41
L
UTHER AND BETTY WALLACE WOKE TO A SUDDEN
pounding on the front door. Who’s out there? he called.
It’s Donna, Betty said. She come back to us.
Maybe it ain’t her, Luther said.
She climbed out of bed and called: Donna, I’m coming, honey.
They went down the hallway, Luther in his underwear, Betty in her worn yellow nightdress, and when Luther opened the door Hoyt Raines shoved violently into the room.
No! Betty cried. You can’t come in here. Get back.
Shut up, Hoyt said. He stood before them, his face ragged and blood-smeared, his ear still bleeding a little, his eyes glassy. You two are going to help me whether you like it or not. Those sonsabitches over at the tavern—
You get out of here, Luther said. Just get out.
Goddamn you, Hoyt said. He hit Luther in the chest and Luther stepped backward and sat down all at once on the couch. I got no damn place else to go, Hoyt said.
You can’t stay here, Betty said. They won’t allow it.
Shut up. Hoyt took her arm and flung her onto the couch beside her husband. Just sit there, he said. And keep your goddamn mouth shut.
He went across to the kitchen sink and ducked his head under the faucet, soaking his head, the blood running thinly from his face over the dirty dishes, and then he stood blindly, his lank hair dripping, and grabbed a dish towel to wipe at his head and neck. Luther and Betty sat on the couch, watching him.
So, you heard what I said. I’m staying here tonight.
You can’t, Betty said.
I told you to shut up. Now by God, shut your mouth. He glared at her. It won’t be long. Just for tonight. Maybe two nights. I don’t know yet. Now I want both of you to go back to your room and stay there and keep quiet.
What are you going to do? Luther said.
I’m staying in that back room. And you listen to me: I’ll kill you if you try to call somebody. I’ll hear you on the phone. He looked at them. Did you hear what I just said?
They looked back at him.
Did you?
We ain’t suppose to talk, Luther said. You said for us to shut up.
Now I’m saying you can talk. Did you hear what I said would happen if you try and call somebody?
Yes.
What’d I say?
You said you’d kill us.
Remember that, Hoyt said. Now get up from there.
He herded them back to their room and shut the door, then walked down the hall to the last room. When he opened the door Joy Rae was sitting up in bed in her nightgown, one hand cupped over her mouth. He walked across the room and pulled her onto her feet, and when she began to scream he slapped her. Stop that, he said. He pulled her out in the hall and into the next room, where Richie was crouched on the floor in his pajamas, waiting in the dark, as if preparing to run off. But seeing Hoyt with his sister he lost control of himself. The front of his pajamas suddenly went damp.
You stupid little son of a bitch, Hoyt said. He shoved Joy Rae into the room and lifted the little boy by the arm. Look at you. He slapped him. The boy slipped out of his hands and fell on the wet dirty carpet.
Now take those goddamn pants off. Get out of them.
The boy whimpered and pulled off the soaked pajamas. Then Hoyt took out his belt and began to whip him. The boy screamed, squirming wildly on the floor, his thin bare legs kicking, his hands reaching out to catch the belt. His sister began to scream too, and Hoyt turned and caught her by the nightgown, lifting it up, and began to whip her legs and thin flanks. He seemed crazed, whipping at both of them in an indiscriminate fury, his face contorted with drink and rage, his arm rising and falling, flailing at them, until Luther appeared in the bedroom doorway. Stop it, Luther shouted. You can’t do that no more, so just stop it. Hoyt turned and walked at him and Luther stepped back and he lashed Luther across the neck and Luther yelped and retreated hollering down the hall. Then Hoyt turned on the children again and went on whipping them until he was sweating and panting. Finally he slammed the door and walked back to Joy Rae’s bedroom at the end of the hall.
When he was gone the two children crawled into the bed, crying and sobbing, scarcely able to breathe, and rubbed at their legs and buttocks. Their legs burned and throbbed. Some of the welts were bleeding. In the brief silence between their sobs they could hear their parents wailing from the room down the hall.
T
HE NEXT MORNING HOYT HAD LUTHER AND BETTY AND
Joy Rae and Richie sit in the living room on the couch. He switched on the television and pulled the heavy window curtains shut. The light from the TV flickered in the shadowy room.
At noon he told Betty to make something to eat, and when she’d heated the frozen pizza he made them sit together at the table. Nobody said anything, and only Hoyt ate very much. After this silent meal he forced them back into the living room where he could watch them.
Once in the long afternoon a car drove up and stopped out front in Detroit Street. When he heard the door of the car shut Hoyt looked past the edge of the curtains, and a sheriff’s deputy was walking up the path toward the door, then the deputy knocked and Hoyt cursed between his teeth. He motioned Betty and the two children back to the bedrooms and hissed at Luther to answer the door. Get rid of him. And you goddamn better remember what I said.
Luther went out onto the porch and talked and answered a few questions in his slow manner. Finally the deputy left and Luther came back in and shut the door. Hoyt came out of the hall and watched through the curtains as the car drove off. Then he sat them down on the couch again, to watch television. In the evening he forced them to their beds and in this way the second night passed in the trailer.
The next morning in the gray dawn he was gone. They came out of their bedrooms and discovered that he had vanished without a sound.
A
T DAYBREAK HOYT HAD WALKED ACROSS TOWN TO ELTON
Chatfield’s house. He had waited at the curb beside Elton’s old pickup until he came out, then caught a ride with him to the feedlot east of Holt. At the feedlot he entered the office and stood at the desk where the manager was talking on the phone to a cattle buyer. The manager looked up at him and frowned and went on talking. After a while he hung up. What are you doing in here? he said. You’re suppose to be riding pens.
I quit, Hoyt said.
What do you mean you quit?
I come to draw my pay.
The hell you have.
You owe me for two weeks. I’ll take it now.
The manager pushed his hat back on his head. You don’t give much notice, do you. He took out a checkbook from a middle drawer and started to write.
I’ll take it in cash, Hoyt said.
What?
I want cash. I don’t need a check.
Well, I’ll be goddamned. You expect me to come up with cash on a Monday morning.
That’s right.
What if I don’t have no cash?
I’ll take what you got.
He studied Hoyt closely. Where you running off to, Hoyt?
That ain’t none of your business.
Some woman chasing you? he said. He took out his wallet and removed what few bills there were and dropped them forward onto the desktop. Now get your ass out of here.
Hoyt stuffed the bills in his pocket. How about giving me a lift over to the highway? he said.
You want a ride?
I want to get over to the highway.
You better start in to walking then. I wouldn’t give you a lift to a goddamn dog fight. Get the fuck out of here.
Hoyt stood for a moment, looking at him, thinking if there was something he needed to say, then he turned and stepped out of the office into the fenced yard. It was already beginning to warm up, the sun risen higher in the sky, the sky completely clear and blue. He walked out past the cattle yards, where the fat cattle were all feeding at the plank troughs at the fences, and walked out onto the gravel road, headed south toward the highway two miles in the distance. There were fields of corn stubble along the road, and small birds flew up from the ditches, chittering as he approached. A pheasant cackled from across the stubble. When he reached the highway he stood at the roadside, leaning against a signpost, waiting for a ride to come along.
Half an hour later a man in a blue Ford pickup stopped beside the road. The man leaned across and rolled down the window. Bud, where you headed to?
Denver, Hoyt said.
Well, get in here. You can ride as far as I’m going.
Hoyt climbed in and shut the door and they drove west toward town. The man glanced at him. What you gone and done to your face there?
Where?
Your nigh ear.
I wasn’t looking and snatched it on a tree limb.
Well. All right then. You got to watch that.
They drove on and passed through Holt and went west on US
34.
The highway stretched out before them, lined on both sides by the shallow barrow ditches. Above the ditches the four-strand barbed-wire fences ran along beside the pastures in the flat sandy country, and above the fences the line of telephone poles rose up out of the ground like truncated trees strung together with black wire. Hoyt rode with him through Norka and as far as Brush. Then he got another ride and traveled on, headed west on a Monday morning in springtime.
42
I
N
SCHOOL
THAT
MORNING
THE
CHILDREN
WERE
DISCOVERED
almost at once. One of the young girls in Joy Rae’s fifth-grade class, a girl who had been briefly interested in her weeks before when she had appeared at school with lipstick on her mouth, slipped up to the front of the room in the first hour of classes and addressed the teacher in a voice scarcely above a whisper. The teacher at her desk said: I can’t hear you, come here. What is it you want?
The girl leaned next to the woman’s head and whispered in her ear. The teacher studied her and turned to look out into the classroom at Joy Rae. Joy Rae was bent forward over her desktop. Go back to your seat, the teacher said.
The girl returned to her desk at the middle of the room and the teacher rose and walked as if on some routine inspection out among the rows of students, and stopped near Joy Rae and then caught her breath, raising her hand to her mouth, but collected herself immediately and led Joy Rae out into the hall and down to the nurse.
The little boy, her brother, was called in from his classroom.
Then, as before, against their will and despite their protestations they were examined in the nurse’s room. The boy’s pants were lowered, the girl’s dress was raised, and seeing what she saw this time the nurse said angrily: Oh Jesus Christ, where is Thy mercy, and left to bring the principal into the room, and the principal took one look and went back to his office and called the sheriff’s office at the courthouse and then phoned Rose Tyler at Holt County Social Services.
T
HE CHILDREN WERE QUESTIONED SEPARATELY. PHOTOGRAPHS
were taken and a tape was made of their remarks. They each gave the same story. Nothing had happened. They’d been out playing in the alley and had scratched their legs.
Honey, Rose said, don’t lie now. You don’t have to lie for him. Did he threaten you?
We scratched them on the bushes, the girl said.
Her brother was waiting beyond the door in the hall, and she was standing before the cot in the nurse’s room, her hands twisted in the waist of her thin dress, her eyes filled with tears. Her face looked red and desperate. Rose and the sheriff’s deputy sat across from her, watching her.
What did he threaten you with? the deputy said.
He never done nothing to us. The girl wiped at her eyes and glared at them. It was bushes.
That’ll do, honey, Rose said. Never mind now. We know. You don’t have to say anything more. She put her arm around the girl. You don’t have to lie to protect anybody.
The girl jerked away. You ain’t suppose to touch me, she said.
Honey. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.
Nobody can touch me.
The deputy looked at Rose and Rose nodded, and he went out to the principal’s office and phoned the judge who was on call that day and got a verbal emergency custody order. Then he phoned Luther and Betty. He told them to stay at the trailer, that he’d want to see them in a few minutes. Then he came back to the nurse’s room, where Rose had both children with her now, sitting with her arms around them, talking to them quietly. The deputy motioned for her to come out to the hall, and they went out and stood below the vivid artwork of schoolchildren taped to the tiled walls and discussed in low voices what to do next. Rose would take the children to the hospital to be examined by the doctor while he drove to the trailer and talked to Luther and Betty. Afterward they would consult again.
T
HE SHERIFF’S DEPUTY DROVE ACROSS TOWN TO DETROIT
Street and parked the car and got out and stood for a moment looking at the trailer. The spring sun appeared to be too bright against the washed-out siding and the sagging roof, the plank porch, the unwashed windows. In the yard redroot and cheatgrass had begun to sprout up in the pale dirt. When he stepped onto the porch Luther let him in.
He sat down in the living room facing the couch where Luther and Betty sat watching him talk, studying his mouth, as if he were some preacher uttering everlasting pronouncements or the county judge himself saying out the law. He began to feel sick. He decided to make this as brief as possible. He told them they already knew about the children, what had been done to them and when and who had done it.
Betty’s pocked face went all to pieces. We never wanted him in here, she said. We told him he couldn’t come in.
You should of called us.
He was going to kill us, Luther said.
Did he say that?
Yes sir. That’s what he said. He wasn’t fooling.
But it’s too late now, isn’t it. He’s already abused your children. You have any idea where he’s run off to?
No sir.
No idea?
He was already gone when we got up this morning.
And he never said anything to you about where he might go.
He never told us nothing about what he was fixing to do.
Except for how he was going to kill us, Betty said.
The sheriff’s deputy looked around the room for a moment, then turned back. Was he still here yesterday when somebody from the sheriff’s office came to the door?
He was back in the hall there, Luther said. Waiting and listening.
He was?
Yes sir.
Well, we’ll find him. He can’t disappear forever.
But mister, Betty said, where’s our kids?
The deputy looked at her. She sat slumped in the couch, her hands in the lap of her dress, her eyes red with tears. Mrs. Tyler has taken them to the doctor, he said. We have to see how bad your uncle hurt them.
When do we get to see them?
That’s up to Mrs. Tyler. But they won’t be allowed to come back here. You understand that, don’t you? Not to live anyhow. There’ll be a hearing about this, probably on Wednesday.
What do you mean?
Ma’am, the judge has issued an emergency custody order and your children are going to be placed in a foster home. There’ll be a hearing about this within forty-eight hours.
Betty stared at him. Suddenly she threw her head back and wailed. You’re taking my children! I knew you was going to! She began to pull at her hair and scratch at her face. Luther leaned toward her and tried to catch her hands but she shoved him away. The sheriff’s deputy stepped across the room and bent over her. Here, he said. He took hold of her hands. Stop that now. That’s not going to do you any good. What good is that going to do anybody?
Betty shook her head, her eyes rolling unfocused, and she continued to wail into the rank and odoriferous air.
R
OSE TOOK THE CHILDREN OUT OF SCHOOL AND DROVE TO
the hospital and the doctor examined them in the emergency room. The lacerations were bad but he could find no broken bones. He applied antiseptic ointment to the cuts and welts and dressed the worst ones with bandages.
Afterward Rose drove them to her house and gave them lunch, then she took them with her to Social Services at the courthouse and sat them at a table in the interview room with magazines to look at while she went next door to her office. She spoke with the deputy on the phone and then called three different foster homes and finally reached one with a vacancy in a house at the west side of Holt that belonged to a fifty-year-old woman who had two children already in her care. Then she went back to the interview room and told Joy Rae and Richie what was going to happen. We’ll go by your house first to get some clothes, she said. You can see your parents for a moment. Do you want to?
The children looked at her out of their grave eyes and said nothing. They appeared to have retreated to some unassailable place.
She drove them to Detroit Street to the trailer and went with them inside. Betty was calmer now but there were the distinct red scratches on her cheeks, like the excoriations after an attack by some animal. The children went back to their rooms and gathered several changes of clothes into a grocery bag, and Betty followed behind and petted and whispered to them and cried over them, while Luther stood in the front room looking up the hall, waiting as if he had been blunted by a sudden blow.
When they went outside to the car Betty and Luther followed them into the street, and when the car started away Betty trotted beside it, her face close to the rear window, crying and moaning, calling: I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you tomorrow sometime.
Mama! Richie called.
Joy Rae covered her face with her hands and Luther lumbered along beside Betty until the car sped up. It disappeared around the corner. They stood out in the empty street then, watching where the car had gone, watching nothing.
O
N THE WEST SIDE OF TOWN THE WOMAN LET THEM IN.
She was tall and thin in a flowered apron and she had a bright way of talking. I’m going to have to learn your names, she said. I just think you’ll like it here. Won’t you. I hope you will. We’re going to try anyway. Now I’m going to show you around first. I just always think people want to see how things are located the first thing. Then they feel better.
Rose waited in the living room while the woman showed the children through her house, starting with the bedrooms they’d be using, then the bathroom and the other children’s room. Then they came back out and Rose told them what they could expect over the next few days. She hugged them before she left and said they should call her at home if they needed anything at all, and printed out her number and the one at the office on a piece of paper and gave the paper to Joy Rae.
O
N TUESDAY THERE WERE MEETINGS AND INTERVIEWS.
Luther and Betty met for an hour at the courthouse with a lawyer assigned to them by the court.
The two children were interviewed at the foster home by the guardian ad litem, a young attorney appointed to act in their behalf and represent their best interests. He listened to their story and took notes and they did not go to school that day but stayed at the woman’s house.
The county attorney met with Rose Tyler and the investigating sheriff’s deputy in Rose’s office and drew up the Petition of Dependency and Neglect, which would be filed with the court.
But no one who met that Tuesday in these various meetings was pleased by what was decided in any instance.
O
N WEDNESDAY THE SHELTER HEARING WAS CONDUCTED
in the middle of the afternoon on the third floor of the courthouse in the civil court across the wide hall from the criminal court. It was a dark wood-paneled room with a high ceiling and tall mullioned windows and benches arranged in rows behind the two tables left and right that were reserved for the attorneys and other involved parties. In front of the two tables was the judge’s bench raised on a dais. The two children did not attend.
Luther and Betty entered the courtroom that afternoon dressed for the formal proceedings. Betty wore a brown dress and new sheer hose, and she had rouged her cheeks to cover the scratches. Her hair was freshly washed and brushed, held back on the sides by a pair of Joy Rae’s plastic barrettes. She looked peculiarly childlike. Luther wore his blue slacks and a plaid shirt with a red tie wound under the collar that was not drawn tight under his chin since the collar could not be buttoned. The tie reached only to the middle of his stomach. They entered and sat down behind the table on the right.
Their attorney came in and sat in the bench behind them, across the aisle from the guardian ad litem. After a while Rose came in with the sheriff’s deputy. He sat next to the G.A.L. and Rose slid in beside Betty and Luther, and she leaned over and took their hands and said they must speak the truth and do the best they could.
Rose, what’s going to happen? Betty said.
We’ll have to see what the judge decides.
I don’t want to lose my kids, Rose. I couldn’t bear that.
Yes. I know, dear.
Rose stood and moved to the other side of the aisle and sat at the table with the county attorney who’d entered the courtroom while she had talked to Luther and Betty. Everyone sat and waited. Outside the courthouse the wind was blowing, they could hear it in the trees. Somebody went by in the hallway, the footsteps echoing. Still, they waited. Finally the judge came in from a side door and the clerk said: All rise, and they rose. Be seated, the clerk said, and they sat down again.
There was just the one civil case this Wednesday. The courtroom was largely empty, and it was hot and stale, smelling of dust and old furniture polish.
The judge called the case from the file before him. Then the county attorney stood and spoke briefly. The judge had already seen the Petition of Dependency and Neglect and the county attorney began to review it for the record. The Petition explained why the children had been taken into emergency custody, described what had been done to them by their mother’s uncle, and stated what both the county attorney’s office and Social Services recommended. The Petition stipulated that the children be kept in foster care until such time as the uncle was apprehended and brought to trial. Until then the children should not be allowed to return to the home, since their parents had not shown that they were capable of protecting them from their uncle thus far. The parents should be granted regular visitations with the children under the supervision of Social Services, and the case should be reviewed at some future time and date.
Then the Wallaces’ lawyer rose and said what he could in their defense, telling the court that Luther and Betty Wallace had been good parents, under the circumstances, and had done the best they could.
Are the parents in the room? the judge said.
Yes, Your Honor. They’re here.
The lawyer motioned to Betty and Luther. They came forward and stood beside him at the table.
You’re aware of what injury was done to your children, aren’t you? the judge said.
Yes sir, Luther said. Your Honor.
Did you make any effort to prevent the injury to your children?
He wouldn’t let us.
Your wife’s uncle. You’re referring to him.
Pardon?