Kentucky Woman

by Mike J. Brogan

  They walked up to the receptionist, a middle aged red-haired woman with large butterfly earrings.

  “We’re here to see Judge Warren Nesbitt,” Ellie said.

  The woman glanced at her desk clock. “Warren’s watchin’ Judge Judy in the lounge.” She pointed down a hallway.

  Walking down the hall, they passed residents creeping along on walkers. In one room, Ellie saw a stoop-shouldered woman staring out her window at the hills, perhaps remembering when she’d climbed them with ease.

  Inside the lounge, Ellie saw four elderly ladies playing what sounded like a nasty game of Canasta. Nearby, sat an eighty-something, rail-thin man, with white hair riveted on Judge Judy.

  “Judge Nesbitt …?” Ellie said.

  The judge held up a finger. “Just a sec …”

  Judge Judy banged her gavel and said,

  “Mr. Jones, you’re a Mr. Deadbeat Dad. Pay

  up in a week, or we’ll garnish your wages!”

  “Right on, Judy!” Judge Nesbitt said, banging his fist on the chair like he’d once pounded his gavel. He snapped his red suspenders and turned toward Ellie and Quinn with a smile.

  “Judge Nesbitt, my name is Ellie Stuart. Mrs. Browne at the courthouse suggested we talk to you.”

  “Mrs. Browne …?” He seemed confused.

  “Agnes Browne, the clerk.”

  A pause. “Oh yes, Agnes. How is she?”

  “She’s fine and says hi to you.”

  The judge nodded. “Fine woman, Agnes. And her husband, Carl, no … Clete … no Clyde maybe?”

  Ellie’s concern about his memory ticked up as she and Quinn sat down.

  “How can I help y’all?”

  “Well, twenty-one years ago, I was adopted here by Harold and Joyce Stuart.”

  “Harold Stillwert out on Kitts Creek Road. Had a brother named Fester?”

  “No, sir. STUART.”

  He blinked, then his eyes lit up. “Oh yes, that Harold and Joyce. Nice folks. Died in that terrible boating accident on Lake Cumberland. What a shame! Drunk boater. Fifth DUI. Judge Young tossed his butt in Frankfort for ten years. Right decision.” He snapped his suspenders again.

  His memory seems to be working fine, Ellie thought.

  “Yes. But I wondered, your honor, do you recall handling my adoption?”

  He looked at her for several seconds, closed his eyes, then looked at her again. “Wasn’t me, young lady. Sorry. You trying to learn who your birth parents are?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He ran knobby, arthritic fingers through his white hair. “Everything depends on whether they want to be identified. Most don’t, you know.”

  She nodded.

  “Talk to Teddy Nichols in town. Good family court lawyer. Handled lots of adoptions back then.”

  “I’ve talked to him. He didn’t handle my adoption.”

  Judge Nesbitt looked out the window. “Were you born in Harlan Hospital?”

  “According to my birth certificate I was.” She decided not to tell him her certificate was probably fake.

  The judge nodded. “Go check the hospital records. Talk to the attending physician at your birth. Or your case might have been an informal adoption. You know, one relative gives a child to another. Or you might have been adopted from another state, or another country. Or even an illegal adoption. That would make identifying your birth parents more problematic.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Try the state records in Frankfort.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And try that Internet thing. I hear they got websites that can help kids find parents and parents find kids.”

  “I’ve tried those websites. No luck so far.”

  Judge Nesbitt nodded. “Well, keep trying, young lady. Don’t give up.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “Wish I could tell you more. Maybe something’ll pop in my head. My memory’s like a bad bulb. Flickers on and off. How can I reach you?”

  She gave him a card with her name and cell phone number.

  They stood, thanked Judge Nesbitt again and left.

  As they drove out onto Main Street, she said, “Any chance Judge Nesbitt forgot he handled my adoption?”

  “Maybe. But I thought his memory seemed pretty sharp.”

  “I did too.”

  “Where’s the Harlan Hospital?”

  “Not far.”

  From the front seat of his red Ford 350 pickup, Huntoon Harris watched the blue TrailBlazer drive off down Main Street. He flipped open his cell phone and dialed a number.

  “Yes …?”

  “They just visited old Judge Nesbitt.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Heading down 421 south.”

  “Here’s what you gotta do … .”

  ELEVEN

  “Where exactly is Harlan Hospital?” Quinn asked as he drove away from the Sunset Center.

  “Down near Gray’s Knob.”

  “Where’s Gray’s Knob?”

  “Over near Hank’s Hump.”

  Quinn smiled. “Bullshit!”

  “Yep.”

  She laughed and it felt good, especially after learning nothing about her adoption from Judge Nesbitt. Maybe she’d learn something at Harlan Hospital. After all, her birth certificate said she was born there. They should have some kind of record.

  They drove past a Chevy El Camino that reminded her of her dad Harold’s old El Camino. He loved it. Called it the “Cadillac of Pickups.” Harold Stuart would always be her dad, the best dad anyone could hope for. But maybe she would grow to love her biological father too, if she ever was lucky enough to identify him. Who said she couldn’t love two dads?

  But the first question was – who delivered her to Harold and Joyce Stuart?

  “Quinn …”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think my adoption was … illegal.”

  He nodded. “It happened a lot back then. And now. Each year in China and Europe thousands of infants are stolen from their parents and hospitals, and then sold.”

  Ellie felt sickened by the fact.

  “And right here in America some women sell their babies, even though it’s illegal.”

  “It’s also disgusting.”

  He nodded. “But not everyone agrees. Even a distinguished U.S. Court of Appeals judge recently wrote that he believes a woman has the legal right to sell her baby.”

  “Like on eBay or in a garage sale?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “So, if mommy can legally sell her baby at six weeks, can she sell her rebellious teenager at sixteen?”

  He smiled. “The learned jurist hasn’t waxed eloquent on that issue yet.”

  Quinn pulled in at Harlan ARH Hospital and parked. She remembered childhood visits to the modern, beige-brick medical center nestled among rolling green hills.

  Inside, they were directed to the Records Office, where they saw a sixty-something woman with puffed-up gray hair typing at her computer. Her nametag said Rena Faye. She looked up and smiled.

  “Can I help y’all?”

  “I hope so,” Ellie said, handing her birth certificate to the woman. “According to this certificate I was born here twenty-one years ago. I wonder if your birth records here go back that far?”

  “Hon, our records go back further than I do! Yours should be here.”

  Ellie smiled and felt hopeful.

  Rena Faye looked at the birth certificate, tapped on her computer and waited. She frowned, crinkling smokers’ lines around her eyes, then turned to another computer, tapped some more and waited. More frowning, and moments later, she looked at Ellie.

  “We have no record that an Ellie Stuart was ever born here. We’ve had nine Ellies, but two died in their eighties, three are in their fifties and four are under ten. I’m real sorry.”

  Ellie’s hope sunk. “Perhaps I could talk to the attending physician at my birth, Dr. Jerome Morton?”

  Rena Faye blinked at hearing th
e name, then looked at the certificate and her eyes widened. “Well now, that’s right weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “Dr. Morton …”

  “Why?”

  “Dr. Jerome Morton died six years before you were born, hon. Massive stroke. Died right down the hall here. I was there.”

  Ellie’s eyes went out of focus and she had to steady herself against the desk. A dead doctor delivered her into this world? What the hell was going on? Once again she found herself falling into the murky abyss of her origins. Where the hell did she come from?

  Quinn placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “Ellie, we’ll sort this out. I promise.”

  She wasn’t so sure, but appreciated his confidence.

  They thanked the clerk, left and drove back toward Harlan.

  Once again, the door slams shut.

  She stared out the window as an old recurring dream flashed in her mind. She’s trapped in a glass bottle on turbulent ocean waves, unsure how she got there, or where she’s heading. The water tosses her bottle back and forth, then underwater, then against the side of a fishing boat. A man’s hand reaches down pulls the bottle out of the water. She’s rescued! The man opens the bottle and asks …

  “Who are you?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “Who are your parents?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know anything, I can’t help you.”

  He tosses the bottle back in the water and it sways back and forth … leaving her drifting, hoping for answers.

  Like now. She and Quinn had found no record of her adoption at the courthouse. No recollection by Judge Nesbitt. And now no record of her birth at Harlan Hospital where she was allegedly born and delivered by a doctor who’d died six years before she was born.

  “You okay over there?” Quinn asked.

  She shrugged. “Just trying to figure all this out.”

  “Only one answer.”

  “What?”

  “You’re an alien baby.”

  “We prefer extra-terrestrial.”

  “E. T. okay?”

  “That works.”

  Laughing felt good, she realized. Glancing at her watch, she said, “You should leave now for your law school meeting with that lawyer in Manchester.”

  “You want to come?”

  “Can’t. My friend Carrie Ann and I are going to talk to some folks who knew Joyce and Harold. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

  “Worth a try. But we got a problem …”

  “What?”

  “Your old boyfriend in the red Ford pickup is back.”

  “I don’t have an old boyfriend here.” Or a new one anywhere for that matter.

  “Well, the same damn pickup is following us again.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep. Let’s find out.”

  Quinn swerved over to the curb and stopped, waiting for the red pickup to go by. It didn’t. Instead it slowed down and pulled over to the curb about fifty yards behind them.

  A second later, the pickup darted down a side street.

  TWELVE

  Ellie and her best friend, Carrie Ann Norris, laughed as they stared at their high school photos in their yearbook.

  “Why’s that lampshade on your head?” Ellie asked.

  “That’s my hair!”

  Ellie said. “Look – there’s weird Arlo Roadheever. My god – he must weigh four hundred pounds!”

  “Momma says he’s big enough to have his own zip code.”

  They laughed as they sat in Carrie Ann’s kitchen. As usual, Carrie Ann looked terrific: Thick auburn hair, large dark-green eyes, freckles on perfect skin, and a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit figure to die for – despite holding down two part-time jobs, attending Southeast Community College and caring for her sick mother.

  She looked around the familiar kitchen. Same green Formica table, same mahogany spice chest, same ancient Frigidaire chugging away in the corner. Nothing had changed.

  Except Carrie Ann’s mother, Harriet. Her large brown eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into their sockets … and her body deeper into itself. Chemotherapy taking its toll … like it had on her husband, a coal miner, who died after a ten-year battle with black lung disease, aided and abetted by the mining company’s refusal to acknowledge the disease or pay for his medical treatment. Bottom line: a two hundred pound man weighed ninety-seven pounds when he died. After law school, Ellie hoped to sue the mining company.

  Harriet Norris shuffled into the kitchen and poured her coffee with a shaky hand.

  “Mom …?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who might know something about Ellie’s birth parents?”

  Harriet Norris pursed her cracked lips, which Ellie noticed were dotted with dried blood.

  “I’d start with Mavis.”

  “Mavis Biddle?”

  Harriet nodded. “I like Mavis, but that woman sucks up more dirt than my Hoover. Queen of Gossip. Lives over there near Wallin’s Creek.”

  Ellie remembered Mavis Biddle. Her husband, Link Biddle, lost his job in the mines twenty years ago, then ran a string of successful moonshine stills before being shot dead in a poker game when some aces slid from his sleeve.

  Before his demise, word was he’d stashed bushels of money in an offshore bank account in St. Kitts from which Mavis still drew money.

  “That’s Mavis’s house down there behind those evergreens,” Carrie Ann said, steering her old Chevy Cavalier down a winding gravel driveway.

  Ellie looked down at the 1960s brick ranch home situated in a small valley. In the front yard were two white wagon wheels entwined with red roses. Nearby a small creek flowed through a decorative Dutch windmill, its blades spinning with the flow. They parked next to a big shiny new GMC pickup with large deer antlers mounted on the hood.

  They got out and walked toward the house.

  Suddenly the door swung open and Mavis, eighty-two, in a large muumuu dress with pink flowers and matching pink Nikes smiled with her few remaining teeth.

  “I’ll be damned – Thelma and Louise!”

  Ellie and Carrie Ann laughed.

  “I’m Carrie Ann – ”

  “Hell, I knowed you, Carrie Ann, and you, Ellie, since y’all was knee high to grasshoppers. Git yer cute butts on in here now!” Her tiny gray eyes sparkled in a sea of pink wrinkles. She seemed hungry for visitors.

  They stepped inside a living room of heavy maple furniture crowded with pictures of children, grandkids and kinfolk. Over the fireplace hung a huge oil painting of her late husband, Link, holding his 12-gauge shotgun and a shiner’s jug of liquor. Mavis clicked off a Doris Day movie, plopped down in a beige Lay-Z-Boy chair and motioned them onto a nearby sofa.

  “We called earlier, ma’am,” Ellie said, “but no one answered.”

  “I was out hittin’ the bars, lookin’ for Mr. Right.”

  “SHUT UP MAVIS!” someone shouted.

  Ellie turned and saw it was a huge green parrot bobbing his head as though guffawing at his own words.

  “That’s Spike. My husband taught the little bastard to say that when I’m talkin.’ Don’t pay Shithead no mind. Y’all want coffee, a little ‘shine maybe?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Carrie Ann, how’s your momma doin’?”

  “So so, maybe a little better today, ma’am.”

  “Good for her! Ellie, how you doin’ up in that big wicked Lou’vull?”

  “I love it, ma’am.”

  “Your parents would be right proud.”

  “Thank you. Actually, we came to talk about my parents.”

  “They were the best!”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I’m wondering about my birth parents.”

  Mavis Biddle’s eyes widened. She sat back and took a deep breath. “Couple years ago, Joyce up and told me you was ‘dopted. I always figgered you wuz what with you bein’ taller and well prettier than Joyce, who wuz right pretty her own self mind you.
”

  “She was. Did she ever tell you who my birth parents were?”

  “Joyce didn’t know. But she wuz tryin’ to find out before she and Harold died in that godawful boating accident.”

  Ellie nodded, flashing back to the morgue.

  “Did she tell you anything about my adoption?”

  Mavis rocked in her chair a bit. “Well, I promised Joyce I’d never tell anyone. But now, with her bein’ gone and all, I reckon you gotta right to know.”

  Ellie leaned forward, her heart racing.

  “You know how Joyce had that problem … eendomeetoastasis or whatever the hell they call that stuff that gunks up a woman’s uterus.”

  “Endometriosis,” Ellie said.

  “That’s it. The lining of the womb ain’t right. Wouldn’t let her git pregnant. So she and Harold got on a six-year-long adoption list. Two weeks later, out of the blue, this fella up and phoned Joyce. Said he had hisself a healthy baby girl, few months old, who they could adopt lickety-split, no questions asked. Wouldn’t cost ‘em one red cent. The baby would come with a birth certificate that named them as parents. Slam bang, here’s your youngun’”

  “A black market adoption,” Ellie said.

  “Yep. But yours wuz right different.”

  “How?”

  “You come with a bonus.”

  “What bonus?” Ellie wondered what Mavis meant.

  “Ten thousand dollars cash money. A heap of money back then.”

  Ellie was amazed. “The Stuarts received ten thousand dollars for taking me?”

  “Sure did. But the money come with a hitch. Joyce and Harold wuz told that they could never try to learn the identity of your birth parents. If they did, the fella said he’d come and take you back!”

  Ellie swallowed a dry throat, trying to absorb what she’d just heard.

  “Did she tell you the man’s name?”

  “No. Joyce didn’t know.”

  “Is that’s all she told you?”

  “That’s all she knowed.”

  Ellie thought about what she’d just heard. “So maybe my birth mom was an unwed teenager whose parents insisted she give up the baby.”

  “Right possible,” Mavis said.

  “Did the man deliver me to the Stuarts?”

  Mavis closed her eyes. “No. Joyce said they wuz a nice woman what brung you, plus your birth certificate and the ten thousand cash money to their house.”