(The World watched, waiting for Trump to be arrested.)

You can pretend the truth no longer. Now it’s time that one shares the blame because you could have stopped it. All you needed to do was declare the truth. The truth will set you free. It says so in a number of Bibles.

Mr. and Mrs. Donald Roy were not terrible, disconnected parents. They loved their boys and had moved from Las Vegas to Mt. Pleasant, Texas, to create a healthy environment, with middle class values for their children to grow up in as privileged Americians. 

Donald Roy had migrated from Mexico almost 40 years ago. Both his boys were born in the States as US citizens. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1990. 

Mr. Roy lived in Las Vegas when he first moved to the States. He had worked in garages since he was a boy in Mexico. When his friend offered him work at his Vegas garage, Donald was eager and excited. He got his work permit. His friend was one of the best mechanics he had ever worked with and he sponsored Donald Roy’s immigration to the United States. 

Roy worked in the garage during the days, and sometimes in the evenings, he worked in a chop shop outside of Vegas. Stolen cars were dismantled and the parts were sold individually. Parts were more lucrative than selling cars whole.

Donald met his wife one night while eating at one of those bars/restaurants along the strip. She was his waitress. The night he met her he left a $20 tip and his phone number with a note. “Would you please have dinner with me?”

They married in one of those chapels with a ‘thin’ Elvis’ poster behind the pulpit. The minister and his wife were their only witnesses. They spent their honeymoon in Vegas. The Roys have been together nineteen years now. When they moved to Mt. Pleasant, Don bought out the previous owner’s garage, who had been a mechanic all his life, but wanted to retire. Donald Roy set up shop. He only accepted legitimate work and prided himself with the quality of his mechanics.

When the Roys first moved to town they lived in the same trailer park that their grandfather had retired in. Within a year the Roy family moved to a three bedroom ranch style house with pink tiles in the one bathroom. They still live in the same house today. 

Mrs. Roy had grown up as a Catholic, but when the Roys moved to Mt. Pleasant, the family joined the Bethel Baptist Trinity Church. When the minister died and the church was closed, the Roy family joined with other members to search for a new minister to open the church again.

Now Don Roy owned the local car repair shop in Mt. Pleasant, Texas. The “Roy’s Garage,” sign went up the first week he opened. When the Roys moved to Mt. Pleasant with his new wife, Mr. Roy was determined to establish his business upright, paying small business taxes, always working within the law. 

Today Roy’s Garage has a triple A rating from the Better Business Bureau and during Covid lock down, Don kept all of his workers on payroll throughout the epidemic.

Mr. Roy’s only real deficit as a parent was that he worked all the time. As his boys grew, Donald never had time to take a vacation or volunteer at school functions, but last year his boys played JV football and he did make it to every JV game—Stone was the quarterback. Donny played defensive tackle.

The boys grew up in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, and had a reputation for cutting classes, and being disrespectful to the teachers and staff. Donny had fits of anger, never aware that he needed someone to help him read. The wrong words could set him off. He was dangerous among a crowd.

Stone Roy was two years younger than Donny, and he was smart. He learned quickly, often without studying. He could be brilliant with some positive adult attention. But, even then, there was a lack of morality that was off putting. He was intrigued by guns. His father had a 22 rifle and an old pistol from his grandfather. When he was eighteen, he would own an automatic weapon. He was sure of it.

The Roys were repeatedly called to the Principal’s office, usually for both boys together. Donny couldn’t read, and didn’t fit in well with other children. Stone watched over Donny and consequently, when Donny was in trouble, Stone would try to intervene and the disagreement would get physical. Donny then stepped in, to side with Stone, to push, or shove, or hit their opponent with a fist or an elbow. It was senseless. 

Two years ago when Donny had turned 16, he had had a driver’s training permit for a while.

One afternoon after Donny first had gotten his learners permit, he accidentally shifted his Dad’s car into forward, rather than reverse, and sent his father’s car over the curb and into the store front of the drug store. The display glass broke into tiny pieces of crinkled safety glass and spread all over the front displays and the sidewalk.

Mr. Roy paid out of pocket for repairs to the drugstore and his car. Empty beer cans were found thrown in the backseat. The drugstore owners’ were sympathetic and didn’t press charges, or even call the Sheriff, but he still heard about it the next day while getting his hair cut at the barber shop two doors down from the drug store.

The Sheriff was a Mt. Pleasant High alumni who once had been on the Varsity football team, back when they were winning. Both Stone and Donny were needed this year for the team to win. The Sheriff wanted the best for his team, so he never wrote Donny up. Donny got a stiff warning from both the Sheriff and his Dad. The Sheriff reminded him that a drunk driving ticket could ruin his chances for a football scholarship. 

The Sheriff hoped that his warning would be enough, but with the Roy boys, they listened for a while, but before long, they were in trouble again.

What one event spurred the Sheriff (with Roy parents in full agreement), who had already started to grow suspicious of the Roy boys, was a series of reported car thefts that highlighted Donny’s special skills with car locks and car ignitions. The boys would steal a car off the street, drive it around for an hour or two, and leave it on some side street, far away from where the vehicle was originally parked. The owner would eventually realize that his car was gone and call the police. Usually, in a day or two, the police would find it. But, it was a local mystery around the town. Nothing was taken. No prints were found. No one knew who was responsible.

The Roy boys thought this was hilarious until one night while they were drinking, they decided to hijack a Dodge Ram truck. Driving too fast on a dirt service road they lost control, and plowed it into a farmer’s fence. Broke the fence and a half dozen cows got out. It was dark and one of the cows was hit by a passing car.

The cow had to be put down. They butchered the cow and Mr. Roy was left to pay for damages to the fence, the cow and the stolen truck’s repairs. 

This event solved the mystery of the number of parked cars that were left abandoned on some distant street, unharmed, but technically stolen, that the Sheriff had not figured out until then.

Part of their punishment was the loss of Donny’s drivers license. Then the Sheriff coordinated between the Roy parents, the farmer for his fence and cow, and the owners of various cars that had been moved, that the boys would attend 100 church services as penance, with the minister’s signature obtained at the end of each service–to prove that the boys had attended the entire service. They also had to pay for all the damages to the truck, the fence and the value of the cow.

Still the Roys were proud of their sons.