Letters From the Grave
depended on how early in the evening they talked before booze overtook the old man.
Will was seven years old when he saw his first doctor at a mercy clinic in the poorest part of some Arkansas town where they were camping and looking for work. The old man hit him too hard in the head with a scrap board that had had a rusty nail in it. It was an accident as far as the nail was concern -- he hadn’t planned to permanently damage the boy, just teach him to respect his old man, as he deserved. The nail punctured his skull on the side of his head behind his left eye, but miraculously missed everything vital. His old man was drunker than usual, and Will must have said something to irritate him. Will couldn’t recall why he was hit that time, nor most of the other times. But it scared both of them enough to seek medical help. He got a tetanus shot, and it was one of the few times he saw a doctor until joining the Coast Guard. They moved around frequently following the work, so authorities who might have helped the boy never had the chance.
When he was about nine, his father kicked him out of the cab of his truck for something Will said. The truck wasn’t moving too fast, and it shouldn’t have hurt him too badly, according to the statement taken by police, but his left arm and shoulder were crushed under the rear wheel. Owing to his youth, the boy recovered most of the use of the arm but had a permanently weak left hand for the rest of his life. The injury was barely perceptible and not recorded as a disability, but he had very poor coordination on both sides and lacked small motor skills.
After that incident, Will was temporarily placed under the care of Child Services in a suburb of Tulsa until the cast was removed. His father disappeared to avoid prosecution, and Will spent several years in foster homes, frequently running away from harsh disciplinarians. Sometimes, he attended school. He learned to live on the streets. He was enrolled in school much later than other children and was treated as retarded, although his IQ approached a normal range. When he was about eleven, no one knew his exact age, he was taken in by a devout Christian family in Blessing, Texas, and he led a relatively normal childhood from that point forward under the ever watchful guidance of his pious foster parents. The overtly religious values drilled into him by the elderly couple, who had no other children, made him even more dysfunctional around more “normal” kids.
Excluded from normal friendships, Will fantasized frequently, especially about girls who would never get near him, and about harming the boys who picked on him. He was in trouble for vandalism and burglary a few times before he was sixteen, which caused his restrictive “parents” to enforce even tighter discipline. He was also charged with being a peeping-tom, but it was difficult to prove. They never hurt him physically as his natural father did, but they damaged him emotionally. At eighteen, they told him it was time to leave.
His only obvious option was to join the military, so he went to all of the recruiting offices in town. His attitude and physical disabilities were detected by most. Only the Coast Guard failed to recognize his defects, and his criminal record was sealed as a minor. After basic training, his test scores were low but still in an eligible range for certain technical ratings, so he chose aircraft mechanics. He completed the basic course module to be a shop helper and was assigned to Coast Guard Station Corpus Christi, working on HH60 Jayhawks.
His work ethic was not up to standard, and he tried moonlighting at a local airport. He was able to steal aircraft fasteners hardware (bolts, nuts, rivets) from the air station and give it to the shade-tree operation on the civilian field, which was the only reason for keeping him on the payroll even at minimum wage. He didn’t realize how closely hardware, even basic nuts and bolts, were controlled for military aircraft, and his thievery was soon discovered. He was placed on report and could have received non-judicial punishment (minor discipline) under the military code, but with the comments from his supervisors, Will was discharged dishonorably from the service, a disgraceful exit eliminating any GI benefits and a problem with any employer that checked.
He hitched rides to towns all over Texas and Oklahoma, trying to re-create the migrant pattern his father had followed, working at odd jobs. He was always fired shortly after being given an opportunity. One night in Tulsa, he was drunk at a strip bar, when he met Callie Murray. Her income was falling off with the economy, and she agreed to give him a blow job in exchange for sleeping in his camping trailer. He fell in love that night and decided to stay around town. She stayed with him since she had no other options.
Callie discovered very quickly that she could sometimes get Will to do what she wanted, using her charms. She initially thought of him as her man-slave, dumb as a tack, but useful. She soon found out that he concealed a clever, but distorted and deviant mind. He beat her up occasionally when things went badly for him, but she could take it. He threatened to kill her if she ever tried to leave him, but the really harsh treatment eased up around the time her mother died in Abilene, and he got a real job in Louisiana.
When Will took the job at CHI, she thought he was finally out of her life. She could live on the edge of poverty in her mother’s trailer, which was as much as she had ever expected in life, but then Will came back for her with a chance at a big score. Will had somehow learned about a drunken pilot with a stockpile of gold coins and guilt that had festered over thirty years. He outlined a plan to steal the coins that involved Callie as an imposter, playing into the pilots guilt. The thought of riches re-energized Will’s controller instincts.
Callie had been raised by her single prostitute mother. From her earliest memories, “momma” would have men stopping by her trailer at all hours of the day or night for brief periods in the back bedroom. Callie was told to stay on the couch and watch TV, and she was severely beaten if she moved. Sometimes men just brought her momma little bags that cost more money than a full grocery bag. Occasionally, she would take them in the back, and the bags were free.
Her mother insisted that Callie attend school, although she hated being the only girl in old clothes at the beginning of each year. She was determined to grow up and live a better life, whatever it took.
By the time she was twelve, she understood why men paid for time with her mother, although the visits were becoming less frequent. When she was thirteen, her mother called her to the back of the trailer one night where a large older man was sitting on her mother’s bed in his underwear. Momma told her that Mr. Smith was going to teach Callie the facts of life. She already knew the facts of life and had seen evidence of it over the years as men paraded to the back of the trailer. She wasn’t going to let it happen to her. She was scared and screamed at the top of her lungs as Mr. Smith and her mother wrestled her onto the bed. Her mother held her hand over Callie’s mouth as she fought to get free. Mr. Smith smelled like an old liquor bottle and he was having difficulty performing but finally used his hand to break in. Callie wailed silently with tears streaming. When it was over, and her mother released her, she ran screaming from the trailer into the streets, then into the woods. She spent the whole night huddled by a tree in the East Texas brush, nearly eaten alive by mosquitos.
In the morning, she was dirty, hungry and ravaged by insects when she came back to the trailer. When her mother tried to scold her, Callie grabbed a butcher knife and pressed it against her mother’s throat, shoving her against the refrigerator, saying, “Don’t you ever try that with me again! Next time one of your Mr. Smiths tries that, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll castrate him and kill you. Do you understand me?”
“You don’t sass me that way! I’m your momma, and I own you.”
“You don’t own me, bitch! And I swear, you better take me serious, cuz I ain’t afraid o’ you or anyone, and I will kill you.”
“I want you out of my house!”
“Nope. I’ll go when I’m ready. Just don’t come near me again, or it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.”
They lived together under the strain for several more months until Callie was fourteen and couldn’t ri
sk it any longer. She didn’t know when one of her mother’s customers would try to rape her again, so she left one morning while her mother slumped in a drug-induced coma. She emptied her mother’s purse and packed her few clothes in a shopping bag. They didn’t have a car, so she walked to the street and used her looks to get a ride to the bus station. She learned to live on the streets and never saw her mother again.
The chance of a fortune brought her with Will to Lafayette. It was the chance at a good life that she was never going to see otherwise, but now, after months living with Jake, she had regrets and was concerned for his life, but there was nothing she could do at this point. She had never anticipated that she would become attached to the pilot, but it had happened. She had no choice but to support Will’s plan in the end without Jake’s protection.
She turned on the lights inside the house and led Will to the back room where Jake kept his three safes. Will had been there before when they “went bowling” during Jake’s time at Port Arthur.
She handed him a piece of paper, “Okay, here’s the combinations. I don’t know which one goes to which safe, but start