Jasmine

by Bene, Jennifer

  It’s the burning ache in my wrists that forces me to plant one foot back on the ground and lift myself as I try to satisfy him. Echoing every insane thing he’s said as I talk to the post. “God, forgive me for being evil, for killing the child you planned for us. Forgive me for— GOD!”

  “Continue,” he commands from behind me, as if he didn’t just whip me, and for a moment I wonder if he’d just let me hang here. If I just let go, would he stop? Would he let me down? Does he ever plan on stopping?

  My back is a spider web of agony, so intense I can’t tell the individual strikes apart anymore, and as I stand there in silence, he adds another, but I don’t have the energy to scream again. I barely cry out.

  “Continue, Jasmine.”

  Sure, okay. “Forgive me for my sins. Forgive me for being a bad wife. Forgive me for failing you. Please, God—” Another strike, and I whine as I lean on the post, the pain swelling and then blending in with the rest of it as I switch feet to try staying upright a little longer. “I’m sorry, God. God, I’m so, so sorry…”

  I’m so sorry I’m not stronger. Sorry I didn’t keep running when I had the chance. I’m sorry I’m weak. I’m sorry I won’t see my mom and dad again, and it’s all my fault.

  A vibrant strike of lightning strokes down my back, and my legs give out.

  I’m sorry. I never should have been here. I should have gone home.

  “Up,” he commands. Harsh, unforgiving, and then I feel something pressed against the side of my foot. I lift it and stand up on something smooth and hard that moves to the side, and then I feel Daniel’s hand on my other leg, lifting that foot onto the surface too. Pins and needles explode in my fingertips, and I glance up at them. They’re a bad color. Purply-red.

  “I can’t do this.” The words come out on a whisper, but I never meant for them to be out loud anyway. He’s not listening. I rest my head on the post, soaking in the moments without new pain, trying to remember how to breathe correctly, because every breath hurts, and I know it shouldn’t.

  “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones. That’s from Proverbs, Jasmine. Something you would know if your parents had raised you in a righteous household, if they had taught you how to remain pure.” He grabs my chin, lifts my head, and I open my eyes to look into the blazing darkness of his. There’s still rage there. Bottomless, and it shows in his voice that isn’t monotone at all now. “You were penitent to God, now you will apologize to me. For tainting our union, our marriage bed, our home.”

  I stare at him, trying to memorize the words so I know what to say, but as soon as he lets go of me, I hear the buckle on his belt and I forget them. He’s not done. It’s not over.

  “Apologize.” The word is a growl punctuated by the snap of his belt across my ass. It’s blunt fire in comparison to the whip, but it still hurts. It hurts more when he lands it again, and again, and again until the burn of it starts to tug me back from the blissful darkness I could almost reach. “APOLOGIZE!” he roars.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He lands the belt anyway, another stroke of pain in the multi-colored haze in my head.

  “I’m sorry I was bad. Rotten.” I whimper when he lands a slash across my thighs, because I don’t have the energy to scream anymore. “I tainted you with my evil. Tainted our bed.”

  “You lied, Jasmine! You killed the child we were meant to have!” he shouts at me, and then there’s nothing but agony. I can’t count the strikes, the snaps of the belt, and I lose track of the pain. It rises like a tidal wave, choking me before it drowns me completely and finally it seems someone heard my prayers because the black rises too and swallows me whole.

  * * *

  Him

  Carrying her across the drive, toward the house, I can feel the blood on her back smearing my arm, but I don’t look down at her again. Not yet. When I get to the front door, I shift her, draping her over my shoulder where she stays, completely limp, but she’s okay.

  Jasmine is okay.

  She’s breathing, I checked when I realized she wasn’t standing on her own anymore, and as soon as I took her down, I tried to wake her. I talked to her. I said her name, but she didn’t answer at all, and as my anger continues to calm, I can feel something else underneath it. It’s like a stomach ache, and it grows as I carry her down to the basement.

  It’s for her own good. All of this is for her own good.

  If I had taken her as a wife sooner, if I had protected her purity like a good man should, then Jasmine would have never been swayed to something like those pills she took. As I remember them, the little slip of paper she’d hid from me, my anger surges back, and I tighten my grip on the railing until I can push it back again.

  Daddy always said to never give in to anger. He told me that Wrath was the deadliest of the sins for me, and I know it’s true. What Jasmine did was wrong, sinful, but I gave in to Wrath.

  As gently as possible, I lay her down on the table against the wall, and my stomach ache gets worse. More than a few of the whip marks on her back are bleeding, and her backside and thighs have large dark splotches amid the red. Yet, it’s the marks on her back that I can’t look away from. I wanted her to repent, I wanted God to forgive her, to cleanse her sins… but I never wanted to give her scars like mine.

  This is what Wrath does. This is why it is the deadliest sin.

  Moving to the edge of the table, I push the hair off her face and trace the red mark on her cheek. It’s swollen, and I can hear Daddy’s voice. ‘You never strike a woman in anger. That’s not what God asks of us.’ Another way I sinned today, and although my sins are less than Jasmine’s, they are no less a stain on our house.

  I take a deep breath and make myself walk away from her and back up the stairs. Locking the basement is necessary, because she is still misguided, and I have to tend to my own sins before I can lie with her. As soon as she’s secure, I head back to the barn and clean up the rope, put the wooden storage box where it belongs, and then I return to the post and kneel.

  “Lord, please forgive me for faltering in my own sins today as I tried to be your shepherd for Jasmine.” I pray aloud, removing my shirt and folding it before I set it aside. “Forgive me, God, for the sin of Wrath. Please let Jasmine see that while I failed to control myself, I was only trying to bring her closer to your light. To purify her in your eyes, as I seek to be purified now.”

  Lifting the whip, I adjust the length and raise my arm high before bringing it down hard across my back. The sting makes my back twitch in remembrance, but it tells me I’m doing it right.

  I do it again, harder, and keep my mouth closed until I’m able to say, “Forgive me, Lord, for striking my wife in anger.”

  I do it again and again, until the pain soaks in, until I’m sure there’s not an inch of my back that I can reach that is unmarked. If I am bleeding, it is God’s will, and I stay silent unless I am asking for His forgiveness.

  Eventually my arm is not strong enough to lay the lash the way I was taught, so I stop and put it away. Before I leave the barn I let Moses and Rebekah out to pasture, and I allow myself just a few moments to soak in the sunshine and remember the time I shared with Jasmine here yesterday. Proof that, although she has been misguided, she can still be saved. God’s light still resides within her, and she can still be a good wife if I keep her close. If I help her fight the temptation of Satan’s darkness.

  That is what I must do. I must keep watch over her and keep her safe from temptation when I cannot.

  I head back into the barn where I grab one of the thick blankets from the storage box, pick up my shirt, and then return to the house. First, I go upstairs and ready our bed. Spreading the thick, dark blanket over the covers, putting my clothes in the laundry bin, and… finally, I go to the bathroom. The sight of the small pink container brings the anger again, but I stretch my back and let the sting abate it before I pick it up. I dig through her bag and find another one with only
blue pills, no white ones, and I take that too along with the paper on the floor.

  When I stand, I remember holding her against the wall, and I wonder if God knows I meant to repent for that as well. I can only hope He knows, as the Lord knows everything.

  I bury her sinful pills in the garbage in the kitchen, wash my hands, then go back to the basement to get her. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t moved, but when I lift her into my arms she makes a noise. I’m sure it’s her back, but I can’t tend to that down here. I have to get her upstairs before I can take care of her and show her I’m repentant.

  Once she’s secure on my shoulder again, I carry her up to our bed and lay her carefully on her stomach. It doesn’t take long to wipe her back clean with a warm cloth, and with the blood wiped away it looks a bit better. If she is forgiven, maybe she won’t have scars at all.

  Maybe God will see our sorrow and give both of us that gift.

  Before I join her, I kneel on my side of the bed and pray once more that God will forgive us both and that we can still be blessed with a child. Then, even though it’s only the afternoon, I lie down next to her to watch over her and wait for her to wake.

  Eighteen

  Mason

  We’re all bundled into another SUV. It’s a pattern I’ve noticed this trip, not that it comes as any surprise. This is Texas, after all, not LA. And though the white Dallam County Ford Bronco Deputy Nolan directs us to is not as nice as the Amarillo FBI’s SUV, it’s decently clean, even if the vehicle is older.

  Carmen takes the front seat, and once we’re all settled, she turns to Nolan. “You know where we’re going, Deputy? The abandoned ranch and the Christiansen home?”

  “Yes ma’am. I haven’t actually been to the Christiansen house; I was a sophomore when Daniel Christiansen played his senior year, and I never was friends with him. But I been out that way more’n a few times.”

  “Okay. And you think you can find this spot? Where Sloane Finley took this picture?” She points at the printout Braddock made before we left.

  Nolan nods. “I’ll find it,” he says with determination.

  “Good. Thank you, Deputy Nolan.”

  He glances over at her, and then twists his head back at me, his mouth working for a moment. “You… y’all can call me Clint. If you want. Just sounds kinda odd. Nobody calls me Deputy Nolan ’round here.”

  I nod as he starts up the truck. “All right. I’m Mason. Mason Jones.”

  “Carmen Rodriguez,” she adds from the passenger seat.

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Carmen,” she chides him gently.

  He gives her a short, quick nod, and then pulls onto the street. As we stop at the single blinking stop light, he glances in the rearview mirror toward me. “Mason is kinda an unusual name, if you don’t mind me saying…”

  “So’s Clint.”

  He gives me a perturbed glance. “It’s… I’m named after the actor.”

  “Actor?”

  “Well… yeah. You're from Hollywood. You know, the famous actor.”

  “Famous actor?” I ask, feigning ignorance.

  He gives me an almost bug-eyed stare. “Clint. Clint Eastwood!”

  This is going to be fun.

  I give a shrug. “Never heard of him.”

  Carmen turns her head to the side, away from Clint, doing everything she can to hide her expression because now he is flat out agape. He says nothing for a moment, staring in the rearview mirror at me while the truck idles. “You… ain’t never heard of Clint Eastwood?”

  I shake my head, pretending to think. “Does he do daytime soaps or something? I don’t really watch those.”

  Nolan doesn’t speak. He simply blinks in rapid succession before he responds in an even, measured monotone. “You’re screwing with me. You have to be screwing with me. Ain’t no other way…”

  I allow him a tiny smile. “Maybe.”

  As we head out of town, Deputy Nolan — Clint, I remind myself — stays quiet, and at first I’m unsure as to why that is. Maybe it’s because I busted his chops about his name, or maybe he’s got that ‘you’re a foreigner’ attitude I feel like I’ve been bucking, and my teasing has only reinforced that. Or maybe there’s another reason entirely I haven’t caught onto. I catch him shooting me glances, looking away the second I return his gaze, and I decide to break the monotony of the drive and needle him a little further.

  “So, you’re dating this… Laurie Ann from the café?”

  He overcorrects, not tremendously, but enough that it’s noticeable. I watch as his adam's apple bobs before he chokes out, “I ain’t dating Laurie Ann Maddock!” He snaps a glare at me, and then faces forward, eyes fixed on the road, knuckles white around the steering wheel.

  “Oh…” I draw out the word, nodding slowly. “I’m sorry. You seemed very focused back there when Sheriff Braddock was talking about the girl. Maybe I misread your look.”

  I let the silence hang as the road noise bears us along.

  “Maybe it wasn’t her that had your focus at all.” I make the comment offhand, but definitely loud enough that I know he’s heard. He doesn’t respond, but I can almost hear the steering wheel creaking under his grip. I glance into the front seat and catch the look of admonishment Carmen shoots at me.

  “So, I take it you’ve studied the Sloane Finley case?” Carmen’s voice is much milder, much less pointed than my own questioning.

  Clint doesn’t answer immediately. It looks like he’s weighing his response before he does. He’s young, but it’s obvious he isn’t stupid. “A little. Enough so I know what took place up until she showed up here in Texas.”

  “Ah,” she responds simply.

  I watch the fenceline alongside the truck stream by, an endless river of tick marks as we continue to dive deeper into this featureless land. I let another mile or two get eaten up before I take up the thread of the conversation. “I imagine you studied everything about her, hmm? Looked at all those pictures she had taken? The headshots? The ones she used for auditions?”

  He says nothing, and I watch his jaw working as another mile slips by. Carmen is frowning, and I’m betting she’s suspicious of what I’m about to do.

  “Those ones of her in that white blouse were pretty nice, you know? Really showed off her assets—”

  “I looked at some of them, yeah.” His voice is a little louder than it needs to be as he cuts me off, strained and tinged with barely concealed anger. Or jealousy. Maybe both. I do my best to hide my grin.

  “Some of them, huh?”

  “Well, everything them detectives from LA sent. I didn’t know about them other pictures from Facebook until today.”

  “She was a pretty girl, wasn’t she?”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment. When he does, his voice is wary, evasive, but still strained and firm. “I… I suppose she is.”

  “You suppose.”

  He flicks a glance my way, teeth gritted, mouth curled down into a frown. “Okay, fine. She’s a pretty girl.”

  “Was a pretty girl.”

  His gaze moves back to me. “What do you mean, was?”

  “Well, she’s dead. I haven’t seen very many pretty dead girls in my time.” I hold up my hand. “Now, not that I judge or anything, if that’s what you’re into…”

  This time Carmen twists her head back to shoot me an outright glare.

  Clint’s gaze is now fixed on me in the mirror, and we are driving blind. I’m not too concerned, because there’s little traffic, and I don’t think this stretch of road could get any straighter.

  “What the hell...” His voice is soft, incredulous.

  “Hey.” I tilt the hand I’ve been holding up into a sign of assent. “If necrophilia is your thing, who am I to pass judgment…”

  “Jesus Christ!” Clint stares at me open-mouthed. “That’s a helluva a thing to say!”

  “I’m just saying. You seem pretty fixated on a dead girl…”

  “I ain’t fixat
ed on her!” Clint yanks one hand off the wheel for emphasis, and then realizes that he isn’t watching the road. He twists his head forward and brings his hand back down to grip the wheel.

  For a moment the truck continues to chew up the miles and then he breaks the silence.

  “And how do you know she’s dead? I didn’t see no notice they found a body.”

  I shrug. “Well, it’s the truth.” I wave my hand at the window, sweeping across the grassland. “There are two truths I know for certain in the Sloane Finley case. One: she’s dead. And two: she’s buried somewhere out there.” I point outside the truck, tracing a wide arc that takes in everything across our horizon. “Somewhere in all that nothing.”

  Clint doesn’t say anything, but the bleak look on his face speaks volumes.

  Pining after a dead girl. God save me...

  We sit in silence as we continue down the two-lane highway that bisects this land like a thin, gray artery. The further out of Stockdale we’ve gone the more the terrain has become less flat, and more rolling. The gentle rise and fall, rise and fall is almost imperceptible at first, until you realize you’re cresting tiny hills every two miles or so.

  It’s Carmen who breaks the silence, and soon her and Clint are engaged in an animated discussion of football. They’re both talking about teams I can only assume are local to this area, and players thereof, both past and present. At one point I hear them talking about ‘The Wall,’ which I remember is the nickname of the young man we’ll be visiting later.

  “Did you ever actually see him play?” he asks Carmen.

  “No. I’ve lived in Amarillo for too long now. And back then, whenever I was visiting family in Stratford, they were either playing Dumas, or Dalhart, or one of the Hartley county schools.”

  Clint nods. “Well, he was something to see, I’ll tell you. He shoulda gone pro.”

  “So I heard. Wonder why he didn’t?”

  He shrugs. “You know what it’s like ‘round here. Some people just don’t want their kids going off and getting corrupted in the big city. Having them put crazy notions in their heads, stuff like that…”