The White Revenge Whp-literature,

  “The devil is in the detail” the voice softly mused, calm, conceited, at ease with the chaotic ambience of the night scene that was growing in the bar. The rough edges of his unshaved beard added to the harsh tone that he tried to keep under the surface. He was medium build, 5’7 and weighed about 100 pounds.

  “How is the detail any important?” the younger voice asked the older one. They both are immediately struck by the empty minutes that passed through them as the younger waited for the older to answer his question. The younger voice could not have been more than 17; he was significantly taller and less refined in his basic physical features.  The two men were however, concise in the way that they viewed the crowd that swiveled in and out of the sports bar.

“You look for the flashiest things your eyes can find” the older voiced said calmly, “but the ones who are truly rich rarely wear their wealth in their sleeve.” He continued his explanation as the younger voice listened.

  “True wealth” he muttered, “is a subconscious state of mind, it allows the rich to not feel the need to hide in the flamboyance of rich misery.” He ended.

   “So by your detail, the richest guy in the room is supposed to be the guy behind the bar?”  The younger voice asked with a sarcastic quibble. The older voice turned with a cold stare, his soft dark eyes suddenly flare; the younger voice notices the rage underneath his more seasoned companion who blankly stares as the young boy calmly wipes the playful smirk off his face.

” The bartender is in fact the richest guy in the room” he emphasizes blankly, “he is what you will call a reservoir of information, he knows all the basic financial ratings of his customers and they trust him” he meticulously narrates with his eyes fixated on the bartender who is known crudely as the “bar-man” suddenly slips a wad of notes into his side pocket. They both watch him, relentless pacing his movements and his awareness of the amount that he had on him.

After some minutes, the two men are at the bar.

“Hello brother, I’d like two bottles of Harp Lager” the older one asks casually, the Bar-man stares at him inquisitively,

“Alright” he finally acknowledges him coldly.

“You know, it’s amazing how the streets outside is a mess, I mean, I walk outside and see the various divisions, ethnic discords, religious sentiments and they seem to least matter here when someone buys a drink” he says keenly, almost as if the conversation was meant for his own ears. The Bar-man shifts casually to acknowledge the reality of the older man’s analysis.

“It’s true mostly, but I figure that the most interesting thing about these people is that their only enemy is money. Most of the men here are just purely business minds who crave nothing but a wad of cash no matter the circumstances” he says, his voice inflecting to show a real sense of anger. The older voice stares keenly at him, admiring a certain vulnerability that the Bar-man exuded.

“You do say the truth there, it is like the street faces a different reality to this people, outside we find people begging, a lot of hate dissipating and it is hard to understand just how controlling this same rich folks have over the mitigating factors of our progress/” the older voice replies and for the first time, his voice carries an emotional constraint. He seemed genuinely distraught by how much the imbalance of the society had affected the reality of most of the people in the bar and the ones outside it.

“We serve their beck and call, so nothing may ever change soon” he murmurs defeatedly..

“You may be right” the older voice replies. He immediately pays for his drinks and together with the young voice, they begin to walk away.

A sudden epiphany hits the Bar-man as the two men walked away, his hands softly glides to the reach of his side pockets which are now empty. The loud thumping of the music, the dim spur of the light on his eyes, and the sudden shrill in the voices as he beckoned the men back made him realized that he had in fact, been conned.

The crowd seemed agitated; the younger voice realizes the ignominy of their present predicament. He shuttles back towards the crowd as the two men throw accusations and slurs at each other. The altercation gradually rises to a crescendo and then it is all a blur.

     The bar erupts, projectiles lean in from every direction; the chaotic endeavor is scuttled by the lights of the old Police truck. The crowds mostly disperse, with the younger voice along with the crowd. The cuffs come to fore, justice will soon be done.

   “I swear to God, the man took my money, not my money per say, but my daughter’s medical money. You may not want to believe me but I trust my gut that he was the one who conned me along with the young boy.” The Bar-man says; his tone was emotional; he stuttered through his words and seemed disoriented. The police recount to him how even after the search there had been no foreign currency notes found.

“I understand your frustrations sir, but you sparked a brawl in the bar where you work because you had some psychic gut that showed you that the money you misplaced was stolen by a con group made up of an adolescent boy and a young man? The police officer questioned trying to get his head around the delineating lines of facts and evidence that was screaming at him. As the police man talked, a look of indignation sprawled across the Bar-man’s face, he immediately steadies himself.

The police questioned the older voice but he denied, how could he not, he was a great actor and his lines were meticulous and thought out, he did not in the slightest hint seemed disgruntled by the affairs of the day nor the accusation but was more forthcoming in his interest in being bailed out of the crappy building which housed the police room. He seemed insulted by the facilities that the law enforcement offered and constantly yanked at the closest available officer. He was a petty nuisance to the whole room and when a young beautiful lady of no more than 25 came in and posted his bail with an extra donation, the law enforcement officers including the sergeant who conducted the interrogation were not the slightest bothered that the extra payment had been paid in the same foreign currency that the Bar-man alluded to.

The ripple of every decision is like a fixed continuum, people don’t always see reaction as a concentrated emphasis on a particular scale of an earlier action. So while the original action may be made in a myriad of competing emotional objectives, the reaction forces itself to pick only but one of these objectives and magnify its traits.

The reaction was what brought us here. For the older voice and the younger voice were back at the same bar again two nights after the brawl. And although the Bar-man was not tending the drinks, it seemed convenient that the older voice lay underneath the feet of the younger voice with his body covered in his own spit.

The police arrived on the scene and watched the scene, the older voice long death from an aggressive poison strain. In his hands was what remained of the wad of cash that the younger voice had aided in stealing from the Bar-man. The sergeants face beams up with a realization as he watched the scared young voice who is his own son.

    The young man begins to convulse, his eyes slowly begin to go dim as his body jerked furiously. In the crowd, the Bar-man watches curiously, his gaze unemotional and unflinching.

   The Sergeant filled with rage pushes up to the man, “You killed them!” he says. The man stares at him coldly.

“What psychic gut told you that?” he answered coldly and shrugs the police officer who is restrained by his colleagues who are afraid of the cameras present.

As the Bar-man left, a nascent feeling erupts in me as I looked, the universe playing its dark eye beneath my sight. I wondered far about the guilt, who really is to blame? For in fact we learnt that the Bar-man’s daughter died. His was a tale of revenge. Not for the things that lived but the soul that died inside of him. The man from the law could not absolve his guilt. He was undisciplined and negligent and corrupt on the measure too. It begged the question as I watched.

Who is good anyway?

Who is good enough to take the white revenge?