by Ryan Green
Impregnating Sheila was the logical conclusion to his domination. He not only owned every part of her but had transformed her from a young girl into a vessel for him. She was no longer allowed to exist as a person; she was only a repository for his dark passions. With Becky, the pleasure that he took in impregnation seemed to have passed all too quickly, explaining the sheer number of children that he forced her to carry. With Sheila, that pleasure was more complete. Not only was she forced to carry a child that it is fair to assume that she did not want, she was also trapped within a crushing web of guilt and shame. Just when his pleasure in total control over Sheila was approaching its natural conclusion, it was spoiled by the intrusion of the outside world, the world that he couldn't control.
The family began to fragment. Gene, already desperate to get away from his father and seizing on this moment of weakness, left to start a life of his own. Without Ronald's constant looming presence, the ridiculousness of the other children's slavish obedience became increasingly apparent to them, and in his depressive state, he rarely even bothered to chastise them for ignoring the routines that he had laid out for them. Without constant reinforcement, the discipline that Ronald had spent their entire lives trying to enforce began to fall apart until he realised that his situation was untenable.
Despite Sheila's stonewalling of the investigation and refusal from all parties to testify, the charges of incest were still making their gradual way through the legal system of New Mexico. For the first time in his adult life, the chaos of the outside world was once again intruding on the stability that Ronald had managed to construct for himself. His response was predictably explosive. He uprooted the entire family and fled the state. The rented house where he had been lurking since he left the armed forces was found abandoned. Without ceremony, the Simmons family vanished.
Part 2: Mockingbird Hill
Almost an entire year passed with no sign of the family. Sheila's due date passed by with it, and the investigation into Ronald Gene Simmons ground slowly to a halt in the absence of either the perpetrator or the victim of the crime. Eventually, the courts in Cloudcroft gave up entirely, filing the investigation into Sheila's pregnancy away with all of the other cold cases. In the 80s, jurisdictional conflicts and poor communication made escapes like this all too simple and all too common. Many serial killers escaped notice in the same manner, skipping between states to avoid attention. The legal apparatus of the time simply wasn't equipped to pursue criminals beyond state borders, and the consensus at the time was that ‘non-violent' crimes like the one that Ronald had committed on his daughter were not to be given priority.
In Ward, Arkansas, the family settled into a hermetic life for two years, with as little contact with the outside world as it was possible to have. If Ronald worked during this time, he was paid under the table. If they rented property during this time, it is safe to assume that it was paid for in cash, or that rent simply went unpaid as the Simmonses bounced from one property to the next. The absolute chaos of a life without any time to lay down roots, the same situation that drove Ronald to the verge of madness in his adolescence, had returned with a vengeance. Still reeling from what he perceived as a betrayal at the hands of his daughter, Ronald turned inward while still lashing out brutally at his family. Within two years, any hope of escape that they might have been harbouring after that brief glimpse of freedom had faded. When Ronald uprooted them again, there was no sense of relief that life was going to fall back into place, just the continual dread that came with sharing space with a man with no care for anything but his own control.
Fifteen miles outside of Dover, Arkansas, the Simmons family finally found their new home. Mockingbird Hill was a fanciful name for what was essentially an abandoned lot. To reach the ‘house' you had to drive up a long winding driveway of rutted red clay in a heavily wooded area, practically impassable in the heavy rain or snow that was typical for the area. Once you had passed the dozens of ‘No Trespassing' signs that dotted the path, the structure itself came into sight. The ‘house' was comprised of two aging mobile homes that had been welded together haphazardly into a single larger structure.
After the chaotic period of their escape and cross-country flight, several of the older children were beginning to rail against Ronald's control. Gene had already left the family before they took flight, and some of the older children, Sheila included, were now beginning to seriously question whether they wanted to spend any more time in their father's tender care. If there had never been any outside interference, then Ronald would never have shown weakness, but now that the family was coming to realise that he was not as all-powerful as he once appeared, the seeds of rebellion had been planted. Ronald responded in the only way that he knew how—he tried to tighten his grip on them.
*
Little Becky started to cry early on. Her mother wouldn't come out of the kitchen. She had sat herself down at the dining table and started to smoke after serving Daddy his breakfast and she hadn't moved since. She wouldn't look out through the plate glass doors no matter how the children cried. You could see her flinch every time one of her children shrieked, but she didn't dare to move. She didn't dare to fight for them. The older ones had already learned that sobs were just going to earn them a scowl from Daddy. They didn't even bother anymore, not for something as small as pain. If it caught them by surprise—if they lost their grip on a cinderblock and it landed on their foot, or if a corner caught on one of the blisters on their hands—then they might let out a little gasp or a little yelp, but it would be by reflex. They marched back and forth in a line, from the pile of rubble that Daddy had found on the property when he was deciding where the grass needed cut, to the new wall. It crept up, row by row, around the front of the property, slowly blocking off any sight of the house from the outside world.
Little Becky was only eight years old. The blocks that weighed her brothers and sisters down made her shoulders strain and pop in their sockets. The others had blisters, but their hands were hardened by years of chores. Hers just bled. Every block that Little Becky slotted into the wall was marked red at the corners. She would have gone begging to Daddy for a job that didn't hurt her so much if she thought that it would do any good, but he wouldn't trust her with the work that he was doing around the back of the yard. The front wall would rise up taller than the one at the back. The lines of trees at the back bordered on some neighbour’s property. Once or twice since they had arrived, Little Becky and the others had perked up at the sound of other children playing outside. They had even caught glimpses of them through the woods. Daddy wasn't going to stand for strangers wandering into his yard any more than he would trust any one of his kids to talk to a neighbour. The only reason that the cinderblock wall at the back of the property was shorter was so that he could coil barbed wire all along the top of it without needing a ladder. Eddy and Loretta had to help him with that, and both of them had come to bed that night with iodine stained hands all scratched to pieces. The only one who was safe from the wall was Barbara. She was confined to her room with the hope that if Daddy didn't see her, then he wouldn't give her work to do.
They had been here for three days now, since Daddy had got the keys from the town down below. Every morning he had woken them up at dawn with a different chore to do that day. On the first night, before they even hauled the boxes in from the car, the oldest ones had to dig a cesspit because the new house didn't have a toilet. Daddy didn't mind. He said it reminded him of his army days. Every day since then they had been working on these projects. Cutting back the long grass all over the yard. Setting up a chicken coop. Gathering up Daddy's bottles from where he tossed them around the yard. Getting a doghouse knocked together for Bo and Duke so that they didn't have to sleep in the house, whining and hollering all night long. Stacking up any of the ‘building materials' into heaps to be used later. Plotting out spots for the next few months' cesspits. The wall was just the latest in a long list.
The brick slipped from between Little
Becky's aching fingers and left a scratch down the length of her leg before clipping off the side of her heel. She tried to hold it in but the tears started running down her cheeks anyway. She didn't cry out, but she shook. The forest blurred as she fumbled, trying to get a new grip on the cinderblock despite her quaking hands. She didn't know who it was, but suddenly there were arms wrapped around her, holding her in a tight circle of warmth. She could smell the sweet tang of sweat, a faint hint of her mother's perfume and the cloying damp that hung on all of their clothes after weeks of living in a car. Whoever it was only held on for a moment before breaking away. Just long enough for her to catch her breath but not long enough to catch Daddy's attention. Blood was staining her sock when she looked down, but it hardly mattered. There was already a little bloody smear on her skirt. There were rusty marks and grass stains on her sneakers too. She would already be punished for messing up her clothes if Daddy decided that punishment was in order. One more mark didn't matter.
With the strength that her brother or sister's hug had imparted, Little Becky got her fingers curled under the corners of the cinderblock and hefted it back up again. The muscles of her back, her shoulders, and her arms all stretched to their limit then vibrated like a guitar string being plucked. Her hands went on shaking, but her grip was true despite the morning dew that the cinderblock had picked up. She carried on her march towards the wall before Daddy could notice her slacking. Building the walls of her own prison.
Over the course of several weeks, Ronald fortified Mockingbird Hill in such a way that any potential visitors would be dissuaded and any hopeful peeping toms would find their hobby impossible. If the isolated location and dense forest surrounding the property weren't enough, the threatening trespasser warning signs and the walls and barbed wire that he forced his children to lay out around the property were probably enough to ensure that there wouldn't be many visitors.
Ronald had learned his lesson about allowing the outside world to see what life inside his little kingdom was really like. If absolute isolation was required to maintain absolute control, then he would create it. He had never particularly cared for the company of others anyway. In addition to learning how secretive he needed to be, he also learned the value of maintaining his family's anonymity by carefully following the rules. His children had perfect attendance at their schools, and while they had some trouble socialising, as they were on strict schedules that allowed no time for friendships outside of the classroom, none of them struggled academically. They remained in the middle of the pack throughout their entire school life in Arkansas, never drawing any attention to themselves or their unusual home life.
A new stress appeared in Ronald's life about this time. When he uprooted his family and severed all ties to his past in New Mexico, he also lost access to the generous pensions that he had accrued from his time in military service. For his entire adult life, money had never been a pressing concern for him. He was cared for by the military during his service and after retiring as a master sergeant. His pension had been sufficient to cover rent and bills. Without that money, he was forced to seek out employment. Even in the best circumstances, jobs were difficult to find in rural Arkansas. The town of Dover had a population of only a few hundred families, but that limited population required very little infrastructure to support it. Small towns without local industry subsist in tiny, mostly sealed economies, where money is just shuffled around between the local residents, with a small amount coming in from exports and considerably more being siphoned out when they have to import goods. To get a job within a small town, you need one of two things: a unique and highly valuable skill or a family member with some influence. As an outsider with no experience outside of the military, Ronald had no opportunities at all in Dover, and like most people seeking work outside of the comfort of the city, he was forced to travel 30 miles to nearby Russellville to find even the lowest paying work.
In a very real way, this was the first time that Ronald had to deal with regular working life outside of the comfortable structure of the military, and he took to it very poorly. After a lifetime of receiving high praise for the quality of his work and receiving literal medals for doing his job correctly, he felt like the paltry salary that he could now command massively undervalued him. In his military life, he had acquired a position of command and earned the respect of his peers. While there were people of a higher rank who he had to interact with as part of his work, he'd never had to deal with the American people before. He was overwhelmed by the constant disrespect that he received from employers, co-workers, and the general public. For a normal veteran, it would have been difficult, but for an egomaniac like Ronald, every day became a constant war with those around him as imagined slights blossomed into vendettas in his mind. As with everything else that caused him discomfort, Ronald struggled in a situation that he could not completely control and that he did not understand the underlying rules of. In the military, there was a chain of command that could be easily followed. He had to obey the orders of anyone of a higher rank because that was the nature of military life, but in civilian jobs, anyone and everyone could place pressures on him, and he had no way of knowing which demands needed to be obeyed and which could be ignored.
And then there was the problem was Ronald's continuing attitude towards women as nothing more than objects for his sexual appetites.
Despite the steep odds, Ronald secured a good position in a law firm as a clerk almost immediately after arrival in Russellville, a role in which his natural proclivity for organisation and his anal attention to detail were actually assets rather than hindrances. All reports on the quality and speed of his work showed that he was an intelligent and diligent worker. The same traits that had made him a success in the military were producing positive results in his civilian life for the first time. Sadly, the diligence and competence that he carried on with him were not accompanied by any structures of discipline.
While the military had always kept Ronald on a short leash, there was nobody to hold him back now. There was nobody with the power to stop him from behaving in what he seemed to think was a normal manner, replicating his home life down at the office. There were few women in the office, but like at home, he chose one younger woman to be the focus of his attentions. Unlike with Sheila at home, his target, Kathy Kendricks, had spent some time socialising outside of a twisted family setting. She was able to recognise the grossly inappropriate sexual advances that he was making towards her as abusive rather than flattering. He had nothing to offer a partner. His instability was becoming ever more apparent since his loss of control back in Cloudcroft, manifesting itself as a foul temper and borderline paranoia. She reported his repeated lewd comments, and after she described Robert's ‘flirtations', which bordered on sexual assault, to her employers, he was fired promptly.
The family thought that they had seen fury before, when all of the slights against him had only been imagined. Now, he had the insult of rejection from a woman who he believed should have been his by right, little more than another piece of property, and the injury of losing the only steady work that he had managed to secure since leaving the military. The wages of a legal clerk in the 80s were nothing lavish, but they had been enough to cover the rent for his little enclave out on Mockingbird Hill, pay for groceries, and allow Ronald to anaesthetise himself with alcohol when troubling thoughts about all of those who had wronged him threatened to rear their ugly heads.
It remains unknown exactly how violent Ronald was with his wife and children. It seems obvious in hindsight that he was a violent man, so it is difficult to imagine that he never inflicted harm on them during his long campaigns of control and terror. If Ronald followed the pattern of behaviour that we see frequently among other psychopaths and abusers, this was likely to be a time of particular suffering for his children and wife as he lashed out at them as a means of letting off steam. While his wife was entirely isolated during this time thanks to her inability to drive and the rural location, the childr
en were never reported to be showing any signs of physical abuse, so it is entirely possible that he focused all of his violent attentions on her.
Becky had again become a sexual outlet for him after Sheila's withdrawal, perhaps expecting a similar improvement in treatment as her daughter had experienced during her time as the focus of Ronald's attentions. During the period when he was obsessing over Kathy Kendricks, it is likely that his affections were withdrawn from her all over again. Some combination of the new foul temper and the absence of anything that could be interpreted as affection was enough to push her over the edge. Becky tried to leave.
Her attempt at escape seems to have been ill conceived and short lived. Ronald had been conditioning her for decades to believe that she could not survive out in the world without him to care for her, something that she believed until her very final moments. In this first attempt, it seems just as likely that she came back home of her own volition as that he somehow coerced her. The fact that her many children were still trapped alone in a house with a man who had shown no hesitation to abuse them in the most appalling ways was probably a contributing factor in her decision to return, too. Ronald did not seem to repay this betrayal with anything more than contempt. If looked at through the warped lens of their relationship, you might take this lack of vengeance to be a kindness, but Ronald was not the kind of man to forgive and forget. This insult, along with all of the others, he filed away mentally. For now, he had more pressing concerns.
Despite the speed at which gossip must have spread in the small town of Russellville, it took Ronald only a few weeks to secure another position for himself, this time with the local oil company. While they had heard about his unpleasant reputation through the grapevine, his competence seemed undeniable, and some ingrained misogyny allowed them to discount Kendricks' complaints against him as a romance gone wrong rather than the predatory actions of a sick man. He was not able to hold the position for long before his constant insubordination and arguments with his employer, along with the first hints of unseemly behaviour towards his female co-workers, had him on the hunt for a job once more.
