by Ninie Hammon
She’d caught the look on Kelsey’s face when the two boys met on the stairs. Jennifer had never seen that look from the outside, on someone’s face, but she’d felt it from the inside every day that she could remember.
She sighed and shook her head. Then she pulled her long, black hair back from her face, leaned over, put the straw to the end of the line of coke and sniffed heaven into her nose. Between one heartbeat and the next, reality morphed into a new thing. The outer edges of her vision grew soft and faded, but every other image stood out as crystal clear as the sparkle on a soap bubble.
All of a sudden, she was happy, charming and beautiful. The people around her were her cherished friends who would take a bullet for her as willingly as she would take one for them. Life was good!
Outside her coke-induced delusion, none of that was true, of course.
The people around her were hardly her cherished friends. They were users. Jennifer knew that and accepted the exchange of goods and services for social acceptance as the price of admission to life. She provided drugs, the hard stuff, way beyond baby-steps weed. Meth. LSD. PCP. Heroin. Even the new drug that was all the rage in the city—crack cocaine. Name it and she had it or could get it.
Jennifer wasn’t beautiful, either, and she certainly wasn’t happy or charming. Ask anybody and they’d tell you: Jennifer Jamison was just weird.
The disintegration of her soul began on a bright summer morning when she was 7 years old. She never thought about that time. If her mind got anywhere near the memory, she quickly got drunk or high or a delirious combination of both until the memory crawled back into the black pit of hell where it belonged.
It was the day her mother disappeared. One minute Darlene Jamison was there and the next she was gone. Vanished without a trace. No one had any idea what had happened to her.
But Jenny knew. Jenny saw.
Men in brown uniforms came to the house late that afternoon and talked to Daddy. Jake barricaded himself in his room, thinking nobody could hear him in there sobbing.
Until that day, Bubba Jamison had never participated in any way in the care of his children. Never held a baby, changed a diaper, read a story, played a game or hugged a child goodnight. But at bedtime, their father barked at Jake and Jennifer to put their pajamas on and brush their teeth.
Then he grunted, “Go to bed!” That was it, the extent of his tenderness for two motherless children, a preview of coming attractions from the movie of the rest of their lives.
Later that night, Jenny awakened in the grip of a horrible nightmare. She’d been curled in a fetal position sobbing when suddenly Daddy appeared at her bedside. He’d come into her room as silently as a moth on velvet.
“Don’t you be crying for your mama, you hear me!” he told her, an edge of menace in his rumbling voice. The look in his deep, dark eyes was as sharp as a broken bottle. “Daddy’ll take good care of his little girl.”
In that moment, a different kind of nightmare—one called “real life”—began to gobble the child up, slowly ripping her apart with its jagged teeth.
A series of housekeepers had orbited in and out of the house over the years, cooking and cleaning and looking after the children. Then they’d do something Daddy didn’t like and he’d fire them. Jenny learned quickly not to become attached to anybody. Eventually, everybody vanished.
In her whole life, Jennifer Jamison had never had a friend.
The teenagers began leaving, singly or in groups until the cabin was empty. Kelsey came down the stairs disoriented. She was coming off a high, too, so Jennifer understood.
“I rode out here with Brandon. Did he leave without me?” she asked.
“If you need a ride home, I can take you.”
Kelsey sighed. “Sure, whatever.”
Jennifer’s head snapped up. “Hey, don’t give me a ’tude, Sweetheart, or you can walk your skinny butt five miles to Crawford!”
“I … sure, I want a ride, thanks.” Kelsey looked around at the mess. “This your cabin?”
“It’s my father’s.” Jennifer got up, went into the kitchenette, opened the cabinet under the sink and took out a roll of trash bags. “He’ll beat the crap out of me if I leave it like this.” She peeled a bag off the roll and struggled with the thin plastic, trying to get it open.
Kelsey stood and held out her hand for a bag. “With two of us, it won’t take long.”
They threw beer cans, ashes, the remains of joints, soft-drink cans, assorted loose pills, liquor bottles and dirty paper plates into the bags. Half an hour later, the place was presentable. It wasn’t clean by any stretch—beer and food had been spilled everywhere and there was a vomit mess to clean up in the downstairs bath that neither girl was willing to touch. But Jennifer would get their housekeeper to come out and finish up the rest.
“Your daddy’s Bubba Jamison, isn’t he?” Kelsey was a year younger than Jennifer, and though the two had been to several of the same parties, they’d never been alone together until now.
“Yeah, and … ?”
“My daddy works for him; Mama said so.” The girls stood for a moment looking at each other.
“Sucks, doesn’t it.” Jennifer’s voice was tired and defeated.
Kelsey set her full trash bag on the floor and plopped down on the sofa. “It sucks big-time.”
Jennifer curled up in the overstuffed chair across from Kelsey and the two girls started to talk. After an hour of pouring out the raw sewage of their lives, Jennifer dropped the conversation-stopper.
“I’m pregnant.”
“My mother took me to a doctor in Bardstown last year and got me on the pill or I’m sure I’d be knocked up, too,” Kelsey said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to have it!” She suddenly felt sick at her stomach, so she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she sat for a moment, studying Kelsey. Why not? It looked like this girl needed rescuing as much as she did.
“I’m getting out of here.” Jennifer’s voice was quiet and intense. “I’m not living like this anymore; I’m bailing.” She looked hard at Kelsey. “I’ll take you with me if you want to come.”
“I’m listening.”
• • • • •
Sarabeth opened her front door and found Sonny Tackett standing on her porch. She’d been baking Ben’s favorite pineapple upside-down cake from scratch. She’d embarked on this culinary adventure because in a little over a week, Ben would be gone to California to college. And that was going to hurt. He’d come into her life when she so desperately needed someone to focus all that mothering instinct on that had had no outlet after Moriah died. But even more than that, he’d been companionship, he’d been there so she didn’t get lonely and end up in a bad relationship with some random guy just to have somebody to talk to. Ben had made so much that was difficult in her life easier, and it’d be one of the hardest things she’d ever have to do to let him go.
“What are you doing here, in uniform on a Sunday?” She unlatched the screen door and held it out for him. “Tell me you didn’t preach this morning with a gun strapped to your hip!”
The Sherman tank of a man stepped inside with his hat in his hand. He didn’t smile and he had that official air about him that told her instantly this wasn’t a social call.
“Did you find out something? You said you were going to open the investigation again—did something turn up already?”
The sheriff had reported to the Brewster City Police Department and the Kentucky State Police what Joe Fogerty had said as he lay dying on the riverbank. Such a “deathbed statement” was considered undisputed truth, even admissible in court. Joe Fogerty didn’t gun Jim Bingham down in front of the newspaper office more than a year ago, which meant somebody else did.
Since the crime was committed inside the city limits of Brewster, the local police had been the primary investigating agency. But there’d been precious little investigating done after
the sheriff found Fogerty lying by a dumpster just outside town with the murder weapon in his pocket and the victim’s hat on his head. Now it was clear Fogerty had been set up. Somebody knew the old man had threatened Bingham and figured they’d get him drunk and dump him somewhere with the gun and the hat and the police wouldn’t likely waste their time running down any other rabbit trails. And they hadn’t. Now all those rabbit trails were stone cold.
Sarabeth held out her hand for Sonny’s hat. “Have a seat and tell me all about it. Just don’t let me forget I’ve got a cake to get out of the oven in 15 minutes.”
The sheriff didn’t give her his hat and he made no move to sit down. Sarabeth looked at him, and a sick dread gripped the pit of her stomach, pinched it tight with the instant nausea of a stomach virus. Police officers never came to your door with good news.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not here about your father. I’m here about Ben.”
All the color drained out of her face.
“Is he hurt?”
“No, he’s not hurt.”
She let out a huge whoosh of air; relief flooded over her in a warm tide.
“Sonny, you just about scared me to death!”
“Ben’s in jail. The state police busted him and three other boys in a dope barn the other side of Crawford.”
She blurted out a little hiccup of relieved laughter. That was ridiculous! It was somebody else, somebody with the same name or who looked like him. It wasn’t Ben!
“Oh come on, Sonny, you know better than that! I slept in this morning and found a note on the kitchen table from Ben saying he’d be home in time for dinner. I don’t know where he is, but—”
“He won’t be home in time for dinner, Sarabeth. They’re booking him right now.”
Sonny might as well have told her that a herd of dancing purple aardvarks were in her back yard planting tulips. That the sun had fallen out of the sky and landed in the Pacific Ocean with a gigantic psssttt sound. She sat down on the arm of the chair and stared at Sonny with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
“I know this is hard. I didn’t believe it either. When I saw the arrest report, I actually thought it was funny that they’d busted somebody with the same name as your brother. Then I looked in the holding cell …” his voice got quiet. “ … and saw the red hair.”
Sarabeth groaned, a wounded-animal sound.
“I wanted you to hear it from me. It won’t be long before the whole town knows, so I came right over. I’m going back to the jail now to make sure they’re done processing him so I can go talk to the judge, see if I can get him to release Ben into my custody. But it may take me a little while to find Judge Compton. On Sunday afternoons, Earl usually goes fishing.”
Sarabeth dropped the towel she’d been unconsciously winding into a knot in her hands. “I’ll just be a minute.” She turned toward the kitchen.
“You’re not coming with me.”
“Oh, yes I am.”
He reached out and took her hand. “Don’t do that to yourself, Sarabeth.” He locked his eyes on hers and held firm, his voice full of compassion. “Don’t go down there to get him. Don’t do that to Ben, see him like that. Soon’s I get the paperwork done, I’ll bring him home.”
She sat there in the quiet house after Sonny was gone while the pineapple upside down cake in the oven burned to a crisp.
• • • • •
Not for one minute did Jake believe it! It was no coincidence that the ugly guy with the broken nose had called him over after they’d been working for about an hour and told him he needed a roll of twine, a big one. He’d pressed $10 into Jake’s hand and told him to high tail it into Brewster and get back with it quick.
Jake had asked why he couldn’t get the twine in Crawford. It was five miles closer. But the man had squinted at him and told him that the twine he wanted was in Brewster, in the hardware store, open one to five on Sundays. Just ask the clerk, the dopey-looking guy with the thick glasses and he’d see Jake got the right kind, one of the big rolls wrapped in plastic.
Jake went over to pick up his hat and tell Ben where he was going. Shoot, by the time he got back, they’d probably be finished. There’d been hardly any tobacco to house, just a couple of wagon loads in the front half of the barn. The whole back side of the barn was closed off. Ben had wiped the sweat out of his eyes and teased him about always getting the cush job.
And Jake had left.
He’d been barreling down KY 32 to get back to the barn when a Kentucky State Police cruiser blew by him like he was standing still. And then another one. Then two more.
Jake floored the accelerator on his Jeep Wrangler, not caring if the road was swarming with cops, not caring if he got a dozen speeding tickets.
He passed the convoy of cops coming back toward town before he ever got to the barn, though. Saw figures in the back seats of the cruisers. He was sure one of them had red hair.
And he knew then it had been a set-up. His father had lied. He’d told Jake to make friends with Ben, then used that friendship to get Ben busted. And Jake had been too stupid to see what was going on until it was too late.
Now Ben was in jail. And there wasn’t a single dang thing Jake could do about it.
• • • • •
It was among the worst two hours Sarabeth had ever lived though, sitting in the living room of her father’s house, with the sheriff and Detective Hayes trying to get Ben to tell the truth.
When he got out of Sonny’s car and came walking up the sidewalk, she had raced out the door, down the steps and thrown her arms around him. Hugging him fiercely, protectively, she’d started to cry. Then Ben started crying. Standing there on the front sidewalk, not caring that all the neighbors were watching, they just sobbed.
She couldn’t stop staring at him. The whole time he was talking she had trouble concentrating on what he said because she was looking at him so hard. She tried to look into his head, into his soul. Tried to understand. At first, it was almost like he was a stranger, a clone of the Ben she knew and loved, and she kept looking for the difference, the chink, the little detail that was wrong.
The sound of his voice, so tender and vulnerable and young-sounding, broke her heart. The look on his face, shame and utter despair, and the pain in his eyes made her want to hold him in her lap like she did right after his parents died, and rock him, telling him everything would be alright.
Trouble was, everything wouldn’t be alright. She knew it and so did Ben. In fact, it could just be that nothing would ever be alright again.
The sheriff’s questions were kind, but firm and no-nonsense. Detective Hayes’ inquiries almost sounded academic. But when it came down to it, they both wanted to know the same thing: who had hired him to work in the barn? And Ben wouldn’t say.
At one point, Sarabeth had lost it briefly, shouted at him that he was crazy to protect someone who had totally ruined his life, told him to stop acting like the star of his own movie and grow up. Be a man. Tell the truth.
Ben wouldn’t budge.
Of course, she knew why. It didn’t take a Rhode’s Scholar to figure out who’d talked Ben into working in that barn.
“It was Jake Jamison, wasn’t it, son?” Sonny asked.
“No sir, Jake didn’t have anything to do with it!”
“Come on, Ben, I know Jake’s your best friend and his father’s the biggest doper around.”
Ben lifted his head and fixed the sheriff with a burning gaze from red-rimmed, swollen eyes. “Jake’s not like his father! Not anything like his father. If you knew him, you’d know he’d rather die than get mixed up in dope!”
And so it went, back and forth, over and over. The sheriff and Detective Hayes pressed; Ben remained tight-lipped and silent. Again and again the same questions and the same answers. Finally, Ben got to his feet, and in that moment something shifted. The boy standing tall and defiant in front of Sarabeth wasn’t a boy any longer. He was a man.
“I have the rig
ht to remain silent and I’m invoking that right. I’m done talking. You want to take me back to jail, go ahead, but I’m not saying anything else.”
Sonny sighed and shook his head.
“Nobody’s taking you to jail, Ben. Go to bed. It’s been a long day. You’re worn out. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
Without a word, Ben turned and headed up the stairs. As soon as he was out of earshot, Sarabeth asked, “What’s going to happen to him?”
Sonny and Hayes exchanged a glance, then both of them looked at Sarabeth.
“He was caught in a dope barn,” Sonny said. “The whole back side, floor to ceiling, was full of it. That’s a manufacturing marijuana charge and the penalty for a Class B felony is—”
“I know the penalty for a Class B felony.” At least 10 but not more than 20 years. In prison! Even with a minimum sentence, Ben’s life would be ruined. Her precious little brother would grow to manhood in a cage. Just like Jesse Lee.
Sonny leaned forward and put his forearms on his knees. “You know what’s going to happen, Sarabeth—all the bricks are going to come tumbling down on Ben’s head because of you.”
She knew that. She’d thought of little else as she sat staring out the window waiting for Sonny to bring Ben home. Sarabeth Bingham, the newspaper editor, had stood up on a soapbox and screamed about the evils of marijuana. She’d insulted the county, taunted the jury pool, dared them to have the guts to stand up to dopers—even threatened to call in federal authorities if they didn’t. So what, pray tell, were those good people going to do when the newspaper editor’s brother was standing before them on a dope charge? They’d chuck him in a cell somewhere and throw away the key.
Sarabeth put her head in her hands, afraid she was going to start crying again. And there was a buzzing, a ringing in her ears that had started as soon as Sonny told her about Ben. It had been getting louder and louder in the hours since. Now, the jet-engine roar was so distracting she almost missed what the sheriff said. His voice was quiet, intense.
