Blackjack Chapter Two

 The Ballad of Blackjack

By

Travis Naughton

Chapter Two

Before he could do anything to avenge the causes of his unrelenting heartache, the haggard gambler folks called Blackjack had to do something about his excruciating headache. Taking a blow to the temple from his namesake blackjack (a small but heavy hand-held weapon made of lead or sand wrapped in a leather sheath) would kill most people, but our Blackjack, a widower who had lost his will to live years ago, would not be put out of his misery that easily. He'd learned the hard way that he was not an easy man to kill. 

Blackjack, born Alan Keller, had been living with unimaginable pain ever since his family was brutally murdered in their home in Kansas City on July 4, 1876. When his wife Olivia and eight-year-old daughter Sarah died at the hands of a drifter who had followed the family home from the river town’s Independence Day reveries, the man known as Alan Keller ceased to exist. A broken man consumed by grief and a thirst for alcohol and revenge took his place.

The pain from the recent wound to his head paled in comparison to the pain he felt when he woke up in old Doc Porter’s office on July 8, 1876. He had been shot twice in the chest at point-blank range by the same six-shooter that had been used to put a pair of bullets through the hearts of his beloved Olivia and Sarah on that fateful night. When he finally regained consciousness after two surgeries and four nights of fever-induced nightmares, Doc Porter told him he was lucky to be alive. 

“A collapsed lung and a shattered rib nearly caused you to bleed out, young man, but luckily we were able to patch you up and save your life,” Doc told his patient.

He did not feel lucky when Doc broke the news about his wife and daughter. Far from it. The only things he felt from that moment on were an all-consuming desire for revenge and an overwhelming eagerness to join his family in the next life.

As soon as he was able to stand, the recovering patient bid farewell to his doctor and staggered into the first saloon he saw. He spent the next few days trying as hard as anyone ever had to drink himself to death. After a good scolding from the good doctor, he decided to put off his own demise for a while and instead focus all of his energy on tracking down the Devil who had taken everything he had ever loved from him.

Charles Morgan, editor of the Kansas City Courier, was shattered by the deaths of his daughter and granddaughter. In his agony, he offered his revolver to his son-in-law and begged him to hunt down the man who killed them. 

“I would light out right now and do it myself if I were a few years younger, Alan,” Charles pleaded to his daughter’s widower. “Please, son. Take it. Avenge my girls.”

“Charles, you know I swore to never pick up a gun again after the war. I want that scum dead as much as you do, but I won’t shoot anyone ever again.”

“Then take this,” Charles said as he reached into the bottom drawer of his desk. “It’s called a blackjack.”

Turning the heavy object over in his hand, the younger man asked, “How do you use it?”

“You strike with it. A blackjack is great for kneecapping someone during a fight or smashing a man’s trigger finger into a thousand little pieces. One good shot to the base of the skull can kill a man.”

“A blackjack, eh? I like it.”

“Then go and use it well, Alan. Your job at the paper will be waiting for you when you get back.”

“Charles, I’m not planning on coming back. Alan Keller died with his wife and child that night.” He paused for a moment as an idea took root in his mind. “Call me Blackjack from now on.”

  “Alright then. Godspeed to you, Blackjack.”

Three years later, almost to the day, Blackjack wound up on the wrong end of his own weapon, the result of letting his guard down while in a drunken haze. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he told himself. The Heartbreak Bandit who had relieved him of his watch, cash, and coin pouch the previous night had also taken the only photograph he owned of his wife and daughter, and Blackjack knew that he would have to get sober and stay sober long enough to track down the conniving thief and to finish the job he set out to do in his father-in-law’s office. 

But first he needed some headache powder, a hot breakfast, and some transportation. And to acquire those things, he would need money. Despite the red-headed woman’s best efforts, Blackjack was not quite destitute. He’d accumulated a sizeable stack of winnings as a semi-professional gambler, and one day while he was trying to figure out the best way to safeguard his stash, he had the clever idea to swap out the lead in his blackjack for an equal measure of 24 carat gold. 

The thought of cracking the skull of the woman who unknowingly tossed aside a pound of solid gold while absconding with about twenty dollars in cash and the photo of his family brought a sadistic smile to Blackjack’s parched lips. 

(Read Chapter Three of “The Ballad of Blackjack” next week.)

The Ballad of Blackjack

 Hello again, faithful readers. It's been a while since my last blog post, and I hope you will forgive me for my apparent inactivity. The truth is that I have been quite busy writing for the Boone County Journal, but in a departure from my previous habit of posting my work to my blog on the same day as it appears in the newspaper, I thought it would be of benefit to the Journal's new owners to promote subscriptions rather than give away my material for free. 

After further reflection, I decided it would be okay to post these pieces after a period of time has gone by. Hopefully readers will subscribe to the paper to support a locally-owned business and its contributors while also having the option of reading my previously published work. In addition to my usual opinion column "Out of My Mind," I am also writing a serialized Western called "The Ballad of Blackjack." Here, for your enjoyment, is the first installment of the saga.

The Ballad of Blackjack

By

Travis Naughton

Chapter One

As the first rays of the morning sun filtered through the small room’s lone window, a crumpled heap lying on the dusty wooden floor began to stir. The heap, a man in his mid-40s with graying hair and a week’s worth of stubble on his face, was accustomed to waking up in strange places. In fact, it happened with such frequency that the citizens of Alexandria began referring to the old drunkard as Blackout rather than his preferred moniker Blackjack.

Of course, Blackjack was itself a nickname, one used by people who were never privy to the Christian name he was given by his mother and father nearly half a century earlier. His parents were by now long gone, as were many others who might have recalled the name he was assigned at birth: Alan Keller. No one had called him that in years. Not since the day he met the Devil himself. 

It took Blackjack a bit longer than usual to shake loose the cobwebs on this sunny Sunday morning. "How much of that rotgut did I drink last night?" he wondered to himself as he struggled to his feet. The pounding in his head was more intense than any hangover he’d had in his life.

Out of habit, he looked around the dingy room for a bottle, hoping for a little hair of the dog to help take the edge off. Curiously, he found no traces of liquor anywhere in the tiny shack. There was only a small cot, a wooden table with two rickety chairs, and what appeared to be a pool of dried blood on the floor. Blackjack instinctively traced his fingers over his face, searching for a bleeding wound. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had his nose broken or lip split in a drunken bar fight. Finding his nose and mouth uninjured, he again contemplated his throbbing headache. A moment later, Blackjack discovered the source of his pain just above his left temple.

The lump was quite large, and it was still oozing a small amount of blood where the scalp had been split open. As more light filtered into the room, he could just make out the shape of a small familiar object on the floor beneath the cot. All at once, the events of the previous evening came into sharp focus. Despite the pain, Blackjack chuckled when it became clear that the cause of this headache (and a few others over the years) was a beautiful and fierce woman.

After his discharge from the Union army, Corporal Keller took a reporter job at the Kansas City Courier where he wrote about the western frontier, post-war reconstruction, and other current issues. It was in the Courier’s offices where he would meet his future bride, Miss Olivia Morgan, the managing editor’s daughter and personal secretary, a force of nature that Alan was unable to resist. She was the only woman he had ever loved, and she and the child she would later bear would become the center of Alan’s universe.

The woman he had met Saturday night at the Alexandria Saloon was decidedly not the love of his life, but as they laughed and played cards and drank whiskey throughout the evening, the man now known as Blackjack allowed himself to open the door to his heart just a crack. That was all the opening the red-headed beauty (referred to as “the Heartbreak Bandit” on wanted posters throughout the West) needed. After they closed down the saloon, the woman who called herself Jane invited Blackjack to come back to her room for a nightcap. 

As soon as the door closed behind them, Jane embraced Blackjack and kissed him with more aggression than passion. She ran her hands all over his body as if she were searching for something. The last thing he remembered was Jane finding the heavy leather sap, or blackjack, that he always carried. Although he had earned his nickname while playing cards in seedy towns up and down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, only Blackjack himself knew that the striking weapon bearing the same name as his favorite card game was the true origin of his nom de guerre. The irony that the splitting headache he woke up to that morning was caused by his own namesake weapon was not lost on him. After retrieving it from under the cot and discovering that his coin pouch, wallet, and pocket watch were missing, Blackjack realized that his simple, yet brutally effective weapon was the last possession he had to his name.

Unbeknownst to her, the Heartbreak Bandit had made a potentially fatal mistake when she chose her latest victim. Inside the stolen wallet, hidden behind the modest amount of cash Blackjack had won playing cards at the saloon, there was a faded photograph of a woman and a young girl with the words “Olivia and Sarah, 1871” written on the back. 

Blackjack knew all too well that he could do nothing to bring back his murdered wife and daughter. But as he stepped out into the bright sunshine already beating down on the Kansas plains at that early hour, he pulled on his wide-brimmed hat, adjusting it to accommodate the goose egg on his head, and tucked the blackjack into his coat pocket while silently vowing to use the weapon on the killer that took his family, the thief who took the last reminder he had of them, and anyone else who stood in his way. 

(Be sure to read Chapter Two of “The Ballad of Blackjack” next week.)

The Adventures of Supersub

 When I announced that I would no longer be writing my weekly newspaper column in the Boone County Journal nearly three months ago, I gave one simple reason for my decision: “I have nothing of value left to say.” The truth, of course, is not quite that simple.

After writing hundreds of opinion pieces, political commentaries, and personal essays over the course of a decade, it became increasingly difficult to come up with new material each week. My readers deserve original and compelling content, not repetition, and continuing my column risked wasting my readers’ valuable time.

So, for the last few months I have written nothing more than an occasional status update or photo caption on Facebook. Free from the pressure of delivering fresh, weekly content for my newspaper audience, I should have been doing some creative writing or at the very least compiling my most recent columns into a fourth volume of collected works. Instead, I have spent most of my summer trapped in a dark and difficult funk, and therefore I have written nothing—until today.

A few short weeks ago I was perusing help-wanted ads, looking for an excuse to get out of the house a few hours per week. After stepping away from substitute teaching last year in order to help look after my beautiful grandbaby Freya, I felt that nine years in the classroom was enough and that it was time to move on to something else. My career as an educator was over.

When my phone rang on July 12, I was surprised to see “Southern Boone Elementary School” on the caller ID. In nearly a decade of subbing, I had never taught in the elementary building, and it had been five years since my youngest child Truman had been a student there. Curious, I answered rather than sending the call to voicemail.

The voice on the other end of the line was that of Principal Amy James. Dr. James was calling with an intriguing offer. Due to increased enrollment, the decision was made to add a ninth fourth grade classroom for the coming school year, and Dr. James wanted to know if I would be interested in teaching the class.

The terms of my employment would be the same as they were when I accepted an offer to teach music next door at the primary school during the 2019-2020 school year. Because I possessed a valid substitute certificate, I would be allowed to teach full-time for one year under a provisional emergency certificate due to the fact that no candidates with a permanent certificate applied for the position.

Taken aback, I asked Dr. James to let me talk it over with my family before giving her an answer. Of course, my wife and kids were in total agreement that I should take the job. I consulted a few of my teacher friends who also, without hesitation, told me to go for it. And in my own heart, I knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I would be a fool to turn down. I called Dr. James the next day and accepted the position.

Soon thereafter, I had an epiphany. I could write about this unique experience, not in a weekly newspaper column, but in the form of a book. Would readers be interested in following the story of a 50-year-old, quasi-retired, substitute teacher as he takes on the challenge of becoming a full-time, fourth grade teacher?

Would you, dear reader, be interested in such a story? I hope so, because I am going all-in on this plan. Having never taught kids in grades 3-5, teaching fourth graders will be an eye-opening and brand-new challenge for me. And I guarantee it will be a year fraught with mistakes, foibles, folly, and hilarity. If I survive academic year 2022-2023, I promise to write all about it, and maybe I’ll even include some of my experiences as a music teacher and substitute as well.

Perhaps I do have something of value left to say after all.

Thank You and Farewell

 I began writing for the Boone County Journal in the summer of 2011. By my estimation, I’ve had over 500 original submissions published in the newspaper in that span of time. At roughly 700 words per piece, the total body of my work for the Journal amounts to around 350,000 words, the equivalent of four 300-page books.

After sharing so much of myself in the pages of the newspaper for so long, I have come to one inescapable conclusion: I have nothing of value left to say. Nothing at all, except for one final and very important message; thank you. 

Thank you, dear readers, for turning to Page 4 week after week, year after year, to read the rantings of a stay-at-home parent/ grandparent/ husband/ son/ grandson/ brother/ uncle/ substitute teacher/ wedding officiant/ public address announcer/ cigar box guitar builder/ collector car enthusiast/ recovering alcoholic/ mental health advocate/ LGBTQ+ ally/ world citizen/ writer.

It has been an incredible honor to serve my community as a columnist and reporter for our locally-owned and operated newspaper, the Boone County Journal. The Journal has a long and rich history and is one of the oldest independent newspapers in Missouri. I am proud that my words—all 350,000 of them—are permanently enshrined in the Journal’s archives. Today’s column will be my final contribution to that collection.

Fret not, loyal readers, for you will still be able to read virtually everything I have ever written thanks to the magic of self-publishing. I have self-published three volumes containing collections of my columns from the Journal (“Love & Fried Chicken”, “686 Words Per Week”, and “It’s All Chicken and Booze”), and I plan on releasing a fourth compilation soon. All of my books, including my novel “Naked Snow Angels” areavailable at Amazon.com.

Although I have exhausted my supply of opinions for the newspaper, I am not yet done with writing. In the future, I intend to create short stories, literary essays, a memoir, and perhaps another novel or two.

My career as a columnist began when I asked former Journal publisher Bruce Wallace if he would consider printing the musings of a stay-at-home dad getting ready to adopt a little girl in China. Eleven years later, that little girl, my daughter Tiana, is not so little anymore. In fact, she is finishing her junior year at Southern Boone High School this week. Her younger brother Truman, whom we adopted three years earlier in 2008, will be a sophomore next year, and their big brother Alex will be a senior at Mizzou next fall.

When my kids were younger, I wrote about them quite a bit, but out of respect for their privacy as they’ve grown older, I have opted to write about them less frequently in recent years. Naturally, I would love to write about my granddaughter Freya ad nauseum, but because she is not technically my baby, I can’t share everything about her life nor that of her baby brother Jude (due in August!) with the public. But who knows, maybe there will be a book called “The Adventures of Freya, Jude, and Pop” for you to read someday.

In addition to thanking you, my readers, for indulging me over the years, I would be remiss if I failed to say thank you to former Journal publisher Bruce Wallace and current publisher Gene Rhorer for allowing me to share my unsolicited opinions, personal stories, and community features for the last decade plus. I am deeply grateful to both of these gentlemen for allowing me to sully the pages of their respectable newspaper.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for selflessly allowing me to share accounts of their lives with you. A special thanks goes to my wife Bethany—the Voice of Reason and the Enabler—for putting up with all of my nonsense for nearly 30 years. I love you and our family, Dear, more than this sorry excuse for a writer could ever adequately express.

I hope I made you proud.

 

May is Mental Health Awareness Month

 Former Boone County Journal publisher Bruce Wallace, a good friend of mine, just called a minute ago to catch up and to make sure I’m doing okay. It was great to hear a friendly voice, and it was down right medicinal to laugh out loud as we swapped stories. His was the fourth or fifth phone call I received in the last week or two from a friend or family member who was concerned about me. I appreciate Bruce and everyone who has reached out to me recently. To them I would like to give my sincerest thanks. 

Mental Health Awareness Month is a great time to check in on loved ones who might be struggling with their emotional wellbeing. It’s also an opportunity for all of us to do mental health self-assessments. In the past, I have written extensively about navigating life as a recovering alcoholic and someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Those two issues are tough to handle on their own, but when I am forced to deal with other emotional crises as they come along, doing so as a bipolar alcoholic makes it incredibly daunting.

 

Over the last few weeks, my family has been dealing with some pretty heavy stuff. I can’t go into detail out of respect for everyone’s privacy, but suffice to say that families are messy and imperfect and as another great friend, Crystal Branch, said when she checked in on me recently, “Parenting is not for the faint of heart.”

While we were busy dealing with these issues, our family’s beloved miniature schnauzer died unexpectedly. Louie was only eight years old and in good health, and his sudden death came as a tremendous shock to all of us. The loss was particularly difficult for me. It is no secret that Louie was really MY dog, which I’m sure everyone in the family would agree. He was the sweetest dog I’ve ever had, and I miss him terribly.

You may have noticed that my column didn’t appear in last week’s paper. I usually write and submit my articles on Sundays, but last Sunday was Mother’s Day and I was in no mood whatsoever to write. While scrolling through social media that day, my newsfeed was full of photos of smiling mothers and children having fun and sharing warm embraces, but it brought me no joy at all because it was the 14th Mother’s Day that has come and gone since my mom died of cancer at the age of 61. My profound sadness last Sunday rendered me completely incapable of writing.

There have been so many times over the years that I have wished my mom was here to turn to for comfort or guidance. With everything our family has gone through over the last few weeks and months, I find myself still yearning for my mother, despite being 50 years old.

I don’t just miss Mom during the hard times. Oh, how I wish she would have been able to meet and enjoy spending time with all of her grandkids. Alex was eight when his Nonna (as Mom liked to be called instead of grandma) died. Truman was two and had only been with our family for a month, but at least Mom got to meet him and tell him “I love you.” She never met any of her three granddaughters or her great-granddaughter which is truly tragic because they would have benefitted greatly from having such a strong, positive female role model, such as she was, to help guide them through life.

Luckily, those kids have amazing mothers looking out for them. The mother of my children, my beautiful bride Bethany, has become the person I turn to in good times and in bad. I would be completely lost without her. I regret that I did not do more to make her Mother’s Day the best it could be, but I honestly had nothing but grief to give to the world that day.

I’m feeling a bit better today. A little more hopeful. I am at least able to write, though I fear that this is not my best work. But that’s sort of the point. When a person is struggling with their mental health, just getting out of bed in the morning can be difficult. At times like these, getting dressed and leaving the house might be considered big achievements. Mustering the strength to go to work or write or make music or paint a portrait can seem like an impossible challenge to someone who is emotionally unwell, but if that person does manage to complete such a task, then he or she might feel a small sense of accomplishment and hope for the future.

Baby steps.

For people like me with mental health issues, struggling on the path to happiness and contentment, the ability to take baby steps is crucial. Eventually, with the love and support of good friends and family members, I will get there. 

And you will, too.