by D L Lane
D.L. LANE
Copyright
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement (including infringement without monetary gain) is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version.
The Sinner in Mississippi
© 2020 by D.L. Lane
Cover and Book Design By Faith Publishing
Edited by Red Penn Services Ltd
ISBN: 978-1-64826-142-8
Fiction and Literature: Inspirational
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without written permission of the copyright holder.
Trigger Warning. This book contains violent acts and sexual assault.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
From the Author
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Epilogue
Reading Guide
About the Author
From the Author
You are beautiful. You are important. Your life matters, even when people say you’re pathetic, worthless, less than nothing, when they hurt you in ways that’s hard to express and scar your very soul, you still matter. Look up. You’re a child of the King. God loves you. He can pull you out of that pit of despair, heal your deepest wounds, and transform your life into something beyond your wildest dreams. He’s there, waiting for you to acknowledge Him.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Prologue
May 5, 1958
“We’re almost there,” Claremont announced, glancing at me from the rearview mirror, his dark eyes shining like polished onyx.
I nodded. “All roads do lead home, don’t they?”
“That’s what they sure say, ma’am.”
As we bumped along the unpaved, tree-lined street, I gazed out the side window. The afternoon breeze had kicked up, disturbing tendrils of Spanish moss that had long ago made their home in the overhanging limbs of the ancient oaks. Slowly, they swayed back and forth, back and forth, like dancing specters haunting me, before my attention shifted to the house I hadn’t seen in twenty-two years.
Honestly, the place hadn’t changed much, except instead of being shabby, it had degraded. From what I saw, I supposed one could call it a hair’s breadth from collapsing in on itself.
When the car rolled to a stop in front of the house, which hadn’t seen a lick of paint since before I could remember, I took it all in, noticing the weeds were so lazy they didn’t even concern themselves with spreading. Instead, they stayed in the same half-wilted, haphazard clumps where they’d always been. Only the mildew climbing up the right side of the dwelling seemed to have any gumption.
Shaking my head, I peeked at the buckling barn, no longer capable of holding its shape, and for an instant, I wondered when it had given up the good fight.
Did I care?
The ugly truth of the matter was quite simply no. Long ago, I’d attempted to bury this place, and all that came with it in the darkest corners of my mind. But from time to time, those evil little creatures called memories tried to claw their way out of the shadows, making me push them back where they belonged. I never purposely allowed them to return, nor did I ever believe I’d be back to this spot where I both began and came to an end.
I took a deep, measured breath, staring at the house I’d been born in during the middle of the night as our small parish outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, experienced one of the worst storms on record. Mama said it rained so much the banks of the Mississippi overflowed, so it was by the grace of God the midwife made it before the flooding ensued.
While the wind stirred outside, threatening to take the tin roof of our house, Mama told me, she suffered inside those quaking walls in hard labor. Unable to do anything else, she prayed the house would keep. Hours later, the wind finally settled, but nothing worked to hold back the rain—not even prayers.
On the second night of the deluge, my mama said, two things happened. Her youngest son, Danny Joe, who was a toddler, was struck ill with the fever, making the midwife split her time between my mama’s needs and tending to him. Then at 12:48 a.m. came the misfortune of my arrival. For most people, bringing a new life into the world would be a time of great celebration. But giving birth to a girl was not a joyful occasion in my home.
Not at all.
My condition was fragile because I had come more than a month early, right after Mama’s fall. She never said, but I suspected her injuries and premature labor were the result of Daddy’s fists.
Absently rubbing the scar under my chin, I recalled my mama telling me she didn’t name me that night, believing I wouldn’t live to see the dawn. She said Fawna-Leigh, the midwife, cleaned me up, wrapped me in an old tea towel, and placed me in a knitting basket beside the wood-burning stove.
According to Mama, the storm raged until morning, but I never made one sound.
Not a cry. Not a peep.
When the sun started to shine, Mama asked Fawna
-Leigh to help her get up so she could make Daddy Bruce and her boys something warm for breakfast. Daddy and James Henry, my oldest brother, would be finding their way home from town since the storm cleared, and she was hoping Danny Joe would be strong enough to eat. Of course, Fawna-Leigh did what Mama requested and helped her out of bed, although she had lost a lot of blood and was weak and wobbly. Even so, my mama endured, because that’s what a woman did.
“Are you all right?”
Claremont’s gravelly voice startled me, causing me to blink up at him. “Hmm?”
I’m unsure at what point my nervousness kicked in, realizing not only had he opened the car door for me, but I’d also been fiddling with one of my earrings.
“I asked if you were all right,” he said.
“Oh, um, yes.” I curled my fingers around the palm of his outstretched hand. “Just memories distracting me, I guess.”
“It would seem those pesky things are akin to death and taxes.”
“All the things we can’t stop?” I scooted out of the car, then running a palm over the bell of my hip, I smoothed the wrinkles in my skirt.
“Mm-hm,” he hummed.
Straightening my spine, I steeled myself for the reentrance into the past. “I hope this won’t take me too long, Claremont.”
He shrugged. “Take your time. I’ll be here if you need me.”
I took one step forward, two steps, then three.
If hopelessness and depression had a scent, those were the recognizable smells permeating the air as I walked over decrepit earth toward the small front porch with a drooping roof and rotting wood. Part of me wanted to turn around and leave. Wipe this visit from my mind. Completely forget. It would have been the easier thing to do. But instead, I placed my foot on the damaged planks—the creaks and moans beginning their noisy complaints.
Thankfully, I was able to make it through the broken front door without those objections giving way to any disaster.
Once inside the tiny kitchen with the chipped green table, scratched blue chairs, and peeling floral wallpaper, I realized not a single item in there lived in harmony with the others. But if I were honest, I’d have to say dissonance was the recurring theme of the place.
As I strode past the filth and overflowing trash can, the recollections crashed around me—wave after wave. It was on the way into this space that Mama and Fawna-Leigh stopped to peek into the basket Fawna had placed me in as a newborn, sure they’d be burying another one of my mama’s babies. But I was sucking my thumb, staring up at them with eyes the color of bluebells.
Mama told me, that’s when she cried.
See, she hadn’t shed a single tear during the harsh pain of giving birth or out of fear of the horrible storm taking the house and her with it, but she sobbed when she saw me. To her, it would have been better for all of us if I’d passed on in the night, carried off on the wings of angels, never to suffer the evils of this world.
Taking a breath of musty air, I stepped into the living room; the yellowing plastered walls spotted where pictures once hung, then paused. The ratty brown sofa tucked under the window—the glass nothing more than a web of fractures over cracks—had dirty pieces of stuffing sprouting from one of its arms.
Unbidden, my gaze slid to the closed door leading to my old bedroom as the rapid beat of my heart pummeled my ribs, and a shudder of revulsion rolled along my spine.
Sometimes I believed my mama might have been right.
“God, help me.” I swiped away the salty moisture flowing down my face.
When a sense of peace descended, I squared my shoulders, giving Him the thanks, my foot kicking empty liquor bottles aside. They warb-warb-warbled across the uneven wood floor as I entered what barely passed as a bedroom, the stench of sickness so overpowering you could taste it.
Choking from the pungent odor, I covered my nose and mouth with my hand, glancing past the puddle of vomit swarming with flies.
There, where the disheveled figure lay passed out on the bed, I’d heard the story of my stormy arrival when I was fourteen. Right there, I’d perched on the side of the under-stuffed mattress, clasping my mama’s pale, frail fingers, listening to her cough every other breath.
“You’ll need to be strong now, Mississippi,” came her last labored words.
She passed on from consumption at half-past three on a sunny Sunday afternoon, leaving me behind.
Chapter One
None of them would ever see me cry
The date was July thirteenth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-six—the day I turned seventeen. There’d be no party, and I’d get no wish. If I did wish, it would be to spend my morning in a good bed, wrapped in clean, crisp-white sheets while the smell of breakfast cooking enticed me out of a lazy slumber. But my reality consisted of a horrible crick in my neck while surrounded by the scent of stale hay and a stomach so empty it forgot how to protest the point.
If my prayers had worked, I wouldn’t be spending my birthday as a stowaway in the loft of our old, rickety barn. Nonetheless, a stowaway I had become, so I decided to leave the job of talking to God to other girls and stared at a spiderweb instead. The intricate woven threads, delicate and glistening within the fractured beams of the sun, stretched perfectly between the rafters above me. My current accommodations were thanks to Daddy Bruce, Danny Joe, and a handful of their friends who had come home loud and rowdy the night before. But I was grateful for their noisy warning. It allowed me time to sneak out my bedroom window, under cover of darkness.
As I’d tiptoed across the yard, I listened to them argue ’bout who was man enough to hold their own in a fight, and when the sounds of a tussle broke out, it became apparent they’d been on a binge. By the time I got to the back of the barn, the sounds of fighting were louder. I wasn’t happy to leave my bed, ’cause even though the moon bounced out from beneath the cloud cover, giving off moments of muted light, I knew the inside of the barn would be darker than a tomb. Although, what did that matter? Neither the darkness nor the boogeyman had anything on my daddy when he’d been boozing. No. The best thing for me was to stay out of sight—unless I wanted to taste the leather of Daddy’s belt.
Or worse.
When one of Danny Joe’s friends staggered around the side of the barn, undid his fly, turned on his unsteady heel, and started to relieve himself on the corner of the empty tool shed, I’d gently pushed one of the loose wall planks aside and wiggled myself through, glad when the moon decided to make its reappearance. The rays shone brightly through the open loft door from above, giving a heavenly spotlight to the makeshift stepladder.
Trying to be as quiet as possible, though I doubted I could ever make as much of a ruckus as was going on outside, I’d climbed to the loft and settled in, making myself at home. Eventually, I heard nothing but the sounds of the night and drifted off to other places.
The faraway hum of a tractor roused me, followed by the morning sun kissing my cheeks with its warm caress of the day to come.
Bone tired, I rubbed my blurry eyes with the heels of my palms and considered my aches and pains. For an instant, I’d almost forgotten my night’s lodgings, but they once again became all too clear when my eyelids fluttered open and I focused past the dazzling web overhead, noticing the barn swallows. They had made a nest in the peak of the roof, closest to the loft door.
The birds flew in and out, making their morning chatter, causing the sound to echo off the walls.
Holding my hand in front of my face, I spread my fingers wide to study the nest from different angles. I’d close one eye and watch the illusion of the nest shift, then switch and close the other eye to see it move again between my fingers, content with my little picture show.
As the light in the barn changed, the dust particles glittered and skipped on air.
“Mississippi!”
My body jerked at the sound of Daddy Bruce bellowing my name.
“Where the damnation are ya, girl? Don’t ya know it’s hotter than hellfir
e out here! I need ya to get your skinny little backside on over to Harlow’s and fetch your brother and me some cold beer!”
I sighed. Times were hard for everyone, but likely they were even harder for my family. Daddy Bruce had always been a stubborn, self-centered, tyrant of a man, but after Mama died, he’d become more of a bully, and many called him a “no-account drunk.”
“Mississippi! Don’t make me come-a-huntin’ ya, girl!”
No reason to try to hide. He would eventually find me, and it was better to face the music sooner than later.
“I’m coming!” I stood and scurried down the ladder.
The barn doors flew open with a bang, the commotion snapping my head in that direction.
Daddy Bruce stood there, shirtless, the sun shining on his broad, bare shoulders, sweat trickling down his face.
Lord only knew the last time Daddy had a good shave.
Slowly, he strummed his dirty hand along the black suspenders holding up his baggy trousers. “Well... Don’t ya look a sight?” He cleared his throat and spat out something nasty. “Pluck that hay from your hair and straighten yourself up before ya go to town. Don’t want Harlow to think you’re trash, do ya?”
That would be a wasted effort. Everybody in our small parish, except for a few, believed I was trash, suspecting I gave favors to men in exchange for things my family and I needed to survive. Many times I’d heard some of the good churchgoing women whisper as I passed. “There’s nothin’ but a sinner in that there, Mississippi.”
I’ve often wondered ’bout the verse in the Bible Mama used to quote, particularly when those same churchgoing women would prattle on regarding some poor soul in need of saving. “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone.”
But who was I to argue the point? Perhaps there was a sinner inside me, but if so, it would be of my daddy’s making, driven by my need to eat and his desire to drink.
“Did ya hear me? Don’t just stand there lookin’ at me like you’re stupid. Go fix yourself up.” The order came as he swiped glistening beads of sweat from his brow. “And ask Harlow for some chewin’ tobacca for your brother. Have him put it on our tab.”