It is December and the rain is showering down in a thick curtain, over the noisy city and the countryside and the black clouds packs together imposingly. Jenkins stares at the falling rain and nostalgia wells up in him, while the fresh smell of the rain rises in his nostrils. Together with the trickles that pounds against the window, big drops of tears roll over his cheeks, while he suddenly realizes how meaningless his life had been and he what's more there isn't time left to do anything about it.
His life of crime paid well, but money does not buy happiness and even less time, to live longer he realise. His best friends are criminals and he is going to die one, he realises. The happiness that he once knew is still fresh in his memory, although it is years back that he brings into remembrance. The realization that he hasn't got long to live and that he cannot buy a second longer, force his thoughts back many years.
The Leukaemia eats slowly but surely at him and he knows that praying remains his only alternative, but he rejects the thought immediately. Ironically the physical cancer that digests Jenkins makes him decide to remove the spiritual cancer from his life, by exposing his criminal colleagues and braking down the numerous facades behind which they hide.
The file with it's red cover, containing the terror story of his life and irrefutable evidence exposing organized crime, connecting it to individuals and influential persons and businesses, has already been mailed to the farmstead which belongs to the friend of Jenkins' youth.
James Desmond's face springs up before Jenkins' minds eye and he remembered how they swam, in the creek, had made clay oxen and had thrown clay stick and especially how both of them had competed for that beautiful blonde on the farmstead which bordered to both there farmsteads.
Jenkins' thoughts roams back to his past and to the farmstead, where he grew up. He imagines feeling the pouring rain and seeing the lightning bolts hitting blue sparks out of the ridges when the huge thunderstorms abated themselves there.
For Jenkins the city only existed out of tar, steel and concrete. In the city he could find no wide open spaces, no hungry piece of earth devouring the live giving moisture, no rocky ridge with it’s green cloak where a person could literally hear nature living and most of all no tranquillity and no place to find piece of mind.
Jenkins could find no clean air to breathe deep into his lungs, or the sound of nocturnal animals; only the smell of exhaust fumes filled the air around him and the frantic hubbub of the city is left to him. What a terrible place to die, he thinks. On the faces of the people on the streets, Jenkins reads the guilt that is digesting him along with the cancer.
At night Jenkins had suffocated in the loneliness of the cheap quick thrill entertainment of the throbbing neon lights and the semi naked bodies, swinging to the almost primitive rhythms of the nightclubs and disco's.
A smile lights up the face of the man who is dying slowly and the big burden of guilt slips from his shoulders, when he almost mechanically phones the number that he had to look up in the directory. He shivers at the thought of betraying his friends, but a man has got to do what he has got to do.
Jenkins stares at the rain that makes lines against the window and is annoyed, when he hears the sound of the engaged tone in his ear. The voice that finally answers sounds somewhat familiar to Jenkins, but at first he does not recognize it and then his memories floods back. So James Desmond had married the beauty that they both frequented, he realizes.
Jenkins makes his voice husky, to ensure that she does not recognize him after all these years. "Good evening. May I speak to James?" He inquires. "Certainly. Who will I tell him is calling?" The lady asks. "It's an old acquaintance. Just tell him it's a old friend," Jenkins replies. "Just hold on please."
James Desmond picks the receiver up at the other end and the moment that Jenkins tries to speak, death silences him forever. One single shot resounds and he dies with a smile on his face, while the bullet jerks him backwards. Jenkins' murderer hears how the telephone tumbles down from it's small table and in the dark rushes over to where it is lying picking it up from the floor, pressing the receiver to his ear.
"Who's there?" He asks keeping his voice even. "James Desmond. What is happening?" The person on the other side of the telephone line answers and inquires, and a gloved hand breaks the connection. After receiving the file that Jenkins had send him, James Desmond hides it in a safe that he had installed behind a false wall in a farm shed, and decides to wait until he is he is able to arrange a meeting with some senior Police officers.
(870 Words)
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