I met my second husband, Bill, at the small rundown apartment complex I lived in with David before he left. Reeling from my husband’s desertion, still coming to terms with it, I hung out with the manager’s son, whom everyone knew as Doc. He introduced me to Bill and, not facing the fact of David’s controlling tendencies, I accepted the friendship, and then the interest, of another man. The night we met, we only drank a few beers and talked for a few hours, where I learned he, too, was divorced but had four children from the eight year marriage. He admitted he’d enjoy having sex with me but I shied off at that point. He walked me the short distance to my door and didn’t even try to kiss me goodnight, a perfect gentleman. Over night, I changed my mind.

During our last civil conversation, David told me to ‘have some fun’ if I could even find a man interested in me as a woman. No longer sad, but getting angry, I followed his sarcastic suggestion. I waited all day for Bill to come home from work. When I spotted his motorcycle parked at his door, I stepped outside, encountering Doc. We both knocked on doors and windows but received no answer so we walked the short distance across the main street of Sierra Vista to the Sorry Gulch saloon for a few drinks. I went to bed alone that night.

The next morning, Saturday, I found Bill tinkering with his motorcycle and chatted with him. He took me for a fun ride to Tucson where we walked through Reid Park holding hands, talking, and to the Swap Meet, the movies, etc. Night fell and we headed back to Sierra Vista, stopping at the I-10/I-92 intersection, which back then was empty except for a lone street lamp in a patch of dirt. We shared that first kiss and then, back in Sierra Vista, had a few drinks in a hotel lounge and then took a six pack of beer back to his apartment. I stayed the night and we weren’t just talking. That first time was more retaliation against David and his parting comment than anything else. The rest was mutual interest, man to woman, between Bill and I. It was a weekend fling as I took the bus back to my home in Texas and stayed there for two months waiting for David to do the divorce, which he never did. I had to come back to Arizona and do it myself.

We’d kept in touch, Bill and I, over the phone and through long letters, some conversational and some hot and heavy, so he met me at the Tucson Bus Terminal when I came back at the beginning of August. During that time apart, I began to love him and it deepened over the next weeks as I stayed with him and took care of the divorce, with Bill’s help. He remained a gentleman, and we openly went out, dating, having an affair. In the long run, I should have kept it to an affair status but hindsight is often twenty/twenty when foresight is blind. He behaved so differently from David, I couldn’t help but love him. Years later, he would eradicate that love, but in 1988,I loved him with all my heart.

In October, we discovered I was pregnant with my first child, my daughter. I had been working at a nearby hotel cleaning rooms and in December my hours were cut to weekends only—thus, I quit. When I got home, I told him and he said…”You’d better find another *&^%$#@ job.” He worked as a bouncer, paid under the table, at a bar owned by a local band. He knew the members well and we often spent the evening there. After that initial outburst, we settled into a routine. Though he spent several months working at the bar, he was collecting worker’s compensation for an on the job injury and later unemployment when the worker’s compensation paid off and his doctor released him back to work. He worked as an electrician, journeyman foreman, until the injury. When he started looking for work, the construction industry was in a major nationwide slump and jobs were hard to find. No one was hiring. After our daughter was born, he got a job at the cable company, as an installer. He stayed with that company through all the ownership and name changes, until Cox Communications acquired it. IN a burst of temper fueled by a stunning hangover, he would later quit but in Sierra Vista, we led began a more stable life.

During this time, drugs were a part of our lives—marijuana and what was then known as speed or powder cocaine—on a casual use basis. We sometimes bought a little, often did it partying with friends, but my daughter always had a babysitter for those nights so she was never part of it. Many of our friends were bikers who belonged to the Nomadens, a biker group who also did much fundraising for charities. One day, Bill got the brilliant idea to by a bunch of speed and sell the major portion of it. He got the stuff but instead of selling it, over time we did it all ourselves, partying with others as well. The scene was getting hot and heavy when the company transferred him to Wilcox, taking us away from the bikers, from the drugs, and down the road toward more stable future, or so I believed.

In Wilcox, we rented one bedroom apartment, our baby girl sharing the bedroom with us—she was eighteen months old and already knew how to operate the remote control, which was perfect as she got up early and watched TV. The transfer included a raise but we never saw a regular paycheck those first months as the cable system was in such bad shape service calls were rampant and overtime abundant. Over the next six months, that tapered off and things settled into routine.

Complacent, content, I began looking for a job. We were not married but had a daughter to raise, and I was tired of collecting welfare payments and food stamps. I have an Associate of Arts Degree from Brazosport College in Texas, but I’m not really trained or qualified to do much of anything except wait tables and clean. Though he made just enough to maintain our household income, he wanted me to work to help increase the funds while I pursued my first love, writing fiction. He didn’t mind the writing but since I wasn’t even published, it became a hobby rather than a career and I got a job waiting tables at the Solarium Dining Room of the Best Western Motel. Decent tips and a two dollar and fifty cent an hour paycheck barely replaced the welfare money and food stamps. That job lasted a few months, until I called in sick one Saturday and the manager drove by, saw the car gone, and no one answered the door. He fired me. The car belonged to Bill and he’d taken it and our daughter to Benson to visit his parents. It was Independence Day and a family get-together which he demanded I attend, paying no attention to the fact I had to work that day. A sign of the control-freak factor? Possibly. I paid no attention to it and simply found another job.

Mind you, during these early years, he was sober over ninety percent of the time. When he did drink too much, he usually simply went to sleep so I thought nothing of the drinking. It was infrequent and nothing odd happened, for a while. He did buy an SKS Chinese rifle, which Guns don’t bother me. I spent time in the military and know how to handle firearms. I also enjoyed target shooting and was quite frankly good at it. I rarely missed the target.

He also had swords, kept with the gun on a homemade rack hanging from the wall, well out of our five year old daughter’s reach. One night, in pain, he went to the hospital, had a cortisone shot, and came home, and then started drinking. This drug reacted with the alcohol to cause a bizarre reaction as he got drunk. Early in our relationship, he’d told me of his background as a Navy SEAL, in combat missions in places like Honduras and Panama during the early eighties. He began to have what can only be called a flashback, though how he managed to fake it, I don’t know. I found out years later, or rather accepted years later, that it was all a big lie.

He pointed that loaded rifle at me so I ducked behind a heavy piece of wood furniture, the bar. Aiming at me through the wood, he said, “You can’t hide from me.” I shook so hard my teeth chattered and my heart raced out of control. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I stared down the barrel of that gun and froze, body and mind. He only looked at me, saying nothing more, for a few minutes before he finally ordered me to call Frank, a friend of ours. Frank worked in Public Works, actually he ran it. He came over and he gun was put away. After checking on our daughter, sleeping soundly, I stayed in the bedroom.

The first one awake the next morning, I stayed in the kitchen/living room, drinking coffee while the entire thing rolled through my head over and over like a bad film loop. I started shaking again wondering how bizarre a mood he would be in when he did wake up. He called out to me and I went to the bedroom doorway, crossing my arms over my chest, protecting myself it seems. He held his arms out and, unable to resist that silent plea, I went to him and believed the profound apologies he poured out. I told him how much he scared me, how terrified I had been, and he apologized even more, swearing nothing like that would ever happen again. I believed him. Two uneventful years later, we got married and life was as I wanted it, or so I thought.

But I’d believed him and fooled myself that things would only get better, but that was only the beginning of a nightmare. It went from good to bad to hell over the next ten years, complacence is shattered and the fire rages out of control in article three, The Inferno.