by I D Johnson
“Elliott!” Jimmy said, pulling back for a second. Elliott looked down into the wide eyes of his baby brother and saw fear. “You… you won’t leave me, though, will you?”
“Who, me?” Elliott asked, staring into eyes the same shade as his own. “You know I won’t ever leave you, don’t you, kid?”
Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Then—let’s go.”
Elliott inhaled deeply and grabbed the knob, the flimsy door dinging against the wall as he threw it open. The strangers were still there, though they were in the living room now, standing between the tattered floral couch and the bureau as Arlene stood halfway in the kitchen, shouting at them. Both the woman and her counterpart had their arms crossed and seemed to be listening intently to what their mother was saying, which now was mostly, “Get the hell out of my house!”
“We want to help you, too,” the lady said whenever his mom paused to take a breath. “If you’d let us get you some help for your drinking problem, a job…”
“Drinking problem? Who the hell are you to tell me I have a drinking problem?”
There had to be at least two dozen empty glass bottles sitting around the living room since Elliott hadn’t collected them recently. He usually did that only once a week when he knew the pantry lady was coming over. The woman only made a sound in the back of her throat that should’ve told his mom she wasn’t fooling anyone, but she seemed to think she was as she continued. “Get the hell out of my house!”
The man took a step back toward the door.
“No! Wait!” Jimmy lurched forward, away from the hand Elliott has slung over his shoulder. “We want to go.”
All three grownups turned to stare at him, their eyes wide and their mouths wider. “What was that?” the woman asked, her voice the sappy tone it had been when she’d first addressed him in the kitchen only a few moments ago before the whole world had been turned upside down.
A little less confidently this time, Jimmy repeated, “We want to go with you.”
The three adults made their way around the couch, Mom pushing her way between the armrest next to the kitchen and an end table, making the bottles there clink against each other, rock, and nearly tumble to their demise. She came the closest while the other two stayed a few feet away.
“What the hell did you say?” she asked, leaning forward, close to Jimmy’s face.
He took a step backward, and Elliott put his arm around his brother, who had clearly lost his nerve.
“He said we want to go, too,” Elliott answered. “We want a new start, Mom. A chance to… have a decent place to live, to have someone to take care of us, to have good food to eat.”
“You don’t look like you’re withering away, boy,” she sneered glaring at him. “Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like that? I oughtta….” She raised her hand to strike him, and Elliott braced himself for the sting of the back of her hand against his cheek, closing his eyes. But it never came, and when he opened them, the other woman was standing in front of him, his mother’s hand in her firm grasp. How she’d gotten there so quickly, he couldn’t say since his eyes had been clutched tightly, but Jimmy was oohing in amazement. Had she really crossed the space from the edge of the couch to the spot right in front of them that quickly? Maybe she’d been standing closer than he realized.
Arlene grimaced as the woman said, “That—that right there, above all else, is why we are taking them. You don’t get to strike a child in the face, not even if he’s your own.” She released his mother’s arm with a fling but continued to glare as Arlene wrapped her fingers around her narrow wrist and gawked up at the woman, more in shock than in pain, Elliott surmised.
“Fine! You two ungrateful little bastards want to go with this she-devil and her husband? Then by all means, get the hell out of my house, you little shits!”
Elliott’s feet were moving before she could try to hit him again, even though he was pretty sure that this woman wouldn’t let her. As they headed to the car, his mom continued to scream, “Stupid little shits! Fat assed little bastard! Scrawny, puny little son of a bitch!”
Some of the neighbors had their heads poking out of windows at the commotion, and his mom had some fine names for them as well, but Elliott didn’t stop until the man had opened the car door for them, and he and Jimmy were in the back seat, their pathetic pillowcase containing the remnants of two childhoods’ worth of sorrow between them.
The woman said a few more words to his mother, who was too busy screaming to listen, before she got into the driver’s seat, the man running around to the passenger’s side, and the engine fired up. Elliott looked out the window at the rundown house he’d grown up in and at the face of his mother. She was standing on the front porch next to the broken pillar, but she wasn’t yelling anymore. She had her hands over her mouth, and tears were streaming down her face. For a moment, he thought he saw sadness there, like she was truly sorry someone she hardly knew was taking her children away. And then she disappeared inside. Elliott never saw her face again.
Chapter 4
Norman, Oklahoma, 1951
The car headed south at a pretty good clip, and neither one of the boys said anything at all, only continued holding onto each other, waiting for some sort of an explanation. After about twenty minutes, the woman pulled over into a diner parking lot and turned to face them. “Like hamburgers?”
Elliott’s mouth immediately started watering as his head bobbed up and down. Within seconds, he was out of the car, Jimmy left to fend for himself.
Over the biggest cheeseburger he’d ever seen in his life, and a platter of fries to match, Elliott stared at the smiling faces of the couple across from him. The man had his arm around the woman in a way Elliott had never seen people sit before except for once at the movies when he’d snuck in during the last few minutes of a matinee. Even though his mom probably had a dozen men over in the last five years, they never wrapped their arms around her shoulders like that, like they wanted to protect her from the world.
Grease dripped down his chin, and the lady handed him a napkin. “Thanks Ms…?”
“Oh, my goodness. We haven’t even introduced ourselves yet, have we?” she asked, looking at the fellow next to her. “I’m so sorry. You two boys should’ve asked sooner.”
“We’re too busy eating cheeseburgers,” Jimmy giggled, and Elliott watched in shock as his twig of a brother inhaled the sandwich.
“Well, that is a very good reason,” she laughed. “My name is Janette Findley. And this is my husband, Jordan.”
Husband. The word would’ve been foreign to him if he didn’t have friends with complete families. Elliott’s eyes flickered to the man’s—Mr. Findley’s--hand and saw a ring there. It was a fascinating concept to him.
“It’s very nice to finally meet you two,” Mr. Findley said with a smile. “We’ve been wanting to meet you for so long.”
Elliott was surprised to hear that. He set his burger down, even though there was at least a quarter of it left, and wiped his hands on his napkin. “What do you mean?”
They exchanged glances again before she said, “Well, you see, we found out a few years ago that the two of you weren’t being taken care of very well, not up to our standards, anyway, and while we wanted for you to be able to stay in Oklahoma City with your mother….”
“It is best, now, if the two of you are removed from the situation,” Mr. Findley finished.
Swallowing hard, Elliott tried to take in what had just been stated to him. Had he made the right decision taking his baby brother out of their home to leave town with two strangers? He glanced over at Jimmy, who was eating a french fry the length of a carrot, dripping with ketchup, happy as a lark. “How do you know our mother?”
“It’s sort of a long story, but we work for an organization that has been around for many years. And your great-grandmother, your Grandpa Stewart’s mother, used to work there,” Mrs. Findley explained. Elliott had never heard anything at all about Grandpa’s m
om. “We tend to keep a close eye on the families of our employees.”
“So you knew Mom wasn’t treatin’ us right?” Elliott asked, finally returning to his burger.
“We did,” Mr. Findley nodded. “So we contacted your mother many times in the last few years, even offering to give her money to buy better food, better clothes for you two. Any money we gave her didn’t quite end up in the right place, though.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine what he was speaking about. Alcohol and cigarettes, no doubt. “So now we’re gonna live with you?” Elliott’s question had Jimmy looking up expectantly as well, his curly hair, slightly lighter than his older brothers, flopping as he did so.
“Not with us,” Mrs. Findley clarified, “but with someone we know. Someone we trust.”
He did remember there being some mention of another person involved in all of this. “Who is it, Mrs. Findley?” he asked.
“Please, call me Janette,” she said with a warm smile. “I know that might seem odd to you since I’m an adult and you’re still children, but I’m not used to being addressed so formally.”
“Okay, Ms. Janette,” Elliott said with a shrug. “Who is this person?”
“She’s a distant relation of mine. Her name is Peggy Smithstone, and she and her husband live on a farm in Norman. She has horses and cows, all sorts of livestock. I think you’ll really like it out there.”
“Wow!” Jimmy’s expression said it all. “Do you think I can have a dog?”
“I’m not sure,” Janette said with a shrug, “but I know Peggy has a few dogs already.”
“Dogs?” Jimmy repeated. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day!”
While Elliott was tempted to mention they hadn’t gotten much good news that day, not if one thought about their mother neglecting them so much that strangers felt it necessary to intervene on their behalf and remove them, the look on his brother’s face was not to be spoiled. He imagined it might be nice to have a dog. Even though he’d fake cried about losing a cat, he had an idea dogs were better.
“You’ll have lots of land to run and play on, and there’s a school as well, though it’s not as big as your city school. You might want to try out for the football team, Elliott,” Jordan said with a smile.
“You callin’ me husky?” he asked, but he had a grin on his face.
“No,” Jordan said quickly. “I was implying that you look like a strong young man, and I bet you could make an impression on the other team.” He had a gleam in his eye that made Elliott think trying out for football might not be a half-bad idea.
“Peggy and Frank don’t have any children of their own, but they’ve always wanted them. She still works for our company, but we will give her some time off so that she can make sure the two of you are all settled.” Janette smiled reassuringly, but the news made Elliott uneasy. Once again, he glanced at his brother, thinking the last thing he wanted was to have to take care of his brother again.
As if reading his mind, Jordan added, “Peggy’s financial situation is different than what you’re used to. We assure you, should she ever be called away on business, it won’t be for long. Frank will be there. He works there, taking care of the animals, but should it be necessary, I assure you she will be able to provide proper care.”
“You mean a babysitter?” Jimmy asked. They’d heard of such an idea before but had never experienced it.
“Precisely,” Janette nodded. “Now, who wants some ice cream?”
Elliott didn’t need to be asked twice, and once he and Jimmy had eaten their fill of ice cream sundaes and drank enough soda to have a sugar rush for a week and a half, they loaded back into the car and continued their way out into the countryside.
It seemed that Ms. Janette was driving a lot faster than the other cars around them the few times that they encountered one out in the country, but it was hard for Elliott to tell since he had only ridden in a car the few times his mom had gotten one of her boyfriends to take them over to her dad’s house in Tulsa. Other than that, the school bus was his best comparison, and that was slow and always stopping. Still, he thought he should be able to see the cows and horses out the window, but mostly, they just looked blurry. He chalked it up to riding in a new car and tried not to think about it.
Eventually, they turned onto a dirt lane that went over a railroad track and wound passed a few fields and some wooded areas now and again. About a mile or so from where they turned, by his best estimate, they pulled down a drive. They were going much slower now, and he could see some cows out in a pasture on his side of the car. Jimmy slapped frantically on his arm, and when he turned, it was to see him pointing out his window at six or seven horses of all colors, but mostly black and brown, eating from a bale of hay. Wherever they were, Ms. Janette had been right about the animals.
The car came to a stop in front of a two-story farmhouse. It was a crisp white, despite the dust coming up from the road, with a wraparound porch and a gray-shingled roof. The sound of dogs barking greeted the doors opening, and Jimmy laughed in glee when a large Labrador Retriever began to lick his hand.
A screen door creaked, and Elliott looked up to see a woman a little younger-looking than his mom. She had on a pair of white pants that reached to mid-calf and a light blue blouse with flowers on it. Her hair was styled like one of his teachers at school, one of the younger modern ones who always wore nice clothes. It came up around her head and tipped out just past her ears, and the color reminded Elliott of the sunflowers they’d seen growing along the drive as they approached the house.
She had an odd look on her face, something between smiling and bursting into tears, but she didn’t say anything, not at first. A second later, a man came up behind her. He was tall and rail thin, though not as skinny as Jimmy. His dark hair covered the tops of his ears, and the stubble on his chin announced he hadn’t shaved since that morning at least.
The man, Frank, Elliott recalled, looked at the woman—Peggy—and they both smiled at each other, like there was some sort of secret only they knew about, and a tear trickled down her face.
Elliott studied Frank for a long moment as the dog continued to lick Jimmy’s hand. Over the years, Elliott had developed a system for assessing the possibilities that a man was a drunk, a skunk, or just an all-around asshole. Pretty much every man his mother had ever brought home fell into one of those categories, sometimes overlapping, and the ones who didn’t never stayed. While Elliott had a bit of experience with other men, such as a couple of his friends’ dads and a male teacher now and again, for the most part, the only men he knew were the kind that came over to drink booze with his mom, went into her bedroom for a while to play some game that made the bed creak, and then headed out the door. Sometime, the same man would come back enough that Elliott would have to talk to him at dinner or breakfast. Sometimes he’d move in for a while. Those were the ones that usually ended up knocking him across the room for having a smart mouth. None of them lasted long, though, not even the ones that made his mom shout their names real loud while they were playing that game. He vowed, when he got a little older and a little bigger, he wouldn’t take getting punched in the face sitting down. But now, none of that mattered. He could tell from here that Frank was not the type of man who would punch a twelve-year-old boy in the face.
Elliott clutched the pillow case tightly as he came around the side of the car, and Janette put her arm around his shoulders. Jimmy finally looked up from the licking, and his giggling stopped as he stared at Peggy.
Tentatively, she walked down the steps, Frank’s hands never leaving her shoulders, and stopped a few feet in front of them. She looked from Elliott to Jimmy and back again a few times before she finally looked Jimmy in the eye and said, “Hi.” It was quiet, almost like she thought if she said it any louder he’d break away into a thousand pieces and be lost forever.
Jimmy tipped his head to the side and stared at her. “Are you… Ms. Peggy?”
“I am,” she said, a bit louder now. �
��I… uh… you must be Jimmy.” He nodded, and she smiled, reaching up to pat Frank’s hand. Elliott had no idea what was happening. Why did she look at Jimmy like he was somebody she knew a long time ago who she thought she’d never see again?
She turned her face toward him now, and studying him with cornflower blue eyes, she said, “And you must be Elliott.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, not moving, not quite sure what to make of any of this.
“We’d love it if y’all would like to come in,” Frank said, his accent thick and clearly Southern, even more Southern than the Oklahoma accent nearly everyone Elliott had ever met spoke with.
“They’re a little… confused, I think,” Janette said, and that word didn’t quite hit the nail on the head for how Elliott was thinking, but he would go with that for now. More like… skeptical. Why would a pretty lady and her husband with all this land and this big house want to take in two ragamuffin kids with nothing but a ratty pillowcase half-full of junk?
“That’s completely understandable,” Peggy said, though the way she looked at Janette raised more questions in Elliott’s mind than her response answered. “Please, come on in.” She was looking at Jimmy when she said that, and Elliott’s feet started moving as soon as his brother’s did, coming around the car to take his little sticky hand in his bigger one.
The dog didn’t seem to like the idea of Jimmy going inside where he could no longer be petted, but Peggy assured him, Samson, he was called, that there’d be plenty of time for that later, and Frank held the door open as the boys followed Peggy inside, Janette behind them. “You’re welcome to come in, too,” Frank said to Jordan, but Elliott noticed him give a wave of his hand, though he was smiling, and he sat down on the hood of the Buick.
