by Londyn Skye
While unrelenting guilt was pounding away at Elijah, Tucker was sitting in a hotel room in another city waiting for Elijah to give him a final set of instructions for their plans. Elijah was at a crossroads: meet with Tucker and reverse every bit of progress Lily had made over the last year … or confess his sins and allow Lily’s progress to continue on an international scale. The path Elijah chose to take while standing at his figurative crossroad led him to break into Lily’s hotel room. He sat there for hours in the dark, feeling overemotional from the alcohol coursing through his veins, looking like the pathetic sore loser that his sister had professed him to be. Despite the intense urge to run like a coward, he gathered the intestinal fortitude to stay and confess his love for Lily, as well as the despicable sins he had committed against her, even wanting to admit that his mistakes were born out of jealousy. He planned to abandon his deal with Tucker and Jesse and do whatever it would take to help Lily avoid being dragged back into a life of servitude. In the end, he hoped that Lily would one day find the strength to forgive him. But, before Elijah could say a word about the egregious sins he had committed, he suddenly wanted Lily to answer one simple question … “Do you love him?”
“You’re damn right I do!” Lily ultimately answered. “You dismiss my feelings for James like I’m some kind ‘a imbecile who needs your permission to know how I should feel! Then you have the nerve to disrespect me, him, and our relationship the minute he turns his back by pawin’ all ova’ me and smotherin’ me ‘til I feel like I can’t breathe, and I’m sick of it! I’m demandin’ you, right here and right now, to tell me just how many damn times I have to turn you down for you to accept that there is nothin’ between us?! Tell me, dammit! So I’ll be sure to meet my quota! There has neva’ been anything between us, Elijah, and there neva’ will be. All along, this ain’t neva’ been nothin’ but your damn imagination, and your undyin’ hope that your twisted fantasies will come to life! Now, it’s time for you to get ova’ it!”
Lily’s explosive tirade was like yet another rejection dagger straight through Elijah’s darkened heart, making him feel as though he truly was a nothing in all aspects of his life. Her words finally killed the last thread of hope he had for a future with her, along with the last little bit of desire he had left to walk upright on the path of virtuous men. Worst of all, unbeknownst to Lily, her verbal eruption solidified the downfall of her very own career. After Samuel wrestled him out of her hotel room, Elijah stumbled off into the darkness, totally content to let Jesse snatch Lily Adams off her throne and drag her back down into the sewers of oppression.
… And so now, because of the love Lily had so intensely professed for James, Elijah was making plans with her money while Jesse had her back in his clutches… literally. Jesse had just stopped Lily’s carriage miles away from Winter Garden, grabbed her by the arm, and snatched her out into the bitter cold. She still wore her evening gown … but not for long. Jesse took his pocketknife and sliced the handcrafted garment in half, carelessly cutting off Lily’s underwear and slicing the delicate skin of her cleavage on the way down. Her dress and undergarments cascaded from her body and pooled on the ground around her fancy shoes, leaving her nude body exposed to the deputies delighted eyes and her skin vulnerable to the frosty air. Shivering uncontrollably as blood streamed into her naval, Lily quickly clutched her breasts in humiliation.
“Where’s her goddamn house clothes?!” Jesse yelled at James. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m puttin’ her on the train in this shit!”
Jesse then walked away to retrieve something from his satchel while James fumbled around in the carriage and found the basic dress he had purchased for Lily before her trip to meet William. With her head hung low, Lily first only saw James’s feet as he approached her. He outstretched his arm to give her the balled-up garment. When she saw it dangling in front of her, Lily lifted her head from its submissive position and just stared at James. The moonlight easily revealed the swollen eye that Jesse had given to her back at Winter Garden after she tried to escape from his embrace. Lily’s face was stone-cold as she continued to express her anger for James with her eyes. James swallowed hard while returning her glare. Lily never blinked as she slowly outstretched her arm to take the mundane garment. She wanted to be sure that James did not miss one minute of the humiliation he was responsible for. But, more importantly, she was searching for proof in his eyes that he even cared about the situation in the first place.
“Get dressed dammit!” Jesse barked after walking back around from the side of the carriage to find her just standing there in a stare-off with James.
Lily finally dropped her head, unraveled the wrinkled dress that was a symbol of her true status in life, and she reluctantly slid it onto her body. When Jesse walked away again, she returned to staring at James. Again, she refused to look away from him while she slowly latched the buttons. She was still searching his eyes for the answer to whether he was a loving man or a monster. Based upon the cold stare that he reciprocated, she was thoroughly convinced that he was the latter.
Jesse walked back after retrieving his satchel from the carriage. He kneeled before Lily, took off her custom fitted shoes and tossed them aside like garbage, leaving her feet exposed to the soft snow surrounding them. Still, as her feet began to go numb, she never shed a tear or took her eyes off James. Being that he was in the presence of his father and the deputy, James did not say a word, but simply continued to return her glare and remained just as stone-faced as she. While they continued their emotionless stare-off, Jesse was in the process of replacing Lily’s shoes with something else her ankles had once been very familiar with.
James turned toward his father when he heard the rattle of the shackle and chains that Lily’s father had used on her the day he sold her. It was then that he finally objected. “Pa, I don’t think those are necessary,” James stated calmly.
Jesse quickly stood up after fastening them in place and put a finger in his son’s face. “Shut y’ur goddamn mouth! You done caused enough trouble!” He then turned around and shoved Lily’s scarf in her hand.
Lily let her hair loose from the beautiful style that Isabel had given her and tied it back into a plain bun. She wrapped her scarf around her head, tied it in the front, and finished her transformation from the highly-regarded musical genius that people paid top dollar to see, back into the faceless indentured servant that people looked right through.
Not long after her metamorphosis, Lily sat on a steam train with her eyes closed. Her head was resting against the window while the last moments at the theater played on an endless loop again in her mind. Much like a recurring nightmare, the constant playback of seeing Jesse’s face again would not stop. From time to time, Lily would briefly open her eyes to survey her surroundings and take in the harsh reality that her nightmare was real. Again and again, she had to accept the fact that there was no waking up from this with sweat on her brow, breathing heavily, looking around in confusion, and then finding comfort in the fact that it was all just a dream. No. This time it was all very real.
To escape the misery of the reality she was stuck in, Lily tried to sleep but her body would not allow her that pleasure. Frustrated, she opened her eyes again and glanced over at the compartment that held the coal funneling system that Elijah claimed to have designed. The night Elijah told her the story about his best friend stealing his innovative idea suddenly came to mind. But now, what stood out most about their conversation was Elijah’s warning about the fact that James was likely using her for money. She now felt Elijah was right to hysterically laugh at her over the fact that she considered James as a friend who would never do such a thing. Lily now regretted that she did not heed Elijah’s warning. More so, she regretted that she had vehemently defended James that night.
When that regret began to simmer, Lily opened her eyes. She saw that Jesse had fallen asleep and she turned toward James. She began staring at him with her eyelids lowered and her lips tightly pursed. Her gaze was so intense
, James could feel it. He suddenly opened his eyes and looked over at her. He swallowed hard and his heart immediately began to race. Lily looked to him like a lunatic patient who had just snapped and was contemplating something violent in her mind. It was the most uncomfortable glare James had ever seen, but he endured it without saying a word. He knew he deserved whatever torture her mind was currently concocting. Like a coward, he suddenly lowered his head to escape the evil look in her eyes. But Lily never flinched. She kept her eyes glued to him knowing full well that he could still feel her eyes stabbing him like sharp daggers.
Lily sat on that train for the longest time wishing she could set James on fire with her eyes. All the while, she was questioning whether everything he had said and done in the last year was real or just deception. Deception: Lily was certain that that was the final answer. Being that she was clueless as to the role that Mary Jo Parker and Elijah Ridley had played in her demise, Lily was totally convinced that James Adams had just spent nearly a year masquerading as a man who loved her in the ultimate calculated game of deception.
Chapter Seven
Ghost Rider Code of Ethics
Section 3.1
The Sacred Duty of Protecting Womanhood
Any crime against pure white American women shall be considered as a sin against our race, a crime against society, a menace to our country, and a prostitution for all that is noble and high in this life. It is impossible for a race, society, or country to rise higher than womanhood. Ghost Riding is therefore a chivalrous response of red-blooded American men to the cry of American womanhood that she be protected in her rights, her liberties, and in her person. Ghost Riders must demand respect for American gentile womanhood and insist that her person shall be respected as sacred at all times. A pure white American woman shall therefore always be protected from indignities, wrongdoings, outrages of lawlessness, violence, and brutality, in the sheltering arms of a Ghost Rider.
Instead of climbing aboard a luxury ship after her performance at Winter Garden, Lily was manhandled through the Athens, Ohio train station with shackles still clamped around her ankles, arms, and neck. The way they rattled and scraped the ground made her a spectacle to be gawked at. James was right. The chains were unnecessary, but Jesse was determined to humiliate her while driving home the point that she was his property.
Soon after being dragged through the station, Lily was lifted into the back of Jesse’s covered wagon to head back to Fayetteville, Virginia. As soon as Jesse snapped the reins, Lily pulled her knees up to her chest and soothed herself with a gentle side to side swaying motion. She was still too broken to cry. She sat looking expressionless in her hardware while being tossed about over the bumpy road. With her arms bound, she did not have much ability to steady herself or to stop the shackles from rubbing her raw and leaving a long-lasting reminder of them engrained in her skin. But still, not so much as a word, wince, or a single tear escaped her as she road along in a contraption that lacked the warmth and gentle give of the fancy black, enclosed carriage she had earned for herself. With the chill of the wind whipping through the back of the covered wagon, Lily’s skin was completely numb … just like her soul. But despite the conditions, she endured the trip bravely while the men she had coined as the devil and his demon spawn sat at the reins dragging her back to their hellhole.
Along with her skin and her soul, Lily wished she had the ability to numb her mind, to stop it from racing with thoughts of the demon spawn. She hated devoting any of her brain power to him. She hated even more that she never once realized he still had the capacity to crush her world. Why? How? she questioned incessantly, no different than a lunatic patient amid a mental breakdown. She wondered why the devil’s demon spawn had betrayed her in the most epic of ways, how it was that he could so callously set ablaze her dream to start a new life in the Old World and burn it beyond recognition. She was not yet aware that James’s quick-thinking lie had been the saving grace that led her to be transported back home in chains versus the eternal darkness of a pine box.
Ironically, the story that James told his father about his mother not only made a difference in Lily’s life, but in Jesse’s as well. It was impacting Jesse in much the same way that James had been impacted when his father had dragged him into the woods as a teenager to teach him a lesson. James had only told him the fabricated story in hopes of saving Lily’s life. He was not at all expecting the ripple effect that it was currently having on his father.
Of all the things that James told his father, one simple phrase began torturing Jesse the moment he heard it: “Afta’ the heinous things you did to her…” Those were eight simple words that James had spewed to Jesse in reference to the way he had treated his wife, Elizabeth, during the twenty years they were together. They were eight simple words that now would not stop echoing in Jesse’s head. Over the last twenty-four hours, that one phrase had unleashed an overflow of repressed memories about his relationship with Elizabeth. They were horrendous memories that forced Jesse to have to shut his eyes tight to keep a very foreign emotion from revealing itself in the form of tears.
While they were on the train, those memories and foreign feelings began to plague Jesse relentlessly. Now, on the final two-day stretch home in his wagon, the feelings and memories had still yet to subside. He was silent nearly the whole ride after his son had forced him to relive the things he had done to his loving wife; it rattled Jesse to learn that instructing Lily on the piano was allegedly Elizabeth’s means of comfort and escape from certain horrors in her life. So, while Lily sat like a lunatic patient in the back of the wagon, Jesse was like one in the front, both unintentionally driven to that state by James.
“Afta’ the heinous things you did to her…” No matter how Jesse tried to shake himself free from that sentence, it continued to overload his brain and unleash an array of deeply buried, visually graphic memories. He attempted to trump the repressed memories by trying to remember the last time he told Elizabeth she was beautiful. He could not recall. He tried to think of the last time he told her he loved her. He did not know. He then tried to recall the last time he held her in a loving embrace. He could not remember. He wanted to relive the last time he had hugged her. The memory was too faded to see. The inability to remember anything wonderful about the way he had treated the mother of his children left Jesse with no choice but to keep reliving events that he did not want to face or take responsibility for. “Afta’ the heinous things you did to her…” The words rang out loudly again in Jesse’s head, this time bringing back the most painful memory of all: his wife’s last day on earth …
Twenty years before Elizabeth Adams passed away, there was a time when Jesse Adams could do no wrong in her eyes. She was a naïve young woman who was convinced she had met the man of her dreams. In the beginning, Jesse was kind and had made life promises to her that every woman longed to hear. He took her on adventures and exposed her to experiences that her overprotective father, Jameson, would never have allowed before she was an adult. Once she was grown, Jameson reluctantly loosened his parental reins and allowed Elizabeth the space to begin building a life away from the comforts of his nest. However, it was not long after she began building her life with Jesse that Jameson regretted allowing her such freedom.
Elizabeth was Jameson’s only daughter, and by far his favorite child. Before her birth, he had a set of twin girls that did not survive infancy. The devestation of their deaths contributed to his attachment to his “little Lizzy.” From the time she could walk, it was rare that Jameson ever went anywhere without his little Lizzy tagging along. They had a bond like magnets until Jesse came into her life and immediately caused them to drift apart. Jameson was initially okay with Jesse courting his daughter but became concerned by Jesse’s subtle criticisms of Elizabeth, his demanding ways, and his possessiveness over her. Jameson was so disturbed by his bizarre behaviors that he turned Jesse down when he asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He was convinced that Jesse was not worthy of a woman
as precious as his daughter. Jameson expressed his concerns to Elizabeth, but she was too blinded by love to heed her father’s warning about Jesse. That love-drunk state of mind made it far easier for Jesse to convince Elizabeth that her father had only turned him down due to the impending heartache of losing the closeness of his favorite child. Elizabeth, therefore, dismissed her father’s wishes and married Jesse anyway. Jameson was livid over her decision but refused to miss the opportunity to walk his only daughter down the aisle. Despite it, their father-daughter relationship never truly recovered.
It was not until she and Jesse were matrimonially united that Elizabeth quickly began to realize that her father might have been right. The day of their wedding, Jesse felt as though he officially “owned” the sort of meek, impressionable, weak-minded woman he had always wanted. When they were finally alone on their wedding night, Jesse took his new wife’s virginity with a sort of despicable force that left her in tears afterward. Again, in her naïve mind, Elizabeth convinced herself that perhaps that level of pain was normal.
