Deni swallowed. She didn’t want to fight with the girl. Lacy looked beaten down enough. “I wasn’t judging you, Lacy. I feel bad for you. As much as I drank my first year of college, I could just as easily have been in your shoes.”
“You?” Lacy breathed a disbelieving laugh.
“Yeah, me. It just happened that my cravings for being a big shot were stronger than my cravings for a buzz. So I quit drinking.”
Mark looked down at her, clearly surprised.
Lacy seemed moved too. “You were always a big shot,” she said.
Deni swallowed. “Well, I’m trying to change.”
Lacy crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. “Jessie was raped by a neighbor when she was fourteen. She got pregnant, and everybody turned on her.”
Deni hadn’t known that. Everyone had just thought she was easy. If someone had just told them…
But who was she kidding? It wouldn’t have stopped the gossip.
“So she started using to numb the pain?” Mark asked quietly.
“Something like that.”
“She was pregnant again in tenth grade,” Deni said. “She never came back to school.”
“No, her folks took her and moved to Tuscaloosa after that. They wanted her to start over clean. But she was in too deep. She kept running away. She loved her kids, though. She always brought them with her. Some guy was always willing to put her up … for a while, at least.”
“Then you don’t think she would have left her kids intentionally?”
“Not for more than a few hours, or maybe a night.”
Deni pulled the notepad out of her back pocket. “Could you tell us some of the guys who’ve taken her in? Maybe she’s with one of them.”
“Doubt it. Most of them dumped her after she got pregnant. They always wanted her to get rid of the babies, and she would say she was going to, then before you knew it her stomach was growing. Some of them got real hot about it. One dude beat her to a pulp, but it didn’t hurt the baby.”
“Who was that?” Deni asked.
“Moe Jenkins, though he’ll deny it if you ask him. He’s the little girl’s daddy.”
“Sarah’s?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you tell us where he is?” Mark asked.
She shrugged. “He’s a jerk. I don’t know where he lives. I see him around sometimes, so I know he’s still in town.”
Deni wrote his name down. “Lacy, did she keep using during her pregnancies?”
“She said she didn’t, but I never knew for sure. They all came out all right, though, so maybe it was true.”
AS DENI AND MARK RODE BACK HOME, DENI TURNED THE conversation over in her mind. “So what do you think?”
Mark shrugged. “I think when we find her, she probably won’t be in any condition to take care of those kids.”
“I don’t get it,” Deni said. “If she loved her kids enough to stay clean while she was pregnant, why wouldn’t she love them enough to take care of them? My mom would lay down her life for me.”
“Mine too.”
“But instead, Jessie winds up so addicted that she’d leave her children to fend for themselves with absolutely no resources.”
“It happens all the time,” Mark said.
Deni knew that was true. She’d had friends in college who had succumbed to drugs and dropped out, ruining their lives, changing their ambitions, their personalities, their character. But there was always hope for redemption. Hadn’t God redeemed her, when she was wallowing in a spiritual pit after her own rebellion? If he hadn’t given up on her, maybe there was hope for Lacy Frye and Jessie Gatlin.
“Deni, I have to go work at the well. But don’t go visit that Jenkins guy by yourself.”
She shook her head. “I’ll give his name to my dad and the sheriff, and let them handle that. I’m not brave enough to visit him alone. But I have thought of another way to get the word out that we’re looking for her. I’ve been thinking about starting a newspaper. The Crockett Times has been down since the outage, and the Birmingham News probably has too. I was thinking I could do one that focused on human interest stories. Like these kids, for instance.”
Mark laughed. “That’s a great idea. But how would you produce it without Xerox machines and printers?”
“I’d have to handwrite it. Maybe post it on the message boards around town.”
“Okay, I can see that.”
“I could call attention to the poverty in some of these apartment complexes. Those people don’t have any place to get water. I don’t know how they’re surviving. They have one grill to cook on and they line up for it. Your guess is as good as mine where they’re getting their food. They have no place to grow it. All they have is a paved parking lot. Maybe if I called attention to it, people would try to help them.”
“I like the idea, Deni. Somebody needs to help them.”
“And there are so many other things to write about.”
“Wouldn’t be any money in it, but it would sure be a great service to the community,” Mark said. “I think it’s an awesome idea. Sounds like the kind of thing that’s right up your alley. And it’ll keep your journalism skills fresh.”
It would also help keep her mind off Craig, she thought. Busyness was the best medicine she knew.
sixteen
THE WORK THAT AFTERNOON WASN’T AS HARD AS AARON HAD expected. It was even kind of fun. The Brannings had sent him and Logan to fish for supper, and since he didn’t much like Logan, he sat down the pond from him behind a big tree. He tied his pole to a lower branch that hung out over the water, so he had his hands free to read through the letters he’d brought from home. He took all of them out of their envelopes and tried to figure out which letters came first.
His grandma’s cursive was small and as neat as a teacher’s. She had dated each letter at the top corner. The oldest one was on the bottom, dated six years before.
Dear Jessie,
I’m sending this to your old apartment in hopes that the post office will forward it. You need to know that as soon as you’re found, you’ll be arrested. We’ve filed charges against you for stealing from us.
I don’t know what you’ve done with the boys, but I pray you’re taking care of them. If you have any sense of right and wrong left inside you, you’ll turn them over to us. They don’t deserve what you’re putting them through.
He scanned to the end of the letter. There was more of the same. As much as he’d wanted to believe that his mom was wrong about them, he could see that at least some of what she’d said was true. No wonder she wouldn’t talk to them. If they were going to have her locked up and take her children away from her, then he didn’t blame her for running.
Maybe the endless trail of apartments and live-in arrangements with her boyfriends had been necessary, after all.
He flipped through and found a longer letter.
Dear Jessie,
I pray for you all day long and into the night, then I wake up and pray some more. And I pray for your boys. The guilt eats me up nights, and I go back over every event in your life, thinking where I went wrong, what I should have done differently, wondering how I can get you to see reason. How did it come to this?
He could feel the pain in the words, and he understood the guilt. He’d struggled with it himself, thinking that if he’d just been a better kid, his mother might not have needed to take so many drugs. He thought of the grandmother he remembered — the one who always had a sweet smile for him and baked him cookies and read to him and his brothers at night. The things his mother said about his grandparents had never quite fit with the memories he had of them. Maybe she had lied. Maybe they really were nice like he remembered.
Jessie,
If you’d just come home, we could get you some help. You could get off drugs and get your life on track. You could be the mother that your children deserve. You could stop destroying yourself.
If you don’t, I’m afraid you’re going to die.
/>
He held the letter in his hand and looked into the warm breeze blowing across the pond. Down the way, he heard a splash, and Logan cried out, “Got another one!”
Logan was way ahead, but Aaron didn’t care. His memory drifted back to the grandparents he remembered. He’d seen them since this letter was written, so apparently they’d found her that time. She’d disappeared for a few days after that, while she was pregnant with Luke. Had she been in jail? When she came back, she’d been bitter and angry, and hungry for her dope.
His pop had played softball with him and talked about signing him up for T-ball. His grandma made him a birthday cake, and they’d celebrated his fifth. It had been a good day.
Then sometime that night, his mother woke him and Joey up and whisked them out into the night. A man with a car was waiting for them, and she threw them into the backseat and laughed like a lottery winner as they drove off. He hadn’t seen his grandparents since.
“They want to lock me up and give you away! They’re hateful, selfish people, and if they find us you’ll never see me or Joey again.”
He could still remember his crushing disappointment. He’d never had a birthday party before. And he really wanted to play ball.
But his mother’s threats loomed over him.
He turned to the next letter. The handwriting was different, more angular and bolder. His grandfather had signed it.
Jessie,
How did such a beautiful, bright little girl, who loved to dance and sing, turn to a life of drugs? I know the abuse changed you, and I’d give my very life if I could undo it. But it happened. We should have handled it differently. We should have gotten you a counselor to help you work through it. We should have seen how much pain you were in.
But drugs? It doesn’t even seem possible.
And now here we are, with you walking in complete bondage, and your children suffering as a result. The abuse that was done to you is now being turned on them.
He read back over that sentence. Had his mother been abused by her parents? Was that why she thought they were evil? Was that why she refused to let the four of them see their grandparents, even when she didn’t want to take care of them herself?
These pregnancies, the arrests, the failed treatment … all leave me baffled and bewildered, and very, very sad. The only thing I know to do is get the state involved, and have those children taken from you.
There it was again. Their goal was to get the kids away from their mother. His mom had always mentioned “the state” in the same breath with those foster homes that would split the family up. Was that what his grandparents had planned? He tried to think of Grandma and Pop as evil, but it just didn’t line up with the picture he had in his mind of them.
Still, nice people turned mean all the time. His mother proved that. That’s why he couldn’t trust the Brannings.
And if the Brannings found Grandma and Pop, they’d turn them over to them, and they might hurt Sarah, Luke, or Joey. They might turn them over to the state. They might split them up.
He bit his lip until he drew blood, then ripped up the letters.
Who needed them? His brothers and sister had him, and he’d already proven that he could protect them. As soon as the time was right, he would get them all out of the Brannings’ house, and they’d be free again.
Freedom. It was what his mother always wanted.
But if he had anything to say about it, his freedom would be different than hers.
seventeen
THE WORK HAD GONE SLOWER ON THE WELL FOR THE PAST twenty-four hours, since one of the shifts late yesterday had struck another layer of bedrock. What Doug wouldn’t give for a working drill, or some dynamite to help them break through it. Since they couldn’t get their hands on either, they’d had to get creative. Scrounging for objects that were heavy enough to drop into the hole and shatter the rock, they’d come up with boat anchors, an old outboard motor, and iron barbells. Those had done the trick, fracturing the stone a little at a time.
Back in the hole, Doug and Brad hacked at the broken rock with their steel rods and sledgehammers, then dropped the shards into the bucket. Its rope was wound around a pulley at the top of the well where Brad’s boys, Jeremy and Drew, dumped it out. Mark and Zach worked outside the hole again, preparing the bricks for the walls.
As they waited for the bucket to be lowered back down, Brad stopped digging and took a long swig from his jug of water. “I thought of a way to make some money after the disbursements are given out. Something we could sell, once people have money they can spend.”
The bucket came back down, and Doug grabbed it. “What’s that?”
“I thought we could make washboards. Judith and the boys and I could probably come up with a way to build them and sell them for some change. Everybody needs them.”
Doug grinned and shook his head. “From Maytag to washboards. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, pal? Full speed in reverse.”
“You got that right.” Brad rammed his steel rod into a crack, trying to break it further. “So you’re sure Kay is up to washing clothes and cooking and cleaning for four extra people?”
“She’ll have to get a lot of help from the kids. Two of them are too little to be much help, but the older two are tough. They can pull their weight. Frankly, I don’t know how they’ve made it this far. You would think they’d have starved to death or died of thirst, but they’re relatively healthy.” Doug positioned his rod again, then whacked it with the sledgehammer once, twice, three times …
“Hey, man! Hold up! It’s wet!”
Doug stopped whacking and turned to where Brad stood. The slightest bit of water had seeped up under his feet. Doug looked up at Drew, wondering if someone was playing a practical joke. “Hey, did anybody spill something down here?”
“No, sir,” the boys called.
Doug looked back at the rock. Already, more water was seeping up, forming a small puddle beneath his feet. His heart jolted. “Oh, man! Is that what I think it is?”
Brad stooped down and began to laugh. “I think it is.”
“Get back.” Doug straightened and took Brad’s pick, raised it over his head, and hacked with all his might. This time the water sprayed upward.
“We hit an aquifer!” he shouted. “We have water!” Brad sent up a whoop and high-fived him. They hugged, their sweaty flesh sticking together. Above them, he heard cheers as the other workers leaned in to see.
“We’ve struck gold!” Brad shouted up.
A flurry of activity began above them as people in neighboring homes ran out. They had much to celebrate.
eighteen
THERE WAS TOO MUCH NEWS TO KEEP QUIET, AND DENI DECIDED there was no better day to start her newspaper than today. While her siblings and the Gatlin kids did their chores, she sat down at the patio table and began working on her first story — the one about Jessie’s disappearance.
Her mother had written a letter to the grandparents earlier that day, and Jeff had taken it to the post office to mail. It might take weeks for it to get to them, and then they’d have to wait for a reply to work its way back. Either way, they’d have the children for a while.
Unless they found their mother. And her article might help with that.
Twenty-five-year-old Jessie Gatlin of Crockett disappeared about two weeks after the Pulses began. She left behind four children, ages three to nine, who’ve been fending for themselves in the Sandwood Place Apartments since that time. The children have managed to survive but are now living with another family until their mother or suitable relatives are found. Jessie Gatlin, who attended Crockett High School, is purported to have had a drug problem, according to her friend, Lacy Frye, who hasn’t seen the woman since before the outage. She suspects that Jessie’s disappearance had to do with drugs. Sheriff Scarbrough, who took the children into custody and placed them in foster care, has started an investigation to find Jessie Gatlin. If you have any information about her or have seen her at any point since the outag
e, please contact Sheriff Scarbrough’s office immediately. Authorities are also trying to find the children’s grandparents or other relatives who may not be aware of their situation.
The handwriting was pitiful, and it was written on a yellow legal pad, but she supposed she could copy it by hand and staple several copies to the message boards around town. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.
She heard yelling and looked through the yard toward the sound of the voices. Her mother, who was hanging a wet shirt on the clothesline, ducked under it. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Deni said, rising from the table.
Her mother rounded up the kids, and they all ran out the back gate toward the sound. They found the crowd celebrating around the well where Deni’s father had been digging.
“They hit water!” someone yelled.
Giving a shout of victory, Deni hugged her mother. Little Sarah and Luke jumped up and down like long-time residents of Oak Hollow, while Joey stood back, hands in pockets, watching with detached interest.
There was still much work to do to get the well ready to use, but all of the men who had helped with the shifts began to make plans for finishing it off. Everyone was jubilant. The women began feverishly planning a party, a huge blowout that would provide a welcome relief from all the hard work — and from the drudgery their lives had become.
nineteen
DOUG AND DENI FOUND MOE JENKINS THE NEXT DAY, sitting on the steps of another apartment building, digging through a bag of garbage. An unlit cigarette butt hung from his mouth. His dark curly hair was greasy and tangled, and his beard was scraggly and unkempt.
Doug was about to introduce himself when, to his surprise, Deni stepped in front of him, brandishing her legal pad. “Hi, are you Moe Jenkins?”
He stopped digging and took the butt out. “Who wants to know?”
She thrust out her hand. “I’m Deni Branning, and I’m writing a story about Jessie Gatlin for the Crockett Community Journal.”
Doug shot her a look. It was the first time he’d heard the name of the newspaper. He wondered if the name had just come to her.