“Maybe you should back up some and tell us how this started. I’m guessing the relationship wasn’t always so hostile? While Dana was growing up, were you two close?” asked Lori.
A slight smile, warm with a fond memory. “We had our spells, like any parent and child, but yeah, for the most part we were close. Least ‘til her daddy died. Cancer took him. Now those two were real close, and Dana took it hard. She got wild for a time, dealing with it and rebelling I suppose, but settled down when she met Jeff.”
“Did you like Jeff?” asked Lori.
“He was a godsend. And good for Dana. Straightened her right out.” Rhonda frowned. “But didn’t last, nothing good ever does.”
“What do you mean?” Spence edged forward on the couch.
“When he came back from the war, he wasn’t the same. Something different in his eyes. And no wonder, after what he saw and went through.”
“We know he was medically discharged from the Army. Do you know why?”
“Of course I do. He saw his whole squad blown to hell. His best friend died in his arms. Something like that changes a person. And they change those close to ‘em. Once he come home, things went good for a while. Then Jeff’s dad died, and he lost the farm. They’s dead broke. I loaned them some money to buy their new house. A dump, really, but all I could manage. Does it look like I’m made of cash?” She waved her hand around the room. “First I noticed of anything off was Dana acting depressed. Wouldn’t talk much. She said a few things made me think she and Jeff were having problems. Even seemed a bit afraid of him. He wouldn’t be the first man to slap his wife around when times got frustrating. I figured they’d work it out.”
“But they didn’t?” asked Lori.
Rhonda shook her head. “Nope, got worse. Dana said someone was after them, wanted to kill them or something. She sounded real scared.”
“Did she say who wanted to kill them?” asked Spence.
“Just said ‘they’. No names or anything. But she was terrified. I called the cops, but they didn’t do nothing.” Rhonda glared at them as though she held them personally responsible. She put out her cigarette and lit up another. “Later, she got cold. Didn’t talk much. Least not to me.”
“The day she warned you not to come back to her house and aimed the gun at you, that was the last time you spoke with her or saw her?” said Lori. “And you say she seemed frightened?”
Rhonda nodded and took a long draw from the cigarette. “Yeah, scared, and something else, worse. Looked like she wanted to kill me.”
* * *
“Heard anything from Amanda?” Marlowe drove into Carrolton with Troy Marks in the passenger seat. Clyde Simmons, owner of Simmons Construction, and his crew were presently erecting a building to serve as Southern Homes Realty district offices. Marlowe hoped to catch them at lunch. Construction workers had a bad habit of hiding behind loud power tools while questioned whenever possible.
“Not a peep. Guess she’ll need some time. If anything happens, I’ll hear about it. I have spies everywhere.” Troy rolled down the window and tossed out a wad of chewing gum. “I admit it worries me. She’s been building toward something like this for a while now. I just hope the fall isn’t too hard. Amanda won’t allow anyone to catch her.”
“No, she won’t. Somethings have to run their course. You have to work through them on your own.”
“Sounds like you speak from experience,” said Troy.
“Too much. But if I could pull through, Amanda can. She’s about the toughest person I know.”
Troy nodded. “No doubt about that. But I’ve seen her armor crack more than once. She’s not indestructible, even if she seems to think so.”
“No one is. Apply enough pressure and everything breaks.”
When Marlowe pulled into the work site, the sound of hammers, drills, and saws serenaded him with a clamorous symphony. Talking to anyone over this noise would test his nerves, and his vocal chords. Fortunately, Clyde Simmons busied himself in an office trailer doing paperwork and ordering materials.
“Jeff? Yeah, I remember him.” Clyde, fifty something and heavy set with tufts of brown hair sticking out from beneath each side of his hardhat, pushed back from his desk and waved to the folding chairs across from him. Marlowe and Troy took seats, but declined coffee that appeared more than a few days old. “I like to hire veterans when I can. Those boys seen hard shit over there. They deserve a break once in a while.”
“How was his work?” asked Marlowe.
“Aces. Kid could build anything. I put him with the framing crew right off. If things hadn’t gone sideways, my bet is he would’ve run the crew in a year.”
“Things didn’t work out I take it?”
Clyde removed his hat and wiped across a bare forehead, his hairline having lost a losing battle long ago. “I’ll say. He’s always talking about somebody coming to get him, and how we should all get ready. Never said exactly who or how, mind you. I’d heard similar before. My wife’s brother, one of them, the oldest, a bona fide nutcase all into survivalist shit—hording water and food, bunch of guns and ammo. He scares the shit outta me. Believes the government or something is gonna take over, or there’ll be a nuclear war. Everything’ll get scarce, people killing for scraps. Zombies eating people for all the hell I know.” Clyde stood, took his cup to the coffee maker and poured out a stream of what looked like oil sediment. “Jeff was like that, too. Not so bad at first, just talk mostly. But after a time, he started spooking the other guys on the job. He seemed more hostile, and paranoid as hell. Either wouldn’t talk to no one, or snapped at the slightest thing.”
“Jeff seemed more hostile and paranoid? How so?” asked Marlowe.
“Well, the day I had to let him go for example. That was the worst of it. One of my guys, fella named Darryl Scot, went over to tell Jeff it was lunchtime. Came up behind him while he was setting in some studs. Jeff spins on him and puts a nail gun to his eyeball. Says he knows what Darryl’s up to and he’ll kill him.” Clyde shook his head. “Darryl ‘bout crapped his overalls. Some of the fellas talked Jeff down and he seemed alright again. Even apologized. But after that, the guys wouldn’t work around him. And I worried what he might do next. I hated to, but had to send him packing.”
Marlowe and Troy thanked Clyde for his time and left the office. Something Clyde said needled at the back of Marlowe’s mind, but for the life of him, he could not place it.
“Do you know much about these survivalists? I’ve read about the lifestyle, but we don’t see much of it in the city,” said Marlowe.
“There are a few families up on Sand Mountain. We even had a Ruby Ridge type incident with one of them several years back. Mostly, like Clyde said, they believe the government or a foreign power is going to invade and take over. Maybe food’ll get scarce or widespread power outages. So they stockpile water, food, guns, ammo. Often homeschool their kids. Pretty much do anything to avoid society and fend for themselves. You even see groups join up in compounds.” Troy slid his seat back and stretched his long legs. “Guess they just don’t trust people like us to protect them. Many of them see us, the police I mean, as the enemy.
Marlowe snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Call everyone and have them meet us at the Baldwins’ house.”
Troy grabbed the radio and glanced over. “Who’s everyone?”
“Everyone.”
CHAPTER
27
Red Weed, Alabama 2017
After losing the farm, we bought a house out on Highway 31—hardly any homes for several miles around—and settled back up in the woods, keeping us out of sight for the most part. Not much to look at, a tiny place, but enough for the three of us. I borrowed the money from Dana’s mom. Planned to pay her back ‘til I lost my job with the construction company and cash got scarce for a bit. Finally, I got on disability due to my back and the PTSD, but it took forever, lots of paperwork and jumping through hoops. And at any rate, it wasn’t enough to do much more than pay the power bill
. Dana got one of those welfare cards for groceries, so we got by okay.
It didn’t matter so much where we lived or how much money we had. Not like before. Now, only surviving mattered. Staying alive. Since Mr. Benjamin and my night in the jail cell, I accepted the certain reality and danger of the smoke men. I geared all my focus and energy toward preparing for the day when they would come. Still, I had more than myself to worry about, and I couldn’t watch over my girls 24/7. Dana and Elle needed to learn to protect themselves. More than that, they had to learn to live off the land, find food without grocery stores and restaurants, make clothes and essential things without going to Wal-Mart. And most of all, they needed to know how to fight, fight for their lives.
So, the first step, break it all down and build it up again. The Army taught me a thing or two about survival. It also taught me about forgetting—forgetting my old self, the scared kid wanting to run and hide behind momma’s skirts. Taught me how to kill before getting killed. But soldiers are only as good as their orders and those who train them. I prayed I was up to the task, everything depended on it.
Training anything is easiest the earlier you get to ‘em. Teach a dog as a pup, before it gets any habits, and it’ll do what you want. Get an older dog, you have to break it down and start over. The Army broke me down and made someone new, someone harder and colder. I needed to break my girls.
First off, I stopped using the pet names. No more Daisy and Munchkin, things were serious now. We couldn’t allow anything to distract us. Heads on a swivel, as my drill sergeant used to say, always focused. Vigilant, alert, and ready, that was our motto. They could come at any second. Maybe tomorrow, maybe a year from now. Getting caught looking the other way would get us slaughtered.
No easy thing teaching a three-year-old about war and making a soldier of her, but keeping her from being a child, damn near impossible. I figured easing the bandage off the wound would hurt more than one good yank.
“Throw it in, Elle.”
I dragged a fifty-five gallon drum, one of the heavy steel kind, around to the back yard and whipped up a roaring fire inside. Dana and Elle gathered up our non-essential clothes, dresses and my suit, anything we wouldn’t wear working outdoors. We cut them into strips and stored the fabric away. Dana’s jewelry we’d sell, which just left Elle’s toys.
There’s little, if anything, more important to a three-year-old than her toys, and Elle must’ve had a dozen boxes filled with stuffed animals, dolls, and games. Crying and pitching a fit, she put them into the fire one by one. The last, her favorite, a big blue teddy bear, she hugged close to her chest and refused to discard it.
“No, Daddy. Please, not Boo. Don’t burn Boo.” Tears and snot dribbled down her face.
I grabbed her wrist and tugged her to the barrel. “No more kid stuff, Elle. Time to grow up.”
“I don’t want to. I want Boo.”
I took the switch to her again. She hopped around, trying to avoid each lash, yelling up a storm.
“Please, Jeff, don’t hurt her. Let her go.” Dana attempted to pull Elle away from me, and I swept the skinny branch across her chest backhanded.
It broke my heart to hurt them, my girls. Never believed my dad when he’d take the hickory to my backside and say it hurt him more than me, but he was right. Dana and Elle didn’t understand, not then. I hoped one day soon they’d see I did it for their own good, to protect them.
Elle, tears streaking her cheeks, pitched the bear into the drum and watched as its features melted away, its fur in flames.
“Good. Now let your mom tend to those welts,” I said.
She allowed her mother to lead her inside, both of them giving me the evil eye. They hated me then, and I didn’t blame them. I hated myself. Doing what’s necessary ain’t always easy. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world. That night Dana tried to run with Elle in tow. I expected it and suspected it wouldn’t be the last time. I had removed the distributor cap off Ol’ Betsy and on foot they didn’t get far.
Whoever owned the house before us left an old freezer in the basement. Broken, wouldn’t cool a snowball, but suited my purposes fine. I fixed several half-inch blocks of wood around the lip of the lid, so when closed, air still got in, and put a combination lock on the latch.
Dana screamed most of the first day and night locked in the freezer. By the third day, in the dark with no food or water, curled up in her own piss and shit, only muted whimpers come outta the box. When I opened it up, the fight had left her eyes. Even fear had vanished, just resignation remained.
It didn’t last. I’d have to put her in the box several more times before she broke for good. Dead eyes, then. I lost my wife in that box, sometime over the years. She didn’t love me anymore, didn’t hate me either. Dana died in there, in a way, but came out alive in the important ways. Eventually, she no longer battled against me. She helped with Elle, mostly to keep her out of the freezer and spared the switch. I think Dana even came to believe in them. Said she saw them a time or two. Maybe so, her fear looked real enough. Not important so long as she stayed safe and alive.
Elle was another matter altogether. Quick to learn, but willful, and possessed a heart too tender for a soldier. We didn’t have time to go gentle and ease in. Things got rough.
I started with trapping, something she could do alone sooner rather than later like hunting, a rifle too big for her to shoot. We set rabbit snares in the woods behind the house. Hundreds of trails all over, we’d place three or four traps and wait a day. The next morning, I led Elle out to check our catch.
“Here we go,” I said, kneeling down next to the small wire cage. Inside, a plump gray ball of fur bunched himself as far from the entrance as possible.
“Oh, he’s so cute.” Elle clapped her hands. “Can I keep him?”
“Sure.” I removed the rabbit from the snare and promptly snapped his neck. “Here ya go.” I tossed it into Elle’s lap. “This isn’t a game. We hunt and trap so we can eat. Animals are our clothes and food. They’ll supply us with a whole host of items we need to survive.”
Elle cradled the rabbit and bawled. Back at the house, she received a switching and four days in the freezer. The next few trappings went pretty much the same, but over weeks and months, Elle gradually accepted the purpose of our treks into the woods and the animals we killed.
By five-years-old, she was doing well with fishing, identifying plants and their uses, for medicine and such, and even managed to stay out of the freezer for more than a month. We moved up to hunting larger prey, which posed new challenges for both of us.
“There. See? Through the trees. A doe.” I pointed out the deer as it wandered through a thicket less than a hundred yards away.
Elle squinted. “Yes, I see.”
She changed a lot over the months, no longer acting much like a small child. The way she moved and behaved seemed feral, like the stray cats that came around sometimes, and rarely spoke anymore.
As if cooperating with us, the deer stopped dead still. I lined up the shot. “Look through here.” I placed the rifle, a .3030, on a log at Elle’s feet, kept a hand on the stock to hold it steady for her, and tapped the scope’s lens. “See the deer?”
“Yeah.” She sat down on the ground, the rifle cradled against one side.
“Okay, make the cross point right behind her front leg. Take a deep breath. Let it out and squeeze the trigger slow, like I showed you.”
Her shot hit, but off the mark. The doe ran and spilled head over tail no more than a rock throw from us. We found it lying on its side, panting hard and wild-eyed. A gaping wound in its belly oozed blood as the terrified animal kicked frantic in the air. I drew a large hunting knife from its sheath at my belt and handed it to Elle.
“The animal’s suffering. Need to end it. Cut right across here.” I indicated a line across the throat. “Press down really hard. Make sure the blade goes deep enough to cut the arteries.”
Elle didn’t hesitate, but took the knife in hand a
nd pushed close to the flailing animal. She wasn’t strong enough to slice through the thick hide in one try; instead, she needed to saw through inch by inch. It required some time for the beast to bleed out and die, but Elle wouldn’t accept help, nor would I have given it.
We strung the doe up by its feet and, with Elle doing as much of the work as possible, slit her open from between the rear legs to the neck. Elle showed no disgust at tearing the innards from the animal; in fact, her eyes gleamed with interest. By the time we finished dressing the deer, Elle was covered head to toe in blood and guts.
My daughter reached six-years-old, and I began to feel more confident my girls could protect themselves and survive, even without me. Dana spent most of her time sitting on the sofa, staring blankly at the TV screen, but at the slightest disturbance, or an order from me, she sprang to action with never a word of complaint. Elle excelled at everything I taught her, accomplishing tasks and learning skills well beyond her years. The one problem we repeatedly fought was her weakness for toys. Regardless of how mature she’d gotten in a lot of ways, and the tendencies I had trained out of her, a child still lived in the cracks and crannies of her mind.
“I found these under your bed.” I dropped three ‘dolls’ onto Elle’s bed: one she made from string and sticks, the other two were large beetles.
“They’re mine. Give them to me.” She screamed and leapt off the bed, her fingernails raking across my cheek and arm. I grabbed her by her shoulders, slammed her to the bed, and wrapped the sheet tight around her. She kicked and thrashed all the way to the freezer.
Took fifteen days to break her.
It wouldn’t be the last time, her will seemingly indomitable. Her dolls evolved from sticks to small animals, mice and gophers mostly, and once a cat, she caught and killed. She even learned to cut their legs so they lived but couldn’t run away. Elle tucked them away and played with them until I eventually found them or caught her with them.
The box alone no longer pacified her, so I added new penalties. I fixed a rubber tube from the lip of the freezer to a water bottle. She had to ration or would run out before completing her sentence. Other times, I filled the freezer to within six inches of the lid, forcing her to squat on her heels and press her mouth as high as possible to catch breaths.
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