Dark and Bloody Ground (10 page)

Standing in the doorway, dripping from the rain, Benny took her breath away. He looked so fantastic in the beard he was growing just for her and that she had promised to keep trimmed for him, she wanted to throw herself on the carpet and die down at his feet. He tore off his windbreaker and sneakers and climbed into bed with his clothes on to let her undress him.

When he took her, something gave way, a check, a barrier that had always been there before with everyone else, a burst dam that could no longer hold back the flood. She made so much noise that Benny kidded her and said that she’d better calm down or someone would call the police; and when he rolled over she saw that she had made four long scratches down his back with her nails. She told him that it was the first time for her, like that; with him it was as if everything were for the first time. This was the first day of the rest of her life. She knew she wasn’t that pretty, she said, but did she make him happy? He said she was beautiful. She had a body that was perfect for—it. If she walked into a room naked, every man would jump on her. She said that was such a nice thing to say.

“Oh, Benny, what’re we going to do?”

“I’m getting out,” he said, “and I ain’t never going back to jail no more. You got to help me.”

She held him and stroked his hair and rubbed herself against his beard. He needed her. Her husband didn’t need her, he lived in his own world and might as well be married to an inflatable woman. Somehow she would help Benny get his fresh start. Everything would be new. It would be like rescuing and reviving someone who had been given up for dead.

“Hodge-Podge,” she called him, hugging him. “Now you’ve found me, everything’s going to be all right.”

They were in each other’s arms when the pounding started on the door. Someone was trying to bust in! Benny leapt out of bed, fists clenched.

“Open up, Hodge! We know you’re in there, you son of a bitch!”

Sherry glanced at her watch. Nearly five! Benny had written in the jailhouse log that he would be back from doing the grocery shopping by four.

“Open up! Or we’ll knock this fucking door in!”

The next day two of Sheriff Trotter’s deputies, the same pair, as it happened, who had accompanied the sheriff to find Benny Hodge, transported a prisoner from Clinton for delivery to Brushy Mountain. Filling out papers in Warden Davis’s office, they talked about how funny it had been catching Hodge buck naked in a motel room with a woman. It hadn’t taken ten minutes to locate him. He was supposed to have been buying groceries at French’s market. Right down the street, they spotted his county car outside the motel room door.

“He must’ve been thinking with his pecker,” a deputy said. “Son of a bitch must be some pussyhound. Old Trotter about busted a gut laughing. Hodge ain’t been with us six weeks and he’s already got his-self some poontang.” The sheriff had scared Hodge by threatening to send him back to Brushy, but Trotter would not do that. You had to kind of admire the boy’s determination, and besides, he was a hell of a cook. “We figure Hodge’ll be real cooperative from here on out. I figure we can tie a string around his dick.”

“Put a bell on it,” the other deputy suggested.

Warden Davis was intrigued. Hodge had had quite a reputation around Brushy, too, though he had never given any trouble. Had they happened to get a look at the girl? Did they know her?

They did not know her but described her as frizzy-haired. She had put on a pair of glasses when Hodge let them in.

“She had the sheet pulled up to her chin. Must be a real fine lady, har de har-har.”

“Maybe this will help,” the warden said. He opened a file and took out some photographs of women and spread them across his desk. The deputies immediately pointed to one.

Warden Davis asked his secretary to get him Sherry Sheets’s home number.

“I hate spoiling her Sunday,” the warden said.

8

S
HERRY POSTPONED TELLING HER HUSBAND
that she had been fired from Brushy. It was not necessary for him to know yet, and it was Sherry’s way to react to necessity rather than to force matters prematurely. She had always taken this circumspect, deliberative approach to life. During her senior year in high school, for instance, when her grades began to fall, she waited until she received her midterm report card and changed the F’s and D’s to B’s with the stroke of a pen. By the end of the next quarter she had discovered the store in Harriman that sold blank report cards; for six cents she was able to convert herself into an honor student. She knew that eventually the people she called Mom and Dad, who were actually her sister and brother-in-law, would discover the ruse. They would be angry and disappointed, and she would be unable to qualify for entrance to nursing school. But all that could be dealt with in its proper time, and meanwhile, there was the thrill of getting away with something for months on end.

She pretended to leave for work as usual, fabricating an erratic work schedule so she could see Benny when she wished, lolling around the house when Billy was at work and Renee at kindergarten. She relished having more time to devote to Benny, but she was resentful. She did not blame Warden Davis; he had no choice but to fire her, and she knew him as a decent and honest man with concern for the welfare of his prisoners and a belief in the possibility of rehabilitation
for some of them. But she thirsted for vengeance against Hot Pants, who must have snitched on her. How else would the warden have suspected her? What also galled her was that Benny the jailbird had scarcely been reprimanded—not that he deserved worse, since his only crime had been in acting like a real man—while she, the supposedly free woman, had lost her job for doing nothing more than loving someone. That was what the world called justice. She was out of a job, while Sheriff Trotter was even talking about giving Benny weekend passes if he behaved himself. The next thing you knew, Benny would have himself deputized.

It was Sherry who handled the family finances—just as she was always the designated driver and the one who went down to bail friends out when they were DUI’d and the one who did the shopping and took Renee to the doctor—and she prided herself on her skills in the field of domestic economy. But with her salary stopped, she quickly ran into a cash-flow problem.

The Pelfreys’ house, three bedrooms and a carport, had been willed free and clear to Billy and his two brothers and two sisters by their mother. Sherry and Billy had taken out a mortgage to buy up his relatives’ shares. At the end of each month, Sherry went to the bank to make the payment in cash. What with only Billy’s salary coming in and buying presents for more than a dozen relations and decorating the house with a tree and lights and stocking up on holiday goodies, Sherry was flat broke by the end of December. She thought of selling or pawning something, but Billy might notice. A scheme to stall for time formed in her fertile mind.

At the loan window to the bank, she asked the teller to check the balance on her mortgage. She said that she and her husband had come into some money and were trying to decide whether to pay down some of their debt or refinance. While the teller was off looking up the figures, Sherry reached through the window and snatched up the stamp used to mark her payment book and slipped it into her purse. The teller returned with the numbers; she thanked him and said that she would discuss the matter with her husband.

At home, she stamped the book “Paid” and filled in the date in a hand copied from previous entries. At the end of January, she stamped the book again.

One day in February, Billy confronted her. What in hell was going on? Mr. Terwilliger had called from the bank today at work. They
were two months behind in their mortgage payments. If they didn’t pay up, the bank would plant a For Sale sign in their front yard. What had Sherry been doing with the money?

“Terwilliger’s a fool,” Sherry said. “You can tell him his horse-and-buggy bank’s fouled up, and it’s no surprise, some of the morons he’s got working for him. You wonder how they stay in business.” She had been paying up faithfully, as always. To prove it, she showed him the payment book. There was her receipt, in black and white. Nor did she appreciate Billy’s making accusations.

Billy was convinced. There was quite a to-do, but the bank gave in and marked their account current. As Sherry had assumed would happen, the teller had never reported the missing stamp, undoubtedly having blamed himself for misplacing it; he would be afraid now to admit his mistake. You could get away with a lot, Sherry took satisfaction in knowing, never underestimating how timid and slow-witted people were.

At the end of the month she was still broke and out of ideas. A notice arrived that the electricity was about to be shut off, then the phone. Circumstances dictated that it was time to tell the truth.

She told her husband everything, or almost. She announced that she was in love with another man and wanted a divorce. She would file herself. And yes, she would ask for custody of Renee.

Billy was more stunned, at first, than angry. Sherry refused to say who the other man was. He was no one Billy knew, she assured him. If he didn’t mind, she would stay on in the house until she located a place of her own.

Billy tried to talk her out of her decision, but no, she said she had to do it, she was deeply in love and Billy ought to admit that their marriage had been in trouble for a long time. “You have a drinking problem, and I have a running-around problem,” was the way she put it. Her advice to him was to “bow out gracefully.” She was asking for very little, only her personal belongings, her car, and her daughter.

When Billy found out who his wife’s lover was, he vowed to fight for custody of Renee, and he and Sherry could no longer speak without screaming at each other. She was counting on the courts to recognize the sacred bond between mother and child.

Sherry took a job in Clinton with Protective Apparel, a factory that manufactured bulletproof vests, camouflage jackets, and other
paramilitary fashion items. She worked as a cashier in the retail shop. She also moved to Clinton, into one room in the house of a girlfriend whose husband was working in Arkansas. Benny was able to visit her there because Sheriff Trotter, a broad-minded man, had made good on his promise of weekend passes.

Renee remained with her father for the time being, but Sherry took her on outings and began telling her about Benny and preparing her to meet him. The prospect made Sherry anxious. Benny had often said how much he liked children and animals, but you never knew how a man would react to your child, especially when he had his own. Stepchildren caused trouble in every instance she could remember.

One bright blue Saturday in May, Sherry picked up Renee and drove to the Clinton jail, where Benny was waiting for them and climbed into the car. They were all in the front seat. Sherry noticed that when Benny tried to put his arm around Renee, the child flinched and started nattering on about the Flintstones. Benny let her talk. Sherry pulled into the drive-up window at McDonald’s and ordered Big Macs, fries, and shakes for everyone to go and headed for a spot she had picked out on the banks of the Clinch River.

There were yellow and blue flowers everywhere in the new grass. A houseboat drifted by on the wide, dark river, a man and a boy taking the sun on the deck. On the opposite bank a man fished from the end of a dock, and upriver you could see two or three big houses that looked as if they had been there forever, with lawns sloping down to the water’s edge. Sherry spread out the blanket she had brought and handed out the food. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

Then, only a couple of bites into her own, Renee asked for a bite of Benny’s hamburger. Sherry was about to tell her not to be so greedy, but before she could get the words out, Benny handed his hamburger to Renee. She took a big bite and offered it back to him.

“You can have it if you want,” Benny said. “Does it taste better than yours?” he laughed.

Sherry swallowed the lump in her throat. Billy would never have done that, she thought, he was too selfish. Now she knew that everything was going to be all right.

The only serious complication in this new life, from what Sherry could see, was Benny’s wife, Lona Kay, who brought his one-year-old
daughter, Krystal Dawn, to visit him at the jail. There had been more than one unpleasant confrontation when the wife had appeared with the baby when Sherry was there or just leaving. No words had been exchanged, but Lona Kay had looked at Sherry with hatred.

Had she been unfair to Hot Pants? Sherry wondered. It could have been Lona Kay who had tipped off Warden Davis. The woman was no stranger to Brushy, after all, having met Benny there when she had been visiting another prisoner. The warden, according to Benny, had been about to remove her from the approved visitors list when Benny had managed to get her pregnant. Once he married her, she was safely back on the list, as a wife was normally not prevented from visiting her husband, the prison’s gesture toward family life. Benny had baked the wedding cake, chocolate mint with cherries on top.

Benny also had another daughter, Sharon Annette, by a woman he had married just before he had been sent to Nashville State Prison. Sharon, who was now eleven, lived in Benny’s hometown of Morristown, east of Knoxville. She had never seen her father out of prison. She visited him several times a year and wrote to him every week without fail. Sherry had read some of the letters, which had drawings on them of father and child and told him over and over that he was the greatest daddy in the world. Benny cared a lot for little Sharon. Sherry looked forward to meeting her.

He cared for little Dawn, too, and it was clear that he had room in his heart for Renee. It would take time to straighten everything out—to achieve what up-to-date therapists choose to call a “blended family.”

Maw Webster fell ill in October and relinquished her post to her apprentice. She vowed gallantly to return, but it looked as if Benny could be the head cook as long as he wanted the job. He was only two months short of eligibility for parole, which would be a cinch. His behavior had been exemplary except for the one incident of unauthorized absence.