Equal Access

by A. E. Branson

  Shad glanced over at Dulsie, who had watched their exchange. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right all the time?”

  Dulsie laughed, and this time Karl heard her. He muttered something to Ken about “They’re here,” and turned toward the rest of the family.

  “There’s the experts.” Karl raised his hands in the air as though surrendering to the group. “Tell me, Dulsie, Shad, what would Sadie do if an armadillo came into the yard?”

  Dulsie frowned slightly. “Armadillo?”

  “Your dad got a surprise when he went out to check on the turkeys last night.” Jill’s smile became amused again. “Of course he wasn’t really using the flashlight he took out with him.”

  “Don’t blame me.” Karl folded his arms over his chest. “You’re the one always telling me not to waste the batteries.”

  Jill shook her head and continued. “So as he was taking his memorized path down to the barns, he found an armadillo.” She looked directly at Karl. “By stepping on its tail.”

  Karl’s eyes widened. “Do you know how high those things can jump?” He threw his arms back into the air. “Almost as high as I can jump!”

  Dulsie chuckled with the rest of the family. “What were you so spooked about? The armadillo’s the one who got stepped on.”

  “For all I knew it was gonna turn in midair and fly toward my jugular – or somewhere worse!”

  “So you were wanting a big white dog for protection about then?”

  “I wanted a crucifix and a silver bullet about then. But what would Sadie do with an armadillo? It’s not a predator unless you’re a bug. Would she just bark at it or try to make it into armadillo burger?”

  Dulsie thoughtfully rubbed on her chin. “Hmm. Interesting question. I can tell you this for sure.” She grinned at her dad. “She’d have sense enough not to step on its tail.”

  A geriatric gentleman who was one of the church elders walked to the center of the chairs and spread his arms apart as he glanced around at the scattered groups.

  “Friends.” His tone was warm and solemn.

  That single word was all he needed to say. The talking throughout the room quickly subsided as some of the members took their seats and a couple of adults led about half a dozen kids through the door on the back wall. It led into a smaller room that was also used as an office. As Shad approached the chairs the entire family sat in a predictable order. Dulsie took a chair to one side of him, and today it was Pap instead of Mam who sat on Shad’s other side. Karl took the chair on Dulsie’s other side and Jill sat next to her husband. It was the farthest she could sit from Shad while remaining with her family.

  One of the changes initiated by the Osage Friends was they now began each meeting with about thirty minutes of discussion on a scriptural passage. Karl was usually very active in these examinations, sometimes earning a dig in the ribs from Jill’s elbow. The congregation had long ago surmised that Karl’s decision to become “convinced” as a Friend after he left the Catholic Church had more to do with Jill than with God. Only immediate family members knew the real reasons why Karl had left his church of origin in the first place.

  After the discussion the children and their keepers returned to the main room, and everybody settled into worship for around an hour. This was when silence reigned, to be broken only when someone was inspired to reveal the word of God. This belief of the Society of Friends that what they spoke and wrote was as true a declaration as any part of scripture was part of what led to their persecution hundreds of years ago. Even the founder, George Fox, wound up in jail a few times for his beliefs. But there was also much about this faith that people found appealing, causing it to once be the third largest religious group in the colonies before the American Revolution began.

  The original congregation that settled here less than a decade before the Civil War broke out were adherents to the teachings of Elias Hicks, a man whom many people claimed had strayed from orthodox Quakerism. His ideas were popular enough to become fairly widespread, especially among rural folk. No sooner did the congregation get established in their new location than Quaid Delaney made his appearance.

  And he’d made quite an entrance. One October morning three Friends who were traveling together found an unknown man lying in the middle of the road. His spent horse was standing, barely, nearby, and Quaid had been shot five times. They hauled him to the nearest house and brought in a doctor, who dug out three bullets that were still lodged in his flesh. Next the congregation held a meeting in order to decide what to do with the stranger.

  There was not a line of volunteers eager to keep Quaid while he either recuperated or expired. They suspected he was a man of violence, and the people who shot him up might come looking to finish the job without regard to anyone they thought was in their way.

  But Grace Riggs offered to take him in. She was a widow whose husband had died of lockjaw while Grace was still pregnant with their daughter, who upon Quaid’s arrival was less than three years old. And because Grace had a problem, her charity was not altruistic. Her late husband’s family never liked that he became a Friend, and his brother claimed the man had borrowed money from him. In his effort to obtain repayment of a loan Grace was certain never happened, the brother-in-law was in the process of taking her farm away. Grace hoped that keeping a convalescent in her home would buy her some time, especially with winter coming on.

  The brother-in-law remained obstinate. But luckily for Grace the burly Irishman under her roof decided to come to her aid. Quaid, it turned out, was a riverboat gambler and a conman’s conman. His victims were other miscreants whom Quaid felt obliged to relieve of their ill-gotten booty as he traveled up and down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. His current predicament was the result of his latest scam not going entirely the way he’d planned, especially the part about getting shot.

  Grace figured out that Quaid’s apparent hedonism had roots in more noble sentiments. He was mad at God for allowing his mother and siblings to die of starvation in Ireland. He was mad at his father for abandoning them. And Quaid was mad at himself because he questioned his decision to come over to this country when he was only thirteen in order to earn money that would bring the rest of his family out of Ireland. But the person to whom Quaid entrusted the money had instead taken off with it.

  So Grace’s brother-in-law fit right into Quaid Delaney’s grudge.

  For years afterward people in the community would theorize what it was Quaid did that made the brother-in-law pack up and leave town. What made their tongues wag faster, however, was the news Quaid and Grace were going to marry immediately. After all, why else would Grace burden herself with the whiskey-drinking, gun-toting, smoking and gambling Irishman? Some gossip mongers were no doubt disappointed when their first child was born more than a year after the wedding.

  Quaid, who was neither a drunkard nor an addict, had given up gambling and used his gun only for hunting and dispatching varmints ... except for that one time during the war he had to take out some two-legged varmints, as his descendants liked to refer to the incident. He embraced his second chance to take care of a family, and although many in the community considered Quaid to be quarrelsome, he had one trait nobody could fault him on and it undoubtedly helped the Friends congregation tolerate him better. Quaid was a very generous man.

  Pap’s Grandpa Ward confirmed to him that the rumors were true about Quaid having amassed a small fortune during his riverboat days. Quaid’s own family never directly benefited from the defiled money – Grace wouldn’t allow it – but he was quick to help anyone, known or stranger, who was in need. And Quaid was especially fond of giving support to widows and orphans.

  Four generations later when a woman from the respectable Leeds family married a man from the suspect Delaney clan, the old people who remembered childhood stories told to them about the exploits of Margaret and Quaid jested it could only signify a beginning and an end to both ancestral legacies. Shad wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to me
an, but he did know the first born child of that union was instrumental in changing his life completely. Had Erin not intervened in her unique, divinely inspired fashion, Shad was certain that if he survived childhood he would have become someone horrifying as an adult.

  And that reminded Shad he still had to do something about Wally.

  Shad’s gaze slid to Karl, who was sitting with a slouch that kept him propped in his chair while his arms were folded over his chest. Karl’s head was tilted back, eyes closed. The man was known to sometimes start softly snoring during a meeting, earning him another dig in the ribs from Jill’s elbow. Otherwise quite vocal, Karl was one of the few, including Shad, who was never moved to speak in these meetings. Of course, Karl liked to remind people that everybody knew how folks who claimed God talked to them had to be schizophrenic.

  When Jill first started to murmur that Shad wasn’t “good enough” for Dulsie, the family was a bit baffled by her conclusion. After all, Jill herself had married Karl, who was another upright individual who unfortunately came from an unsavory past. Jill pointed out they knew what Karl’s past was, but why did Shad remain so tight-lipped about his own history? What was he hiding?

  Shad suspected that Jill’s maternal instinct, which was said to run strong in her family, had tapped into that threat which once lingered in his psyche. It made sense to Shad, except there was one thing about her intuition he couldn’t understand. Jill didn’t seem to sense this threat until after it had left him.

  Now why was that?

  Chapter Six

  Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.

  --John Greenleaf Whittier

  Located on a back road just a couple of miles from the Meeting House, the home where Dulsie grew up had originally been built as a 1920’s bungalow on the side of a hill. It was basically a single story home with a pebbly concrete basement, but Dad, who had once worked for a contractor, changed the entire character of the place. He built an additional wing which gave the house its current mutated L-shape. Dad also widened the porch so that it spread the full width of the original house, and built a bigger back porch and pantry on the side opposite the new wing. There was little left that suggested the original bungalow.

  To one side of the house was Dad’s sprawling, metal-sided workshop, and behind it sat an old, single-car, clapboard garage that now served as the wood shed. Farther back on the next hill were four long turkey barns. The driveway that led up to the house was long and a bit meandering.

  Throughout her childhood Dulsie considered this place to be her primary home and the Delaney farm as her secondary home. She had been a “surprise baby,” born when her older brothers were eight and ten years old. Apparently this had caused a bit of financial hardship for her parents because Mom quit working for a few years in order to tend to Dulsie. Aunt Maddie and Uncle Pax were always very generous with Dulsie’s family, and also watched Dulsie whenever Dad was unavailable after Mom went back to work. This favor wound up being “returned” when Dulsie was in high school and Uncle Pax’s hospitalization caused financial hardship for the Delaneys. Although Shad didn’t need to be watched, he was around Dulsie’s family more simply because her parents were there to help out. That was how Shad learned just what his parents had gone through to keep him away from that woman – Dulsie also refused to give her any maternal title – and out of state custody.

  The weekly dinner after First Day meeting had been going on since before Dulsie was born. It used to include her maternal grandparents’ home, but in the years of their failing health the dinner became restricted to her home and Shad’s home. Her paternal grandparents were never included because Dad was estranged from them. People who bothered to notice that he had nothing to do with his family of origin used to sometimes inquire about this, and Dad simply stated they had a falling out when he left their church.

  Dulsie knew that was a cover story with only a seed of truth, but Dad had to appear as the “bad guy” to preserve the family reputation. She did have some memories of her Grandma Wekenheiser from when Dulsie was around four or five years old, and she remembered liking the woman. But she never met Grandpa until the day of Grandma’s funeral.

  It wasn’t much of a meeting. Shad and her mom looked cozy compared to Dad and Grandpa. The two men barely acknowledged each other and no introductions were made. There was one time the aged but still hulking man scrutinized Dulsie with such intent that she became uncomfortable and stepped behind Shad to escape his gaze. It probably had something to do with the fact Dulsie’s resemblance to Dad meant she also resembled his mother.

  Grandpa was so large that Dulsie did wonder how her father had survived his abuse, but then again none of the very few accounts her parents had related to her compared to the slightly more numerous but definitely horrific stories Shad told her. At least Dad could entertain them with humorous events that even involved Grandpa, who apparently had the public persona of being a really fun guy to be around ... a lot like Dad. Of course Dad’s philosophy was that this world was spinning at over a thousand miles an hour, so he was going to enjoy the ride before something crashed and burned.

  Years ago, shortly before Shad proposed to her, she asked Dad why he didn’t share Mom’s concern that Shad harbored something dark and dangerous.

  Dad explained that boys who grew up with abuse usually turned out as one of three kinds of men. Some continued to be victims throughout their lives, setting themselves up over and over to be taken advantage of. Some believed power was attained by becoming abusers themselves, so they continued the cycle. The third kind became protective. Whether they simply broke the cycle and became good men, or went a step further and also tried to help others beyond their family, they could be depended on.

  “Shad’s not trying to be a lawyer because he’s a greedy shyster,” Dad said. “We all know the last place he wants to be is in front of a group of people where he has to argue a point. I’m not denying there may well be a venomous snake lurking inside him, but I think he’s found someplace else to use it, and that will never be against his family. Your mom may always be right, but that just makes her kind of annoying.” Dad then grinned fondly at Dulsie. “Don’t you turn out like that.”

  While Dulsie helped Mom and Aunt Maddie get the food out on the table in the dining room, which was part of the original house and located between the kitchen and living room, Shad hung out with Dad and Uncle Pax. The men were gathered around the empty fireplace and discussed the misbehavior of squirrels. Dulsie contemplated that thus far today Shad hadn’t altered his behavior with Mom one bit.

  “Isn’t it squirrel season yet?” Dad asked Dulsie when the guys were called in to the dining room.

  “Has been for well over a month.” Dulsie smirked as she stepped over to the chair that would seat her at Mom’s end of the table. “You know I prefer to wait until the weather cools off. If you’re so mad at them right now, you go hunt them yourself.”

  “Yeah, right.” Dad strolled over to the other end of the table. “Like I’m gonna waste my time chasing squirrels when I’ve got a deadeye daughter who can blow away every one that’s fool enough to think his nuts are safe.”

  Dad had a tendency to brag about Dulsie’s shooting ability. For one thing, she was the only person he knew who could match Uncle Pax during target practice. But it was one thing for Delaney men, who had already been “dismissed” as rabble rousers by the pacifist congregation, to take up arms. It was a bit scandalous for a woman descended from Margaret Leeds to be so proficient with a weapon. Dad did question how Dulsie’s ability to bring in game of all sizes was any different from Mom’s and Aunt Maddie’s pragmatic approach to slitting the throats of chickens and turkeys.

  “They taste better in the fall, anyway,” Aunt Maddie commented as she took the chair across the table from Dulsie.

  Mom sat at the end of the table, to Dulsie’s right, and Shad sat in the chair on her left. Uncle Pax took the chair beside Aunt Maddie and across from Shad.


  “If I’m gonna slow roast them in the oven, I definitely prefer to wait for cooler weather,” Mom commented to her sister.

  “I like it to be cooler even if I’ve got one tender enough to just fry,” Aunt Maddie replied.

  Uncle Pax smiled as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table while clasping his hands together. “You two are giving me a hankering for squirrel meat.”

  Dad grinned as he glanced at everyone around the table. “As we say grace we can thank the Lord for His wisdom in making an animal that deserves to be shot to taste so good.”

  Everyone bowed their heads and after about a minute of silence Mom murmured, “Amen.” The rest of the family responded in kind, then began spooning up food and passing around the dishes.

  The conversation jumped from hunting stories to animal antics to childhood memories. Shad as always didn’t contribute much other than to respond to a direct question. Mom as always never acknowledged Shad was even sitting at the table.

  Uncle Pax finished a story about the time his Grandpa Ward was a kid and found a black snake in the chicken house on the farm where Quaid and Grace Delaney, who were Ward’s grandparents, lived. Ward had moved in with his grandparents during his adolescence to help them run the farm during their waning years. In return they willed that property to him. After Ward received his inheritance he quickly sold the place and had a very nice down payment on the current Delaney farm.