“This is Doug Branning,” she said, failing to mention that he was her father. “We were told that you used to be involved with Jessie.”
Moe’s eyes narrowed. “I told the sheriff I ain’t seen Jessie in a long time. She got everything she wanted out of me and moved on.”
Doug leaned on the stairwell. “Did you know Jessie’s missing?”
He shook the garbage bag and resumed his digging. “Sheriff told me.”
“Did he tell you she hasn’t been seen in weeks?”
Moe put the cigarette butt back in his mouth. “She’s probably holed up in a crank house somewhere.”
“How long were you involved with her?” Deni asked.
“Three, four months. She was like a leech, hard to shake off once she settled in. Her and those bratty kids.”
“If she was so awful, why did you take her in?” Doug asked.
“She was hot, that’s why. I’m a sucker for a pretty face. But it got old fast. She started stealing from me. That was it. I threw her out.”
“How long ago was that?”
“After she got pregnant the last time. She was a real drag then. Cranky and dope-sick, ’cause of the baby.”
“Dope-sick?” Doug asked.
“Yeah. She didn’t do as much dope when she was pregnant, and she was a nightmare to live with.”
Doug met Deni’s eyes. So she had used some. According to Moe, at least. Hard to tell who was a less reliable source — Moe or Lacy. Poor kids. It was a miracle they were all right. “Which child of hers is yours?” Doug asked.
“None of ’em.” He kept rummaging through the garbage bag. He pulled out the heads of a couple of eaten carrots, their long leaves wilted and brown. He set them aside on the steps. Doug wondered if he was going to eat them. “She lied and said that fourth one was mine, but she was just trying to get money out of me.”
Deni set her hand on her hip. “She looks kind of like you. The same eyes, curly brown hair. Have you ever seen Sarah?”
He spat the butt onto the ground. “Sarah who?”
Deni glanced at Doug.
“Your daughter,” he said.
Moe started to laugh then. “I told you, she ain’t mine. There’s not a bit of proof.”
Doug could see Deni’s disgust flaring up, and he touched her arm to quiet her. “So do you have any idea where Jessie could be?” he asked.
Moe shook his head. “I haven’t given her a thought in years. She’s probably dead in a gutter somewhere.”
Pursing her lips, Deni wrote that down. “Do you know if she had any relatives in town?”
“She didn’t get along too well with her folks. Whole time I was with her, she didn’t talk to them at all. They were always giving her a hard time, you know, treating her like trash, trying to take her kids. She kept moving so they wouldn’t find her.”
Was that why the parents hadn’t been able to get the children yet?
Doug leaned on the rail of the stairwell, watching the man pull out some chicken bones. “Moe, what would a drug addict do after the outage? Were there still places to buy drugs?”
He discarded the bones. “It got real interesting. Most people had a little cash on them when the lights went out. Dealers sold it ’til they ran out. Couldn’t get it here without transportation. Some’s just now starting to work its way to town.”
Deni might have known. They couldn’t get food shipments in, but they’d found a way to get dope.
“Could Jessie have been selling?” Doug asked. “Could a drug deal have gone wrong or something?”
He shrugged. “Anything’s possible with that girl. She wasn’t above it, I can tell you that. Lot of folks turn to dealing to pay for their habits.” He finished sorting through the garbage, then got to his feet. He was almost as tall as Doug. “So where are them kids, anyway?”
“They’re staying with our family,” Doug said.
“So you’ll get their disbursements?”
Deni looked at her father and he froze for a moment. She could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. “We haven’t worked that out yet. Hopefully we’ll find their family before then.”
As they rode their bikes away, Deni ranted. “What a jerk. Jessie sure knew how to pick ’em.”
Doug just shook his head. “Those poor kids.”
“You got a little pale when Moe asked you about the disbursements. Why was that?”
He sighed. “I just don’t trust him. Didn’t want him to start changing his tune about paternity, just for the almighty buck.”
Deni considered it. Surely he wouldn’t go to all that trouble. The man didn’t look that resourceful. She studied her dad as he rode a little in front of her. “Dad, do you think she’s alive?”
“Probably,” Doug said. “From what we’ve heard about her, I’d say she’s alive and taking care of number one, and she’s forgotten all about her children. I think they may be better off without her.”
twenty
KAY WAS PACING IN THE GARAGE WHEN DENI AND DOUG GOT home. “Thank goodness you’re back! I have to show you something.”
Doug braced himself as he got off his bike. “Uh-oh. What now?”
“Come upstairs and you’ll see.”
He left Deni to close the garage, then followed Kay up the stairs and into Logan’s room. It looked like a tornado had hit it. The Gatlin kids’ things were everywhere. She reached into a grocery sack stuffed with toys.
“I was going through their stuff to wash their clothes, and I found this.” She pulled out a small revolver.
Doug caught his breath and took the .38 Special from her. “But the sheriff took their gun.”
“Apparently they had another one.”
Doug moaned and checked to see if it was loaded. Thank goodness, it wasn’t. “Did you look through the rest of their things for the ammo?”
“Yes, I went through everything. But if we missed the gun, maybe we’re missing the bullets too. We helped them pack — you’d think we would have seen it.”
Doug took the bag and pulled out the battered Barbie, the baseball cap, and the Superman cape. “He brought this one home yesterday. My fault. I should have searched it.”
Kay rubbed her temples and sat down on the bed. “What should we do?”
“Confiscate it, of course. I’ll tell the sheriff.”
“Doug, do you think they’re dangerous?”
He thought of telling her that he’d warned her, but that wouldn’t be fair. Taking them in had been the right thing. If he’d gotten nothing else from Moe Jenkins, he’d seen a glimpse of what the lives of these kids had been like. “Not dangerous. Just desperate. Aaron has been in survival mode for a long time. In his mind, this is part of his survival.”
She stood up and looked around at the mess. “I want to help them,” she said. “And we gave them our word that we’d keep them until we found their grandparents. But I admit, I’m a little nervous. A nine-year-old kid who packs a pistol is not someone I should have in my house. But what else can we do?”
He’d wrestled with these same thoughts. “Let’s not panic. Yesterday, you had some really good arguments about God leading us to them. I don’t think we should change our course now.”
Her eyes were hopeful as she looked up at him. “Do you think I was right about that? That God really brought them here?”
He searched his heart and found confidence there. Slowly, he lowered himself to the bed and patted her leg. “Yes, I think you were. When you look at Aaron and his behavior, it seems all about the other kids. I’m not suggesting he’s a saint, but he does seem to have their best interests at heart. How bad could a kid like that be?”
“I hope we find his mother alive so I can wring her neck.”
“Yeah, me too. Why don’t we just talk to him, tell him we found it? Let him know we’re not going to tolerate this kind of thing.”
She nodded. “I’ll go get him.”
He waited, sitting on the bed, turning the gun over in his hand. Wh
ere in the world had they gotten two guns? Did they both belong to Jessie, or had they stolen them? Their next-door neighbor had been aware of their weapon, and she claimed others were, as well. Why hadn’t even one of the neighbors reported it?
Kay came back a few minutes later, with Aaron and Joey shuffling behind her.
Aaron saw the gun in Doug’s hand as he entered the room, and he stopped cold.
“Aaron, Kay was just getting ready to wash your clothes,” he said, “and she found this.”
The boy crossed his arms. “Yeah? So?”
“Where’d you get it, Aaron? Is it your mother’s?”
His face was hard. “No, it’s mine.”
“They don’t sell guns to kids.” Doug got up and stood over the boys. “Now tell me where you got it.”
“I found it, okay?”
“Found it where?”
Aaron hesitated. “In a Dumpster.”
“Which Dumpster?”
“I don’t know. I dug through lots of them looking for food. I can’t remember which one.”
Not likely. But Doug doubted he’d get anything else out of him. He turned to Joey. “How long have you had it?”
“A long time,” Joey said.
Aaron gave him a look that told him to shut up.
“Joey, where are the bullets?”
Joey shrugged and looked at his brother.
Color crept up Aaron’s cheeks. “I did have some, but they’re all gone now.”
That sent a chill through Doug. “What did you use them on?”
Aaron turned away then and went to put his stuff back in the bags. “I used the gun for protection,” he said. “A time or two I had to shoot at the ground or at the sky to keep somebody away. It kept people from taking everything we had.”
Joey’s face was distraught as he said, “Every time we came back with food, some of the neighbors tried to steal it.”
Doug threw a glance to Kay, then fixed his eyes on the boys. “Is that why the neighbors didn’t call the police on you?”
“Why would they?” Aaron asked. “Sometimes I just gave them stuff, so they’d leave us alone. They liked what I brought them.”
So the kid was also a politician.
“But when I didn’t have enough, some of them would get rough. Sometimes just waving the gun got the message across.”
Doug could imagine. Anger rose to his throat. Maybe those neighbors deserved to live the way they did.
But then Aaron shot that thought down. “It wasn’t all of them. Some of them were nice and helped us. We traded off. Sometimes they’d give us their water, if I found food. And when Joey and I weren’t home, they’d look in on Sarah and Luke.”
“But they let you live there alone!” Kay said. “How could they do that?”
Aaron and Joey exchanged looks again. “We didn’t tell them Mama wasn’t home. She was always gone a lot anyway. Sometimes she didn’t come home at night. They just figured nothing had changed.”
Doug looked at his wife, saw the tears in her eyes. He swallowed. “I understand why you needed this, Aaron, but we’re going to take it and put it up for now, okay? You’re not going to need it here.”
They could see the hesitation and fear on the boy’s face. “Where are you gonna put it?”
“I’m locking it up with our other guns.”
“Will I get it back?”
“I doubt it. But let’s hope you never need it again.”
Rage twisted the boy’s face. “It’s ours! You can’t have it!”
“This isn’t negotiable, Aaron. You can’t stay here with a gun.”
“Then let us go. We didn’t ask to be here!”
Joey spoke up. “They don’t trust us, Aaron.”
“Joey, it has nothing to do with trust,” Kay said. “It’s against the law for children to own guns. Period.”
The boys stood staring up at them, clearly unhappy at the turn of events. Doug wished he could make them understand that they were safe here. But only time would do that.
He started to the door. “Now let’s go down to the well and see if the chemist has tested the water yet. If it’s clean, we can get our first drink of it. It’s nice and cool. Perfect for drinking.”
Life returned to Joey’s eyes, and he smiled. But Aaron wasn’t moved.
As they led the children down the stairs, Doug realized he would need to report this to the sheriff. Then he’d need something more secure to keep his guns in.
What a way to live.
twenty-one
THE PLIGHT OF THE PEOPLE AT THE SANDWOOD PLACE Apartments haunted Doug for the next few days. As he worked on his sermon on Proverbs for the following Sunday, God’s Word convicted him: “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act,” Solomon had written.
It was in his power to act. He knew things they needed — how to sort the garbage taking over their land, how to dig a well, how to invest their disbursement dollars so they could survive the winter. Though there was still work to be done on the Oak Hollow well, he felt so blessed to have hit the water table. The chemist who’d tested it confirmed that the water was pure, perfect for drinking, washing, bathing. And there was plenty of it. They had almost finished building the housing over it with a stronger pulley for lifting water. And the walls around it had to be high enough to keep out children and animals. It needed a top to keep out debris. But it would all be finished tomorrow.
He had the skill now — the power to act, as Solomon described it — so how could he withhold it from the people of Sandwood Place?
Doug took Jeff and Deni with him to the Sandwood Place Apartments after supper that night. Kay had wanted to come herself, but since Deni begged to accompany him so she could interview some of the residents about the missing woman, Kay stayed home with the children. They didn’t think Beth could handle Aaron and his brothers.
Doug rode with his rifle slung on his back in case of trouble. As they grew closer to the apartments, he tried to plan what he would say.
I’ve come to show you how to sort your garbage and handle your finances.
What was he? An expert on everything? Why would they even want to listen to him?
No, he needed a more humble approach.
He glanced at Jeff and Deni, riding beside him. “Guys, I’m coming to help these people if I can, but I don’t want to put them on the defensive. Let’s just start out talking to them about Jessie, and then maybe I can ease into the stuff we’ve done to make life easier in Oak Hollow. If they’re interested, I’ll go on with my ideas about investing their money and digging a well.”
“Okay,” Deni said. “Why don’t you let me lead? I’ll do the journalist bit and interview them.”
“I don’t know …”
“No, really, Dad. In college, when I did stories for GUTV, I was the one they sent on the toughest interviews.”
“What’s GUTV?” Jeff’s voice dripped with contempt.
“The student-run television station at Georgetown.”
“And they put you on it?”
“Yes, smart guy. I happen to be very good at what I do. That’s why NBC hired me.”
Doug knew Jeff was just trying to rile her. He’d been as proud as they were of his sister when she’d sent videos home.
As they rode into the parking lot, Deni said, “Seriously, Dad. I’ll take out my notepad and tell them it’s for the newspaper, and you’ll be surprised who’ll talk to me.”
“If you let her do it, Dad, you’ll never get a word in.”
Doug laughed. “I think it’ll be okay. Jeff, I want you to stay with the bikes, all right?”
Jeff sighed. “Story of my life.”
Deni’s eyes shone with purpose as they parked their bikes. She pulled out her pad and headed into a cluster of families congregated around the grill, her dad following. “Hi, I’m Deni Branning with the Crockett Community Journal. I’m doing a story on Jessie Gatlin — the missing woman in 4B — and I wonder if any o
f you would answer a few questions for me.”
Doug watched as the families perked up with a respect he hadn’t expected. Her sudden credentials seemed to give her the perfect entree.
She introduced him as Doug, as if he were her sidekick instead of her father, and before he knew it the neighbors were telling stories of Jessie and her druggie friends, her all-night escapades, and her screaming fights with her children. Most of them swore they hadn’t known the children were living there alone, but Doug had trouble believing that.
As Deni finished her interviews and moved on to other groups, Doug would remain behind and engage them in conversation about their plight. They told him that they got their water from a pond over a mile away — and when they washed clothes, they had to haul them there and back. A lady in 6A, a retired schoolteacher, babysat for several of the families when they trekked there for water. Some of them listened as he shared ideas with them; all seemed interested when he mentioned digging a well.
A cluster began to form around him as he talked. He noticed that Deni had stopped her interviewing and was listening as he explained how they’d dug the well — and told them how important it was that they process their garbage first. The crowd got bigger, and by the time he’d finished, two dozen or more people were hanging on every word.
But most of them were female heads of their households, and as malnourished as many of them were, they didn’t appear to have the strength to dig a well. They needed to get more men involved. But looking around, Doug didn’t see that many able-bodied men. They would need outside help.
When they’d finished talking, he and Deni walked around the building to look for a place to dig a well.
“Deni, I want you to do a story on the plight of the apartments in town,” he said. “The community needs to get involved. These people need our help. And as surprised as I am to say this, it looks like people are actually reading your paper.”
She laughed. “I know. It’s weird, huh? Handwritten legal pads tacked to a wooden board. But people are hungry for communication. Maybe we could set a date for people to show up here to work, and I could post it around town. Do you think anyone would come, with so much of their own work to do?”