Go Get'um, Old Man. Adult. An African Odyssey. (standard:adventure, 11089 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jul 16 2020	Views/Reads: 1347/993	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An unexplained killing in his youth continues to haunt an old retired military man. The answer is found on a trip to Uganda to find abandoned American prostitutes.

It started at two in the morning in a dark smelly alley behind a church.
I heard Tom breathing hard. We were two kids on our first robbery. 
Pastor Peter Pastorious was thought to be home in bed by then. The 
sanctimonious prick rarely worked late. 

I tried a back door of the Divine Light church, finding the knob
wouldn't turn but the door still opened. I worked days for the bastard 
and had stuffed the hole where the tongue went in with cardboard. The 
year was 1952, long before electronic alarms were common for churches. 

Pushing the door open a few inches, I hesitated at the entrance to a
dark classroom, the only light coming from a red exit sign over the 
doorway. Our eyes were already adjusted to darkness, letting me see 
silhouettes of a nearby raised podium with rows of chairs lined up into 
the distance. 

The silence was imposing, scary, even our footsteps unheard due to worn
carpeting as we hurried between rows to the rear of a large room. 

“How much again, Sam?” Tom whispered from directly behind me. 

“The Fed money's supposed to have come in today, maybe ten ... fifty
grand?” 

“Jeez! Enough for the rest of our lives.” 

“Just about,” I said. “Watch that table. Its got a weak leg.” 

Dodging around the obstacle, piled high with church shit, we came to
double-doors at the rear. 

“Sheeeee.” I tried the doors, opening one to let in a sliver of light
from a hallway leading to the office section of the building. Pastor 
Pastorious not only preached at this church but ran a non-profit 
Federal project to help displaced orphans, the ones that weren't 
adopted before reaching fifteen or sixteen. They, we, came from 
hundreds of miles around. Most of us volunteered to learn simple skills 
for no reason other than it seemed better than being forced out onto 
the street with no assets at eighteen. 

We were to learn trades useful in normal society. What it really
amounted to was several years of forced labor at sub-minimum wages for 
local factories, shops, and farms. A sort of laborious on-the-job 
training. The theory was that those businesses would like our work and 
keep us on after that vital eighteenth birthday. Fine in theory, but 
most employers preferred getting a new set of ditch diggers at low cost 
rather than paying adult wages to the older ones. 

Business owners paid the preacher directly, us kids barely getting
cigarette money from the bastard. Also, he collected a government 
contribution on top of our salaries. The asshole was really raking it 
in. 

Somehow, the best-looking girls never stayed long. Within a week or two
of arrival, they were shipped to his other business, missionary work 
somewhere in the wilds of Africa. Just how wild intractable girls from 
the States could gentrify savages wasn't mentioned. 

That night, however, Tom and myself had other plans ... big plans of
being set for life. 

The silence, broken only by scuffling feet on carpeting and the thudding
of my heart, I led Tom through empty rooms and corridors toward the 
Pastor's inner-sanctum. 

“The door's locked,” I whispered, gently tugging on a knob. 

“Well, kick the sucker open.” 

“Better check first. Make sure nobody's around.” 

“The parking lot's empty.” 

“Someone could be using his car. Pastorious sometimes sleeps on his
couch, I hear.” 


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