Three Minutes More

by Edward O'Dell

  When Henry, the fourteen year old, awoke to a beautiful, big black snake slithering over him in the middle of the night, they felt they could no longer keep me. The two days I spent in the thick brush to capture that snake paid off handsomely.

  My most memorable stint lasted all of two and a half days. I arrived at the Simmons’ house on Saturday afternoon. Jim, their son, greeted me at the car. He said he was happy to have someone his age to play with. I was equally pleased that I finally was placed with a family with a child my own age.

  After we ate dinner that first evening, Jim and I threw a football, while he asked me lots of questions. I told him a bit about where I was from and about my family. I had no real answer for “what happened to your mom?”

  The next day I was taken to church. The pastor delivered a hearty sermon, talking about “the need for a revival.” After the service, he welcomed me and talked about the power of prayer. “Son, if you believe in God’s infinite power, your prayers will be answered,” he proclaimed.

  I sorely missed my brothers. “Maybe God could put us back together,” I thought. I prayed a lot all day Sunday and Sunday night.

  When Monday came, Mr. Simmons woke me and Jim up early to start working his huge garden. We hoed from around six until about ten. My hands started to blister, and I was thirsty. I walked back to the house to get some gloves and some water.

  Mr. Simmons was working on his truck. As I passed him, he asked “where the hell are you going?” His angry tone resembled nothing I had heard the previous two days. While Eddie likely would have sensed him capable of abrupt change from the moment he met him, I actually had to wait for the change to occur.

  Continuing to make my way to the house, I said “I’m really thirsty and my hands have blisters. I’m gonna get some water and gloves.”

  Suddenly, I felt a horrible jolt of excruciating pain rush though my body. I fell to the ground and immediately curled up into the fetal position. My hands and feet tingled.

  It took several seconds for me to realize what happened. Old Man Simmons had just kicked me square in the ass as hard as he could with a steel-toed boot.

  I lay there writhing in pain for some five full minutes. I really felt like I was going to be paralyzed.

  As I was regaining my wits, he stood over me. Taking off his leather work gloves, he hollered “you never turn your back on me, especially when I’m talkin’ to you. YOU GOT THAT?”

  I couldn’t answer. I was literally dry heaving, having already vomited twice.

  “Now, get some water and get back to hoein’. You hoe to sundown. Then you hoe tomorrow. These boots’ll make sure of that.”

  Still feeling nauseous, I made my way into the house and got my water. After drinking three full glasses, I poured a little on my head to help me regain my senses. I thought about Eddie. I hoped he was doing better than I. Then I thought about James. James would make that fucker pay!

  Looking through the kitchen window, I saw that bastard demonstrating to his boy just how and where he kicked me. They laughed as he demonstrated my having completely left the ground from the force of his kick.

  I could accept that he was mean. Hell, most of the men I’d ever met were mean. But to laugh about it with his son was, well – please pardon my language – fucked up! Even Feenie didn’t derive that much pleasure from beating my ass. I had to do something.

  He left his son and went back to working on his truck. I gingerly made my way back to the garden. Jim stood there, leaning on his hoe. “Guess I should’ve warned you. Monday through Saturday he’s pretty tough,” he explained.

  I looked at him, enraged. I literally bit a hole into my bottom lip. I said “well, you’ve been using that hoe as a fuckin’ standing stick all morning, but your ass ain’t in pain. Besides, I saw you laughing. What the hell is so funny about an old fat bastard beating up an eleven year old skinny kid? My old man would kick the shit out of him.”

  Jim looked astonished that I still had any fight left in me. He said “I’m going to tell him what you called him.”

  I responded “you won’t make it before I split your head open with this hoe.”

  He angrily replied “don’t talk about my dad like that.”

  I actually admired him a bit for defending such a pathetic-loser-hypocrite-piece-of-shit. But admiration and affection are two different things, and I was sorely lacking the latter.

  I acted as though I was going to put some lime down. I grabbed two hands full. It burned like hell on my blistered hands, but I was not going to put it down. It had a purpose.

  Jim turned to say something. Before he could utter a complete word, I threw the lime. It slammed into his eyes and nose. He spit what he could out of his mouth. He started screaming.

  Roughly two hundred yards separated us from his prick of a father. I picked the hoe up. I thought for a moment about slamming the blade into the back of his whining, crybaby son, but I didn’t. I rotated it and smacked him in his lower back, as hard as I could, with the wood end. He fell to his knees, crying for his dad. As the fat pile-of-shit ran toward me, I raised the wood and brought it down, with all my strength, onto his son’s shoulder, causing him to scream in pain. His pathetic old man yelled for me to stop.

  When the bastard got to within thirty yards, I put the hoe down and ran through the garden, about a hundred yards. With that much head start, he could never catch me. I picked up a three pound rock, and yelled at him to send his crybaby son to come get me. He dared not. I think he feared I’d finish him off.

  So there we were, in a modern day standoff in the Simmons’ garden. “What the fuck is your problem?” the pathetic, fat bastard screamed.

  “Hey,” I yelled back at him. “I just did to him what you did to me. I turned my back on you and you nearly killed me. He turned his back on me and he paid the price. He’ll pay every time you think you need to mess with me. You hurt me, I’ll hurt him more. If we keep goin’, one of us is going to die. I’m ready. Is he?”

  He stood there in disbelief. I think he really believed I was going to kill his son. I really didn’t have it in me, but it sure felt good to put that bastard in his place.

  He took his son to the house. I stayed at the far end of the garden, under the big maple tree. I sat so I could keep my eyes focused on the house. I didn’t want him sneaking up on me. Neither he nor his son came back out of the house for the rest of the morning.

  By early afternoon, Ms. Kroy was at the house to take me away. I tried to explain how he kicked me in the butt with steel-toed boots. She finally understood when I pulled down my pants and showed her my purple ass. She asked me what I had done to make him so angry. I told her I committed the unforgiveable sin of not being his biological son.

  “You boys are having a tough time finding suitable families,” she explained. “Please try and understand that your father needs some time to get his life in order. I want to put the family back together, but I can’t right now.”

  I thought for a moment about how to best appeal to her. “Look, Mrs. Kroy, I just want to be with my brothers. We didn’t do anything to deserve this life. Why are you doing this? Why can’t you take me to my dad’s house?”

  She paused for a moment, sighed, then said “your father is not capable of taking care of seven boys and holding down two jobs. He came to us and asked for help.”

  I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t. How could he? We were his flesh and blood. He just had to try harder. Parents take care of their children, no matter what it takes.

  When we reached the stop light at Second Street, I jumped out of the car and took off running. It took her and her coworkers down at the child welfare office almost the entire afternoon to catch me. I ended up getting spotted behind the laundry mat.

  Mrs. Kroy told me it was going to take some time for her to find me another home. In the meantime, I would be staying at my great aunt and my uncle’s place.

  Chapter 16: Aunt Marilee and Uncle Charlie

  I never bothered to ask A
unt Marilee why her son, who was as old as my father, still lived with her. I just assumed she needed him around. Though not frail, her severe arthritis sometimes got so bad it left her toes curled, rendering her unable to walk.

  They lived at the foot of Reese Hill Road. Every time we visited, Aunt Marilee gave us delicious snacks. She sometimes had cake. At other times, she had homemade cookies. Still others, she had pork rinds. She seemed to really like pork rinds. While they weren’t as tasty as chocolate cake or homemade oatmeal cookies, they were still pretty good. I know none of my brothers ever turned down an offer of anything she offered.

  Charlie often played a game where he’d squeeze our hands until we begged him to stop. We played that game many times with The Old Man, as well as with other friends and relatives. Eddie would play with just about everyone, but never with Charlie. I really couldn’t tell any difference in how hard Charlie squeezed compared to how hard my dad squeezed. Eddie said it wasn’t about the squeezing. It was about the reaction to seeing us in pain. He said The Old Man squeezed to show who was boss, but Charlie did it because he liked to see us in pain. He said Charlie was a mean son-of-a-bitch. He always stayed as far away as he could when we visited.

  Aunt Marilee seemed gentle enough. She rarely gave any outward indication she was anything but a nice old lady. She came across as such.

  As was routine, Eddie asked Aunt Marilee a lot of questions, most of which regarded her son. He asked about Charlie’s speech impediment. He asked about Charlie’s mood swings, and if Charlie had to take medicine. If he felt she wasn’t completely forthcoming, he would continue on, probing ever deeper.

  Once, he either hit a nerve, or clearly went beyond what she felt was appropriate. When he asked if Charlie ever finished grade school, she responded bluntly “you should learn to mind your own business.”

  I don’t know if she just didn’t have enough energy for all of Eddie’s questions, or if she was embarrassed to answer that one, but that was the only time I heard anger in her voice. Following that, Eddie stopped asking questions, until the following visit.

  But that didn’t prevent him from observing her every move. He said she was tough to figure out. He said at times he believed her to be harmless, while other times he sensed she wasn’t the nice old lady we had come to know. He told that to The Old Man, prompting a half-hour long lecture about him sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.

  I learned to trust Eddie’s instincts. I don’t know how he figured people out, but he had a way of just knowing what people’s intentions were by looking in their eyes, at their faces. Far more often than not, he was right about people. Everyone feared Ms. Blake, but Eddie said she wasn’t mean, just in a lot of pain. She ended up being the one person we could count on for a peanut butter sandwich or a sloppy joe when we were starving. She went out of her way to help, even though she was as poor as we were.

  I still think he was wrong about the Waybrights. I don’t think Old Man Waybright was the one who Tony feared. I think it was his mom. I spent a little bit of time over at Tony’s house, and never once witnessed his dad treating him badly, or even unfairly. And though I never saw his mom beat him, I did see her deny him everything from food to clothing, affording Tony such luxuries only after she ensured that Tony’s older brother got his fill.

  On most days, Aunt Marilee’s arthritis didn’t prevent her from getting up and about. However, her hands never resembled anything one could consider normal. Her fingers were in terrible shape. They locked in various states of contortion, preventing her from performing even routine tasks others took for granted. As therapy, she put together jigsaw puzzles.

  Eddie’s gut instincts aside, I had no reason to fear anyone in the home. I’d been alone in the house many times, though never for more than an afternoon, and never felt uncomfortable. I was actually happy that they decided to take me in. I hoped that I wouldn’t have to go to another foster home before The Old Man could bring us all back home. At least with them, I was with people that I knew. Granted, they weren’t my brothers, but they were extended family, so I felt comfortable.

  I arrived on Monday night, and spent four uneventful days shooting basketball and catching tadpoles. The Old Man made a visit last Saturday. He didn’t stay long, just enough to gauge my health, and to ask Marilee if she needed anything to help her. He left to see Eddie, up at the White’s. He promised he’d be back this Saturday to visit. I wish he had spent just a little more time with me, but I knew Eddie would be happy to see him.

  I spent the better part of this past week shooting baskets into a garbage can. The ditch across the railroad tracks all but dried up by Wednesday. I don’t know what happened to the tadpoles, but I didn’t see any dried up remnants. I figured their moms took them to another ditch somewhere so they could continue to develop. Perhaps once the water dried up, they became easy pickings for the birds, though I don’t remember seeing a huge number of birds over in that direction.

  I walked up to Gilman on this past Monday, and out to Highland Park on Wednesday. Highland Park was about a two hour walk, but I knew some kids over there, with whom I played for three hours before heading back to Aunt Marilee’s. Thursday came and went, with me spending most of my day exploring and looking forward to seeing The Old Man this Saturday. I couldn’t wait to ask how Eddie and James were doing.

  Today started off as each of the past nine did. I woke up around seven, made my bed, and took the trash out to the aluminum can sitting against the wall on the north side of the house. After that, I shot baskets into the other can, using their house as a backboard. Aunt Marilee called me in for biscuits and gravy about an hour later. After breakfast, I shot baskets for another hour or so, then went back inside to get some water and to go upstairs to pee.

  In a very short time, my whole life took a devastating turn for the worse. While I have never been a fan of hyperbole, simply saying that things progressed badly would be an enormous understatement.

  As I was standing there relieving myself and thinking about what to do for the rest of the day, Charlie came into the bathroom and closed the door. I immediately felt uncomfortable, somehow sensing his intentions weren’t virtuous.

  I tried to get past him and out the door, but he grabbed me by my arm so hard that I could not get away. He threw me on the floor and got on top of me, pinning my arms down with his knees.

  I screamed for Aunt Marilee. Charlie tried to cover my mouth with his hand to muffle my screams, but I managed to turn my head and scream again. I kicked and bucked and tried as hard as I could to get him off me.

  I managed to bite his hand hard one time as he again tried to muffle my screams. He backhanded me hard, literally knocking me dizzy for a second or two. When I got my wits about me, I told him “you’re gonna regret that. When my dad gets here tomorrow, you know you’re gonna pay!” Usually a threat such as that would give any offender, but especially Charlie, serious cause for concern. After all, The Old Man once beat him to a pulp when they got into it while putting siding on Aunt Marilee’s house. I was alarmed that he seemed unfazed.

  I was deeply relieved to see the door crack open. “Thank God,” I thought, fully expecting Marilee to put her son in his place. As I struggled to get out from under Charlie’s weight, I looked up at her to beg her to make her son get off of me.

  I immediately began to see things as Eddie saw them. In less than half a second of eye contact, I could tell she knew what was going to happen. Not only that, I also knew she was going to do nothing to stop it. I saw more evil in her than even Eddie thought might have filled her. Her eyes told me that what was about to happen was the reason they decided to allow me to stay with them in the first place. I sensed, too, that I was not the first.

  I don’t think she wanted to hear the screams that were to soon echo through the house, brought on at the hands of her forty-five year old son. I again cried out for her help as she grabbed the door handle.

  She looked in one final time. Though her soul was dark, it must
have contained a tiny sliver of humanity, evidenced when she told him in a hushed voice “take it easy on him, he’s still very young.” She slowly closed the door, taking care to turn the handle gently so as not to scuff the locking mechanism. After the weight of her body hit the third step on her way back downstairs, I resigned myself to my fate.

  Charlie told me it would go a lot easier if I didn’t fight. He put some lard on his penis. He ripped my pants down and, though I struggled as if my life depended on it, managed to wrestle me over onto my stomach. I cried and begged and pleaded for him to stop.

  Oh God, it hurt. I hadn’t felt that much pain since Old Man Simmons kicked me. But it was a different kind of pain. I thought of Eddie and how he said Charlie was an evil son of a bitch.

  It took almost five minutes for him to finish. When he was done, he offered me a lollipop. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I wanted to run out, but I figured he’d grab me and do it all over again. I took the lollipop and, in tremendous pain, walked as best I could past him with my head down. I was both furious and ashamed of what I just allowed to happen. Though I was young, I knew what just happened would forever change me and how I saw the world around me.

  I ran to my room, crying. Twenty minutes passed and my butt was hurting. Something felt wrong.

  I cannot explain why I even spoke to Aunt Marilee. Perhaps because though she allowed it to happen, I sensed she had the ultimate power, and she alone could prevent it from happening again. I told her my butt felt hot. She told me to go to sleep and that I’d feel better when I woke up. She promised to not let Charlie touch me again. She gave me a glass of milk and a brownie. I cried myself to sleep.

  After sleeping for about thirty minutes or so, I woke up in pain. I went and sat on the toilet for thirty minutes, unable to poop, but desperately feeling the need to. When it finally pushed through, I was frightened to see blood accompanying it. I screamed for Aunt Marilee to come. She looked in the toilet and immediately grew a look of restrained concern. I told her I still felt really bad and that it hurt a lot. She said it probably would hurt for a little while longer, but by tomorrow I would feel better. “If it still hurts this bad tomorrow,” she said “I’ll take you over to see Dr. Luke.”