The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  “Banana,” she said.

  Jack loved her at that moment more than he’d ever loved anybody. Except Lyla.

  ******

  1985

  Becca Hawkins cowered in the back corner of her huge walk-in closet. It was her special place. It was back behind the long hanging clothes like bathrobes―she had three of them, one with a Macy’s tag still dangling from the sleeve―the full-length fur coat Daddy made her wear sometimes even though the thought of the poor animals who’d been skinned to provide the fur almost brought her to tears, long dresses and a silk kimono thing Daddy’d brought back from somewhere. She’d strategically placed a mound of stuffed animals in front of the clothes so that when she slipped through the dangling fur and silk, there was an open space about six feet square that you couldn’t see from the door, not even with the closet light on.

  She’d made it after she got McDougal. It would have been scary back there in the dark if she hadn’t had his warm presence to reassure her, the smell of his doggie breath and the soft whump, whump, whump of his tail on the carpet. She kept a big, powerful flashlight in a corner, the kind that would probably light up a satellite, but she didn’t often turn it on because the brilliance cast ugly, harsh shadows, and she preferred the warm velvet black. Darkness was her friend, provided a refuge even when she wasn’t here because she used its inky nothingness in her mind to wipe out the lamp’s glow when the bad stuff happened. Daddy always left the lamp on, said he liked to see.

  Sitting beside her, McDoo whimpered softly, and she realized she was squeezing him so tight it must hurt so she loosened her grip but kept her arms around him and her face buried in his fur. She wanted to pray. She came here often to talk to God―had been thrilled when Bishop said Jesus told people to pray in their closets. But she couldn’t pray now. She couldn’t cry, either, though she’d been wanting to cry for hours. Sometimes crying eased the pain of the horrible lump in her belly that she didn’t have a name for―the fear/dread/sorrow/guilt/shame lump. Like throwing up makes you feel better for a little while after.

  She’d tried hard to cry when she told Bishop what had happened, well not all that had happened.

  Ever pull the wings off a fly?

  She couldn’t tell him that part because she couldn’t stand to have the image painted in her head with the telling. She was afraid she’d start screaming, like she’d wanted to do crouched in the bush with McDoo. And if she ever did start screaming, she knew she would never stop. So she couldn’t cry or scream—only shake—and speak with a very small voice that didn’t seem like hers at all. The voice had been calm and precise, coming from somewhere down in a deep well where it had gone to hide from all the feelings that boiled and bubbled inside her.

  The horror of one demon was almost more than Becca could stand. But six, their images, branded forever in her brain! Becca Hawkins didn’t know much about the way things worked in this world, but she did know that what she had seen and heard today had damaged her in a fundamental way that could never be repaired, had ripped her apart somewhere deep in her soul, had torn loose something essential. Now she was bleeding—was it called hemorrhaging?—from a gaping wound there, and no bandage existed for such an injury. She’d just keep bleeding and bleeding until there was no blood left. She would die then, from no other cause that anybody would be able to find, and it would be over—dark and quiet, like it was here.

  Then the darkness in her special place, as deep and black as tar, suddenly began to lighten with a rich golden glow—that was also music. Light couldn’t be music, but it was—voices with no words. The air smelled like a spring rain and the light on her cheek was the touch of velvet as soft as the down in her comforter. The golden brilliance that cast no shadows grew brighter until she could see DD clearly. He had slipped out of her grasp and risen to his feet and was looking at the glow, wagging his tail frantically.

  There was a person in the glow. Or the glow was a person. Becca couldn’t tell which.

  Becca’s special place was too small for her and McDoo and this woman to fit in together. But she couldn’t see the sides of the space enclosing her anymore, couldn’t feel the wall she was leaning against. The clothes were gone, the stuffed animal wall was gone. It was dark outside the glow, but it felt like the darkness was wide and deep and went on forever. She probably should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. In fact, she actually blurted out a little peep of a giggle because resting on the long, glossy black hair of the woman dressed in light—it flowed around her like fabric, shimmering and sparkling with sequins—was the floppy red-and-white striped hat of The Cat in the Hat. The book had been Becca’s all-time favorite, and she cherished the handful of memories she had of sitting in her mother’s lap, listening to her read it aloud.

  “You’re not the Cat in the Hat,” she blurted out.

  “I’m whatever doesn’t frighten you,” the glowing woman replied. She cocked the hat forward at a jaunty angle and did a joyful little dance, holding the hat so it bobbed up and down but didn’t fall off.

  Becca smiled.

  “You’re not afraid, are you, Becca?”

  Becca shook her head.

  “Good. You’ve seen enough scary things for one day.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was there.”

  “In the woods today? I didn’t see you.”

  “There’s much that you don’t see, Becca, battles you can’t begin to imagine, all around you, all the time.”

  “I see them,” Becca said. “The…bad ones. Demons.”

  “Yes, you do.” The woman reached out a hand and cupped Becca’s cheek tenderly. Her touch was warm and soft. “And that’s too scary for a little girl to handle. That’s why I’m here.”

  “To get rid of the bad ones?” A candle flame of hope flickered in Becca’s heart.

  “No, I can’t get rid of them. But I can stand with you and hold your hand when you know so you won’t be afraid. And I can heal your heart and protect it.”

  “But I don’t want to see them.”

  “God designed you to see them. He put the sight in you for a reason.”

  “Wha—?”

  “I don’t know the reason. I only know there is one.”

  There was a sudden fierceness in her beauty that was both wonderful and terrible to behold, and Becca knew that never again in her life would she see anything as lovely and as dangerous as this being…this woman of light…this angel.

  “Their ugliness will not destroy you, sweet Becca. I won’t let it!”

  The glow grew so bright that Becca had to close her eyes, but she could see it through her eyelids. Then it began to fade, and the darkness washed back in behind it. McDougal gave a small bark, a single yap, and the angel was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  2011

  When they got to Hendersonville, Indiana, Jack pulled up in front of the jail, got out and went inside. It was a small jail, served only one county, and probably didn’t have half a dozen cells. He had called to ask about visiting Becca as soon as he found out where she was.

  The deputy who was on duty was gruff and grumpy, and no amount of cajoling on Jack’s part could get him to allow Andi in to see the prisoner.

  “Rule’s thirteen years old,” he said.

  Jack went back out to the car.

  “I’ll go first,” he told Theresa and handed her the car keys. “You two go get some burgers and bring them back. I think the shift changes at three, and maybe whoever takes over from this bozo will let us take Andi.”

  Theresa, left and Jack allowed himself to be patted down, emptied out his pockets and left the contents in a metal bowl, and was led up a set of old, metal stairs to the floor above where the cells were located. The jailer seated Jack in a room one step up the contagion ladder from a bus stop restroom and came back almost immediately.

  “I should have asked her before I went to all this trouble,” he said. “She don’t want no visitors.”

  “Did you tell her who�
��?”

  “She didn’t give me time to tell her nothing. I said she had a visitor, and she said she didn’t want to see anybody. End of story. Come on.”

  As they started back down the metal steps, Jack couldn’t help himself. He tilted his head back and shouted, “Becca! It’s me, Jack!” as loud as he could. The deputy gave him a dirty look.

  They were all the way to the bottom of the steps before a voice from the floor above called out. Tentative. Small.

  “Jack?”

  The deputy grumbled something unintelligible, turned around and started back up the stairs.

  The thin, frail woman with dirty short blond hair, dressed in Goodwill clothes, bore so little resemblance to the vibrant little girl he’d known all those years ago that Jack would have passed her for a stranger if he’d bumped into her on the street.

  She stepped tentatively into the room, head down, and she didn’t lift it to look at Jack even when the deputy had left after a brief speech about how he’d be right downstairs and that they’d better not try to “get it on” because that was a violation of jail rules and he’d throw Jack in a cell, too, if he caught him.

  The deputy didn’t have the authority to arrest him, but Jack was polite and docile—fearful the little runt would toss him out on his ear—which he did have the authority to do.

  The room was silent after he left. Jack didn’t have any idea what to say. Oh, it wasn’t that he hadn’t come up with a dozen different scenarios about how the conversation would go. But he was so taken aback by her appearance and demeanor that he couldn’t make any of his prepared intros work. He’d thought up speeches to make to the little girl he knew all grown up. This woman was very different, much less or perhaps much more than that.

  Finally, he blurted out, “Let’s sit down, Becca.” He indicated one of the two wooden chairs on either side of a plain wooden table that were the only pieces of furniture in the room. “And just talk.”

  He went to the table, pulled out a chair for her and then sat down in the chair on the other side of the table to urge her to follow.

  Finally, she moved toward the chair, every step reluctant, and sat down on the edge of it.

  “It tormented me all night, wouldn’t let me sleep. I only came here to get away for a little while.”

  She still didn’t look up.

  “Who tormented you, Becca?”

  “The demon on the prostitute.”

  He thought about Andi at the convenience store.

  “That must be horrible to be able to see them.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him in wonder.

  “It is you, isn’t it, Jack.”

  “It’s good to see you, Becca.”

  She was still gaping at him.

  “I can’t believe it’s really you.” Then it appeared that she just that moment realized how she must look. She dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft. “I shouldn’t have agreed to…you shouldn’t have come.” She looked up. “How’d you find me? And why’d you come looking?”

  He’d known she would ask, of course. He’d had a convenient excuse all cooked up about a Three Musketeers reunion. But he could see now something that inane would sound as phony as it was.

  “I…we wanted to see you. A couple of months ago, Daniel and I connected for the first time in more than twenty years, and of course we thought about you.”

  “Daniel?” The same wonder.

  “And Theresa, too. In fact, she’s here today. Right now. They said you were only allowed one visitor at a time, but she’s down there, waiting.”

  Becca put her face in her hands and shook her head.

  “Can’t.” Her words were muffled by her hands, and her voice had become thick with unshed tears. “No.” She took in a trembling breath but neither looked up nor took her hands away from her face. “You need to go now, both of you. Just go.”

  “Theresa won’t leave here without seeing you. She’ll sit down at the foot of the stairs and stay there all night and all day tomorrow and…however long it takes. You know Theresa. You can’t get rid of her just by saying you don’t want to see her.”

  She looked up at him then, and twin streams of tears cleaned off some of the dirt on her face as they slid toward her chin.

  “Please don’t do this, Jack. Just leave me alone. Go away and don’t come back.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to see you, either of you!”

  “Yes, you do, child,” Theresa said from the doorway. “You want to see us so bad the wanting of it aches in your heart like a rotten tooth.”

  Becca froze as solid as a hood ornament, then closed her eyes, lowered her head and covered her face with her hands like she wanted to hide her whole self behind them.

  Jack looked a question at Theresa.

  “I brought that deputy a Big Mac and talked him into letting me come on up,” she said simply.

  Jack could not begin to imagine that conversation.

  The old woman moved ponderously across the room until she was standing beside Becca, then put her hand tenderly on the young woman’s shoulder.

  “Why don’t you cry, sugar. ’Pears to me you need it, been needin’ it for a right smart while.”

  Becca sat, unmoving, so still Jack couldn’t even see her breathe.

  “Go on ahead.”

  Theresa’s was the voice he knew she’d have used to soothe a fretful baby.

  “You safe with us.”

  Jack only realized Becca had been holding her breath when she let it out in a trembling sigh. Then her shoulders began to shake, though he could hear no sound of crying. Without opening her eyes or looking up, she suddenly reached out and threw her arms around Theresa, turned in the chair and buried her face in Theresa’s dress. Then she sobbed. Not loud or hysterical, but gut-wrenching, so full of every imaginable emotion the raw pain of it was utterly heartbreaking. On and on she cried. Theresa swayed gently back and forth and smoothed back her dirty hair. Jack felt like he was watching a holy moment.

  Becca finally exhausted herself. Jack had the sense that if she’d been physically able to, she would have continued to cry for hours. When the shaking stopped and she had been reduced to hitching breathing, she continued to cling fiercely to Theresa.

  Theresa sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Demon stink,” she said. “They’s one here about, close. We gone get you out of here, child. You gone come home with me. You ain’t gone spend another night locked up in this bad place with that monster.” She looked up at Jack. “Jack, you go see to it.”

  He looked at Theresa in mute astonishment. Just like that? He carried a Get Out of Jail Free card for such occasions? She flashed him a beatific smile.

  Well…maybe he could bail Becca out, get her bonded into his custody or something. He’d have to find a judge willing to do it. On Saturday afternoon. He got to his feet and headed toward the door.

  “Andi’s downstairs talking to the jailer,” Theresa said.

  When Jack got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw Andi perched on the end of the visitor’s bench in earnest conversation with a uniformed man he didn’t know—must have been the jailer.

  She giggled. The man smiled broadly. Jack just shook his head.

  It took Jack almost three hours to find a judge—he was sitting drenched in the stands of his granddaughter’s rain-delayed softball game—and get a release order signed. Andi elected to stay behind with her new best friend, Bud the Jailer.

  Theresa spent the whole time upstairs with Becca.

  It was late afternoon by the time Jack got back to the jail. The judge had postponed Becca’s court date for two weeks. The jailer went upstairs, and a few minutes later Theresa followed him back down. Behind Theresa was Becca.

  Jack wasn’t at all prepared for what happened when Andi saw Becca.

  ******

  It was a gray, drizzly Saturday, with rain spitting down from low-hanging clouds and a gusty wind combing the leaves off trees. Billy Ray l
istened to it and to the silence in the woods and was certain he was completely alone before he climbed up onto the butt-cheek rocks again and dropped down into the crevice behind them. He pulled the can of WD-40 out of the Walmart sack and gave each hinge on the grate a good squirt, worked the gate back and forth a time or two, and the hinges stopped squalling.

  He’d brought a car battery with him and used it to replace the old, dead one. Then he had electricity.

  The boxcar was standard—fifty feet long, nine and half feet wide and eleven feet tall. In one end of it Billy Ray’d made an office of sorts, had an oak desk with a wide top and drawers on both sides and a comfortable chair with wheels—he’d never quite got it why office chairs needed wheels. He pulled open the shallow drawer in the center of the desk, and it was right where he’d left it—a stack of money, used tens and twenties—two thousand dollars. That would tide him over until he could connect with his new business associate to begin converting his other assets here into spendable currency.

  The treasure Billy Ray’d hid away in a buried boxcar all these years wasn’t money or dope. It was gold. Solid gold. Evenly distributed along shelves he’d built with concrete blocks and two-by-twelves were two hundred and fifty kilo bars of it—a thousand grams or 32.15 troy ounces. When he’d loaded the gold away in the boxcar, each of the bars had been worth about eleven thousand five hundred dollars. He had found a smarmy little banker in Louisville willing to procure the gold for him—at a hefty percentage off the top, of course, to keep quiet about where the gold was going.

  That man had gouged Billy Ray on gold transactions for seven years. When the law came down on Billy Ray, he had gone around to all his business associates and settled up accounts, so to speak. He’d paid the little man in Louisville a visit then, too. They found him a week later floating in the Ohio River. Throat cut.

  Five hundred pounds of solid gold. Now worth twelve million dollars. Four times what it had been worth when he climbed down into the crack between the rocks every month or so and deposited another bar on a shelf.