On the Run (10 page)

She nodded.

“You were driving?”

Her chin dropped a fraction of an inch. She knew where this conversation was heading. Another nod.

“But you don’t have a driver’s license.”

“No.”

“The law says you can’t legally drive unless you have a driver’s license.”

“I know. And I know I shouldn’t have been driving. But I . . . I didn’t know what else to do. I know when you asked earlier if I’d done something criminal, I said I hadn’t. I was thinking of crimes like bank robbery or holding up a gas station. Or murder. And I never did any of those.” Another drop of chin. “But, since I was driving without a license, I guess I should have said yes, I did do something criminal.”

I figured this needed further discussion, but first things first. “Okay, let’s get back to these names. Which is it, Morrison or Tyler?”

“Well, both, sort of. Tyler is on my birth certificate, but I’ve never used it. I went by my stepfather’s name all the time I was growing up.”

“And his name is Morrison?”

“No, his name is Grigley. Tom Grigley.”

Getting answers out of Abilene felt rather like trying to extract nails with my teeth. “So Morrison is . . . ?”

“My husband’s name.”

I stopped short right there in the middle of the green tunnel and stared at her. “You’re married?”

“That’s what having a husband usually means,” she muttered.

“And he’s . . . where?”

“Back in Texas, I guess. Unless he’s . . . around here somewhere.” She peered toward the underbrush as if afraid he might be peering back.

“You’re . . . umm . . . separated, I take it?”

“I guess you could call it that.”

“What would
you
call it?”

“I . . . left him.”

She met my eyes and said the words defiantly, as if daring me to challenge her, but what I did was look at those black eyes and bruises with an awful truth dawning.

“He did this to you?”

She hesitated, and for a minute I thought she was going to invent some story about falling down steps or running into a door, but instead she warily issued a part-truth. “I got one black eye and twisted my hip in the accident.”

“But the other black eye, the earlier one, and all the bruises and sore shoulder, he did all that?”

She hesitated but finally nodded, her gaze focused on the road again. I could see the shame, like a sludge oozing through her, as if this was somehow her fault.

“Don’t, Abilene.” I grabbed her upper arms—I had to reach up to do it—and yanked her around to face me. “Don’t blame yourself. Not ever. Whatever he did to you is not your fault. No man has the right to do something like this to his wife. You must not blame yourself. How long has he been doing this?”

“Since a couple months after we got married.”

“I take it you had no idea what kind of man he was before you married him?”

I still didn’t blame her. I still felt horrified and appalled at what the man had done. But I was also a bit exasperated. Starry-eyed kids these days, rebelliously rushing into marriage before they know the most basic things about each other . . .

Abilene bluntly pulled the plug on that thought.

“I didn’t know anything about him before we got married. I’d never seen him before my folks took me down to Texas and we met him at a courthouse to get a license.”

I was still sprinting on my self-righteous agenda of young people’s irresponsibility. “You mean it was some kind of Internet thing? You met him on the Internet and decided to marry him without—”

“I never
decided
to marry him at all. He was a friend of my stepfather’s, somebody Tom knew when he worked in Texas for a while. Tom and my mother decided I should marry him. Tom always resented me, and I think he figured this was a good way to get rid of me. Usually my mother smoothed things over and didn’t let him do anything too awful to me.” She stopped and swallowed. “But this time she went along with him. They yanked me out of school in Kansas and took me down there, and a justice of the peace married us.”

“But . . . but that’s archaic! People don’t do things like that these days. At least not in this country. Parents don’t decide who their children are going to marry, and then just . . . drag them into it.”

“Mine did.”

So much for my mistaken scenario of youthful irresponsibility. I felt a big whap of guilt for
my
irresponsible judgment without knowing the facts. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

Sixteen when she’d married him. Twenty-two now. Six years the man had been abusing her. She held out her left arm. A ridge bulged just above the wrist.

“He broke it there once. He said I didn’t need to go to the doctor, so I just wrapped it as tight as I could in an Ace bandage. I didn’t have any way to get to town to a doctor. I-I don’t think it healed quite right.”

I was so horrified, so appalled that all I could do was look at her. She mistook the look.

“I know. You’re going to tell me that I have to go back to him. That I should be a better wife, and then he wouldn’t have so many reasons to get mad at me.”

“Why in the world would I say that?”

“It’s what my stepfather said when I called home and told them after the third time Boone hit me.”

I shook my head. “Child, all
I
can say is, what took you so long to leave him?”

We were still standing there in the middle of the gravel driveway. A line of ants marching back and forth across the road had now included my foot in their pathway. An unseen bird chirped with incongruous cheerfulness somewhere in the brush. All very normal, and yet I felt I was peering into a dark world I’d only heard about before. No doubt I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I’d never before personally known a woman who was physically abused by her husband. Now I knew why Abilene’s eyes looked so old. Abuse had aged her on the inside.

She gave me a long, searching look as if she was uncertain whether to trust me. Finally she pulled on the cord around her neck and brought out the leather pouch again. This time she dug out a small photo and handed it to me.

Three children, a boy and two girls, all blond and fair-skinned like Abilene. Their ages appeared to be close together, all under five. Adorable kids but somehow frail and vulnerable looking.

I blinked. “You’re a mother? With three children?”

“They called me Mom. I love them like they’re my own.” She sounded unexpectedly fierce, as if she’d protect them with her life. Which, it dawned on me, she probably had.

“Randy was four when Boone and I got married. Lily was three and Alisha only two. The picture was taken way back then, but it’s the only one I have. Randy is ten now, Lily nine, and Alisha eight.”

“They’re why you couldn’t leave even if your husband was abusing you.”

“The first time Boone hit me, I was ready to walk out right then. I packed a suitcase and headed for the door. I wasn’t about to take what he was dishing out no matter what my folks thought. We were twelve miles from town, but I figured if I had to crawl to the bus station to get away, I’d do it. Then Randy started crying because I was leaving, and Boone hit him and . . . and knocked him clear across the room.” Abilene’s throat moved in a convulsive swallow. “Then I was . . . afraid to leave.”

Afraid for the kids. Afraid of what he’d do to them if she wasn’t there to protect them.

“Usually he left them alone when he was on one of his rampages. He’d come after me instead. Which was fine.
Fine
,” she repeated with that same fierceness. “Though sometimes, if he was mad enough or drunk enough, he went after them too. That was how I got the broken arm. Because I-I told him he’d have to kill me before I’d let him keep beating on Randy with his belt the way he was doing. He said killing me would be fine and maybe someday he’d do it, but right then he settled for holding my arm over the edge of the table and breaking it. But he stopped beating on Randy,” she added with that same protective fierceness.

“Oh, Abilene . . .” My body ached with her pain, physical, mental, and emotional. “Wasn’t there something you could do? Go to the authorities?”

“The sheriff down there is Boone’s cousin. They hunt jackrabbits and rattlesnakes together. I think he knocks his wife around too. Sometimes I thought about taking the kids and just running with them. But they’re Boone’s kids, not mine, and I knew I’d never get away with it. So I just stayed and . . . did the best I could for them.”

Putting herself between them and their father’s brutality.

“But I didn’t feel like that at first,” she said almost angrily, as if she didn’t want me to mistake her for some noble martyr. “At first I just resented the kids. I blamed them for everything. For my having to live in a rundown old trailer with a man I didn’t love. Struggling to cook on an old stove with only two burners that worked. Trying to do laundry when the well pump kept breaking down. Coping with all their colds and earaches and Alisha’s allergies. Because if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have been dragged into marrying Boone.” She sounded miserable and ashamed and guilty.

“It was a lot to cope with. And you weren’t much more than a child yourself.”

“But after a while I knew who was really to blame. Boone. Boone and his bad temper and meanness and stinginess and drinking. And then I just wanted to protect them.”

Because she loved them, with a love that was so apparent when she took the photo back from me as if it were the most precious thing she owned. Which it probably was. “What about the children’s mother? Where was she? Or was Boone a widower?”

“No. She . . . wasn’t around.”

“You mean she just walked out and left her children behind?”

“That’s what I thought for a long time. Boone talked about her as if she were . . . dirt. But a few months ago I found out differently. Boone beat her too, but she took it worse than I did, I guess. She had a mental breakdown. He divorced her while she was in some institution, and got the kids.”

Great guy. Abuse his wife, then take away her kids after he’d driven her into a breakdown. “So then he needed a new mother for them, and you were elected.”

She nodded. “I hate Boone. I suppose as a Christian you think that’s terrible and I should just forgive him. But I hate him.” Her jaw and fists clenched, and the sheen of perspiration on her forehead wasn’t just from the heat. “I’m glad I was there for the kids when they needed me. But I’m glad I’m away from him now.”

“You finally decided that even for the sake of the kids you couldn’t stay?”

Her eyes flashed as she looked at me, as if my assumption bordered on blasphemy. “No, I’d never do that! I’d never leave them at Boone’s mercy.
Never.
MaryLou, that’s Boone’s ex-wife, finally got out of whatever institution she was in. She remarried a year or so ago. A good man. They got a lawyer. A very good lawyer.” She smiled with a hint of grim satisfaction. “A few months ago they filed a lawsuit to get the kids. And they got them.” Abilene’s eyes brimmed with tears, and I knew the tears were for her own loss, losing the kids she loved. But there was no regret or resentment in the words.

I squeezed her hand, not knowing how to comfort her.

“I-I miss them. I miss them so much. But I’m glad she got them. They’re better off with her and her husband. Boone can’t hurt them now. And MaryLou told me I could visit if I wanted.”

“Will you do it?”

“I’d like to sometime. But they’re way back in Kentucky.”

“What did Boone say about his ex-wife getting the kids?”

“He blamed me. He said if I’d been a better wife and mother, he wouldn’t have lost them. He was in a rage after I testified at the court hearing.”

“Testified against him?”

“Not exactly against him. But I told the truth. On the way home, he hit me in the face with the can of beer he was drinking.” She touched her nose. This hadn’t been long ago. Her nose was still a bit swollen. “He said he ought to kill me right then and there. And he would. Soon.”

“Did you tell him you were leaving?”

“No.”

“How did you manage to get away without his knowing?”

“I’d been saving a little money here and there, trying to get enough to take Randy to a dentist. His teeth were in terrible shape, but Boone said it didn’t matter, they were just baby teeth and would fall out anyway.”

Still thinking only about the kids, not her own needs.

“So after the kids were gone I packed a few things and took the money and sneaked out in the middle of the night while Boone was asleep.” She touched the leather pouch safely hidden beneath her clothes again, as if to reassure herself the money was still there.

Abilene seemed a bit dazed now, and I knew she’d never told all this to anyone before. I put my arm around her waist, and we started walking toward the motor home. It’s modest, as motor homes go, certainly no big luxury model, but now it looked like a haven of safety basking in sunshine there at the end of the green tunnel. Abilene didn’t really lean on me physically as we walked, but I could feel another kind of leaning.
Lord, help me to help her!

We reached the motor home, and I started fixing iced tea. Abilene sat on the sofa, absentmindedly fingering a straggly spike of hair behind one ear. I’d been wondering ever since we first met about that strange haircut.

“Boone liked your hair short?” I asked.

She stretched the strand out to what there was of its full length. “He hated it short.”

“So that’s why you cut it short?”

“No. It was long when we got married, and it got almost down to my waist. It . . . it was the only thing about me he ever seemed proud of. The only thing he ever complimented me on. So I kept it that length even when he grabbed it a couple of times and used it to swing me around and hurt me.”

“Oh, child . . .” Desperately needing approval even as she was abused.

“But then he did it again a few weeks ago when he was mad about my saying something ‘smart-alecky’ to him, and I . . . I vowed he was never going to do it again. I went out to the barn and whacked it off with the electric horse clippers.” She touched another ragged strand at her temple. “I guess I got it kind of . . . uneven.”