“I finished out my senior year and joined the service. Traveled all over the place for the next few years, but I didn’t never stop thinking about Lindy and that baby. I met Opal here when I was stationed in Millington, Tennessee back in ’67. She come from a little town name of Covington, was teaching up in the high school there. What was the name of it, Opal? Byars Hall, that’s right. Anyway, I told her all about Lindy soon as we got serious.
“It was Opal suggested I write letters. We wrote them together, must have written near about everybody in Cabell and Wayne Counties. Wrote the hospitals, the sheriff’s departments, the police department...everybody we could think of to write. We figured if Lindy or the baby had had any sort of trouble, one of those places must know about them. Nothing, though. Didn’t hear nothing back.
“I got out in ’71 and we moved back to this area. I saw more new places than I can remember during my time in the service, but West Virginia was always home to me and that baby kept pulling at me. I guess I thought my chances of finding Lindy was better if I come back to Logan, where we was both raised. I went to work as a mechanic and we started thinking about having a family of our own, but that wasn’t meant to be.”
“I wasn’t able to,” Mrs. Huffman spoke up. “After a couple years of trying, I found out from the doctor I had some cysts in the way. They thought maybe they could save the ovaries, but they couldn’t.”
Mr. Huffman patted her knee. “That was a rough time for us, but we did okay, didn’t we, Opal? Somewhere along the line we decided if we couldn’t have our own, we’d work helping other kids, ones that needed us. We spent a lot of years doing that, and I reckon we might have helped one or two along the way. I hope we did, anyway.
“Without no kids of our own, and with both of us working, we was able to save up a little bit of money. Opal seen I was still eaten up with wanting to know about that baby. When we had saved up enough, she suggested I hire someone to help me, a private investigator. What year was that, Opal? Around ’74?”
Mrs. Huffman shook her head. “It was in ’73, right after my surgery, remember?”
“That’s right,” he nodded. “I remember now. Hired a guy from Charleston to go find Lindy. Smart, that man was. Sharp. Man by the name of Rogers. Samuel Rogers, a sheriff’s deputy who did investigating on the side. Took him a few months to get a lead, because as it turned out Lindy hadn’t gone to Huntington after all.
“Rogers went back to the beginning. When I’d gotten home that summer before my senior year, rumor was that the man Lindy was with looked like a coal miner, but he wasn’t anyone folks in our town recognized. Rogers figured he must have been a temporary hire from somewhere close by.
“He went to the mines all around Logan County looking for information about mine workers. Found out one mine, Rock Creek, had hired temporary diggers from Cedar Hollow for a week that summer when they hit a big vein. Rogers got a list of all the names and started going through it, one by one. Eventually tracked down Roy Campbell, here in Cedar Hollow.”
I flinched at Roy’s name. It was odd, hearing it spoken by Mr. Huffman.
“Once he found Roy, he found Lindy. Said she had three kids, the oldest a girl the right age to have been mine. He watched the family for a couple days, used to joke he hoped I got things settled before a bear got him, hiding out on that mountain like he was. Said it was a sad situation, from what he could tell. Lot of fighting.” Mr. Huffman glanced up at me. I nodded. Yes, it had certainly been a sad situation.
“The evening of the second day, right when Rogers was about to call it quits and head home, he saw Roy Campbell get in his truck and drive away. Rogers waited a few minutes to be sure, then went up to the shack they was living in and knocked on the door. Took a few minutes, but Lindy finally opened it a crack.
“Rogers said he just come straight out and told Lindy I wanted to see her. Told her why, too. Said she looked plumb scared to death, refused at first to have anything to do with him. He finally told her he wasn’t leaving until she agreed to meet with me and answer my questions. She agreed of course. He didn’t leave her much choice. Rogers told her he’d come pick her up the same time the next day, while Roy was at work.
“I couldn’t believe we’d finally found her. I halfway didn’t expect her to be there the next day when he drove out to get her, but she was. Rogers said he could hear kids inside the house and she called back to someone,” Mr. Huffman paused, “you, I reckon, told you to take care of the little ’uns, she’d be back after a while. Then she climbed up in the truck with him. Said she didn’t say a word all the way to our place, over in Logan. Just sat there with her hands in her lap, looking out the window.”
I thought back to that time period and realized it wouldn’t have been strange to see Lindy climb into a truck with a man. That was right about the time she left me. For a period of time spanning several weeks she had snuck out while Roy was at work, going to meet the train conductor she eventually ran away with. I’d gotten used to watching over my half-siblings while she was gone. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
“Rogers brought her right to our house,” Mr. Huffman was saying. “I tell you, I was shocked at how she looked. The girl I remembered had been pretty, but Lindy wasn’t pretty no more. Looked old. Old, and tired. I reckon she had really had a rough go of it. I felt so bad for her; she was pitiful. But at the same time I felt a little bit angry at her, too. If she’d just told me instead of running off....” He didn’t complete the thought.
“She come in and sat down at the kitchen table with us. Opal got her something to eat. At first she wouldn’t say much, just sat there looking scared to death. Wouldn’t answer none of my questions for the longest time. Then she put her hands over her face and started crying, asked me what I wanted. I told her I wanted to know about the baby. Was it mine? But she wouldn’t tell me. ‘Richard,’ she said to me, ‘look at the life you have here. Such a good life. I’ve made a mess of things. I never do seem to make the right decisions.’
“We told her we could help her. Me and Opal both told her that. If the little girl Rogers had seen was mine, I wanted to help raise her. I’d give them money or whatever else they needed. Me and Opal had already discussed taking her in, if Lindy would let us. We would have done anything. But Lindy just kept saying she couldn’t mess up our lives. I couldn’t make her understand I wanted to be a part of that child’s life. Of your life.” Mr. Huffman reached in his back pocket, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Mrs. Huffman put a hand on his shoulder.
“Before too long,” he continued, “she said she needed to get home, told Rogers to take her there. She stood up and walked to the door, but right before she walked out she turned back to me, her face all splotchy from the crying, and said, ‘If you’re serious, you need to come tomorrow. I’m leaving him. I’m taking the kids with me, but if you’re serious about what you’re telling me, I’ll leave Jessie there for you. She’ll have a better life with you than I could ever give her.’
“Well let me tell you, that was music to my ears. Me and Opal looked at each other and right away we both said yes. We didn’t even need to discuss it. It was a dream come true to hear them words. She hadn’t even told me for sure the baby was mine, but I didn’t care.”
I was trying to make sense of the things he was telling me. “So, Lindy offered to leave me for you,” I said. “She had planned on taking me with her when she left?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered. “She was taking all of y'all with her. She was plumb desperate to escape that man. When I showed up and she come to meet me and Opal, she saw I could give you a better life than she was able to do. I reckon compared to the life y’all were living in that shack, we must have looked pretty rich.”
“Then what happened?” I asked. “You chickened out? Because clearly you never came for me.”
“But I did,” he said. “I did come for you. Me and Opal both did. Come for you that next day just like I said I would. Pulled up to that little shack and
seen right away something was wrong because Roy’s truck was there. He wasn’t supposed to be there, you see. Was supposed to be at work. Lindy was going to tell you about me and explain why she wasn’t taking you with her so you wouldn’t be scared when me and Opal showed up. Then she was going to leave you there waiting for me.
“But something had happened. Something went wrong, because when we got there you was gone, too. Lindy had taken you with her. Roy come out on the porch and laughed at us. Called me a few choice words, told me I should have known better than to believe anything Lindy told me. Said you was gone with them, gone to Arizona with the train man.”
I couldn’t breathe my throat had closed up so. Finally I managed to say, “But I wasn’t. I was there. I was there with Roy.”
Chapter 37
I remembered that day as if it were only yesterday. How could I forget the day my mother left me?
They had been fighting the night before, she and Roy. I remembered that, too. I didn’t know what they were fighting about. They always fought; that was nothing new. He accused her of something, she accused him back. It was a tiny cabin, only one room sectioned off with sheets. It wasn’t as if I could escape their yelling, but over the years I’d developed a pretty strong ability to block it out, like white noise in the background.
They argued behind their sheet while I fed my half-siblings dinner and got them settled in bed, climbing in with them. They continued fighting off and on throughout the night, waking the three of us with their shouts and cries. I pulled the babies closer and shushed them. The last thing we needed was for Roy’s attention to be diverted from our mother to us, and I knew that’s what would happen if Roy heard us.
I don’t know when the fighting finally ceased. Sometime before dawn. When I awoke, the sun was shining through the window beside the door making a bright, white rectangle upon the floor across from our shared bed. My half-siblings were no longer next to me; I could hear my mother talking softly to them on the other side of the curtain. I climbed out of bed and parted the sheets.
“There you are, Jessie!” My mother grabbed my arm and pulled me to sit at the table across from her. She was dressed, her hair styled, and I noticed with surprise that she was wearing bright red lipstick. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mother wearing lipstick, couldn’t really remember if she ever had. “Listen up, now,” she said, “because I got some things to talk to you about and I ain’t got much time.”
“Why are you dressed up?” I asked her, but she ignored the question.
“The little ’uns and me is goin’ to be leavin’,” she said. “But you ain’t comin’ with us.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “What do you mean?” I asked. Of course I was going with her. Where else would I go?
“You’re stayin’ here,” she said, and I remember starting to feel afraid. She wasn’t herself; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes overly bright. My gaze landed on a suitcase by the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked her, the initial prick of fear turning into panic.
Before she could answer me, I heard Roy’s truck come barreling up the rutted drive, loose gravel spraying against the front wall of the house as he skidded to a stop, nearly shearing off the front steps. What was he doing home? He was supposed to be at work. Roy had never shown up in the middle of a work day; it was the only time I think all of us felt safe.
“Oh, my God,” my mother said then, the blood draining from her face. “Oh, my God,” she repeated, jumping up and grabbing Leroy from where he’d been crawling on the floor. “Jessie, there ain’t no time for me to explain. There ain’t no time; there ain’t no time! Lenny Sue, grab that suitcase, baby, quick now. Quick!” She turned to me, frantic. “Jessie, we’re leavin’ but you cain’t come. Oh, my baby doll, you have to stay here.”
I grabbed at her arm. “No, Momma! You can’t do this! You can’t leave me here with him!” I clung to her, begging her to take me with her as Roy came bursting through the door.
Momma screamed and clutched Leroy tighter in her arms. Roy stood in the doorway, blocking the sunlight. Then he grinned.
“Figured today was the day,” he said, “so I come to tell you goodbye. Wouldn’t want you to leave without a proper goodbye, seein’ as how you’re my wife and all.” Roy kicked the suitcase out onto the porch and turned back to Momma. He unbuckled his belt, pulling it through the loops with a whish.
The cabin was small enough that there was no way to escape hearing the noises they made some nights, but even so, all I knew were sounds. I didn’t know, at that time, what he had in mind for Lindy, though I fully realized it as I allowed myself to remember that day. Back then I assumed he meant to beat her with the belt, as he often had me. And truthfully, he may have planned on doing that as well, in addition to raping her.
Dimly, I could hear another truck approaching and I recognized it as the one Momma had gotten into several times over the last few weeks. Roy heard it, too. He paused, his pants halfway down his hips.
“You lucky bitch,” he said to Momma. “You lucky, stupid bitch. Get out of here. If I ever see your ugly face again I’ll kill you.” He yanked his pants up, slid the belt back through the loops.
“But leave her,” he jerked his head towards me as he fastened the buckle. “She ain’t goin’ nowhere. You takin’ what’s mine, I’m takin’ what’s yours. That’s fair, ain’t it? It’s the only way I’ll let you go. Take them squallin’ brats; I don’t want no shitty diapers to be changin’. But leave her. Somebody got to look after me. She can do the cookin’ and cleanin’, and soon enough whatever else I need, too. I ’magine she’ll be better at all of it than you ever was.”
I gripped Momma’s arm harder, terrified. She couldn’t leave me with him. She wouldn’t.
Momma clutched my chin and made me look at her. She was breathing hard, her eyes boring into mine. Had she been trying to tell me? I couldn’t help but wonder now. “Baby doll,” she said, “I got to take the younguns with me. They ain’t old enough to fend for themselves and you know that asshole won’t take care of ’em.” She scrubbed for a second at the dirt on Leroy’s face before reaching out to me again.
“But you got to stay behind,” she had said. “I ain’t got room to take you. You’re big enough to care for yourself, and besides, Roy is goin’ to need somebody to take care of him. You be good now, you hear me?”
She gripped my chin again, hard, and hesitated for just an instant before she grabbed Lenny Sue by the hand and ran past Roy, leaving her suitcase on the porch where it had landed.
A few seconds later I heard the truck drive away. I was afraid to move. Roy seemed to have forgotten about me for the moment and I didn’t want to remind him that I was still there, right where Momma had left me. For a long time he stood staring down the mountain after the truck. Then he turned to me.
“Get the hell out of here,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Get out of my sight, but mind you get back in time to cook me some supper. I ain’t supportin’ your ass for free, you better believe that.”
I hadn’t even had time to dress; I still had on the flimsy nightgown I’d slept in, but I ran anyway, towards the creek where I’d always gone when Roy frightened me. I stayed there all day, curled up on the ground with nowhere else to go. Later, years later, I’d find a cave to hide in when Roy came after me, but that day I made do with the muddy banks of Rugged Creek.
While I had lain there in the mud, desperate and afraid, my father had finally come charging up the mountain to save me, but he was too late.
Chapter 38
On a bookshelf against the wall behind the Huffmans, a clock softly chimed the half-hour. It was only eight-thirty but it seemed much later. I could feel Nora scrutinizing me, gauging whether or not I was able to continue. Across from me, Mr. Huffman reached a hand towards me, then let it drop into his lap.
“I know that now,” he said, “but I didn’t know it then. I didn’t find out until much later. I’d give
anything....” His voice cracked and Mrs. Huffman put a hand on his arm. “I’d give plumb anything to be able to go back to that day and do it again.” He exhaled a long breath and swiped the back of his hand across his eyes.
His sincerity was obvious, but I still didn’t understand how, if he’d spent all those years searching for me, he could have given up so easily that one fateful day. “Why didn’t you come back?” I asked. “You had tracked me down once before; why didn’t you do it again?”
“I did,” he said. “I did, but not quick enough and not in the right place. I thought she’d changed her mind about leaving you with me and Opal and taken you to Arizona, you see. It would have been like Lindy to do that; she always was a flighty girl. Like she’d told me just the day before, she couldn’t never seem to make the right decisions, and it had taken some convincing from me and Opal to get her to agree to leave you with us in the first place.
“At that time, I had run out of money for the private investigator. I didn’t have no way of sending him to Arizona after you, but me and Opal figured we’d save up some more and find you again. After meeting Roy Campbell I was relieved you was out of that situation. Lindy didn’t always make good decisions, but I did believe she would do the best she could for you. I understood she didn’t mean to let me have you, but I was bound and determined to find you again anyway because if you was mine, I wanted to provide for you. Rogers told us to give him a call when we was ready to hire him again, so we did.
“He went out there to Arizona....” He turned to Opal. “How many times, Opal? ’Bout five? Five times over the next four or five years, but Lindy and her man, name of Floyd Bowden, wouldn’t stay put long enough for him to catch up to them. Could have found them easy if Bowden hadn’t quit working the rails, but he quit soon as they got to Arizona. Found out later he’d filed a workman’s comp claim for a foot injury he somehow got backing up to couple a wagon.
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