of Fort Worth on Interstate 35W. Though it had a population of six-thousand residents just a few years earlier, it saw a population boom bringing the number of residents to about twenty-thousand. It was the biggest town in Johnson County, and in spite of the problems the Johnson boys posed, it was a place where people wanted to raise their children. It was still relatively small and safe and in close proximity to both Fort Worth and Dallas.
Austin and his family lived just outside the city limits, in what they considered the country. They were never personally exposed to the problems the Johnson boys created - they only read about them in the local paper, the Burleson Star.
Their house sat on a wooded half-acre lot. It opened on two rooms on either side of the entrance. On the right was Austin’s office with a desk in the middle. A hutch behind that held his computer, fax machine and a few artifacts he had collected during his travels. On the walls were several wooden masks from Africa and South America and dozens of photos he had taken on his many trips. The photos included places like the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and one he was especially proud of was of an elephant he had snapped during a safari at Kruger Park in South Africa. On the left side of the entrance was the dining room, which his wife had decorated in French motif, connected to the kitchen. From the kitchen, one would enter the breakfast room and then the living room. To the left of the kitchen was a little entrance with a door to the two-car garage and a utility room next to the master bedroom and its private bath. The living room was large enough for a fireplace and a big-screen television. The walls of the living room had few pictures selected by his wife, and other than a few small figurines he brought from around the world and displayed on the fireplace mantle, his wife would not make him any allowances on decorating the room. “You can do whatever you want in your office but stay out of the rest of the house,” she would always say. It would always bring him joy when she would pick something up he placed in the living room without her authorization and place it on his desk giving him that look of “nice try but no dice.” To the right of the living room were two bedrooms with a common bathroom in the middle. One of the bedrooms was his daughter’s and the other was converted to an exercise room with a couple of stationary bicycles and a treadmill with assorted weights and wraps. Behind the living room they had added on a sun room/bar room that was stocked with all kinds of alcoholic drinks from around the world. Some of the bottles they had for years and kept for display because of their origin and art. The bar, as it was finally called, opened up on a covered patio and an oversized wooden deck with a hot tub at the far left corner. On the right of the deck was their in-ground swimming pool. Looking at the back-yard, one would think they were in the tropics after his wife was finished with the landscaping. That was where his wife and daughter would spend a lot of quality time together and where Austin would linger as well when he was home. During their time by the pool was where they did most of their bonding and talking and tackling any problems any of them might have. Austin loved to watch his wife and daughter interact and his eyes never failed to mist on him. He loved the drive to their house. Flying cargo for a worldwide carrier kept him away for days and sometimes weeks at a time and he hated that. The schedule was intense, so when he left DFW Airport and turned off the busy interstate toward Burleson, his nerves calmed. He drove past horses, cattle, goats and even emus on his way home. The simplicity and order thrilled him. At night he would see lightning bugs. He really loved coming home.
Austin began his aviation career in the U.S. Air Force. He flew the A-10, nicknamed the warthog. It is not an attractive aircraft but was a devastating weapon against ground personnel. During the Gulf War, Austin was involved in the battle that was dubbed the Turkey Shoot. Thousands of Iraqi troops ran from Kuwait back to Baghdad after looting the city of everything it had. The U.S. Air Force caught the retreating Iraqis just across the border. Pictures of the devastation were plastered all over newspapers and television screens across the world. Austin flew his missions with the usual precision and detachment. He didn’t feel sorry for the Iraqis. He saw them as intruders, murderers, rapists and any negative image he could conjure up. He was there to set things right. He was there for revenge. That’s how Austin saw the world, that’s how he had survived so far. Then he met Megan.
Austin was attending the University of Texas at Arlington. He had been there a full year and never tried to make any friends. He was a loner. He saw Megan when she walked on campus for the first time. She looked lost and close to tears, looking as if she had no idea where to start. For the first time in his life, he actually approached someone. It was like a magnetic attraction. He had no control of his own legs when they started dragging him toward her. It was love at first sight. She was tall, five feet seven inches, long brown hair and the most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen. He always thought it was the eyes that really hooked him. She was petite and looked extremely innocent and, over time, he loved everything about her.
“Can I be of help? You look lost,” Austin heard himself say. He really was not sure who was saying the words but knew it had to be him as they were coming out of his own mouth.
“Well yes, I would really appreciate your telling me where to go from here.”
There was something about her. He couldn’t explain it but it was something that kept him close. He took her to the registration office and showed her to her dorm. When he finished helping her carry her belongings to her room and settle, he volunteered to show her around campus. She was grateful for his help and actually enjoyed his company and when he finally asked her if she would go to dinner with him that evening, she readily accepted.
That evening was the best he had ever had. They talked and laughed for hours and never felt the time go by until the waiter cordially told them that it was past closing time. Ever since that day, they became inseparable. Austin always referred to that day as the day he was born.
When he met Megan’s parents, Van and Ruth, and saw how much attention and love they paid her, he immediately liked them. He realized what he had missed all his life. He grew up alone, an orphan, and never really knew that kind of love. No one had ever paid attention to him and he never had anyone to love or love him back. He was a very bright, but painfully shy little boy and could not get along with other kids. He was told over and over that his shyness and loneliness were the reason he kept moving from one foster home to another. Each family would discover the tragic truth when they would give up on him, and even though some were very decent and tried to help, they would give up again when they were faced with their failure to get through to him.
He had witnessed his parents murder and suicide when he was five years old. He had awakened to the usual sound of his parents arguing. This time the neighbors had called the police. His father had put a gun to his mother’s head, shouting and threatening, drunk as usual, and when the police arrived and tried to disarm him, he pulled the trigger. When he pointed the gun at the police, he went down in a hail of bullets. No matter how much time passed, Austin could not erase the memory of that evening. The nightmares happened nightly and in them were different scenarios of what he could have done to prevent the incident.
Austin had no grandparents, they were all dead. He had no uncles, aunts, cousins, no one. After that night, Child Services took him in and tried to place him with different foster families. Some were very decent and wished he could stay, but he could not blend in with the other children. He buried himself in books and always stayed in his room. Some of the families knew his situation going in and when his parents were mentioned, he would explode. On some occasions, when one of the kids would persist, Austin would fight with frightening rage and it never failed, he would be driven to Child Protective Services the very next morning. Austin knew the drill. Every time he had one of those episodes, he would go into his room and start packing. No one seemed interested in the guilty party and who started the argument and hence the fight. They would be alarmed by his rage and take him back to the authorities.
He also excelled in sports. He would play with such vengeance that his own coach would eject him from the field during practice. He never failed to participate in the actual games, though. All his teammates loved having him on their side, but wanted nothing to do with him after the games.
Austin could never rekindle his rage no matter how much he tried. Every morning he seemed to have more rage after the nightmares.
After he married Megan, the nightmares continued on and off, and his loving wife never failed to wake