reputations, local girls were interested in going out with the young Johnsons. Not just for their looks, but also because of their wealth and the stature of the family in this part of Texas. It was known that if a young woman marries one of the boys, they would never have to work for a living. It was understood, of course, that the boys would never treat them with respect, but for some girls, who never had much of anything, this didn’t seem very important. And of course there always is that famous statement: it will be different with me.
When the boys were young they were in trouble every time they made a move. At first it was simple pranks, minor stuff that annoyed people more than anything. Certainly no one dared press charges. Everyone turned a blind eye to their pesky activities. The boys wanted a tag, a label to unify them and signify their strength as a unit. They called themselves the “Three Musketeers“ or the “Three Amigos“. The town called them the “Three Hoodlums“ not to their face of course, not even within earshot. As the boys grew older, the pranks became more serious. Their teasing grew vicious, vindictive and destructive. During one incident, when the boys were about fourteen, they caught a little girl’s cat, tied a rope around its neck, hung it from a tree and used it as a piñata. When the cat made noise, and it made a lot of noise, it was an easy target, even with blindfolds. They took turns beating the cat until it was dead. They did this while the girl watched. When the girl would attempt to leave, one of the boys would hold her down and force her to watch some more and the more she cried, the louder the boys shouted with glee. The mindless cruelty of this act alarmed and frightened the residents of this little town. They went out of their way to avoid them. The more vicious their acts became, the prouder their fathers were of the boys.
There were decent members of the Johnson family. Such as the mothers of the brats, but as with previous generations of women in that family, they learned to keep their mouths shut. If they tried to talk to their husbands about the kids’ behavior, they would get slapped, and always right in front of the boys. To keep what was left of their dignity, they learned to live in silence. The townspeople treated them with love and respect; after all, they were their own. The elder Mrs. Johnson was still living but, heartbroken, had given up on her boys a long time ago. She lived in a modest three-bedroom house outside of town.
The first serious incident happened on Randy’s eighteenth birthday. The boys went drinking and took along two local girls, fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds. The next morning the girls were found at the local lake where they had been dumped the night before. They had been raped and badly beaten. The parents of the girls had had enough of the boys and went to court demanding justice. They had to settle with a threat issued by the judge to the three boys and for the first time, he actually issued the boys a warning that if they get caught doing anything like this again, he would personally throw them in jail. The boys did not take him seriously, though they showed concern for the benefit of the girls’ families. They knew they would go home and laugh about it. They found these incidents amusing.
They grew up watching their fathers beat their mothers. At first they would get mad at them and talk about it among themselves in private, but after a few years of this, they just got used to it and figured that’s how things were supposed to be and couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about when they beat up the girls.
As weak as justice was, the families had to live with it. They couldn’t convince the district attorney to press charges, and when the judge heard about it, they all received warnings of employment termination. They all worked for the Johnsons. The medical bills were paid for, however.
Burleson is a small town fifteen miles south 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.
