The Beauty of Staying Together

Calvina, the young battered wife of Duane, is in desperate need of a new start in life. Will her jealous husband, the mad man with whom she had been unequally yoked, prove too much to ever hope for a chance of staying together--a chance to fix her troubled marriage?

Please read the two main character profiles before reading the story. We can be so wrong in the strong initial opinions we form of people.

Duane was raised in a small town in Florida. Before the family's move to Minnesota, he had observed, or so he shared with Calvina, a young boy being nailed to the roof of a garage and the garage set on fire. He had been hiding in the bushes and heard the young boy's screams. He never told anyone. But, in his own mind, there is nothing that a eight or nine year old kid could have done so wrong that it warranted taking his life. It was nothing less than pure hatred for the color of the young boy's skin. From that day on his dislike for white people turned to hatred. And that hatred and anger ruled his life. Duane also carried anger against his parents. He felt they loved the other seven children more than him. He had shared with Calvina that his mother, when scolding him for some misdeed, would often look at him with contempt. She, according to him, often referred to his "big head," causing him to be self-conscious about his appearance. Later, in the story, he says that his first theft was breaking into the medical office to steal an inhaler to get relief from an asthma attack. He claims he had asked his dad to buy it and his dad had refused.