Between Heaven & Hell Part 4

The room wasn’t fancy, in fact he’d seen nicer rooms at the Y than this rolling flop house. Everything vinyl or plastic in shades of gray. Josiah took off his sneaks and lay back, throwing one thin arm over his eyes as he sought to sleep, get away from the voices in his head and the memories.

But sleep never came for Josiah, there was no respite from the voices in his head. Tension thrummed through his body and he knew he’d have to find a release and soon before he lost control. Mayor Jenkins was the last time he’d done that thing that always brought him release. Since winning American Star Josiah had fought to keep his urges under control. He was a celebrity now and well, you know, he couldn’t go around meting out divine punishment willy nilly because all eyes were on him now

But he only hunted predators, those that preyed on the weaker and the smaller. In some ways Josiah Smith felt this was his holiest of missions. His real calling. God knows the music wasn’t his calling.

In the back of his mind Josiah knew that the music he made was meaningless, inconsequential. His singing and guitar playing was no better or worst than that of a million other singer songwriters out there relentlessly plugging away in the bar scene. Just as he’d been during those long years between leaving Mississippi for Los Angeles and winning American Star.

His problem was the same problem of those million others playing the bar scene. They all sounded the same, with their songs of angst and heartbreak and irony. Josiah was painfully aware that the production staff at 7 Entertainment, owners and producers of the show, had forced his musical direction into that most calculated to sell the most records. They’d cared nothing for his own thoughts on the process, the sound he wanted, the image he wanted to project. It had been as cut and dried as turning out sausages or toilet seats.

As a result Josiah was both proud and ashamed of his first CD self titled “Josiah” The CD was filled with pop music, angry white boy music in the vein of every emo band of the last ten years. Now the production values were first rate. 7 Entertainment spared no expense or talent in the recording. The problem was it just wasn’t who he was.

At first management had put the full force of the powerful 7 Entertainment publicity machine behind him. Josiah had done an endless tour of morning shows, entertainment interviews and guest spots. Premieres, happenings. Hell, Josiah had walked the red carpet in a designer suit for the first time in his life. His posters were everywhere. One night the head of 7 Entertainment took him out on the town, turning the powerful sports car they rode in a parking space just so Josiah could gaze rapt at his own self. 7 Entertainment had taken out a huge billboard overlooking Sunset Strip in LA, a huge Josiah holding his Fender guitar over his head in triumph. That night had been even more exciting that the night he won the show. The label gave him his own expensive sports car as a bonus for going multi platinum. He only wished his Momma could have seen his victory.

Josiah‘s mind kept turning back to Mississippi, and his Momma. He loved her, he hated her. He loved nothing about Mississippi. Josiah only held hate for that hellish place he’d grown up in. The social class and monetary distinctions of Mississippi couldn’t have been more divisive and stringent that those of Calcutta or Victorian England. Because his mother was a woman from a good family that had lowered herself to marry someone from the wrong side of the tracks and to then return as she was seemed to be an unforgivable sin in Chattawah.

He’d suffered through the years because his poor Momma couldn’t seem to pull herself together after being abandoned by her Naval Aviator husband. She would only creep from the trailer to get her Tabs and Parliaments or to check on their welfare payments.

It wasn’t like there weren’t others in the community on government assistance, because there were, plenty actually. By the time Josiah started school he knew who in his class was and wasn’t because of the lunches, the free lunches. At least by the time Josiah started public school it didn’t matter so much if Momma was having a spell. He’d get to school in time enough to have breakfast followed by a hearty lunch. Soon enough the lunch ladies caught onto the fact that sometimes Josiah didn’t get much to eat at home and before long he’d started stopping by the cafeteria before getting on the dusty school bus for home. The ladies had packed up enough leftovers in a brown paper bag for him to have for dinner during those times when Momma locked herself into the bedroom with gin, candy and novels.

The reason that others in the town whispered behind lace curtains what a shame it all was about him and his Momma was because of who her family had been. Momma’s granddaddy had once been the richest man in town, richer than Mayor Jenkins. He’d owned a textile factory and other businesses but during the depression he’d lost everything, the factories, the businesses, everything from the farm that their trailer set upon. Even as he’d lost it all and was reduced to farming he still had the respect of the community and the family lived modestly for many years, like everyone else but still traced their lineage back generations. His grandmother was still a member of the Junior League and the Eastern Star. They still held prominent social positions in town.

When his momma, Lillian Smith, returned to town and didn’t settle into the Junior League or even attempt a job working at the five and dime or as a secretary somewhere but moved the dilapidated trailer on the property. Besides throwing aside all social niceties and traditions of her family Lillian had also committed the unpardonable sin of signing her mother into the Mississippi Lunatic Asylum. Her mother had slipped into early dementia but instead of move into the big farmhouse to care for her mother, his Momma had chosen to plead poverty and dump her in the state facility instead.

One of the worst aspects of life in a small southern town was not only did everyone know your business, everyone chose to add colorfully to it, false or true. Whispers went around saying Josiah’s daddy had never married his mother and that made him a bastard. People wouldn’t let their kids near Josiah. When he encountered a child in town their parents would draw them away as if Josiah was contaminated or contagious.

Going to school hadn’t stopped it either. None of the kids in the class would have much to do with him. His teacher was kind but she was the only one. Others would taunt him about his mother and how poor they were. Josiah clearly remembered that first Christmas at school, sitting at his desk wondering how to tell Teacher that he had no present to give for the class gift exchange. His teacher had stopped by his desk, bent down and slipped a small package into his hand with a whispered, “Don’t tell anyone. I knew you haven’t had a chance to buy a gift for the exchange and I happen to haven an extra!” He’d felt hopeful, grateful, ashamed and humiliated all at the same time.

In the hell that his school years were the teachers he had all seemed to conspire to make sure he had extra help. They enlisted the lunch ladies and some of the organizations in town too. Every year he was in school Josiah knew he could count on being called into the office on the last day of school before Christmas break and being handed a paper bag with his name on it. The bag always held a new set of dress up clothes, right down to socks and underwear and shoes in his sizes. There were a few toys and candies as well as a certificate for food at the local Piggly Wiggly. Every Thanksgiving brought a full turkey dinner with all the fixings from the Kiwanis club and every new school year clothes and supplies through a local church. Christmas was the big haul, not only did several local churches give them food but the Lions club, social services and churches gave him presents and clothes. Listening to his classmate brag about what they’d gotten for their Christmas gifts was one of the few times Josiah felt on equal footing with them. Many of the things they bragged of receiving were also part and parcel of his gifts.

Easter brought more food and candy from the civic organizations. There was always a glistening ham and all the side dishes. Momma made an effort to bestir herself and try to act more normal during holidays. Sometimes she even cleaned the trailer spotless instead of the slovenly half assed condition it was usually in. She fixed her hair, she put on a clean house dress and hummed in the kitchen while fixing their feast.

The problem with Josiah’s school years and his Momma and her spells was summer vacation. Summer, no school, just him and Momma. With no school or daily routines Josiah did what he wanted, as long as he didn’t bother Momma when she was watching her stories he was free to do as he liked. It wasn’t unusual for Josiah to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and sleep in well past noon. There was always something to explore or do. The Dark Man showed him a lot those long summers.

Sometimes Josiah hadn’t wanted to do what the Dark Man kept insisting, like the time he’d wanted Josiah to kill baby animals in the woods, smash nests and scatter the peeping baby birds. Josiah would scream at the Dark Man, scream that he didn’t want to play any longer. And just like that, the Dark Man would disappear from his life, for a month, for a week, but eventually he returned.

Summer was a dangerous time for many reasons. It’s the season that copperheads and rattlers would seek shelter from the searing sun in places you were likely to run across without thinking. Many times down by the creek Josiah saw alligators slithering just below the surface of the sun warmed water.

It was a cruel time of the year, turning the air outside into an barely breathable sticky mass of heat. Even the tall canopy of loblolly pines in the deep woods could not hold back the heat. In that heat not only did the poisonous snakes come out but it seemed to bring out every buzzing creepy crawling bug under the sun. Swarms of mosquitoes and flies made life miserable in the back woods of Mississippi. No matter what Josiah tried he still ended up with bug bites over most of the surface of his body. He tried asking his Momma for some insect repellant but she’d just turned from her soap opera, grunted and handed him an ancient gummed up bottle of Avon bath oil. It seemed to attract more bugs than it drove off.

But the bugs and varmints were not the only problems Josiah had with the pervasive heat. The trailer they lived in had no air conditioning beyond a small wheezing window unit in his Momma’s room. On nights when she wasn’t having a spell Josiah would sleep on a made up pallet on the floor of her room. He’d learned to put his bed down near the foot of her bed and not next to the bed because Momma had a habit of getting up in the middle of the night to pee and not watching out for him. Josiah suffered bruises a number of times before he learned it was safer to squeeze between the foot of the bed and the bureau.

During the day Momma refused to run that ac and she would not listen to his pleas to move it to the living room instead. Once Momma was up and had donned a fresh house dress she’s shut off her bedroom to try and preserve the last of the cool air after turning off the unit. That’s another reason why Josiah stayed outside as much as possible. It was boiling inside of the trailer. Once the sun got up and over head the metal of the trailer seemed to magnify and trap the heat.

On those boiling hot days his Momma sat in a webbed lawn chair she’d got at Goodwill outside the door, just under the beginning of the trees and watch her beloved soap operas in the shade. Every day Momma would tote their small tv outside, run an extension cord and watch hours of her stories with a lit Parliament in one hand and a can of Tab in the other.

But if it was raining, and it tended to rain a lot in the summers of Mississippi, both Josiah would be stuck in the living room, sweating, laying around the furniture, drinking soft drinks and putting pots under the worst of the roof leaks. It was a miserable damp way to spend a day.

When Josiah was around eight he signed up for a library card and on those days when the sun shone too hot or the rain turned the world into a steamy sauna he would spend hours in the library. He’d find a book to check out, curl up in one of the many niches of the library and read until the head librarian forced him to go home. Not only was the library cool in the heat of summer, it was clean, smelling of fresh wax and polish. It was quiet and the Dark Man dared not intrude there. But Josiah rapidly learned that to spend more than a three hour stretch there risked the librarians asking him about his Momma and if she knew he was there so often for such long periods of time.

But the biggest danger that summer held was not the heat, not the insects or the snakes, it was Momma herself. It seemed like the more the temperature gauge nailed to the electrical pole outside the trailer climbed, the more likely it was that something would set Momma off on one of her spells.

Her spells in the summer were way worse than any other time. Momma would not only lock herself into her bedroom and stop feeding him, she would crank up her air conditioner and not let Josiah sleep in the room with her. As bad as the heat was on those nights it was nothing compared to what happened when Momma stopped buying food or fixing it.

Summer was always the hungry time for Josiah. He learned quickly how to do for himself when Momma was locked in her bedroom but sometimes he’d get down to saltines, tap water and ketchup before Momma would come to herself and remember he needed food. He didn’t dare go into town and try to cage food off anyone because of what had happened the last time he’d been caught. But he learned to shoplift, just little things, a can of tuna, a pack of cheese, in those times. He’d search behind the sofa cushions for enough change to buy bread and shoplift whatever else he needed. He didn’t know if he never got caught because he was clever and good at lifting the cans or because the men that ran the Piggly Wiggly, the A&P and Winn Dixie seemed to feel sorry for him.

Every summer he would beg his Momma to allow him to go to summer school, just knowing that the summer school kids were getting a full breakfast and lunch. But every year Momma said no. So he learned to take what he needed, a skill that would benefit him immensely when he hitchhiked out to Los Angeles. It kept him from starving many a day.

And it wasn’t just the Piggly Wiggly or Winn Dixie that Josiah stole from either. Sometimes he’d sneak over to nearby farms and swipe a tomato or two. Or go into a rustling corn field by the light of the moon to steal a few ears.

Laying back on his bed in the bus Josiah had to smile, remembering those delicious open air meals he’d enjoyed, purloined hot dogs cooked over an outdoor bonfire with a side order of roasted corn, roasted right in the corn shuck. Nothing he’d eaten since tasted as good as that. He’d been constantly hungry as a boy.

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Full darkness fell like a black cloak eased down from on high over the flat plains of Kansas. Josiah stepped outside of the bus and sniffed eagerly, taking in the scents of corn dogs and cotton candy. Foods that he didn’t get much of a chance to eat as a kid. Momma never let him hang around the fair when it came to town.

Multicolored lights played over the midway, lighting up the night like a fantastical imaginary kingdom. Josiah laughed, almost as if he were a boy again, letting the lights play over his face. But as soon as he did a mighty squeal like a thousand hogs in rut went out. His fan base, shiny eyed with flaccid porcine faces, stood just beyond the barricades, making their presence known to him immediately. He ducked back inside the bus, sudden anger flaring that they’d intruded upon him yet again. The Dark Man whispered to him that he should take care of them, flay the lot of them, leave a trail of bloody corpses across the midway. At the same time a calmer voice spoke in his head, soothing and angelic, urging him to be nice to them. They didn’t have a clue what they were doing and they meant well, the voice urged.

If the Dark Man was party to all the blackness in his soul then just as surely the Angel urged Josiah to do what was right. He sighed, giving in to the Angel and trudged back outside, going to the barricade to sign autographs, pose for photographs and receive the gifts of the crowd. There were the usual nuts out there, the ones that followed him from place to place, seeming to have no life other than to trek around the hinterlands of the United States for Josiah’s endless tour of State Fairs and bars. He always wondered how they could afford it all, especially when he looked at the itemized statements from his accountant. The amount of dough it took to run the tour day to day seemed impossibly astronomical sometimes. How did they afford it?

The kids tagging along with their fat mommas made Josiah the saddest. Tiny sad faces peering out at him like hostages to insanity. What type of mother drug their kid to see a rock singer in a bar in the middle of the night? He’d seen kids standing on the bar at venues so they could see, kept up to all hours of the day and night, looking confused, bedraggled and unkempt while the mother shrieked and screamed for his attention.

The worst were the fans, their mothers. They reminded Josiah of his own mother. Corpulent and sweaty. Granted they didn’t run around clad in thin cotton house dresses but most of them weighted well over two hundred pounds, middle aged and jowly. Josiah just did not get it. Why were they all so fixated on him? On rock and roll? He tried to do nothing that encouraged them but he also tried not to piss them off. They’d driven his freshman CD up to platinum sales. Still, it would have been nice to look out over the audience some time and see age appropriate fans, not a see of lardy ladies dressed like their were nineteen again.

Josiah was disturbed to note a rotund mother with three small children smashed against the fencing. The mother stopped in her attention getting tactics to smack the youngest child and shake him hard for crying like that. The crowd surged forward and Josiah could see that the kids were becoming even more frightened so he called out harshly for the crowd to back off, stop mashing the children.

By the time Josiah and one of the security guards made it back to the bus he was exhausted and oh so done, over it all. He wished he could abandon his bus and fly back to his condo in LA. At least he’d scored enough bread from the first tour to buy a decent place to live, no more squatted in abandoned buildings or cheap apartments.

Joe, the burly security guard that traveled with the band asked Josiah, “Hey, what do you want me to do with this load of crap?”

Josiah could see the large stack of things Joe toted, scrapbooks filled with endless photos of himself along with poorly written poetry being the most given item. What use for those things would he ever have? Josiah sighed in frustration and said, “Wait till the fans leave for the stage and toss the whole lot of them in the nearest trash bin.”

Joe nodded, he asked but he knew the drill. Scrapbooks went into the trash along with fan t-shirts and jewelry and other odd bits. Teddy bears and toys were handed over to the local promoter with the instructions that they were to be given to the children’s ward at the local hospital.

The rest of the band reluctantly awoke, in various stages of hangovers and went out to do the sound check. More fan screams met their departing the bus for the stage area. Josiah stayed behind on the bus. He didn’t want to encourage his fans any more than he already had. He sat at his usual seat on the bus and listened to the noise of the midway, the grinding of machine motors powering the Tilt o whirl and the Roller coaster, the musical notes of the calliope, the come on of the carnival barkers and he wished he could be out there, looking at the lights, eating a corn dog. Something normal. Whoever had said be careful what you wish for was absolutely correct.

By the time Josiah and his band hit the stage the crowd surrounding the stage had grown to completely engulf the area. There were heads as far as the eyes could see. As he strapped on his guitar he could see the usual assortment of his most vocal fans pressed up right against the stage. And, Dear God, they were wearing their freakish beaver hats, hats that looked like a disemboweled beaver on their heads. At some point during the “American Star” competition some of his fans had named themselves ‘Josiah’s Eager Beavers’. Now they showed up at each and every show wearing those stupid hats, sometimes with fake beaver teeth. Sometimes they held up obscene signs at the concerts, not caring that the other fans didn’t seem to like it, or that there were children in the crowd.

As Josiah strode forward, to the edge of the stage to greet the crowd the voices in his head raged again. The Dark Man demanded he step on their fingers that were eagerly gripping the stage edge or that he spit in their faces. The Angel counseled grace, grace and gentleness as the band launched into their first song.

The vibe from the crowd was good and Josiah and the band plowed through their nightly repertory of songs like the only world that existed was right there on the stage. Sometimes when the music was right, everything clicked together like a well oiled machine. That feeling was what Josiah lived for, that feeling of ultimate bliss where nothing else existed. That was Josiah’s drug, no alcohol, no narcotic could come close. This is why he did it.

The problem was that when it was good, that good, it took Josiah and some of his band mates a long time to come down from it. Adrenaline pumping, energy shooting arcs throughout your central nervous system, raring to go again. On those nights coming down wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Josiah could fully understand why great classic rock bands made trashing hotel rooms an art form back in the sixties and seventies when most towns rolled up their sidewalks at six pm. There was nothing open after the gig and all this excess energy to burn off. Which lead to drinking, drugs and groupie banging.

Most of the guys in the band slipped out to the late night carnival, knowing that they could ride the bumper cars and roller coasters mostly unaccosted by the fans. He knew that his bassist Alex would get drunk on the cheap beer and maybe demand a blow job or two from what ever lurking fans there were nearby.

Instead of heading back to his room on the bus, Josiah made the snap decision to swipe Mo’s jacket and hat. With the much bigger man’s long jacket and fedora it wasn’t likely that any of the lurking Beavers would know who he was.

‘Let them find you and then just mete out exactly what those cunts deserve..” the Dark Man whispered as Josiah bounded down the metal steps of the bus. Josiah shook his head, it wouldn’t do to follow what the Dark Man said and end up in prison even if he also knew that the pressure inside was getting too intense. He’d have to do something soon to shut it down for awhile.
For a long time no one approached Josiah. He was able to get a corn dog and candy apple without anyone recognizing him as tonight’s headliner. He rode various rides, even taking a turn under the brightly lit canopy of the bumper cars. No one suspected. It was the most fun he’d had since those long ago days playing in the forests of Mississippi. He whooped and yelled as the roller coaster cut magic manic circles through the chilly air, laughing like a child.

It was only when Josiah made his way over to a deserted set of portajohns that someone intruded on his evening. He had just barely entered the farthest portable toilet, lowered his pants and started to take a dump with the door popped open and one of his more vocal fans entered, closing the door behind her. It was just the two of them in this tiny fetid box of a rest room. “Lady, what are you doing?” Josiah growled menacingly as the Dark Man put evil thoughts in his head.

She jumped up and down, the floor shaking and rattling, from all that blubber bouncing up and down. “It’s you! It’s YOU! IT’S YOU!!”

But the Angel whispered calmly, lovingly in the back of his mind, “Peace, she just wants a few moments of your time.”

The Dark Man shouted over top of the Angel’s words, “Kill the bitch!”

Josiah tried to remain calm in being interrupted at this most intimate of moments, “Look, please, please, wait outside and I’ll talk to you, sign anything you want.. Alright?” he wheedled in his charming of voices.

Her spandex leggings and home made t-shirt proclaiming all her love for Josiah strained to the limit as she shouted anew, “It’s You!”

He stared in horrified fascination at her mountainous belly and straining breasts the size of cantaloupes. Her hair was a mess and she wore no makeup on her mottled skin. Middle aged sag head to toe with a moon like face.

Suddenly Josiah remembered seeing this lady earlier in the day, seeing three small children, aged perhaps nine, seven and five or under, being pressed up against the barricade as this woman shouted out at him. He could not help but ask, “Where are your children?”

She squealed again and replied, “They’re sleeping in the van.” and with that this mystery woman reached for his exposed crotch.

Josiah jumped backwards rapidly, avoiding her touch and what happened next occurred as crazy feelings surged over him. It was the culmination of months of being stalked by freaks and weirdoes without any outlet to deal with these pressures. He whipped around behind this nameless Beaver, grabbed her with one hard muscle laden arm while he wiped his bare hand over his still dirty ass. Forcing her towards the gaping hole of the portable bathroom towards the stench of a million pieces of shit floating in gallons of strangers piss he wiped his shit laden hand over her mouth and nose.

He whispered into her ear, not in his usual soft voice, or the voice of authority he sang with, but with a voice that sounded like it was from the pit of hell. “Is this what you wanted? To be up my ass? How do you like the way my shit smells? Stinks, doesn’t it?”

She may have outweighed him by a good one hundred pounds or more but his insane rage gave Josiah the strength of a mad man. As she started to weep and struggle Josiah held her even more tightly, clamping one large hand over her mouth and nose, forcing her ever closer to the stench filled hole. A loud buzzing of a million angry voices swarmed through his mind and Josiah felt the woman start to retch but he held her fast, not allowing her to take a breath or puke. She shook fiercely until suddenly going slack from inhaling her own vomit. His glee grew as she neared death. By the time Josiah lowered her body over the toilet seat she was already dead.

He stood straighter and smiled. All the tension that had been pulsing through his body was gone, just like that. A new lightness was there and he sighed contentedly. Josiah left the portalet, taking a paper towel to wipe down any handle he might have touched. He took the time to jerry rig the door to the occupied position. He walked out into the fields and wiped the excrement from his hands on the grass before heading back to the bus.

Killing the bitch had birthed a new type of excitement in the marrow of his bones, akin to how some people described their orgasms or reaching the summit of a tall mountain. That hag would be missed by no one and her children better off in foster care than being drug everywhere like dogs.

Back at the hotel watching the midnight local news there had been a report of the mysterious abandonment of three young children in a van once the fair closed and the parking lot emptied. Police were asking anyone with information on who the children were and where they were from to come forward and reported the three had been placed together in an emergency foster care family. Josiah smiled, yes, yes, he’d done the right thing and rescued those kids from their evil neglectful grasping cunt mother.

Between Heaven & Hell Part 3

The room wasn’t fancy, in fact he’d seen nicer rooms at the Y than this rolling flop house. Everything vinyl or plastic in shades of gray. Josiah took off his sneaks and lay back, throwing one thin arm over his eyes as he sought to sleep, get away from the voices in his head and the memories.

But sleep never came for Josiah, there was no respite from the voices in his head. Tension thrummed through his body and he knew he’d have to find a release and soon before he lost control. Mayor Jenkins was the last time he’d done that thing that always brought him release. Since winning American Star Josiah had fought to keep his urges under control. He was a celebrity now and well, you know, he couldn’t go around meting out divine punishment willy nilly because all eyes were on him now

But he only hunted predators, those that preyed on the weaker and the smaller. In some ways Josiah Smith felt this was his holiest of missions. His real calling. God knows the music wasn’t his calling.

In the back of his mind Josiah knew that the music he made was meaningless, inconsequential. His singing and guitar playing was no better or worst than that of a million other singer songwriters out there relentlessly plugging away in the bar scene. Just as he’d been during those long years between leaving Mississippi for Los Angeles and winning American Star.

His problem was the same problem of those million others playing the bar scene. They all sounded the same, with their songs of angst and heartbreak and irony. Josiah was painfully aware that the production staff at 7 Entertainment, owners and producers of the show, had forced his musical direction into that most calculated to sell the most records. They’d cared nothing for his own thoughts on the process, the sound he wanted, the image he wanted to project. It had been as cut and dried as turning out sausages or toilet seats.

As a result Josiah was both proud and ashamed of his first CD self titled “Josiah” The CD was filled with pop music, angry white boy music in the vein of every emo band of the last ten years. Now the production values were first rate. 7 Entertainment spared no expense or talent in the recording. The problem was it just wasn’t who he was.

At first management had put the full force of the powerful 7 Entertainment publicity machine behind him. Josiah had done an endless tour of morning shows, entertainment interviews and guest spots. Premieres, happenings. Hell, Josiah had walked the red carpet in a designer suit for the first time in his life. His posters were everywhere. One night the head of 7 Entertainment took him out on the town, turning the powerful sports car they rode in a parking space just so Josiah could gaze rapt at his own self. 7 Entertainment had taken out a huge billboard overlooking Sunset Strip in LA, a huge Josiah holding his Fender guitar over his head in triumph. That night had been even more exciting that the night he won the show. The label gave him his own expensive sports car as a bonus for going multi platinum. He only wished his Momma could have seen his victory.

Josiah‘s mind kept turning back to Mississippi, and his Momma. He loved her, he hated her. He loved nothing about Mississippi. Josiah only held hate for that hellish place he’d grown up in. The social class and monetary distinctions of Mississippi couldn’t have been more divisive and stringent that those of Calcutta or Victorian England. Because his mother was a woman from a good family that had lowered herself to marry someone from the wrong side of the tracks and to then return as she was seemed to be an unforgivable sin in Chattawah.

He’d suffered through the years because his poor Momma couldn’t seem to pull herself together after being abandoned by her Naval Aviator husband. She would only creep from the trailer to get her Tabs and Parliaments or to check on their welfare payments.

It wasn’t like there weren’t others in the community on government assistance, because there were, plenty actually. By the time Josiah started school he knew who in his class was and wasn’t because of the lunches, the free lunches. At least by the time Josiah started public school it didn’t matter so much if Momma was having a spell. He’d get to school in time enough to have breakfast followed by a hearty lunch. Soon enough the lunch ladies caught onto the fact that sometimes Josiah didn’t get much to eat at home and before long he’d started stopping by the cafeteria before getting on the dusty school bus for home. The ladies had packed up enough leftovers in a brown paper bag for him to have for dinner during those times when Momma locked herself into the bedroom with gin, candy and novels.

The reason that others in the town whispered behind lace curtains what a shame it all was about him and his Momma was because of who her family had been. Momma’s granddaddy had once been the richest man in town, richer than Mayor Jenkins. He’d owned a textile factory and other businesses but during the depression he’d lost everything, the factories, the businesses, everything from the farm that their trailer set upon. Even as he’d lost it all and was reduced to farming he still had the respect of the community and the family lived modestly for many years, like everyone else but still traced their lineage back generations. His grandmother was still a member of the Junior League and the Eastern Star. They still held prominent social positions in town.

When his momma, Lillian Smith, returned to town and didn’t settle into the Junion League or even attempt a job working at the five and dime or as a secretary somewhere but moved the dilapidated trailer on the property. Besides throwing aside all social niceties and traditions of her family Lillian had also committed the unpardonable sin of signing her mother into the Mississippi Lunatic Asylum. Her mother had slipped into early dementia but instead of move into the big farmhouse to care for her mother, his Momma had chosen to plead poverty and dump her in the state facility instead.

One of the worst aspects of life in a small southern town was not only did everyone know your business, everyone chose to add colorfully to it, false or true. Whispers went around saying Josiah’s daddy had never married his mother and that made him a bastard. People wouldn’t let their kids near Josiah. When he encountered a child in town their parents would draw them away as if Josiah was contaminated or contagious.

Going to school hadn’t stopped it either. None of the kids in the class would have much to do with him. His teacher was kind but she was the only one. Others would taunt him about his mother and how poor they were. Josiah clearly remembered that first Christmas at school, sitting at his desk wondering how to tell Teacher that he had no present to give for the class gift exchange. His teacher had stopped by his desk, bent down and slipped a small package into his hand with a whispered, “Don’t tell anyone. I knew you haven’t had a chance to buy a gift for the exchange and I happen to haven an extra!” He’d felt hopeful, grateful, ashamed and humiliated all at the same time.

In the hell that his school years were the teachers he had all seemed to conspire to make sure he had extra help. They enlisted the lunch ladies and some of the organizations in town too. Every year he was in school Josiah knew he could count on being called into the office on the last day of school before Christmas break and being handed a paper bag with his name on it. The bag always held a new set of dress up clothes, right down to socks and underwear and shoes in his sizes. There were a few toys and candies as well as a certificate for food at the local Piggly Wiggly. Every Thanksgiving brought a full turkey dinner with all the fixings from the Kiwanis club and every new school year clothes and supplies through a local church. Christmas was the big haul, not only did several local churches give them food but the Lions club, social services and churches gave him presents and clothes. Listening to his classmate brag about what they’d gotten for their Christmas gifts was one of the few times Josiah felt on equal footing with them. Many of the things they bragged of receiving were also part and parcel of his gifts.

Easter brought more food and candy from the civic organizations. There was always a glistening ham and all the side dishes. Momma made an effort to bestir herself and try to act more normal during holidays. Sometimes she even cleaned the trailer spotless instead of the slovenly half assed condition it was usually in. She fixed her hair, she put on a clean house dress and hummed in the kitchen while fixing their feast.

The problem with Josiah’s school years and his Momma and her spells was summer vacation.

Part 2

Scary looking men had hissed from dark shadows and somewhere in the distance someone moaned and someone else shrieked. Rubber wheels squeaked and nurses attired all in white like ghosts silently padded up and down the halls. People sat still with dead eyes like zombies on the nearby benches. A very frightening place, with one exception.

He’d gotten a glimpse of the kids that made it their home. Josiah had spied a parched grassy square just outside of the glass paned doors opening out to the back of the massive building. There, beneath the Gothic arched overhangs of the immense granite building there’d been a playground enclosed with a rusting sagging chain length fence.

He’d not known at the time that the playground wasn’t much, a dilapidated swing set, a bent slide and a deflated tether ball at the end of a rope. Josiah had only seen playgrounds and hordes of playing children on television. Momma kept him at her side as much as she could, complaining copiously when he’d befriended the sharecroppers boy down the dirt track from their trailer. She’d walloped Josiah with an electrical cord and ranted loudly about the evils of race mixing, calling his new friend a ‘neeg-grah’ and ‘pick-a-ninny’, both words Josiah had never heard before. After that whipped Josiah learned to keep his companionship at playtime with The Dark Man.

But the sight of all those children playing tether ball, running, laughing, playing on the battered old seesaw and swings had thrilled Josiah to no end. And from the depths of his loneliness he dared give voice to his desires for friends. He turned to his Momma and begged, “Momma, please, please, can I go play wit’ those kids?”

His mother paused in her task of clumsily applying her new tube of lipstick before a cracked mirror in the lobby and turned to him, puzzled, “Whatever for, sugah?”

Josiah didn’t know exactly what was wrong with his question, with what he wanted but he could feel his mother’s disapproval already. He muttered out, “Because I want to..” looking miserable at the scuffed too big tennis shoes his Momma bought at the Salvation Army store.

“Iffen you wanted te go hop off the top of the Empire State Buildin’ do you think I oughta let you?” Momma had queried, a deep frown forming on the puffy surface of her moon shaped face.

He couldn’t speak, looking from his second hand shoes to the kids still capering about joyously just outside the doors.

Momma stood up straight, and placed her fisted hands on her hips before thundering, “You think I’ma gonna let you ass-so-cee-ate with a loada crack pot offspring and mental dee-feck-tiffs you gotta another thing comin’! You know why they put those kids ina here? They bad! They bad little kids nobody ever wanted. You wanna be like them? They evil rubs off on you, like cooties and the next thin’ you knows I’ll havta sign you in here for the rest of your LIFE! You wanna live here?”

People were starting to stare now. The snooty looking lady at the reception desk paused, telephone receiver forgotten in her hand, while still others visibly drew back from Josiah and his Momma. “No, Momma, No!” he whispered forcefully, silent tears sliding down his cheeks.

Caught in his long ago memories Josiah muttered, “No Momma, No!”

The elderly bus driver Mo turned around and gruffly barked, “What? What?? Do you need something Mr. Smith?” before snapping back forward, eyes to the road.

For one long moment Josiah Smith stared at the back of the bus driver, taking in the grizzled grey hair sheared Marine short. The more Josiah looked the more fixated he became with the pulsing vein on the side of Mo’s neck. Oh how easy it would be to reach over with an iron grip and squeeze, squeeze all the life of out Mo, watch as his face purpled and horror entered his dying eyes at the knowledge that this smiling genial younger man was robbing him of his very life.

“Do it, do it now. The bus will go out of control and kill all of them..” came from inside Josiah, whispers from The Dark Man. Equally quick came the calming voice calling, “This man only wants to help you. Don’t end his life, you’re better than that Josiah.”

Josiah sighed, giving in to his angel and he muttered, “No Mo.. Nothings wrong.. I was just napping and having a weird dream.. That’s all.”

Mo looked at him like he was insane before turning back to the road and lighting up another Marlboro, hacking a big nasty smokers cough. The cough of a lifetime sucking down filtered cigs.

It seemed like much of Josiah’s life had been spent in a haze of cigarette smoke that was not his own. Sometimes, like now, the smell became overwhelming, reminding him of the years he spent in that stinking cramped mobile home with his grotesque mother. He remembered how it had permeated all of his clothing and books. Sometimes the kids at school had teased him, called him the Marlboro Man. He bet they were all sorry now, sorry they’d been so mean to him through the years now that he was a tv star and musical artist. How many of them had purchased his freshman CD after he won the American Star competition and bragged that they went to school with him? How many pretended to strangers to be best buds with him? Fuckin’ Marlboro Man.

One of the later episodes of “American Star” had been filmed in his home town of Chattawah, Mississippi. Cheering crowds with signs greeted him and for one small instant Josiah knew something of what the Beatles must have felt when they first deplaned in New York city for their first American Tour. No one called him any of the names they’d have for him through the years, no shouts of Freak, no gibes about his mother being fatter than Elvis, no reminders of his years being tormented by the town bullies. For once he was the returning prodigal son arriving in triumph. Josiah didn’t know if he should laugh or rale at these freaking hypocrites. Instead he’d simply smiled and waved for the crowds and the cameras of “American Star”

Even Josie Tutwiler, the prom queen who’d laughed in his face the one time he’d dared to speak to her, was gushing about how great he was. The moronic cretins on the football squad were filmed telling all of America that Josiah Smith was their best friend and the pride of Chattawah, a favorite son.

The mayor presented him with a key to this shit hole burg before giving a speech expressing civic pride in Josiah. The same mayor who’d called him a ‘snot nosed punk’ back when he was working at the local barbeque juke joint bussing tables. Another hypocrite.

That night as the mayor slept Josiah had done a very bad thing. But he’d done it so skillfully that the local cops and coroner ruled that the mayor had died of cardiac arrest in the night.

It wasn’t the first time Josiah had given in to the voice of The Dark Man in his mind and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But he had to admit the little episode had been vastly satisfying, powerful even. Certainly he’d felt powerful when he’d been astride the mayor’s prone body as the older heavier man had been bucking like a sunfish on a lure. As Josiah pressed the feather pillow over the other man’s face he’d felt like God. It was the ultimate high he felt when suddenly the large man stopped fighting and went utterly limp.

Afterward he’d lifted a beer from the fridge of his victim and he’d savored his payback. Josiah sat across the room from the bed in a floral sprigged wingback chair, drinking in not just the beer but all that he’d done that night.

He never could sleep after gigs and sometimes this was the perfect nightcap. As Josiah slipped out of the back door he could feel tiredness starting to overtake him. He’d sleep well for the first time in months tonight. Evading his handlers and keepers for a final visit with an old enemy was the tricky part.

Josiah chuckled at the look of surprise on the mayor’s face when he’d tickled the other man awake with a feather under his nose before proceeding to kill him. The man’s last words had been a surprised, “You!” Laughing Josiah had lowered his handsome face even closer to Mayor Jenkins and said, “Surprised? Payback is a big dirty bitch.”

The truth was that during his late high school years when Josiah had been bussing tables Mayor Jenkins had made The Squeal his regular stop. Jenkins been sleeping with one of the waitresses, smutty and middle aged Bernice, since before he’d placed his long suffering wife Millie in a rest home. Jenkins would show up at The Squeal and hang around man handling the waitresses, pinching butts and lording it over everyone there that he was the richest guy in town and the mayor. Josiah had been on the receiving end of Mayor Jenkin’s jokes and rants too many times as the only son of the town’s poorest oddballs. Many, many times Josiah had dreamed of what it would be like to choke the life out of Mayor Jenkins.

A methodic search of the late mayor’s home had only turned up some ancient porn and worthless mementos of a life lived in this tiny burg. It was one of the few times Josiah took no souvenir of his kill. He laughed at the thought of the silly looking Playboys from the 1960s he’d found in the mayor’s closet.

Mo turned back again and said to Josiah, “You oughtta try to hit the rack for awhile. You’re in for a long drive today.”

Nodding his agreement Josiah got up and made his way back to the small private bedroom in the very back of the bus. His privileged status as the headliner earned him his own tiny room instead of a single bunk with only a curtain separating him from the drummers farts and the snores of the others.

Another Year, Another Nano - Between Heaven & Hell

The road unwound like a silver grey ribbon in front of the tour bus. Mile after mile of flat landscape, towns that looked almost abandoned, like prosperity had never graced these parts. Houses, churches, stores with the patina of poverty slid by in a haze of sameness. The customized bus flew through this depressing landscape like an ocean liner parting the fetid waters of a blighted and polluted sea.

Inside the bus there was no real distractions from the road. A number of young men with long hair and unkempt appearances played a raucous game of cards over beer and chips. Of their number only one sat alone near a bus window and stared morosely at the world outside.

That lone man sighed and closed his eyes, leaning further back remembering that not too long ago he headlined in good-sized arenas. None of this county fair bar scene crap. Sometimes it seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d won the competition and started this endless round of recording music and then touring to promote the music.

Anyone looking through the window of the bus would have noticed immediately that Josiah Smith was handsome, attractive in a very middle American corn-fed every man way. His jaw line was rugged and shaggy dark brown hair exploded in a shoulder length cascade of waves and the occasional ringlet. A masculine face with a cherubic cloud of hair. Josiah was average height, average build and his brown eyes looked like those of a million others Through the years he’d carefully cultivated his every man appearance, seeking to hide what was within him. The daily internal struggles at great odds with his harmless countenance.

To his adoring fans Josiah was like a God. He could do no wrong and at every stop on the tour he was greeted by a die hard cadre of the most fanatical. Too bad most of them were fat old hags that not even his ever horny drummer wouldn’t tool even when stoned out of his gourd.

But Josiah knew he wasn’t a God. If anything Josiah knew he was a demon, or had a demon and an angel constantly grappling for control of his mind. On days like today, quiet days rolling down the road to the next gig on this never ending tour, his thoughts took him places he didn’t want to go, down into Hell.

The card players hooted as someone made a big bet and someone else challenged during the daily poker game. Every day it was the same, drinking, eating, poker playing degenerating into teasing and laughter. The noise of it all grated on Josiah’s brain. He never participated in the game and on days like today he could imagine gleefully slitting the throats of the players, imagine their lifeless forms dripping with coagulating blood.

Immediately Josiah tried to push that tempting thought away, shooting a quick glance over to the players to see if anyone picked up on his very thoughts. But none of them seemed to realize only a moment before that Josiah, the singer they’d all been hired to back, had momentarily harbored murderous thoughts towards them.

As the bassist, a tall lanky blonde of about twenty five years old named Alex, started to fall out of his chair Josiah realized that half his band was drunk again. He sighed loudly in irritation. Great, just great, he thought. Any minute the guys would start to stagger off drunkenly to their bunks in the bus and futilely try to sleep off the boozing. They’ll get a few hours of shut eye, awaken half wasted and confused and awkwardly lope through a half assed performance, all the while blaming it on feeling unwell for no reason. Another fucked up part of Josiah’s life.

And they’d leave Josiah alone with his angel and his demon. The worst torment of all.

Eventually all seven of the guys filed back to the bunks. Josiah closed his eyes as they passed, feigning sleep just so he didn’t have to make small talk. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the guys in his band, It was more that it just simply took too much energy for him to make the effort. Plus sometimes when the angel and the demon started battling in his mind he wasn’t always sure what was real or unreal, appropriate or wrong. Like the time he’d been five and didn’t yet self censor, thinking all he experienced was alright.

Josiah remembered a bright sunny morning in the woods of his boyhood home in Chattawah, Mississippi. He’d been in the forest playing with the dark shadowy man in the shadows of the tall loblolly pines.

His mother and he had lived in an ancient mobile home a few miles outside the city limits of Chattawah. The trailer the only thing that survived the long ago wreckage of his parent’s short lived marriage. He’d seen the photos of his mother Delta, a slim and beautiful young woman, with that of his father. Josiah had no memories of his father beyond those lone photographs. His momma told him that his father had been an airman at the near by Naval Air Station who’d left for advanced training on the Puget Sound and had never returned to Mississippi.

Now as an adult he realized his mother had hidden her frustrations and her sadness, stuffed them down with food. Josiah could not remember a time when his mother weighed below four hundred pounds. She shuffled around the turquoise sided trailer in a cheap floral print house dress and flip flops from Kmart, collecting welfare checks and food stamps and SSI.

That day Josiah had lost track of time, he’d gone farther and farther into the pine scented woods, laughing and chasing that elusive dark man who’d been with him as far back as he could remember. Momma had told him to come back to the trailer for his mid morning snack of Twinkles and cola before they left for town. Momma was out of diet drinks and cigarettes again. She always had a Tab in one hand and a Parliament cigarette in the other.

But in the forest there was no sense of time under the soaring canopy of the loblollies. There were places of shadow, of deep darkness where the sun of late spring never penetrated. He’d chased The Dark Man and then the man had chased him. They played hide and seek for a long time. But Josiah had forgotten he was supposed to be home quickly. By the time he looked up and squinted at the few shafts of light penetrating the long deep green needles of the pines it was late, maybe as late as noon. The Dark Man tried to persuade him to stay and play but Josiah knew he had to head home before his momma had one of her spells.

Momma in a spell wasn’t a good thing, she’d take to her bed, staying locked in there for days on end. She’d eat boxes of candy, weep, read romance novels and drink some funny smell clear liquid called Gin. When she got like that Josiah had to fend for himself, living on whatever food he could scrounge up. The last time his Momma had a spell he’d ended up digging through the trash behind the Piggly Wiggly and Johnsons Rexall for thrown away food. One of the local deputies caught him and took him back to the trailer, telling his Momma she had to pull herself together or they’d take him off to foster care or to the Mississippi Lunatic Home. That threat had jolted Momma out of her stupor. She took more care after that to at least emerge a couple of times a day to make sure Josiah was alright.

Josiah ran as fast as he could, speeding up as he neared the trailer, ignoring the calls of The Dark Man. As he stepped into the clearing he could see that Momma was waiting for him, wearing a clean house dress with fancy town shoes, her hair trimmed with fake for get me nots, white gloves on her hands as she primly clutched her pocketbook. That old peahen from down the road at the big white house, Mrs. Jackson, sat in her car. Josiah could see the pursed frowns on both womens faces. The set look on his Momma’s rouged lips scared him as he ran up panting and shouted out, “Momma.. I’m sorry, I lost track of time.”

Momma glared at him and said tersely, “Get in the car”

As they’d driven away in the old rattletrap Lincoln Josiah had said to the adults, “I was playing with the Dark Man and forgot we had to get to the store.”

Mrs Jackson’s lined face took on a whole new set of wrinkles as she frowned in confusion before snapping at his Momma, “Delta, are you still entertaining this boy’s nonsense about haints and spooks?”

Momma’s face had taken on a dark color, like a bruised plum and she’d grabbed his arm and squeezed as hard as she could, nails painted bright red and cutting a line of bleeding half moons into his flesh as she hissed, “Boy, you ever talk about that ridiculous crap again and I’ll leave you at the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum myself. Do you understand?”

As she spoke those final words she’d increased the pressure of her nails until Josiah thought he might black out. He didn’t trust his voice because the pain was so intense if he opened his mouth he would shriek. So he nodded yes to his Momma until she let go.

They’d once gone to see Momma’s own mother, his grandmother, at the asylum and Josiah still had nightmares about the place. A large crumbling edifice near Jackson, Mississippi. It looked like something out of a monster movie, one of those movies that starred a haunted house in the rain. And it wasn’t much better inside, long gray corridors smelling like pee and disinfectant and tiny rooms without air conditioning only holding a small hospital bed. He’d gotten a glimpse of the kids that made it their home.

Karma Day 25. Will I Make It?

When I entered college I traded rural Mississippi for rural western mountainous Maryland. It was a big change for me in many ways but in some ways nothing changed. I studied hard when not in class and I worked as much as I could at a nearby pizza joint. Nose to the grindstone, no time for the kind of social interaction. Just like high school I didn’t date, I stayed home or worked. I knew I struck my dorm room mates as a stick in the mud but I didn’t care. I had my eyes focused on a future that didn’t include food stamps or having to make do and no handsome flirty boy or booze was going to derail that. Besides, I’d seen first hand where that lead from my days living with my momma.

The biggest change for me was losing the musical cadences of the various southern drawls of Mississippi and losing the melody of the passing trains. That unique southern music left my live. I felt as if I had invaded yankee land, going up north past the Mason Dixon line.

Plus it was cold, colder than anything I’d ever experienced in Mississippi. The coat I brought was perfectly serviceable in Mississippi but here in the Allegany mountains the fall wind cut right through it like I was wearing mere newspaper. That first winter I suffered from chill blains most cruelly even if I was thrilled to see snow for the first time.

All four years I studied at the Catholic college in Maryland slid by in a haze of work and school. I took the train home every holiday to see my grandmother and took occasional weekend side trips to Baltimore and Washington.

By the time I’d met Michael I was one year out of college and working in Silver Spring, Maryland as an OR nurse. I’d settled into a nice life in suburban Maryland, buying a new car and furnishing my first apartment with furniture from Ikea.

We had a very quick romance, going from dating to engaged to married in just under a year. In fact, we married on opening weekend at the Renaissance fair dressed in period clothing. After sending my grandmother copies of the wedding photos I got a lengthy letter telling me that this was just simply not done. You do not marry at a fair! I laughed reading her shocked words as she clucked over the fact that I’d trampled on her precious etiquette during my wedding.

I lay on Marvelette’s sofa and tried to figure out what had gone so terrible wrong between Michael and I. Those first years together we got along so well, so much in love. Michael and I bought a condo in Crystal City and planned a life together that looked bright.

The only dark cloud on the horizon was that Michael completely cut his family from his life. He complained that since he’d left law school they’d been dunning him for every dime that they could. I tried to never mention Michael’s family to him because it only put him in a terrible mood. It was five years before I had a chance to meet his parents.

And then I got pregnant after we’d been married for five years. We had never discussed having kids, it was just one of those things that seemed to loom way off in the future, a some day occurrence but not now. I’d been on the pill but ended up pregnant anyway. I remember the night I told Michael we were going to be parents.

The whole subject made me nervous because we’d never really talked about having a family so I had prepared to tell him the news carefully. I made sure the condo was immaculate and that I’d prepared all of Michael’s favorite foods right down to triple chocolate cake. I took care with my hair and makeup and I wore the dress Michael loved the most, form fitting, slinky and black.

But not matter how carefully I prepared he still flew into a rage when I told him we were to be parents and accused me of planning this to tie him down to responsibility. But after a few days he came around and said it would be good to start a family, in fact, we should look for a new larger home, something in the Virginia countryside, invest the money from the sale of my grandmother’s home. Which led to another fight.

Michael had been after me to do something with the money for months now. Once my grandmother had passed on her possessions had all been left to me. There wasn’t much to be had, some of her ancient furniture and the house. I packed up some of her things to take home but the majority had been auctioned off. The house sold quickly and I deposited the money in my name only at our bank. Michael was upset with me for not putting his name on it too. It should have been a tipoff, a warning sign but I was too much in love to see anything.

My pregnancy triggered an eighteen month search for just the right home for us. I was adamant I wanted a small farm or a rural homestead while Michael was insisting on a plastic sided house on a cul de sac in one of the thousands of identical neighborhoods encircling Washington DC like the outer rings of Saturn. We fought over what type of home and fought over prices.

Every weekend for months was filled with excursions to all the far flung outlaying regions of the Greater DC area, from southern Rhode Island all the way down to West Virginia and almost to Richmond. I fell in love with the Piedmont region of Virginia, the gracious rolling green hills fenced with white board held some of the finest horse flesh in all of the US with the looming Blue Ridge mountains in the not too far distance. Hard to believe such scenic bucolic landscapes existed within a ninety minute drive of Washington.

But when I first laid eyes on the falling apart farmhouse cobbled together out of an old log cabin I knew I’d found exactly what I wanted. The trouble was convincing Michael. He didn’t mind the drive, but he seemed most to mind that it was a farm. The fact was that Michael didn’t do farming or rural very well. I begged, I pleaded, I threatened but the purchase of what he called sarcastically ‘Tilted Acres’ came down to two things. That it would be much better for our child to be raised in a rural setting as opposed to the gritty inner city childhood he’d experienced and that I would be paying for the entire place with the money from the sale of my grandmothers home.

Through the years as I torn away the uglier updates to our home and redid the floors, pulled the crumbled plaster away from the river rock original fireplace Michael had sneered that the house would never be finished, it would be a perpetual money pit. We fought the hardest on the days Michael perused our checkbook and had seen that I’d spent almost nothing on groceries, getting peanut butter, dried beans and apples, eking out what he called ‘poverty meals’ just so I could pay the plumber and the electrician. He didn’t understand how much I loved it, from the rocky soil to the acreage that spanned gullies and hills to the house that was half traditional farmhouse and half log cabin through the train tracks running in front of the house. The place spoke to me.

Eventually I discovered it was just easier to make the monies I needed for the renovation from the farm. First I tried my hand at making herbal infusions, teas and medicines I’d learned from my grandmother back in rural Mississippi but there was only a limited market for such things, so I supplemented the herbs with hiring myself as painter, a private night nurse and other menial jobs until I settled upon making organic goats milk cheese, soaps, shampoos and lotions from the same goats milk and growing exotic vegetables for the gourmet restaurants of DC in my large garden. The problem was I was still working my day job at the hospital.

A few years of expensive day care combined with Michael suddenly finding religion led to me quitting my job as a nurse and becoming a full time wife, mother, home remodeled and part time farmer. We both agreed it would be for the best and Michael kept saying that as the head of the household under Biblical law he should be the breadwinner while I should be in my primary role of mother. I didn’t argue because I was exhausted from several years of trying to do it all.

I had to keep my business activities limited to what I could produce from the farm, the goats milk products, the herbs, the natural candles I made and the boutique fruits and veggies.

Michael’s sudden conversion to radical evangelical Christianity puzzled me and at first I was reluctant to join him, not even wanting to visit the church when he attended the Sunday services. But he kept nagging me to join him and it seemed like a good way to make friends in the new area we lived in. So I joined him, a non-believer in a sea of the righteous.

I still to this day do not know exactly what happened to Michael. Every time I asked him why he suddenly started believing in God and wanting to go to church he clammed up. Whatever had happened to him was powerful and too intimate to talk about. I did notice that a few guys he worked with also attended the church he picked out for us. I suspect they had leaned on him until he’d had a conversion experience.

No matter how I ran the scenario in my mind I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what had happened. It was just too unbelievable.

It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t believe in God. I just hadn’t been raised in the church. My only real acquaintance with religion had been my years with the nuns. I could recite all of the Catholic liturgy from years attending Mass before classes. But I just didn’t get that God was as involved with everyone’s day to day lives as all the Jesus freaks claimed. God was in some distant place lofty and removed, too busy with bother with the lives of mere mortals. He didn’t care if you have toast or doughnuts for breakfast because He was engaged in some enormous struggle between good and evil, not our piss ant little lives.

Strange as it seemed, Michael, handsome Michael, vain Michael, competitive Michael turned into a regular Charlie Church. Every Wednesday night found him at Bible study, every weekend he was either helping out with one of the church’s many ministries or attended conferences and every Sunday the day was filled with church, church, church. He talked, ate and slept Jesus.

I don’t think I really took Michael entirely serious until he started teaching children’s Sunday School and humbly asked for my forgiveness for his former sins against me. He didn’t explain what he meant by that but after tonight I can well imagine that infidelity was one of them. He wanted us to put the past in the past.

Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We had turned into one of those couples that started bickering in a second and fought over the most petty things. Once Michael was baptized and washed in the blood of the lamb his attempts to bait me into a fight trickled down to nothing and he started treating me in a more kindly fashion. It wasn’t the white hot passionate perfection of the early years of our marriage, it was more like a partnership rooted in the rules preached by the church. But I sometimes missed the passion, missed the making up after the fights, the intense sex all over the house.

At first everyone at Plover Creek seemed frighteningly strange. It wasn’t unusual to hear people praying for minutia guidance from God for such silly simple things as what to eat for lunch that day. And it frightened me just how many uneducated women were insisting that you only home school your children because public school was a cesspool of liberal thinking. Eventually I found myself joining in on the worship service and feeling a strange sensation, almost like a heaviness, a presence of someone else with me.

But I wasn’t entirely convinced until one night when I heard an audible voice telling me to come unto Him while I was silently praying one night alone out of the porch. I started to have a two way internal dialogue with the divine.

How do you not believe in the face of that? It’s not possible. I started on a path that led me closer every day into the presence of the heavenly.

The biggest miracle was that Michael stopped drinking entirely And smoking. No amount of pleading from me that he was making Jay’s asthma worse by smoking around him had any affect but somehow our new church did. He gutted it out and stopped smoking. Michael went to AA and I never saw him drink again. I owed the Lord an enormous debt for those two things because it eased things even more between us.

We entered a phase in our marriage that was the happiest of all times. We did all things faith related, from service to the poor, church attendance, Bible study and prayer as one. Michael quit resenting the fact that I stayed home with Jay and I made every effort to make his life as uncomplicated and tranquil as possible. I did everything, not that I left much undone for him before but now I made just that from the moment Michael awoke in the morning till he lay back in our bed with a sigh there was nothing in our home that need stress him. I look back on those days and can hardly believe how close we were for awhile.

Then after five or six years at Plover Creek things began to change. First, there was a church split over the role of women in leadership in the church. Those that believed it was alright for women to take high level leadership roles such as deacon or elder or minister formed their own church. There were tears, friendships ruined and families split apart. I watched with dismay as various sides alleged all sorts of sinful pride based behaviors that the other side engaged in. I tried not to take sides.

Not Michael, he took it hard, his best friend from work and in the church was appointed pastor of the new fellowship. His friend Lane went from being a deacon at Plover Creek to giving sermons each Sunday and writing the Statement of Purpose of the brand new church Amazing Life. The thing that freaked out Michael the most was that Lane refused to have anything to do with him once the church split happened because Michael hadn’t supported his faction in demanding that women have equal leadership status.

At Amazing Life Lane’s wife, Susan, was his co-pastor. They met in a small room over the old Exxon station in a nearby village and the church consisted of perhaps twenty members at first.

It was several years before anyone at Plover Creek or Amazing Life would have anything to do with each other and even then it was only on bowling league nights on Faith League night at the large bowling alley in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Michael and I hadn’t taken sides in the split but we’d been treated like the enemy anyway. That marked the first time that Michael showed any signs that he wasn’t utterly content with our faith life.

Six months later our church split again. This time it was the people who wanted to have a Holy Ghost experience, a revival atmosphere like that found at Brownsville Assemblies of God or even at the local AoG church. The agitators wanted us to be able to sing and dance in the aisles, laugh, howl, pound tambourines or even speak loudly in tongues.

Michael was the most horrified by their assertion that everyone needed to speak in tongues, that it was our own private prayer language. He ranted loudly about it many times in our house to me, yelling that speaking in tongues was only for back in Bible times, anyone doing it today was only fooling themselves and speaking in nonsensical gibberish.

I wasn’t quite so sure. I’d experienced a few odd things at conferences, like seeing angels and being slain in the spirit so I wasn’t as dismissive of it as he was. Thankfully he never found out that a group of ladies from Plover Creek once had an afternoon get together in the guise of a special Bible study to talk about this and figure out exactly how one went about speaking in tongues. I remember standing there in front of Sister Charlene’s crackling fireplace, opening my chapped lips and waiting, waiting to talk in tongues, waiting for what I knew not exactly.

By the end of the afternoon most of us were tongue less still and concluded it was a load of hooey dreamed up by someone listening more to the devil. Still, a few had ended that afternoon singing and crying and praying in strange phonic sounds like a long dead language. They were fervent believers now and told the rest of us to get with the program or we were going to miss out on heaven and all of God’s gifts.

I remember driving home in a rage, crying hard. I’d wanted all that God had for me. Why didn’t I get it, I’d raged at God, why? Did I do something wrong? Am I stupid? I’d asked Him, hearing nothing for all my pleading.

Michael never even realized I was in an internal turmoil in those days, wanting to believe the revival folks, but afraid to. Not seeing much evidence of what they claimed was the real truth. I stayed spiritually stuck all that winter, spring and summer until the split finally occurred.

When more people left Plover Creek many said good riddance, that most of the women involved in the first and second splits were sinful divorcees that were controlling and going to hell for it. Nothing worse than a controlling woman because manipulation was likened unto witchcraft according to the Bible. Divorcees and controllers burn in hell.

The second split caused those in our fellowship to take a tack more towards the extreme right. The eldest deacon’s wife demanded we cover our heads because St Paul said so and that we wear loose clothing to hide anything that might tempt a man into the sin of lust but still it should be feminine. No pants were allowed and many frustrated days I split wood for our wood burning furnace or drove my tractor wearing long johns covered by a thick flannel cotton petticoat topped by a long skirt and cursed the day we’d all been told pants were of the devil. No amount of tights, long underwear and flannel slip made up for not being allowed pants on the coldest of days.

When each of these new stricter rules had been announced Michael had inwardly seethed but kept an outward lid on his disagreement with them. He only took it out on me, barking out orders at me not to pay any mind to what those mindless holiness ninnies kept inventing in their spare time.

But I didn’t. I did what the church said because I didn’t want to lose my God or my friends. I found myself turning to them ever more as my relationship with Michael floundered into quiet disagreement and he spent more nights working late in the city before staying over in our condo.

My friends assured me if I just stayed a faithful, praying and obedient wife then Michael would eventually see the error of his ways and return to treating me well, with respect, with love again. Even my friends could see there was tension between us now.

I ignored it because I still loved Michael, as much if not more than I did that first moment I spied the handsome fallen knight at the fair. I’d aged, getting fine lines and silvering hair but Michael was even more handsome with a little age on him. I just knew if I stayed sweet and subservient with a true servant heart towards him that this would all blow over, Michael would make his peace with God and turn to me with renewed love and appreciation.

Until September eleventh two thousand and one I was convinced it would happened. My world had been destroyed in one short day.

I can’t say I slept much that long night on Marvelette’s sofa but suddenly sunlight was in my eyes and I felt confused. I sat up and looked around, wondering where I was for a few brief merciful seconds before the memories of the day before returned. I could hear Marvelette getting breakfast ready for her large brood, setting the table, smell the frying bacon and hot coffee. As I stretched I could see that Jay was sitting glumly in a chair across from the sofa staring soberly at me. He asked me, “Is Dad dead?”

With his words I wanted to crumble, to cry, never to get up again but some silent inner preservation mechanism kicked in and I smiled brightly and said, “No way, silly! Dad missed his flight to Los Angeles yesterday because he was stuck in traffic. He decided to go to the condo and take a later flight. I saw him yesterday evening. He’s fine! He’s just got a lot of work in the city so he might not be coming home for a few days. But I bet he calls you today!”

I certainly didn’t feel like the chipper pleasant everything is right with the way I was putting myself across as to Jay but I saw it was exactly what he needed to hear, tears filled his eyes and he said, “You promise? He’s not dead?”

Marvelette cut me a strange look with her eyes and frowned as I laughed out, “Promise, pinky swear.” and Jay and I solemnly crossed pinkies and shook.

It was only later when Marvellette and I sat down over coffee while her children and Jay ran shouting in the yard that I allowed my real feelings to show. Marve said nothing for awhile, she sat drinking her coffee dispassionately watching my sudden tears before saying, “Do you really think that was wise? He’s got to know sooner or later that his father isn’t coming home.”

At that moment I made a decision, one that would cause me heartache for a long time and I said, “He’ll come back, he always does. Michael gets bored with our life, or out of sorts and eventually he returns to our home and our marriage. This is just more of the same.”

Her face was kind as she said, “Look at me,” but I noticed she was firm, her eyes filled with the inescapable truth, “He’s not coming back. He asked you for a divorce. That’s what you told me last night.”

I got up from the table, suddenly eager to be away from Marvelette’s probing eyes, those ice blue eyes that missed nothing, “I was over wrung by the emotion of the day. Things seem different by the light of day. Besides, I thought you Mennonites were against divorce, all for keeping the marriage together regardless.”

She snorted, “Yeah, unless someone cheats, all bets are off. You found him practically in bed with someone else.”

I sighed, “Marve, I have to keep that door open to accepting him back. He always comes back. I have suspected in the past that he strays but he always comes back. I love him and I’m prepared to forgive him.”

It was much later before I returned to my own home. Jay ran upstairs to his room and his video games while I did the piles of dishes and rewashed the laundry. By this time I’d convinced myself that Michael hadn’t meant anything he’d said, it was just the shock of finding out that the World Trade Center was gone and how close he’d come to losing his life in the crash at the Pentagon. He was talking crazy talk, the talk of someone that has suffered an enormous shock to their heart and mind.

I’d give him his space and he’d come back in a few days or weeks, tail between his legs, contrite and sorrowful. I’d make sure in the meantime that everything was waiting him perfectly here and if I decided if he was unhappy with Plover Creek that it would be alright with me if we switched to another church, perhaps even Amazing Life.

That September twelfth I’d even cleaned our bedroom thoroughly, putting our best bed linens out and putting a dried rosebud on his pillow. I prepared the closest thing I had to a negligee, a sheer white cotton nightie with a hundred tiny mother of pearl buttons down the front. I was completely convinced he would return perhaps that very night.

I skipped and hummed worship songs through my day, more and more convinced I was right. Even a visit from Pastor Will Morgan didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. When I told Will that I was sure Michael would return home tonight he’d looked like I’d just announced the world was ending in five minutes or I was flying to Mars. He let go of the silver teaspoon in his hand and it dropped with a heavy plunk to the saucer beneath his teacup. I could see he thought I was mad, that I’d lost all sense so I airily explained that this was just another phase in our life, Michael would tire of his freedom and come home to momma.

That night I cooked a special meal, organic steaks with asparagus and salad. Jay and I waited to eat, waited as long as we could so that Michael would join us. But he never came, we lit the candles on the dining room table and sat down to cold steaks and shriveled overdone asparagus.

Finally Michael called, just as Jay was getting ready for bed. Jay got to the phone before I did and I ended up picking up the receiver in the kitchen, listening as Michael told Jay that he was leaving us, leaving home and divorcing me. And it hit me again, the trauma of the day before as I sagged silently to the floor feeling my heart breaking again. I sat on the polished brick floor and wept loudly, not seeing the polished copper pots hanging from the rack over the huge old Aga stove or the strings of dried onions and peppers festooned from the open oaken support beams overhead. I lay down, panting and crying, seeing nothing, feeling everything, every miserable painful word from Michael’s lips the night before.

Jay found me that way, laying on the floor moaning wordlessly my distress and I caught a glimpse of panic on his face as he said, “Mom, Mom! You lied to me, Dad says he’s not coming home.” He shrieked and started slapping at me, pulling my braid before he collapsed on top of me and we hugged together, weeping, faces pressed together.

How long we lay there crying I will never know but eventually I snagged one of my beautiful antique embroidered tea towels from the stove handle and wiped down Jay’s tanned face before patting down my own. We sat there Indian style cross legged on the kitchen floor and Jay began to ask me questions. I had to keep telling him I didn’t know the answers, no I didn’t know why Daddy said he didn’t love me any more. No, I didn’t know if Daddy would ever come home. No, I was never leaving him, regardless of what happened I would find a way to make it work out for us. Yes, Daddy might get tired of living alone and come home some day.

That night neither Jay not I could face being alone and I slept with him on his narrow twin bed, listening to his quiet breathing, smelling the mysterious aroma of green grass and fresh air that boys emit. I held onto Jay like he was my life line and secretly cursed Michael for so cavalierly throwing away our life, abandoning our son like this. I would always hate him for forcing our child to grow up sooner than he should have.

One of the biggest things Jay had been worried about was that we’d have to leave our home. He was afraid we’d end up in the streets. He worried about how people would perceive us now that Dad had left. I silently blamed Plover Creek for putting the idea in his mind that divorce was a shameful sin for the entire family.

The last night Jay said to me that night as he drifted off was the most haunting, “Mom,” he’d asked, “did Dad leave because of me, because he was disappointed that I don’t like to play sports?” I’d hugged him even tighter and reassured him that this was simply not the case. I didn’t know all the whys Michael had left but it wasn’t Jay’s fault and I made sure he knew this.

As Jay started to lightly snore between his Spiderman motif sheets I started to worry about the future. What would I tell people? Was what little I brought in from my herbs and goat cheese going to be enough? Was it folly to even consider staying on the farm?

I spent another long sleepless night and in the morning I didn’t feel near as hopeful as I’d felt the night before. Both Jay and I were slow to get up, in fact we were still in our nightclothes at the breakfast table when Will pulled up in our driveway. He’d come by to bring Jay his assignments and books just in case Jay didn’t return to school for a few days. Jay ran upstairs to get dressed while I made uncomfortable small talk with Will Morgan at the table.
Pastor Morgan looked at me solemnly and said, “I see the reality of what happened has finally sunk in.”

I couldn’t even speak, all I could do was nod, I didn’t trust myself not to start crying again.

After Will left I barely had time to slip into an old set of clothes and start milking my goats. I was lugging feed into the barn when my own pastor, Pastor Chas Waverly, a tall craggy faced man with silvering hair, arrived. I dropped the feed sack and ran to him, dissolving into blubbery tears as he hugged me tightly. I don’t know who told him but Pastor Waverly knew that Michael had left me.

Thankfully Jay was with Marvelette and her children again because I spent the next several hours rehashing that terrible evening at the condo, telling Pastor Chas just how horribly off the rails my life had gone. “We’ll get through this together,” he’d assured me, “no matter if Michael does or doesn’t return allow your church family to surround you with love and support.”

At his words I’d felt an enormous weight lift off my shoulders and I’d sighed, sinking back into the old sofa. I’d need all of their prayers to get through this terrible time.

Before he left Pastor Chas slipped me the business card of a lawyer, said while he knew that the Bible counseled no divorce I certainly had Biblical grounds to divorce Michael and move on with my life. Even if I didn’t want a divorce it wouldn’t hurt to find out where I stood legally, he urged me to protect myself against Michael.

How stupid I’d been that day, I innocently said with the utmost naivety and sincerity that I knew even if Michael divorced me he’d be fair and he’d not abandon Jay and I to starve. We were adults and he knew his responsibilities. Little did I know.

We settled into a routine of normalcy, well, as normal as it can get once your world is blown apart. Jay returned to school and I kept on with my routine of taking care of my goats, making cheese, picking the herbs and making deliveries to my customers. We slogged along sadly, the same but not the same.

That first week I got phone calls from Plover Creek Church sisters and brothers, most were genuinely concerned wanting to know what they could do for Jay and I but a few were simply seeking to gossip and cluck over my misfortune. Some people sent meals over for Jay and I, almost as if someone had died in our family and a few of the men of the church came over to offer their services around the house. Several sisters came to do a thorough fall cleaning of my home, insisting I go up and rest.

But I couldn’t rest, that day I’d paused at the top of the stairs. I didn’t want to go into the bedroom I’d shared with Michael all these years. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than change clothes in there, I had taken to sleeping in the guest bedroom, on the firm barely used mattress, missing the comfortable broken in feeling of my own bed yet unable to sleep where I’d slept with the man who had betrayed me. I still felt mostly numb inside now.

But I didn’t want the members of my church knowing I’d moved out of the marital bedroom. They all murmured words of encouragement, telling me that Michael would come home. I just had to pray harder, beseech God to turn his heart back to his family. He would come home, everyone said so.

When my feelings returned they see sawed wildly from hope and optimism to the blackest despair. I had days when getting out of bed was an impossible task and other days when I bounded out, rejoicing in another day, sure that today would be the day that Michael returned.

Several weeks passed and I heard not one word from Michael. He didn’t call, he didn’t come home. As much as that hurt me I could see it hurt Jay even worse. He flinched every time the telephone rang, running from wherever he was in the house, waiting for me to pick up, listening hard until he could ascertain if it was his father. Once it was obvious it was not Michael he’d sigh, flinch and move along.

The first inkling I had that Michael was still determined to divorce me and that he would not be returning was the day I went to deposit my monies from the places that bought the produce of my farm. The teller at our bank told me that our checking account was closed, that Michael had closed the account and taken all the money several days before. I stood there, shaken to the core, realizing that the five hundred dollars in checks I held in my hand were the only things that stood between myself and poverty.

The bank manager and teller had been so kind to me, the teller led me over to the manager and the bank set up an account for me, only in my name. I was so embarrassed for them to know that Michael had humiliated me like this, abandoned us with nothing.

When I got home I started digging through all of our financial data. Checking the balances of our savings accounts online I discovered the same story. Accounts drained and closed. Even our stock portfolio was closed. I called Michael, first on his cell and then at his office, unable to get through to him. Clearly he was avoiding me. I left a series of messages on his voice mail, getting increasingly frantic and upset as time went by.

I realized that Pastor Chas Waverly was right, I needed to consult a lawyer. But the attorney he put me in touch with wanted a retainer, five thousand dollars up front and I just didn’t have that kind of money. What little I managed to get from the proceeds of my farm I needed for food, gasoline for my truck and electricity at the house. I’d come home and gone over the contents of the house with a eye for value. I had wept as I packed up the large wooden chest of antique silver I’d managed to accumulate over the years and I reluctantly took it to one of the better high end antique stores up on the main highway, coming away with enough money to pay the lawyer.

Before the week was out I’d sold a few more of my more valuable antiques and I was in a rage. Michael had not called, it had been three weeks and Jay had spoken to him. It was as if we didn’t exist to Michael.

That third week brought a series of humiliation to me. I applied for food stamps and aid to dependant children, hard working me, applying for welfare. I wept, thinking my grandmother was probably turning in her grave because of what I’d been reduced to. I went to the electric company and made arrangements to pay late, and made the hardest trip of all, out to Ryland Memorial School to tell Pastor Will Morgan that I had to pull Jay out of private school and enroll him in public school because I could not pay tuition.

Will didn’t say a word as I explained that I had been cut off from any money by Michael, he merely stared at me over the top of his steepled fingers, elbows planted on the top of his stately walnut desk. When he did speak it was to say, “Mrs Smith, there’s no need to worry about the tuition for this month. An anonymous donor here at the school has picked up two months tuition for Jay. Please don’t take him out now, what he needs most is stability, to feel that the important things in his life haven’t changed.”

I frowned, as glad as I was that I didn’t have to cough up tuition for a few months I was not comfortable with the idea of charity and I said, “But the most important thing in his life, our family, has changed. There’s no escaping that. But I cannot afford to keep him here, in this school, beyond the next eight weeks.”

Still Will sat unmoving and he said quietly, “I know that, I just knew that your husband wasn’t going to allow you access to any funding but I feel it’s more important to keep Jay here in school than to burden him with even more changes. Give me a few days and I might be able to come up with a solution that would suit everyone, can you do that?”

“Alright, “ I said, “ a few days, but I can hardly imagine there is much you can do about my situation.”

I went home that day, sad, defeated and tired. I couldn’t summon up the energy necessary to do anything beyond climb the stairs up to the bedrooms and lie down. I’d paused at the door of my bedroom, feeling sudden anger at Michael and went in. Surveying the room I took in it’s odd shape, tucked up over the family room the long hallway area in the room leading to a small square just large enough to hold our antique mahogany four poster bed and marble topped dresser. I stared angrily at the smooth creamy white walls hung with framed prints of hunt scenes, horses and other masculine pursuits of days gone by. I glared at the dark damask drapery and bedspread.

No more, I thought and I ripped down the drapes, pulled off the scratchy bedspread. Quickly I removed the prints, the china dogs on the mantelpiece and other masculine accessories. Why had I decorated this room in a style I didn’t like, just to try and please a petulant male that was wretchedly ungrateful? I was almost shaking with galvanizing cleansing anger. I couldn’t believe how much I hated the furnishings of this room. Quickly I boxed and bundled up all the things I hated about my bedroom and set to work hanging a set of white lace curtains, remaking the bed in pretty vintage linens with a white comforter. I ran around the house gathering well loved adornments to put in my bedroom, erasing any trace of Michael. Before I picked up Jay from school I started boxing up Michael’s clothes, thinking perhaps I should sell the entire lot of them on Ebay. Screw him for not taking care of us, leaving us to starve while he stole the money I’d scrimped so hard to save.

I sat back and surveyed my hard work. I’d moved the bed from the front wall under the windows to the side of the room, directly across from the fireplace. Both sets of windows had white lace curtains, lifting the gloom out of the room by allowing natural sunlight to filter into the room. The room took on a cheerful glow with the extra light and I’d hung floral prints on the walls, simple and pretty. I felt better already, more in control.

But that didn’t last long, as we got back from school I saw a strange truck in our driveway. Strange men in coveralls were lugging things out of the house and packing them into the back of the truck. I was horrified, was I being robbed? I didn’t pull into my own driveway but parked across the street at Marvelettes before dialing up the sheriff’s dept on my cell.

As we waited a familiar figure came out of the front door, carrying an armload of suits. Before I could stop him Jay had thrown open the car door and run across the road, throwing himself at his father. While Jay was hugging his father a sheriffs deputy pulled into the driveway.

I got out and crossed the road to where Michael stood with Jay and the deputies to find that Michael was busy removing anything from the house that he deemed his. He’d stripped out not just his clothing but some of our possessions such as the large screen television from the family room. The movers had packed up most of the electronics from the house, the stereo, the computers and even a few pieces of furniture.

“Michael, what are you doing?” I asked loudly, “Three weeks pass, you don’t call, you don’t contact us at all and now you show up to loot our home like you did our bank accounts.”

As one of the movers tried to cart my vintage Louis Vutton steamer trunk past us I turned and grasped it, “Stop it, stop it, that is mine, not his. Put that back.”

The officers stepped in and stopped the mover, “Son, you can turn around and put that back where you found it till we get to the bottom of this.” The mover backtracked with my trunk.

Michael sighed, rolled his eyes like he was dealing with the mentally deficient and stated baldly, “I told you three weeks ago that I am divorcing you. The paperwork has already been filed. And, officers, as this home is still half mine I am entitled to my own possessions. You cannot stop me.”

“You strip me of any money, our savings and investments and now you’re going to steal the antiques I haggled and bargained over,” as I spoke these words the true import of what was happening hit me like a sledge hammer and my voice grew in volume, ‘things I saved to buy, lovingly picked out that you never gave a tinkers damn about? You don’t deserve anything out of that house.” With that I kicked the dirt in front of me in frustration.

The officers exchanged uncomfortable glances, I knew both of these young men, The stocky blonde was the son of Kelly and Gene Jenkins of Amazing Life Church. The other man was slightly older, perhaps as old as thirty, dark and swarthy. I knew he was the son of migrant workers that had stayed behind many years ago after picking the fall apple crop. The Garcia family ended up being a valuable addition to this community.

Finally Garcia spoke and he said in an apologetic tone, “Ma’am, I’m truly sorry but your husband does have the right to remove whatever possessions he deems fit, at least until you get a court order prohibiting from doing so. There’s nothing we can do.” I knew that most cops hate family situations like this because they can so quickly spiral out of control and end in tragedy plus both men knew us. I’m sure there was just about anywhere else they’d rather be at that moment.

I replied as calmly as I could, “Is that my next step? Get a lawyer so that I can keep my ex away from my things?”

“Yes, ma’am, you need a court order.” Garcia replied seriously.

Michael frowned and muttered, “What on earth did you do to our bedroom. It looks atrocious, like something out of a Amish Living magazine. Where are my prints of hunting scenes and the Italian woven silk draperies? I want them?”

I nodded my head indicating I would listen to no more and pointed towards the road saying simply, “Go.” I was struggling not to go crazy on Michael, the man I’d once loved more than life. Whatever love I felt for him had now been overwhelmed by shock and disgust. How could he keep doing this to us.

But when I saw my much beloved roll top desk in the hands of the movers it was too much, beyond my fragile state and limited self control. I went nuts, reaching out to attack Michael, slapping him, clawing at him and shouting. I didn’t care that the cops were there or not.

Before I could inflict any real damage I was physically whirled away from my husband and roughly body slammed against the cruiser hood. I tasted blood in my mouth from a split lip and experienced sudden knifing pain as both of my arms were twisted behind my body and hand cuffs tightened down. Please God, I prayed silently, don’t let the police do anything further in front of my boy.

Before I knew what was happening I was shoved firmly into the back of the police cruiser. As they pushed me into the car I caught a glimpse of my face, eyes wild, hair coming loose from my careful French braid. I looked like a mad woman.

The deputies left me in the back of the cruiser for over twenty minutes as they spoke with Michael and tried to talk to Jay. I couldn’t hear what was being said but I could see that the police were indicating to the movers to pack it up and go and that Michael was passionately arguing with them about something. As Michael and the movers drove away the back door of the car opened again and a crying Jay joined me in the back seat as Officer Garcia read out my Miranda rights.

“You’re arresting me?” I huffed out in surprise.

“Yes ma’am. Your husband, Mr. Michael Smith is pressing charges of spousal abuse, assault and battery. You’re being charged on all counts.” Officer Jenkins said in a weary voice, “Cooperate with us and you should be able to bond out in the morning. Don’t make this any worst than it already is.”

“Morning?” I roared, “What about Jay? He’s not being sent to jail is he?”

I could see the strange look that passed between the officers as Jay cried even harder. Garcia finally spoke, “Ma’am, your son is going into emergency foster care tonight. Your estranged husband refused to take possession of the boy. We have to take him in, it’s the law.”

As the sun set I experienced one of the most humiliating nights of my life. First, I was taken down to the county sheriff’s office, photographed and finger printed after Jay was removed to another section of the building to await a social worker. Then I was put into a small room containing only a chipped beige enameled table and uncomfortable chairs clustered around it and left alone for a long time. It felt like hours. They didn’t remove the cuffs and I became increasingly aware that I hadn’t eaten today as my stomach rumbled.

By the time the officers returned to take my statement my need to pee surmounted all my other needs and I was having the beginnings of a stress headache from not eating. I gave the officers a brief account of my outburst and subsequent pummeling of Michael. When I told the officers how Michael had been caught by me cheating and afterwards made sure that Jay and I were stripped of any money. While the officers were sympathetic to my problems with Michael, the law was the law and I had broken it.

Being that this was such a small town there was no room in the jail so I was put into the female drunk holding tank with a few other ladies, women I knew of but had no interaction with in the past. One was a disheveled looking red head missing most of her teeth. I knew she had a reputation as the town crack whore, blow jobs for five bucks and whatever you wanted to do of a sexual nature for ten. She was cackling and laughing madly with the other drugged out looking woman when I arrived to her cell. She laughed out, “Oh, how the high and mighty have fallen. You think you’re too good for the likes of us and guess what, here you is, blood on your face and your stupid lookin’ blouse torn. I loves it!”

I ignored her, going to the piece of polished steel mounted on the wall above the exposed toilet and realized she was right. My light weight white cotton button up blouse has a rip where the right sleeve joined the bodice, probably sustained when the cops slammed me to the car and snapped the cuffs on. I also have dried blood from my split lower lip to my chin and dotted on the blouse front. Irrationally the only thing I could think was that it would take a lot of work to get the blood out, like I didn’t have bigger problems.

Both of the other women heckled me for a while longer but I ignored their words. There was nothing they could say or do that could possibly measure up to the hurt I felt from the series of betrayals Michael had inflicted on me.

I was served a sandwich consisting of two slices of dried up white bread with limp tasteless baloney and wilted leaf of lettuce. The meal was rounded out by a spongy orange in a sickly pale shade and some unidentifiable drink I think was supposed to be iced tea. But I was so hungry that I ate it all and was grateful for the meal, bad as it was. A full belly is worth a great deal.

Once the lights were turned out and I gingerly lay down on a moldy smelling thin mattress on a steel bunk there was no way I was going to be able to sleep and I knew it. Another night tossing and turning, rehashing the recent twists and turns of my life. I tried comforting myself by praying silently as I wondered what type of foster home my only son was residing in tonight. I prayed that the foster parents were kind and loving and that there were no evil predators lurking in their home, that he wouldn’t be too frightened for me.

I couldn’t get over the fact that Michael had turned his back on our son. His son. Surely he wasn’t so selfish as to totally reject the child he’d help raise for the last eleven years. The cops had told me that Michael had told Jay that he would not take him in, that Jay was not his son because no son of his would be so bad at sports. Michael was rejecting Jay because Jay wasn’t a reflection of his own glory, a player and supporting prop in his inner sports fantasies. I lay in the dark and trembled with hatred for what Michael was putting Jay through tonight.