Enduring the Crisis (17 page)

Methodically thinking about what she still needed to do before four arrived helped keep her “what ifs” at bay. With the trailer in her garage, it made it easy for her to pack and repack without anyone the wiser that she was up to something. She needed to make sure she had it balanced and leave enough room for any last minute items. When the thought of repacking it again overwhelmed her, she studied the map tracing and retracing the route she was going to take. Once she sat still was when her arm started to ache.

“Mom?” Charlie was hesitant as she stood in the doorway to the garage.

“Hmm?” Tammy was so preoccupied that she easily subdued the fury that wanted to well up inside her again.

“I think I have everything.” She hauled her big tote that was practically overflowing down the stairs. “Well, I wanted to bring a few more things. I couldn’t get everything to fit.” Her face was red from crying. “There are things I just can’t bring myself to leave.”

“Like what? Show me.” Tammy was struggling with all the things she was going to have to leave behind too, but she had a bad habit of putting her girls ahead of her own wants at times.

She had filled a trash bag full of things she wanted to bring.

Tammy rubbed her forehead. “Leave it here and if we have room we will see if we can get it in.” She pointed at each tub as she mumbled what was in each one before she turned and pointed at Charlie. “I need you to get all the games, books, busy stuff. Pack those up right now and we will see what we can fit in another tub.”

There was one thing Tammy hadn’t had time to do and it was collect all the pictures and some of the keepsakes she had for the girls. She went through the house finding all the places she had stashed photographs and albums and did her best to fit them in one tub. It was close to being the heaviest tub she had packed yet.

She heaved it to the floor of garage and pushed it with her foot when her arm ached too much from the strain. She was about to lift it into the trailer when she thought she heard Charlie.

“Hey, I need your help…” Tammy turned to give her daughter room to grab a side when she saw it wasn’t Charlie after all. She backed up and the tub was in the way. Losing her balance, she fell hard on the floor of the trailer.

“My brother is dead.” The one she was afraid would come back was towering over her. He coiled a rope in his hands and he had a crazy look in his eye. “They’re all dead.”

“I didn’t do it.” She scrambled back into the trailer when he lunged for her.

“There’s blood on the ground in front of your house.” He grabbed her foot, pulling her to him.

She kicked his hand and was able to shove him back with her foot, loosening his grip. He let go and she slid off the edge of the trailer and swung around the side to the tool chest. She grabbed a big crescent wrench and swung it at him. He picked up a tire iron and went for her.

She grabbed a handful of sockets and threw them at him. He yelled when a few of them nailed him. Backing away, she looked for anything that could help her. A can of wasp spray was sitting on the shelf. As he reached for something to throw at her, she sprayed the foam in his face.

He threw the tire iron at her as he screamed in pain. It hit her in the back as she ran for it around the other side of the trailer. That was a mistake. There was nothing she could grab to throw at him. He had taken off his shirt to wipe his eyes and was more furious as he stumbled towards her. She swung the big crescent wrench but it was heavy and cumbersome. He grabbed it and pulled it out of her hand. He didn’t toss it, he went right for her head.

She leaned back as she dodged it and felt the swoosh of air from the swing. He almost got her. Dropping to her knees, she scrambled under Old Betsy. She hit her head hard on the muffler. He came down hard on her ankle with the wrench and she cried out in pain.

His hand was almost tight around her foot when she rolled, rolling out on the other side. She had access to more things to throw at him. He ran around suburban to come at her again when Charlie and Zoe were standing at the door.

“Get out!” she shouted and he turned going right for them.

The girls screamed and went back into the house.

Tammy picked up a quart of paint and threw it at him, nailing him in the shoulder. He didn’t stop. She threw another and another. When those two cans landed, missing their mark, paint splattered across the floor and up the wall. When she started to chase after him as he followed the girls inside, a terrible pain shot up her leg.

“Oh no.” She could hardly put any weight on it as she hopped to chase after him.

The girls were screaming which brought Amanda and Holly upstairs. Buddy too. He barked and went for the man’s leg that had Charlie cornered with Zoe sandwiched between her sister and the wall.

He kicked at the dog as he reached for Charlie’s throat. Buddy yelped and backed off but kept barking.

“I will kill her. You will pay for what you did,” he shouted over the screaming and barking in the room.

Tammy tried to hop over but there was paint on her shoe and she slid, falling to the floor. She struggled to mentally block all the pain coming from everywhere. Kicking off her shoe, she got back on her feet.

Charlie grabbed his hand but couldn’t stop him. She tried to knee him in the groin and missed.

Zoe screamed and had slipped out from behind her sister and pinched him so hard on his side that he released his tight hold. He backhanded her across the face and she hit the wall, sliding to the floor.

Charlie got him in the groin the second time she tried. He bent over but didn’t completely let go of her. She started coughing.

Amanda rushed him, knocking him to the ground. Before Tammy could even stop any of them, all four girls scrambled on top of him and pinned him to the ground. He was a big guy compared to his brother and he tried thrashing. But Amanda pressed her knee hard against the back of his neck and Charlie had her knees dug into the back of each legs. Zoe held one arm while her nose was bleeding profusely. Holly pinned the other.

“Hold him still girls, while I get something to tie him up.” She knew right were the big zip ties were, tucked up in the cupboard.

He was fighting hard and had got his arm free from Holly and grabbed her shirt while he was kicking, hitting Charlie in the back a few times. They didn’t give up.

“Bite him, Holly,” Zoe yelled. She was still furious over him hitting her.

Holly hesitated and then tried to go for it when he got the best of her and whacked her as she tried. That just made her mad. She stomped on his wrist, standing on it after that.

Tammy hobbled over to her girls. He worked hard at getting free once more, sliding one of his legs up just enough to throw both Charlie and Amanda off balance. Tammy could hardly stand as it was, but before he could get free, Tammy threw herself onto his back. He yelled. Amanda grabbed his hair and forced his head down on the floor while she grabbed the package from Tammy. Handing them around, they each had a couple zipties tightened on his wrists and ankles. The hard part was going to be getting his hands behind his back and his feet together.

It took a bit but they finally had him hogtied on the floor.

“Now what?” Amanda asked as she helped Zoe clean up her bloody nose.

“I can see the skin under my eye is already swelling,” Holly said.

“I think my teeth are loose,” Zoe said with her fingers in her mouth.

“Quit complaining, I got his stupid heel in my back more times than I can count.”

“Come on, we need to get him out of here,” Tammy said, ignoring her own injuries and was fuming mad that all her children had been hurt by him.

The man lying on the floor was swearing up a storm.

Tammy kneeled down and pulled his hair so he had to look at her. “What’s your name?”

He clamped his jaw shut.

“Fine.” She grabbed the wallet from his back pocket. “James, huh? Well, you have a potty mouth and using it profusely in a room with young ladies shows you have no manners. We shall toss you out on the front lawn, I believe. Hopefully, the militia out there that took care of your friends will have mercy on you. That’s for your sake not mine. The thing is, I told them you were still prowling around and they know there is one more that they need to take care of. They showed no mercy at all on your friends.” Tammy was so furious that she didn’t care what was about to happen to him when they left him out on the front lawn all tied up.

She couldn’t lift him  with her messed up ankle. So she left it to the girls and they took far too much pleasure in figuring out how to haul him outside. He might have gained a few more bruises.

When he was deposited close to the sidewalk, Charlie and Zoe were getting ready to give him one last kick.

“Girls, no. This is good enough. Go make a sign that he was an intruder real quick like Charlie did with the other one and we can tape that on his back.

Zoe ran in the house. She was back outside in no time. With the exception of James still cursing at them while he flailed to no avail on the ground, there was no movement, no sign of anyone outside.

The girls made sure the sign was stuck very well to the bare skin on his back.

Tammy pulled on Holly’s arm first. One by one she sent the girls inside. She waited until they were all gone before she kneeled down so he could look her in the eye. “You messed with the wrong girls. I’m actually sad for you. You could have made better choices with your life. I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen when I go inside.”

They both heard something rustle across the street.

“Don’t leave me here. Let me go. I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again,” he begged.

“If you asked me that before you hurt all of my daughters and me, I might have considered it. But you were trying to kill me and then you wanted to kill my daughter. I don’t have it in me to kill anyone. However, I want to live to take care of my girls and if it means you aren’t in the world anymore for us to be safe, then so be it.”

She stood, turning her back on him as he pleaded some more, and stoically walked to the house. She imagined it was stoic. It really wasn’t with her very messed up ankle. Shushing her brain as she went when her empathy went into overdrive. She transferred those feelings the best she could over to her girls.

They were in the kitchen and in the dining room nursing their wounds. Tammy locked the door up tight and tried to look through the peephole. When she couldn’t see him, she hobbled over to the window and looked out the gap in the shutters near the bottom.

Shadows were closing in around him.

“Girls, go downstairs now. Please, don’t waste time.” She fanned at them to go quickly. “Zoe, we’ll clean that up later. Go.”

They could hear James scream outside. Hopefully the girls running down the steps at once drowned out the sound so they couldn’t hear him beg for his life.

Tammy backed away from the window when she saw them undo the straps on his legs but not his arms. The shouting, the begging. She jumped when there was a familiar knock at the backdoor.

She hobbled over to the door and she froze when she heard the gunshots. The tears, she couldn’t stop them when she opened the door for Dale.

“Hey.” He reached out to hug her “I asked them to wait until they were farther up the road so you didn’t have to know when they took care of business. He must have run for it.”

She gently pushed his arm away.”I was hit in the back with a tire iron. In fact, I hurt everywhere.” Using the pain as her excuse, she really wanted to keep up her personal space boundary.

He pulled out a chair for her when he realized she couldn’t walk.

“Let me see.” He grabbed a light from the kitchen counter. “What happened to your ankle?”

“That was from an oversized crescent wrench.”

He carefully pulled off her sock. “Is this blood?”

“No, it’s paint. The red from the front door. I chucked a paint can at him and it got all over. I slipped on it. Not the best choice for a weapon.”

“I’d say.” He examined her foot, checked her pain when he moved it side to side. “It’s really swollen. I don’t think anything is broken or torn. Just very bruised.”

“I hope it’s not broken. I didn’t have time for this.” She couldn’t get comfortable in her chair and her head was hurting.

“I see you got a pretty good bump on the forehead.” He moved her hair out of the way to examine it. “What else?”

“The tire iron to the back is hurting pretty bad. It hit my shoulder blade on the good arm.” She covered her face in frustration. “Crap.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he hurt the girls too. We didn’t get the two by fours back up above the garage door as good they were on there before. He forced his way in there and I didn’t notice. It’s all my fault this happened.”

He kneeled on the floor and gently touched her arm. “You’re alive right?”

She nodded.

“Do you or any of the girls need to see a doctor?”

“No.”

“So you are still in great shape. He’s gone now. I mean gone forever gone.”

“I’m not going to be able to leave in a few hours. That’s for sure.”

“So leave tomorrow if you are up to it.”

“You made it sound like I needed to go right now.”

“You need to go right away, yes. But only if you are physically able to or you’ll be in even worse shape if you leave hurt
and
exhausted. If something happens, you aren’t going to be in decent shape to deal with it.”

“True.”

“I’m sorry but I have to go right now. I’ll check on you tomorrow, see how you’re doing and if you need help with loading the trailer because your ankle is so messed up, I’ll be happy to help.”

“Thank you.” She mustered the best smile she could. He really was helping her with the tough decisions.

Dale squeezed her hand and smiled warmly at her, letting his gaze linger a little longer as he turned to head out the door. “. We’ll be watching over your place. I hope that will ease your mind so you can get some sleep.” He was gone.

Tammy stared at the door a long time. She had been married a long time and had never had the feeling that someone besides her husband might have feelings for her. And she was terribly confused. It was his prodding for her to go that was helping her pull herself together. In fact Ben would have talked her through it the same way, maybe a bit more impatient with her for dragging her feet, though.

Was Dale just taking care of business with her? Was he genuinely that kind of man that hugged most people at the right time and squeezed their hands? She was not the most touchy-feely type so it was far out of her comfort zone unless she had feelings for someone and she didn’t have feelings for him. At least not in that way.

“Mom,” Amanda whispered as she came up the stairs.

“I’m here.” Tammy wiped her face with a towel. She shook her head at her own wimpy behavior.

“Was there another man in the house?”

“Yes. Dale is one of the men that has been trying to help us stay safe.”

“Oh.”

“And he’s told me how we need to get out of town.” She struggled to stand up. Amanda was by her side, pulling her arm around her shoulders.

“I see. We heard the gunshots when we ran downstairs. That man, James, is dead. Isn’t he?”

“I suspect he is.”

“I can’t wait to get out of here.”

After Tammy looked over all of their injuries, she sent them to bed. All except Mae who was unhurt but heard everything and was inconsolable over the state of her family.

“You all could have died and I would have been all alone.”

“But we’re all here and no one needs a hospital. That’s actually a blessing. Another one is all those men won’t be bothering us anymore.”

Mae rested her head on Tammy’s shoulder and hugged her as gently as she could. Once she finally felt safe, she went to bed and said her prayers.

Tammy couldn’t kneel beside her bed in fear of not being able to get up again so she stood and listened to her youngest ask for safety, comfort, and healing for her family. And she prayed for a long time begging for her daddy to come home soon.

There was no relief for Tammy. As exhausted as she was, there was pain no matter which way she turned in bed. When she finally found a position she could tolerate, it was facing the empty side of her bed. No matter how long Ben’s absences had been, she always slept on her side of the bed. She rested her hand where his chest would be and turned her head into the pillow as she lightly punched the mattress because it hurt too much to hit it any harder. She didn’t cry that time but she felt the profound sense of loss grow deeper and she was angry too. Angry that she was having to go through so much without him, that she couldn’t talk to him to tell him how upset she was, and that they never got to say goodbye.