• The moon shone pompously with all of its silver glory that night as the small light brown haired boy stood silently behind the trunk of an old Willow tree. His marble blue eyes watched intently as his mother, dressed in a white night gown that matched her magnolia colored flesh, slowly descended into the cool sapphire waters of the James river. The boy, Lewis Carleton, aged seven years, had little knowledge that this would be the last time that he would ever see his mother.
    He kept watching, so curious as to what she was doing. Through the dark summer night he could barely discern what looked like diminutive crystals racing down his mothers cheeks and raining into the river water below that was now knee deep as his mother, Jane Carleton, kept pushing forward into the pitiless darkness. Lewis marveled at his mother with mystification and intrigue, she looked so beautiful basking in the moonlight. He noticed how her azure eyes, which she so generously gave to him, seemed to blaze sapphire in the pale light of the moon. Her long curly blonde hair fell in soft shimmering tendrils that framed her face, the foremost part of her hair reaching just below her mid-back. She was, in the young eyes of Lewis, simply divine.

    But what was it she was doing out here so late? She and father had fought earlier, it was not an uncommon sight for Lewis to see. His father Nathan, who spent his entire life in the coal mines in backwater country Virginia, was severely addicted to the saloon and usually spent a whole months pay-check in one night on boozes. His love for alcohol always prompted violent fights between he and his delicate wife, Jane. And Jane, having no way to defend herself, endured his painful beatings and usually retreated to her sons bedroom in tears, holding little Lewis close to her bosom in her sleep as if she were afraid to lose him.
    But tonight after Nathan had beat Jane to his satisfaction, she did not crawl into Lewis's room. This was a different change for Lewis, his mother always came to him after father striked her! Tonight something was different. Though unexplainable to Lewis, he could feel it but could not explain this strange feeling that had compelled him to follow his mother.

    Lewis's youthful eyes watched his mother fixedly and as if feeling his gaze upon her, Jane turned slowly in the now waist deep water and looked. Her son shifted behind the broad trunk of the tree, away from her searching eyes. And when she did find those watchful blue eyes hidden from her, she turned.
    Lewis gradually craned his neck around the tree as his mother came back into view. She looked like a white water lily to him; the way that her dress wreathed around her in the still water resembled petals and his mother in the heart of the flower; Purely beautiful.

    Silence fell over the scene like a frost.

    Jane trembled as her small porcelain hands grabbed the rosary around her bruised neck as she closed her eyes in silent prayer for a brief moment. That brief moment felt like an eternity to Lewis, everything had seemed to slow to a snails pace. He would never forget the image of his fragile mother clutching her rosary as she began to sink into the water. The next image Lewis saw was forever etched into the deepest part of his mind; never to be erased. Jane's head slipped into the murky depths of the cruel waters of the river and was followed by bubbles. He wanted to call out to her, to stop her, he was bewildered and confused and the unyielding lump in his throat refused to permit any speech. So he watched dreadfully as Jane sunk beneath the surface of the water as the bubbles, an indication of the life that was still left in Jane's lung, came to a stop as the crushing darkness claimed her. And now, Lewis's sweet mother was forever lost to the James river.

    As he grew out of his ignorance, little Lewis harbored a bitter heart scarred with an impassioned resentment towards the man who took his dear mother away; the one who drove Jane to drown herself. And now twelve years after his mothers death, little Lewis, no longer small, stood over his slumbering father with a .44 caliber Colt Walker revolver pressing firmly into Nathan's temple as the moon shown brightly just like that daunting night so many years ago.