by Jeff Abbott
I came up behind Cayla and grabbed the broomstick when she brought it back to have another go at her husband. I yanked it away and she spun toward me, her eyes filled with such blinding fury that I took a shocked step backward. She swung a fist at me and nearly connected with my jaw. Stunned with surprise, I seized her arms and shook her hard.
“Cayla! Stop it! It’s me, Jordy!” She struggled against me like she’d never seen me. I shook her again and she calmed, the berserker rage fading. She took a long, hard, shuddering breath and gasped, “Get out. Get out of here.”
“What did he do to you? Did he hit you? Hit Bradley?” I glanced at her son, but he seemed more upset than injured, crying and mewling in Mark’s arms.
“Hit her? Bullshit!” Mark screamed. “She hits him! She beats him! ”
Mark’s words oozed in. I glanced over at Davis; slowly, like a snake awakening to warmth, he uncoiled himself. I saw bruises on his forearms, his neck, and a vicious cut above the left eye. His tortoiseshell glasses lay broken by his elbow. He looked at me like a whipped dog, awaiting the next kick. This wasn’t my friend-this was someone else. Someone I didn’t know.
“Get out!” Cayla rediscovered her voice. “Get out of my house right… this… minute.”
I pushed her away from me and knelt by Davis’s side. He flinched away from my touch, burying his face in the crook of his arm.
“Get my boy out of here. Take Bradley and go,” he muttered into his arm, his voice barely audible. “Please. I don’t want him to see me this way.”
“She’s crazy, Uncle Jordy!” Mark hollered. Bradley wrestled free from him and crawled to his father’s side. I blinked up at Cayla; she didn’t look at any of us except for her son. She tried to take him by the arm, gently, but he squirmed away from her, holding his father’s hand. Bradley’s face was contorted with tears, his lips curling in anguish. Oh, God, what had this boy seen in this house?
“You stay away, Mom,” Bradley cried. “Stay away.”
Cayla straightened up and, without a word, turned and stumbled out of the kitchen.
“I saw it all,” Mark gasped, squatting by me. “She was whaling on him with that broomstick and also tried to hit him with a skillet. You want me to call the cops?”
“No! No police!” Davis seized my arm, pressing hard. “Promise me, no police.”
“Davis. You have to tell me what’s happened here.”
“I told you, Uncle Jordy-”
“Mark, please! Let Davis talk.”
Davis couldn’t look into my eyes. He ran fingers across his head and left a trickle of blood in the thinning blond hair. “Um, nothing really, it was just an argument-”
“For God’s sake, Davis, she was about to beat you unconscious. Now, what did you argue about? What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. I wouldn’t hurt her. Please, just take Bradley and go. Please.”
I took Bradley’s frown-locked face in my hands. “Bradley. Listen to me. What happened here?”
Bradley blinked back more tears. His breath came in ragged, aching gasps. His chin wobbled against my fingers, spittle smearing my hand. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. Finally he found his voice and whispered, “Ain’t supposed to tell. Mom said never tell. Never tell, never tell, never tell!”
“You can tell me, Bradley. You know you can.” I kept my voice low and soothing. If violence held sway in this house, God only knew what this poor kid had witnessed.
Bradley fixed his eyes on the floor, the unspeakable secret weighing hard on his heart. After a long minute he spoke, his fingers drawing nervous patterns on the tiles. “Mom. She gets mad. She hits Daddy. She hits him, and she hits him again.” He raised his face again, anguish painting his features. “I ain’t supposed to tell!” He collapsed against Mark, who looked at me with an accusing glare.
“Mark. Take Bradley back to our house,” I said.
“Won’t go! Daddy-” Bradley protested.
“Son. Do as Jordan says.” Davis still wouldn’t look at me. Slowly, Mark got Bradley to his feet and led him out of the kitchen. Bradley was bent with walking, his feet shuffling like a prisoner fettered at the ankles.
I felt thoroughly sick. “Davis. Look at me. How long has this been going on?”
He, like his son, stared at the floor. He rubbed at a spot of his own blood that had dripped from his nose to the tile. More blood leaked between his teeth. I seized his jaw and turned his face toward mine, hot with anger toward him.
“Davis, damn you, answer me! How long has she been battering you?”
He closed his eyes, shamefaced. “Since we found out Bradley was retarded. I guess about thirteen years.”
“ What? ”
“She can’t help it. You know what a temper she’s always had. She just gets upset when Bradley messes up and she, well, she can take it out on me,” His voice sounded soft, reasoning, the tone of long justification of terrible wrong.
“For God’s sake! Takes it out on you? She was going to beat you to a pulp, Davis!”
“Well, she couldn’t hit Bradley, could she?” Davis said.
I closed my eyes in nausea. “But Mark saw bruises on Bradley’s arm-”
“She got upset with me last night. Bradley tried to stop her and she hurt him. She hurt him for the first time.” He finally looked at me. His blue eyes were streaked with bloodshot sorrow. “I couldn’t believe she hurt him. So I figured, it can’t go on, I can’t let her hurt my boy. So I went to go see Steven Teague, I thought he’d know what to do, what I could do to make her better.”
“Oh, Davis, Jesus. You can’t fix what’s wrong with Cayla. She has to do that.”
“We got back and Bradley told her he’d seen Mark. Cayla wanted to know where’d we been. I told her I went to Teague’s office and she went crazy.” He made a horrible snuffling sound of sickness and sadness long buried.
“Davis. Why didn’t you leave her?”
“I can’t. I love her.”
“I don’t understand you at all.” My own voice sounded near the breaking point. “Why didn’t you defend yourself, fight back? Why’d you let her do this to you?” I was so mad, so frustrated, I wanted to shake him myself.
“Good God. You don’t hit girls, Jordan. I could never hit Cayla.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t let anyone know. Hell, you don’t think I see how you look at me right now? A man that lets a woman beat him. It’s wives that get beaten, not husbands. What kind of man do you think people would say I was?”
If this was his reasoning and logic, he was a far sorrier lawyer than I ever suspected. “I would have respected you for getting out of this hell, Davis.”
He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so ashamed. So ashamed. My boy-”
“Listen to me. We’ll get you and Bradley out of here. You can stay with us, as long as you need. We’ll see if we can get Cayla to go to counseling. No one has to know what’s happened.”
Davis Foradory turned away from me. “No. People will know. They’ll find out. Like Clevey and your sister.”
“Sister? She knows about this?” I managed to keep my jaw off the blood-specked tile, but it wasn’t easy.
“She came over-the morning Trey was shot. We had been having breakfast and Bradley spilled his milk all over the table, all over the paper. Cayla got upset with me about it. She was hitting me, telling me that Bradley’s clumsiness was my fault, I shouldn’t have put so much milk in his glass-and Arlene walked in. She tried to stop Cayla, and Cayla belted her. Gave her that shiner. I’m awful sorry about that. So’s Cayla.”
Oh, God have mercy. “Your wife hit my sister?”
“Yeah. Knocked her to the floor. Cayla got upset and ran upstairs, so I took care of Arlene. She was so surprised she could hardly say much.”
Although I could imagine Sister being shocked, I could hardly picture her at a loss for words. “She told me she’d fallen down some steps and blackened her eye.”
“I begged her not to tell. I said Cayla didn’t mean it,
she just had been awful upset. She was hankering to go wallop Cayla, but I talked her out of it. For Bradley’s sake.”
“I don’t understand why my sister was here.”
Davis sniffed. “She wanted me to be her attorney. Get a restraining order against Trey, keep him from Mark.” He wiped his dripping nose with the back of his sleeve, the carefully cultured lawyer gone. “I told her if she didn’t tell about Cayla, I’d represent her for free.”
I sat back down on the floor. Free legal services for her silence. And she’d done it, knowing that a boy was in an abusive household. Suddenly I wasn’t real happy with my sister.
He saw it in my face, “Oh, she don’t know the whole story, Jordan. Don’t be mad at Arlene. Please, I made her promise. I told her it was the only time that Cayla hit me.”
“And Clevey? He knew, didn’t he? You said so.”
Davis nodded, misery clouding his face again. “He found out about a year ago. He saw a bruise on my arm when we were out at Lake Bonaparte fishing. He kept at me about it, and I finally told him. I confided in him. He kept his mouth shut for months, but then he wanted money!” Davis quivered with rage.
“How much money?”
“Oh, God, thousands,” Davis leaned against the wall, face contorting in pain. I’d been so floored by this series of revelations that I hadn’t even thought about getting him to a doctor. I made him sit, went to the sink, and dampened a washcloth. I handed it to him and slowly, he cleaned his face, blinking at his blood on the cloth.
“Clevey said if I didn’t pay, he’d feature us in a story he was writing about domestic violence.” Davis stared at me, eyes rolling. “I couldn’t let that happen, oh no. It’d ruin me. I’d have lost my law
practice. And if I lost that, I’d have to sell my partnership in KBAV.”
I held my breath. “Did you kill him, Davis? Did you?”
He gave a shuddering breath. “No. I didn’t. I wanted to; God, I even thought about it. But I was too scared. And he promised that the money would be just that once. I could get on with my life.”
As though you could, I thought. Davis couldn’t get on with life while Cayla beat him. He and his son would forever be caught in a loop of bitterness and twisted love, manifested with fists and clawing fingers. And Clevey would have taken his place at KBAV. The humiliation would have been utter.
“You believe me, don’t you, Jordan? I swear, I’m not a killer.”
No, I didn’t think Davis was. He hadn’t roused himself to flee the hell his house had become; he wouldn’t have shot Clevey Shivers in cold blood. I had to get him to take action now, though.
“Never mind Clevey now. We’re gonna get you and Bradley out of here.”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “I can’t leave my house. How do I explain it?”
“We’ll say you and Cayla are just having some problem. People don’t have to know the specifics.”
“Then why wouldn’t Bradley stay with his mom? Kids stay with moms. Folks’ll know, they’ll find out, and I’m ruined!” His voice rose in a whiny shriek.
“Listen to me!” God, yelling in his face was probably not the way a trained counselor would handle this, but I was winging it. “Your life is already ruined! You can’t live this way, you can’t pretend that this is normal. Get yourselves out of here-if not for your sake, for Bradley’s. His life matters more than any stupid, overblown reputation of yours.” I clutched at this straw of persuasion and kept pressing him.
“Davis, you said yourself she hurt him last night. That’s the start, don’t you see? What happens when she starts getting mad at Bradley? Are you going to stand by and watch him be beaten?”
“I-” He faltered, unable to speak.
“You took the first step. You went to get help from Steven Teague. You don’t have to do this alone, okay? I’m here to help you, and Mark and Sister and Junebug and Hart and Ed. Your friends will help you. Now, come with me. He dragged the back of his hand across his bruised and cut face, “But I’m supposed to be in court this afternoon-”
“Never mind court. I’m sure the judge will understand. In fact, we can call the courthouse from my house. Why don’t we go do that now?” The air in the Foradory house felt dense, oppressive. I wanted to leave badly.
He nodded, finally, and stood. He was in obvious pain. I wondered how many injuries he’d suffered-and silently healed-over the years. I helped him toward the front door.
“I need clothes-” he started, the first excuse not to leave. I didn’t brook it for an instant.
“We’ll get them later. Or you can borrow some of mine.” We walked, slowly, Davis leaning on me from the kitchen through the pristine living room. As we neared the entry hall I could see Cayla Foradory sitting frozen on the leather couch, her head bowed. She might have been a statue for her stillness. Davis did not look at her.
I walked him onto the porch and got him to sit in a brown wicker chair. Bradley and Mark were nowhere in sight. The rain had abated and the sun was doing its damnedest to peek through.
“I’ll just be one minute,” I said. Davis hardly seemed to hear me.
I stormed back into the house, pushing the door hard so it banged loudly against the wall. I wanted her to know I meant business. Cayla still hadn’t moved, and she didn’t look up at me.
“Cayla.”
No response.
“Cayla, look at me.”
Her head inclined slightly, but her eyes were obscured by strands of dark, lank hair. She sniffed, hard, gulping air.
“Bradley and Davis are at my house. Don’t come over. Don’t come near them. And if you ever come near my sister again, or bother anyone in my family, I’ll have your sorry ass slapped in jail so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
“Tell Davis,” she started, sobbing. “Tell him I’m so sorry, so very sorry, it won’t happen again, and-”
“No. I won’t tell him your garbage. You’re a liar, it’s been happening again and again and again. You want your son and your husband back? Get yourself some help, Cayla. If you’ll do that, we’ll all help you. But you got to get yourself some counseling.”
“I don’t need a goddamned shrink, I just need Davis and my boy-”
“Find some other punching bags,” I said. I know I sounded cruel, but I wasn’t particularly inclined to kindness toward her.
“Bradley needs me, he needs his mommy-” she cried.
I didn’t want to listen to her anymore. “I’ll be back in a while for their clothes. I might bring the police with me. You better behave yourself, Cayla.”
She didn’t answer, she just kept crying.
I left. And out on the porch, where Davis still sat subdued, I breathed in fresh air like it was a long-denied pleasure.
I got Davis home. Clo examined both of them and ordered Davis to see a doctor. He refused at first, till I placated him by getting Dr. Meyer (our family physician as well as the Foradorys’) to make a house call. One of the benefits of small-town life is that your doctors treat you like a person, not a number.
Davis had suffered grave bruises, a loosened tooth, and a broken finger, but nothing worse. Bradley was also examined and, except for the ring of bruises, pronounced fit. Davis declined to tell Dr. Meyer the source of his injuries, but I had no such compunctions. I did Davis the courtesy, however, of telling Dr. Meyer in private, “Good God. Call county social services. They deal with battered women all the time.”
“He’s ashamed. He thinks no one’s ever heard of a battered husband. He says people’ll treat him like a freak.”
Dr. Meyer huffed. He did not suffer fools. “That ain’t the worse thing in the world. Better that than being beaten.”
“He’s trying. After she slapped Bradley around, he did go to Steven Teague’s office for help.”
Dr. Meyer snorted. “That dandified city fool?” Dr. Meyer is of hardy Bavarian-colonist stock and has only a tidbit of patience for people whose families haven’t been in Bonaparte County since Texas was a r
epublic. “Well, I suppose it was a step. Anyhow, I’ve given him a tranquilizer. He needs to sleep. I’ll come back by tomorrow, but you or Clo call me if you need me.” He zipped up his medical bag. “Goddamn. And they say you have to go to the big city for the interestin’ cases.”
I’d begun to feel yanked in nineteen different directions. On top of all else, I’d adopted Davis and Bradley and their hornets’ nest of difficulties, I took a deep breath and called Candace at the diner, explaining to her what’d happened.
“Good God almighty,” she said when I was done. “Cayla gave Arlene that eye? Hell, I think Arlene could clean up the floor with Cayla Foradory.”
“That’s one option,” I concurred.
“So where are you going to put them?” Candace asked.
“Bradley’ll bunk with Mark, and we’ll put Davis in the guest room. Unless Clo has to stay over if Mama’s having a tough time, then I’ll take the couch and Davis can have my room.”
“Your application for sainthood is hereby approved.”
“Or I could propose a not-so-saintly alternative sleeping arrangement.”
“My bed is always open. To you, at least.”
“How reassuring. Actually, I could use a kiss right now. And another kiss. And then maybe a-”
“Yes, darlin’, I get the picture. I’ll come over after work. How about I have one of the cooks here fix up a big fried chicken dinner, and I’ll bring it over. We won’t have to cook and the Foradorys won’t have to face going out.”
“Your application for sainthood is stamped. Thanks.”
“Jordy?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d never hit you.”
“Well, only once.”
We said our goodbyes and I hung up. Thank you, God, for giving me a Candace and not a Cayla.
Next I called Sister. She was in Junebug’s room and told me he was continuing to improve. He’d felt good enough to argue with a doctor today.
“He nearly had company in the hospital. I caught Cayla Foradory beating the tar out of Davis this afternoon.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line. “My Lord.”
“Yes, Davis and Bradley will be staying with us for a while. She’d taken to hitting Bradley, too.”
