Some of you have asked for more stories so I will post this story chapter by chapter. That way it is not such big files to upload. Read on for a while and there is an airplane connection in there, I promise.

Shane

Old Men’s Scars

Chapter one

It was evening and I was walking slowly down the beach near a small resort on Baja’s Eastern Shore. I was just loafing along watching the girls and daydreaming when I spotted two old men sitting on the veranda of a small local cantina.

The thing that caught my attention was the scars. One man had four massive, white scars running diagonally from his left shoulder down to his lower right rib cage. The scars were knotted and lumpy with smaller jagged tears running off like tributary streams.

Once I had stopped to look I noticed the other man at the table. He too was scarred horribly. He had a large, jagged tear almost dead center in his chest that looked like he had been shot with a cannon or something. The scar went from a point about three inches below his collarbone to the bottom of his brisket and was nearly four inches wide.

After staring with my mouth agape for a moment I turned away and went on down the beach. The next evening I strolled along the same stretch of sand, watching the same glorious sunset and ogling the same lovely young girls in bathing suits. I wasn’t thinking of much on this night either until I found myself in front of the same small cantina as the night before.

As before I spotted the two old, scarred men. They held court at the same table and had what seemed to be about a dozen small children running around them. Of the two men, one was Mexican and looked like he had been born and raised right there. The other, though nearly as dark, tanned from years and years in the tropical sun, was obviously a white man.

The old Mexican turned to chase one of the kids away by tickling his ribs and when he turned his back to me I saw he had another scar just to the right of his spine that was nearly as large as the one on his chest.

I found an empty seat and watched them for a while. They were attended occasionally by one or another of several women seated in a group nearby, apparently the mothers of the band of kids. They played a game of cribbage that they paid little heed to, other than to argue grandly over who was cheating the most. Both had a bottle of beer at his elbow but they seemed to drink infrequently. Like me, they seemed to just be enjoying the sights and sounds of the beach after the heat of the day.

I really had other things that I was doing or intended to do while here on vacation but I seemed to be drawn back to the small cantina night after night. I soon saw that the old gentleman were residents of the community and were doted on by everyone around them. They seemed perfectly happy, in the querulous way of old men everywhere. I thought and thought but I couldn’t come up with anything to explain the horrendous scars these old boys wore. They had no embarrassment from them, like most of the men in this climate, they either wore no shirt at all or left it unbuttoned to escape the heat.

After several nights of wandering by and just looking I stopped and sat at one of the tables. A lovely young lady came over and asked me something in rapid fire Spanish. “Ah, momentito, ah me hablo espaniol es pocito, muy pocito. My Spanish is pretty weak and a lot of the words I do know are not for polite society.

She giggled at my bungling and asked me in better English than my Spanish if I would like to eat supper. I said Si, muy bien, I am hungry. I expected a menu but what I got was a bowl of tortillas and a beer, then a plate of sizzling meat and vegetables with some rice.

This became my pattern for the rest of my stay. I slowly became a part of the group and their life went on around me. Eventually I became acquainted with the gentlemen who had first attracted my attention because I was chosen to be the arbitrator in their continuing argument over cribbage scoring.

I soon found out that the white man’s name was Jake Morgan and the Mexican man’s name was Carlos Diego.

In the time that I spent with this wonderful, extended family I heard no less than a dozen people, strangers all, ask about the scars. I also heard a dozen totally different wild stories about how they came to be.

I heard Jake tell folks that he had been bitten by sharks, hit by a speedboat, run over by an elephant and shot with a machine gun.

Carlos was the same, he had been speared by a jealous man, shot through and through with a cannon, gored by a bull and stabbed by a unicorn. In nearly all of his stories he ended by saying that whatever had got him that time that it had “killed him deader than a road kill rabbit”.

Finally I learned the true stories of these two men and as is many times the case, the truth was indeed stranger than the various fictions I had heard before. This then is their story.[/b]

...I am glad you are posting these in the (not much to do) winter months. Now for chapter 2??

Kinda like getting to the really good part of a TV show and having the screen jump to "To be Continued".
I'm gonna be thinking about this all day.

Remembered this from a couple of years ago. Are you planning on writing any more of these for the upcoming winter months Shorton? Good entertainment

It looks like Shane got up to Chapter 11 of Old Men's Scars. Here's the search results:

Old Men's Scars Chapters

shorton wrote:
Finally I learned the true stories of these two men and as is many times the case, the truth was indeed stranger than the various fictions I had heard before. This then is their story.[/b]

Jealous wife with a 3-iron most likely .