"How could God do this to me after all I have done for him?"

LOUIS XIV
1704

Dack Shannon sat back in a recliner in the corner of Thor Alexander's cabin and stated, "Enough about my love life, tell me about yours. No tall tales, Mr. Sweetness."

Thor stood behind the dinner table in the rustic cabin and stretched his six foot eight inch frame. He swept back his mane of blonde hair, picked up a beer bottle and grinned. Thor's boot kicked against an old whiskey barrel near the fireplace and he quipped, "Well, I got quite the stable o' honnies, ol' son! Lemme tell ya what!"

Dack shook his head of ivory hair as he relaxed and peered at the ceiling with his pink eyes. "No, no, I was talking about true love."

"True love?" Thor grunted with a grin, his right hand resting on the sealed lid of the barrel.

Dack nodded and sipped his drink. "We all know I have no heart left. You ride my behind about that often, blondie. Who is your heart of hearts?"

Thor sat down in a massive wooden rocking chair that faced the large whiskey barrel. The big man in black jeans and dark flannel shirt put his boots on the barrel and sighed. "Whiskey?"

Dack shook his head. "You do not really drink out of that thing, do you?"

"Naw. It is sealed and just for decoration. What else would a secret agent for a cabal in the government use for a party favor?"

"You are avoiding my question, Mr. Alexander."

Again, his foot struck the barrel. "Nope, just thinkin' is all. Hmm. Oh, yeah mean like some one I really loved?"

Dack smirked. "Yes. That."

Thor rubbed a blonde beard, glanced at the snow falling outside the window and chuckled. "That won't take long, dude."

"Oh, come now! I know why I have been an outsider in life," the albino agent of Majestic Services said with a half smile. "But you have never had women after you or any truly loved? Tell me that is true!"

"I didn't say that," Thor acknowledged, his hips pushing back on the chair, balancing on the barrel in a rocking motion. "I said I never loved many. One actually. What is the old cliché? Yeah got one love, first and last…"

Dack sipped his Jack Daniels & coke and replied, "I thought that was one's first sexual experience?"

Thor closed his eyes. "Are you that bored, ol' son? I ain't talkin' ‘bout this all night!"

"Whatever."

"She was a common lady," the big blonde man told Dack at last, his tone very low. "A girl I knew when on assignment in Mississippi in the late eighties. Sweet gal, simple means, hair as black as night, skin kinda pale but not like yours."

Dack closed his eyes and drank more. "No one is as pale as me."

Thor's mind drifted back and he said quietly, "Yeah, she was a special girl who loved me cause, well, I was me. Not cause I was big or studly or tough…"

"…Or humble…"

Thor shot him a quick look of distain and then went on. "Well, Jill loved me ‘cause I was me. Period. It was positively sickenin' the romance end of it. We met at a country and western bar, ya know the type. Lots of phony assed pussies in their in cowboy boots and brand new hats that only come out on the weekends. Shit damn, the closest them little asswipes ever came to a real cow is when they stopped to crap at a Ponderosa."

"Anyway…" Dack prodded him forward firmly.

"Well, anyways, Jill was a real sweet looker, casual and hardly wore make-up, but didn't know she was beautiful. A farm girl that busted her ass for her education, and was studying to be a lawyer."

"Turn on the charm did you?" Dack asked.

"Strange enough, no. It was like, I dunno, kismet they call it."

"Stretching yourself there, Thor."

"Just lemme tell this. You wanted to know, damn ya! I was relaxed with her and just could be myself."

"Yourself…" Dack said as he took another drink. "Who might that be?"

"Screw you, pale-face. I ended up asking her to just go for a walk and then on a simple date…"

* * *

Thor's mind replayed the walk he took with Jill, her obsidian hair waving in the wind that came from the timber beside the tavern, his own long blonde locks tied back.

"So what is it you do for a living?" she asked him quietly, but with confidence.

Without missing a beat, Thor produced the standard Majestic Services lie: "I'm a U.S. Marshal."

Jill giggled and replied, "No really. What do you do?"

Thor responded, "I'm a professional killer for a secret intelligence agency beyond top secret. We pretty much do as we please and answer to a shadowy figure, a General named Hank. I can make a man disappear and no one will ever miss ‘em save for maybe his mama. Most of the folks I kill hatch outta garbage, though."

Jill laughed and gently laid her head on his thick arm. Thor recalled that soft hair, that voice, that sweet, honest lady of average means…

* * *

"We went to the movies. I ended up tellin' her a lot of dumb crap I never told anyone.Told her about my lonely childhood, hopes, dreams, life in the military..."

"What movie did you see?"

"Promise you won't laugh."

Dack grinned. "That I cannot do."

"We saw FRIED GREEN TOMATOES," Thor confessed, tapping the whiskey barrel lid with his boot three times.

Dack threw back his head, his ivory colored hair shaking as he laughed loud in the cabin.

Thor grimaced and spat, "There ain't a bigger prick in the universe than you, snowman."

The albino wiped his eyes before saying; "I am attempting to picture you in a chick flick. Did you sit in back?"

Defensively, Thor shot back, "Hey it ain't a bad movie! They cannibalize a guy at the end!"

"Spare me."

Thor looked down and said quietly, "We never even kissed on our first date. Dated a while and knew she was really the one." His deep voice trailed off and stopped.

As the big man grew silent Dack stared at him for a long time. "How did she die?"

Thor never lifted his head up and kicked the whiskey barrel again. "Is it that obvious she is dead?"

Dack shrugged. "I am an excellent guesser."

"Jill was killed in a car crash. Hit head on by a drunken driver. Freakin' murdered as surely as a gun had been put to her head."

"That is unfortunate. At least you had some love together."

Thor closed his eyes recalling Jill's long legs, clear skin, dark eyes and black hair… so shiny…and the fact that he never made love to her. Yet, she was still his one true love and lasting obsession. The one grave he went to one time a year. The only woman who could make him cry. "Yeah. I guess."

"Did it kill the guy?"

"Huh?"

"The drunken driver."

Thor tilted back on the barrel, his eyebrows drawing in. "No. It was a rich bitch that murdered her, Dack. Brilliant girl she was or at least that is what the test scores showed. A college grad, rich slit right, but on lots of nerve medication at the time. Never got any jail time at all, ya see. Her dad was a wealthy bastard and got her declared nuts for a brief time. She walked from the nut ward after her insanity left."

"That is unfortunate too. I am sorry I asked."

"Don't be, man. It was along time ago. Ya only find someone that special one time, no lie? No matter how hard I drink or screw another woman, I can't erase Jill's face from my brain. I keep tryin', though. Maybe I'm a dumbass."

"Probably."

"I guess I gotta keep searchin' for another heart of gold, eh?" He thought of how many country and western taverns he'd been in seeking out such a prize, always to come up empty. He knew where it was, though. Slumbering under six feet of earth in Senatobia, Mississippi.

Dack leaned forward sporting a furrowed brow. "And this woman, the medicated rich girl, she just walked completely from out of your sight?"

Thor Alexander stopped rocking and closed his eyes again. He stood up and stretched again, his mind full of the images of his big hands on a small woman's body, struggling…fighting…screaming…threatening…promising vengeance from a money drenched daddy…as she was placed head-first in a wooden barrel full of Tennessee whiskey…then the echoes of nails driving through the lid of the barrel cupped with nails on the inside scratching, breaking…and the silence that reigned…

"C'mon, ol' son! What kind of an ass do ya think I am?"

Dack raised an eyebrow. "A vengeful one."

Thor rested his hip on the lip of the whiskey barrel and replied, "Me? Naw, I just love justice, no matter what costume she chooses to put on. Sometimes, I gotta dance with the bitch until she falls down. Other times, I make lady justice my whore."

Dack sat back and laughed, "All right, Marshal Dillon. Whatever you say."

Thor licked his lips as his fingers drummed on the lid of the barrel. "Vengeance doesn't bring yer true love back, Dack."

"Huh. I know that."

"Love makes the world go ‘round, partner, but vengeance only greases the axels a bit."

Dack sighed. "Sorry I asked, honest."

"Wanna play VIRTUAL GETTYSBURG? I'll even let you be the north!"

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