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The Story of Mack [Updated]
This is the story of Mack. Well, really, it's the story of Mack's life, but it mostly revolves around Mack.
Mack isn't really his name either, nor does he call himself Mack. Yet he asks people to call him Mack, and when people ask what to call him, he replies, 'People call me Mack.' His real name was, well.. technically still is.. Alexander Krimmily. Sometimes you wonder if even he remembers it. Nobody calls him Alexander. Nobody has since he was ten, or something close to that. But they didn't always call him Mack either.
Mack was born poor, raised poor, and lived poor. Now, poor where Mack lived isn't just short on disposable income - poor in that land is not being able to afford food. Mack would tell you these days that his father never worked an honest day in his life, was a deadbeat scoundrel, and a vagrant. He'd then turn around and tell the next guy that his father was a great man who was just down on his luck. Mack didn't ever really tell the truth too much when it came to his past, but who could blame him? No matter what Mack said, says, or will say, his father was stabbed in a gambling house at the same age people stopped calling him Alexander.
Mack got rich eventually. Real rich. He had to feed himself, of course. And get himself some alcohol. And women were never cheap. Taxes were for fools and liars he thought. When he was twenty-or-so he found himself a nice place and laid down two-thousand odd gold coins in the broker's caravan. Mack blended in well to high society. The governor even invited Mack, being a good looking fellow, to one of his parties. The governor was a bad man who acted like he was a good man. If there's one thing worse than a bad man, it's a bad man who thinks he's doing good things.
When a broker has gold ingots handed to them in burlap sacks, they take the money and run. No good ever got a broker anywhere by asking where the money came from. Hell, for a house you won in a card game, this was the real steal. Nobody can bring a house with them on a trading caravan.
Yeah, Mack stole the gold. Only from the richest though; the governor himself was particularly ignorant about how safe his estate was. He was the worst thief they'd known in years, maybe even a decade. Nobody ever saw his face though. No, that's a lie, quite a few people caught him actually. They're all dead. It's a damn shame really; Mack probably wouldn't have touched a soul in those days if he hadn't gotten caught.
Mack liked to walk around in fine clothes in the day, and dress down in the night. People liked him because they didn't know him. They probably would have liked him if they got to know him too, but Mack never got that lucky.
One day he got his nose cut off. Of all the stories Mack will tell, this is the one he loves and hates the most. I mean hell, he lost his nose. I guess a man just isn't the same without his nose. Mack couldn't walk around in his fine clothes no more. He couldn't show his face no more. Rich men didn't get their noses cut off, and he knew it more than anybody.
Mack kinda broke down from the stress, you could say. I'd say it, but I know Mack. Mack wouldn't touch a hair on my head. Hell, he couldn't, but that's not the point. If you were to say it, you'd have a knife in you. He took to his thieving as a full time occupation, more so than the occupation of convenience it was before. Mack found a mask too. Not so much found, as made, but still, it's the sort of mask that will scare the shit out of you. If you saw that face, you might as well stab yourself; Mack never tolerated screaming much. He said it made escapes sorta difficult.
Funny thing about Mack - he makes more friends killing and stealing than he ever did at parties with sluts and politicians. He found a good crew several times. The first crew killed themselves off, while Mack sat on his chair laughing his ass off. They were a stupid bunch. Poor, greedy, men never made good criminals anyway.
Mack found Henry outside his house one day. The kid was snooping around the old house. You can't blame him for that; kids love to be stupid. I would have bet one of Henry's friends even told him to go snooping around the place, if I didn't know Henry better. Well, Mack went outside, put a knife to the kid's throat, and told him to never come by again. Henry started crying, apologizing, and the like. It turned out that the kid was schizophrenic.
Now, Mack felt bad - probably for the first time in his life. He pitied the kid, talked to him a bit, and found out he was the son of the Grimsby's up the road. The Grimsby's were mean folk. They didn't treat Henry well. The kid's own parent's made fun of him; why did they have to look after the embarrassment? They figured the insane kid had no clue what was really going on.
Mack sent the kid home half petrified. Henry didn't speak a word for weeks - not even to the people who weren't there.
((To be continued..))
((Part Two))
For those next few weeks Mack didn't thieve, at least not for himself. He had other people do it. There were other crooks and criminals in town, and Mack knew where to find them. There was a small clinic for psychiatric criminals at the town jail. If Mack wasn't a genius, he'd be in there to this day. Mack pulled a few deadbeat thugs out of the jail a few times. The psych clinic was one room; there was a row of iron gates jail-cells at one end, and a chair and barred window at the other. The clinic used to have a rickety wooden plank floor in those days, but when Old Hazel went and got locked up for a third time he lit the floor up. Hazel took the other psychs with him too. It's a wonder that with all the arsonists that went through that place in the forty-something years it was built, that nobody had considered it before.
Mack got Hazel out the first time, with a few other small-timers. Eddy and Monty got pulled out too. Out of the three, Hazel was the one Mack really wanted. Hazel lit a lot up while he was out the first time. You knew always knew it was Hazel, because nothing of the house was left standing. There could have been some real job opportunities for a man with his, well, talent. I figure a fireman would have been too ironic, but he could have worked as a demolition expert for somebody. It was too easy to label arsonists as insane in those days. Not that the wiry beard he wore on his face nor his eery grin helped make him look sane in the slightest. Mind you, Hazel was insane as a man got without running down the streets screaming.
Eddy wasn't very bright, but he wasn't greedy either. He did what he was told when he was with Mack. Eddy didn't have a memory longer than twenty minutes, a lot of people said. He got himself killed in the same gambling house Mack's dad was stabbed in, just over a week after Mack pulled him out. The clinic picked up the body the next morning. Nobody would say who did it, but everybody knew. Eddy fancied Jane, the gambling house owner's daughter.
Eddy was a dark-skinned man. Mack drank himself sick for a month.
Monty lasted longer, but not a few months longer. Mack stuck him to a log with a rusty halberd and set him out into the bay. Monty learned his lesson, but a bit too late. Monty wasn't actually insane. He ended up in the psych clinic because he stabbed a guard. 'Too dangerous to be near other prisoners', or something similar, was the official line. The same guard lived long enough to become the warden twenty years later, and still chuckles at the thought of Monty.
Mack was fair to his crew.
Monty tried to kill Mack since he figured he'd be a better leader of the misfits.
Mack didn't like killing people. He always just seemed to need to.
Hazel stuck around for a few more years. It was Henry who made him go. Henry was Mack's friend and got all the jobs. He was quick, efficient, and smart. Hazel was getting old, and thought Mack would knock him off when he didn't need him anymore. Hazel walked over to the clinic jail, sat down in a cell, and waited for the jailers to lock the door. He broke out another year later once Mack and Henry left town. The clinic guard was fired.
((To be continued..))
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