottle go and spun into a roundhouse kick, spinning on his good foot. The prosthetic foot connected with the side of the loudmouth's knee and he went down hard, screaming his pain loudly. His partner jumped in swinging a knife, Duke, wearing his heavy Carhart jacket was well armored against it. It was cold outside, so he'd worn his well insulated and very heavy canvas jacket. It turned the knife blade just enough to avoid heavy damage to his arm and protected him from the sharp edge. He slapped the knife arm as it flashed past him spinning on his prosthetic heel, brought the other elbow into the shoulder and neck joint, putting him down for a few precious seconds. The loudmouth had his back to Duke as he tried to get back up on his broken knee, so Duke punted his balls into his stomach. Nobody else was getting in on the slaughter, and Duke kicked the second man in the ribs, keeping him down. The deputy manning the door as bouncer was trying to edge behind Duke, but when Duke stood up, the deputy put a hand on his gun and pointed with the other, telling him to simmer down.
"Call an ambulance, they need some help," Duke told him going back to his beer.
