Red: The Adventure Begins Read online

  RED: Book 1

  The Adventure Begins

  By Darrell Maloney

  This is a work of fiction. All persons depicted in this book are fictional characters. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Copyright 2015 by Darrell Maloney

  This book is dedicated to:

  The real Debbie Poston, born Debra Maloney,

  who was my twin sister.

  Debbie was a redhead, and Texas tough, like the character who shares her name. She was also one of the finest human beings I’ve ever known. She was a far better person than I’ve ever been, and it’s a shame she departed this earth before me. She deserved to be here much more than I do.

  Debbie, you were my heroine, my inspiration, and everything I’ve strived to be.

  I have found Christ again, in hopes I can become a good enough person to go to heaven when my time on earth is done. There’s no doubt in my mind you’re already there, and I pray to God each day that I can see you again someday.

  I love you.

  Chapter 1

  Debbie had always favored her father. He had a thick head of flaming red hair, and so did she. He was stubborn as an old mule, and so was she.

  He was also tough as nails, and as long as she could remember, he took no guff from anyone. Yet he had a gentler side he tended to show only to those he cared about.

  She spent her entire childhood trying to emulate those traits.

  Debbie was a daddy’s girl, through and through.

  Oh, it wasn’t that she didn’t love her mom. In the early days her mom had her heart, and in her youth Debbie actually spent more time at her mother’s bedside than with her dad.

  For one of the greatest things her father had taught her was to always take care of your friends and the ones you love. Loved ones were to be cared for and tended to.

  And defended at all costs.

  He taught her that an attack against one of your loved ones was no different than an attack on oneself.

  Even when the attacker was nameless and faceless.

  Even when the attacker was something you couldn’t punch out, or shoot, or even touch.

  Even when the attacker was something like cancer.

  Debbie had been taught at a very early age how to defend herself against bullies. How the first option was to try to reason with them.

  For it was much better to reform a bully whenever possible.

  To show them that brutalizing others would never earn them the respect they’d need to succeed in life.

  Respect that was earned by helping other people.

  Or at least by getting along with them.

  She was also taught that some bullies just couldn’t be reformed. That there was something inside of them, something akin to hunger, which could only be fed by the suffering of others.

  Others who were weaker, or more frail. Or more timid.

  Those bullies somehow felt better about themselves by making others feel afraid.

  “Something made them that way,” her father told her. “Sometimes it wasn’t their fault. They were abused themselves, maybe, or just weren’t given the nurturing and love they needed as a young child.

  “And sometimes they were just born that way.

  “It isn’t your job to figure out which one. Assume that all of them are lacking in the tools it takes to be human, whatever the reason.

  “Be patient with them. Try to reason with them. If reason doesn’t work, walk away from them. If they won’t let you, or if things are going to get violent, then take the first strike.

  “And then fight like a wildcat.”

  Butch, her dad, taught her other things as well.

  “Now remember. You’re a girl first. Girls are supposed to be soft and sweet and smell nice. And you should be all those things.

  “But just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean you can’t be tough. I want you to be able to defend yourself against all comers. I don’t want you to have to depend on a man to protect you, or come to your rescue. Any man worth his salt will, of course. But if you happen to be with one who’s worthless, or incapable, or there just isn’t a man around, you shouldn’t be at the mercy of an attacker just because you’re a little sprout of a girl.”

  So he taught her a very effective one, two, three punch.

  “Men who pick on women, and boys who pick on girls, are cowards. Every last one of them. And they expect their victims to respond in the same way. With a kick to their groin. They expect that, because that’s usually how women defend themselves. That’s the only move most women know.

  “And these guys… these cowards know it. So they guard against it.”

  “You’re gonna surprise them.

  “The last thing a boy will expect from a girl he’s pushing around is a punch to his face. And that’s how you’re gonna catch them off guard.”

  Butch taught her the same right uppercut that had won him many a schoolyard fight in his own youth.

  “I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s gonna hurt. You won’t be able to open your right hand for a couple of days without it hurting, and you may even bruise your knuckles.

  “But it’ll hurt him a lot more than it’ll hurt you. And if you do it right, he’ll never bother you again.”

  He showed her how to make contact just under her attacker’s chin, with enough power to force it upward.

  “Don’t just aim for his chin. If you do, you won’t have enough power for the follow through. Your punch will peter out about the time you make contact and he’ll just laugh at you.”

  Debbie, only seven years old at the time, wasn’t sure she was following everything her father was saying.

  “Follow through? What’s that?”

  “You have to give your punch enough strength to hit his chin and keep right on going. Otherwise it won’t affect him much at all. Pretend your real target is the top of his head. You’ve got to hit his chin with enough force to knock it though his face and relocate it to the top of his head. If you can do that, you’ll get his attention and make him see stars.”

  “Just like in the cartoons?”

  “Exactly. But you’re not going to stop there. You’re not going to give him time to react either. As soon as you make contact with his chin, your other fist should start moving.”

  Butch had taken her tiny fist and used it to demonstrate a roundhouse motion until it connected with the right side of his face.

  “This is your second punch, and it needs to be just as powerful as the first one. Don’t punch me like your fist is going to stop as soon as it hits my cheek. Punch me like you’re going to knock my jaw all the way to the moon.”

  He stopped and smiled, remembering something he’d watched that evening on the Nostalgia Channel.

  “To the moon, Alice!”

  Butch sometimes got carried away.

  Debbie was confused.

  “Huh? What moon? Who’s Alice?”

  “Never mind, sweetheart. Just hit him with your second punch as hard as you can. With any luck you’ll knock him out and he’ll avoid you for the rest of his life. If you don’t do that, he’ll at least remember the pain every time you walk past.”

  “Okay. But you said there were three punches. A one, two, three combination.”

  “Right. After you try to knock his chin out of the top of his head, and after you try to knock his jaw to the moon, then you kick him in the groin.

  “By that time, he’ll have let his guard down because he’ll be too busy trying to protect what’s left of his face. Which by then should look like a Picasso painting.”

  “A what?”

  “Picasso. He was an expressionist painter. Oh, never mind.”

  “But if I hit
him that hard in all those places, won’t that, like… hurt him permanently or something?”

  “Not permanently, no. But if he lives to be a hundred and fifty years old, he’ll never forget you. And he’ll never mess with you again for at least that long or longer.”

  Debbie never went looking for trouble. But she didn’t shy away from it either.

  Her best friend at the time was Roy. Roy was a likeable kid, who just happened to have one leg that was shorter than the other. He wore special shoes, and wasn’t as athletic as most of the other kids in second grade.

  And that subjected him to ridicule and torment from the school’s bullies.

  Ridicule and torment that bothered Debbie at least as much as it bothered Roy.

  Roy and Debbie were commiserating at recess about the math problems they’d been doing that morning. It wasn’t bad enough that they had to learn to add and subtract, but now the teacher was trying to throw in a whole new thing called multiplication.

  It just wasn’t fair.

  But it wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t fair.

  An errant soccer ball came rolling their way.

  “Hey, freakazoid,” Tommy Tuttle yelled. “Kick the ball back!”

  Roy dutifully made a move toward the ball, which had rolled to a stop ten feet away from him.

  “Don’t do it,” Debbie told him. “Make them come and get their own stupid ball. Or make them at least ask you to kick it back and call you by your real name.”

  “But if I don’t kick it back, they’ll beat me up.”

  “No, they won’t. Trust me. I won’t let them.”

  Tommy Tuttle was suddenly there beside them, close enough so they could smell the stench of his putrid breath and see the fire in his eyes.

  “Hey, freak! I told you to kick the ball back.”

  “Leave him alone,” Debbie shot back. “He isn’t your servant, and the only freaks around here are you and your bully friends.”

  Even Roy gasped at that one.

  “Don’t think I won’t kill you just because you’re an ugly little girl.”

  “Try it.”

  Tommy made the mistake of stepping within range of Debbie’s fists.

  They’d learned a couple of days before in class about “personal space.”

  Tommy was violating Debbie’s.

  And he’d pay a heavy price.

  Thirty seconds later Tommy was in the dirt, writhing around in pain, trying to protect his groin from further assault and spitting blood from a tooth that had been knocked loose.

  Ten minutes after that Debbie was in the principal’s office while Tommy was being attended to by the school nurse.

  She wasn’t afraid.

  She was proud.

  Because she knew she had justice on her side.

  Her father, Butch, was called to the school to pick her up. The school had a zero-tolerance rule on fighting. Three days of suspension were in order for all parties, regardless of who was the aggressor.

  The school called it a “cooling off period.”

  Butch wasn’t upset. He was aware of the policy. And he didn’t try to debate it.

  He was proud of his daughter for standing up to her first bully.

  He took her fishing.

  Chapter 2

  The one evil that Debbie could not conquer was the vile cancer that was slowly consuming her mother's body.

  Rita was in her last weeks when Debbie knelt at her bedside.

  "Daddy taught me how to fight. I kicked a boy's ass."

  Rita was aghast.

  "Oh, my goodness! That's not the proper way for a young girl to behave. Please tell your father to come and see me immediately."

  Debbie fetched her father, disappointed but not surprised that her mother didn't approve.

  "Butch, you're teaching our daughter to beat up boys? What kind of life will she live if boys are afraid to court her for fear of saying or doing something wrong and being beaten for it?"

  "I'm not teaching her to beat up boys. I'm teaching her first to be a peacekeeper. To try to reason with the unreasonable. To apply logic to the illogical. To try to talk her way out of a difficult situation.

  "But you and I both know that sometimes bullies, drunks and thugs can't be dealt with in civil terms. Sometimes she'll have no choice but to defend herself or those she loves.

  "And in those cases, you're darn right I want her to be able to kick a boy's butt. I want her to exhaust all other more peaceful means, but when she can see it's going to get violent, I want her to hit first, hit hard, and hit often. It's like that old Chinese proverb... He who hits first stands the longest."

  Rita was skeptical.

  "I don't believe I've ever heard such a proverb."

  "Okay," he confessed. "I made it up. But you have to admit it's pretty clever, don't you think?"

  Rita didn't think so.

  Butch turned to Debbie, who thought it was indeed quite clever, and who decisively nodded her head in agreement.

  "Oh, Butch, I'm just afraid for her. What if she starts something she can't finish?"

  Butch turned to Debbie and asked her, "Honey, what did Daddy tell you about losing fights?"

  "You told me that there are no guarantees that I'll win every time I have to use my fists. And that's why I should only hit someone as a last resort. And you told me that even if I don't win a fight, that I'll chase away a bully. Because bullies pick on people they don't think will fight back. And when they do, the bullies stop picking on them. They will find someone else, someone weaker, to bully."

  "And what else, honey?"

  "You told me that black eyes build character."

  Butch panicked.

  "No, not that. That was supposed to be just between us. What else did I tell you to tell your mom if she ever had any concerns with you defending yourself?"

  "Oh, yeah. You said that even though I may not win every fight, I'll finish each one a little bit stronger, a little bit wiser, and with one less bully."

  Rita still wasn't convinced. In principle, she agreed with Butch's attempts to raise Debbie as a strong girl, who didn't necessarily need a man to rescue her when the going got tough.

  But Rita was raised in another era, with a different set of social norms.

  "I'm just concerned that she'll never be able to find a boy," she explained. "When I was young, boys went out with girls who wore dresses and played with dolls. Not tomboys who climbed trees and skinned rabbits."

  "Times have changed, Rita. The men who are intimidated by a strong woman aren't worth having. A real God-fearing, salt-of-the-earth man now sees a woman as an equal. And he isn't concerned if she's capable of defending herself. In fact, I want her to have a husband who's proud of her for being strong."

  Debbie was just a bit confused. She had a girly side too, and cherished her time playing dolls and dress-up with her friends.

  "But Mom, can't I have both? Can't I be a girl when I play with my girlfriends and still be able to defend them when one of us is bullied?"

  And that, in a nutshell, summed up Debbie's outlook on life.

  She'd grow up to be a caring and nurturing woman. A loving wife and mother.

  But she'd also relish the role of protector when she needed to be. And any man who couldn't accept her on those terms wouldn't make it in her world.

  But that was many years away.

  Here, and now, she needed her mother's blessing.

  Rita asked, "What happened to the boy you fought?"

  Debbie smiled.

  "He lost a tooth and walked funny for the rest of the day."

  "No, honey. That's not what I meant. Did he also get punished? Do you think he'll learn a lesson from this?"

  "I know for a fact he has, mom. He called me last night to apologize. He admitted that his mom made him call, but he really sounded like he meant he was sorry. He said his friends were making fun of him for getting beaten up by a girl."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I accepted
his apology. And I told him that dynamite and hand grenades both come in small packages and he should never assume a smaller person can't fight back. I also told him that real friends don't make fun of each other, and that maybe he should find some new friends who accepted him as he was. A great big jerk."

  Butch stifled a laugh.

  "I told him that if he'd quit picking on Roy and the other kids that Roy and I would be his friends.

  "He never said yes or no to that, but he got quiet. Maybe he's thinking about it."

  Rita smiled and felt a rush of pride.

  "Maybe I've misjudged you, sweetheart. I think you handled a difficult situation perfectly. I hope he can change his ways and the three of you can be friends."

  "Yeah, maybe. It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other. But I'll be his friend if he behaves himself."

  She changed the subject.

  "Samantha called. She said the whole school is talking about it. She said I have street cred now."

  Her mother asked, "What on earth is street cred?"

  "Gosh, Mom, I don't know. I was goin’ to ask you guys."

  Debbie and Rita both looked at Butch.

  He smiled.

  "It means respect. Street credentials mean that you've earned your right to walk the streets. You've proved yourself. You're not someone to be messed with."

  Rita said, "Oh, my. I'm not sure I want my daughter to have such a reputation."

  Debbie summed it up a different way: "Cool!"

  Chapter 3

  Several things happened in the aftermath of Tommy Tuttle’s beat down at the hands of little Debbie Poston.

  Debbie learned that not all problems can be talked out, not all threats can be neutralized without taking drastic action.

  It would be a lesson she’d carry with her as she grew into a woman, and throughout her life.

  Word got around that Tommy got owned by a girl.

  And a little girl at that.

  Many of Tommy’s friends abandoned him. He stopped being chosen for playground soccer games. He learned what Roy and the others had learned a long time before.