A Grant County Collection

by Karin Slaughter

  'I know.'

  'They looked so dirty, so hungry.'

  Nell shook her head, tsking.

  'I don't want to feel this way.'

  'Oh, now,' Nell said, stroking her hair. 'Shh . . .'

  'What happened?' she begged. 'Please just tell me what happened.'

  'Come on,' Nell soothed, taking a Kleenex out of the box. She held the tissue to Sara's nose and said, 'Blow.'

  Sara did as she was instructed, feeling silly for her outburst. She sat up, wiping her eyes with another tissue. 'Oh, God, I'm so sorry.'

  'It's a wonder you haven't broken down before this,' Nell said, taking another tissue to wipe her own eyes.

  'Those children . . .' Sara murmured. 'Those poor boys.'

  'I know. It makes my stomach ache every time I see them.'

  'Why can't anyone do something?'

  'Don't ask me,' she said. 'I'd put an ad in the paper if I thought someone would take them.'

  Sara tried to laugh, but she could not. 'What about children's services?'

  'You wanna know something funny?'

  Sara waited.

  'She used to work for them.'

  'No,' Sara said. She could not believe it.

  'She did,' Nell confirmed. 'About fifteen years ago she was a caseworker at the Department of Family and Children's Services. Then she got into a car accident on the way to do a house visit and sued the county and the state and anybody else she could get her hands on. Between her disability and whatever she got from the settlement, she's not hurting for money.'

  'Where does she spend it?'

  'Not on any of her kids,' Nell answered ruefully. 'The upshot is, she knows all the rules. She knows how to get around having those kids taken away. D-FACS is scared of her. If it wasn't for Hoss making drop-bys every now and then, she'd probably put those two boys in a closet and throw away the key.'

  'What's wrong with the youngest?'

  'Some blood thing,' Nell said. 'He's always having to get transfusions.'

  'Hemophilia?' she asked, thinking Nell probably meant infusions. Even in a town as small as Sylacauga, the doctors would know better.

  'No, something else like that, but not hemophilia,' Nell told her. 'State pays all the bills, I'm sure.'

  Sara sank back into the sofa, feeling an overwhelming exhaustion. The two women sat there in silence, and for some reason Sara told her, 'I was raped.'

  For once, Nell did not respond.

  'I've never said that out loud,' she said. 'I mean, the actual words. I always say I was attacked or I was hurt. . . .' She pressed her lips together. 'I was raped.'

  Nell let her take her time.

  'It was when I worked in Atlanta,' Sara said, adding, 'Jeffrey doesn't know.' She picked at a piece of string on the cushion.

  Nell gave Sara a moment before saying, 'I guess we've each got our secrets from him.'

  'I've never felt like this with a man,' Sara said. 'Not about anybody.' She tried to find a way to articulate it. 'I feel totally out of control, like no matter what my brain tells me, there's this little thing in the back of my head saying, "No, don't listen to them. You can't live without him."'

  Nell repeated, 'He has that effect on women.'

  'I just want . . .' She threw her hands into the air. 'I don't know what I want.' She picked at the string again. 'I can't even tell him to his face that I love him, but every time I see him or even think about him . . .'

  Nell took another tissue and handed it to Sara. 'I never believed it,' she told her. 'What they said about him and Julia.'

  'What exactly did they say?'

  'That Jeffrey and Robert raped her in the woods.'

  Sara bit her bottom lip. Nell had said the words matter-of-factly, but they still had power. The word 'rape' in and of itself was the most obscene sort of profanity.

  'She was a slut,' Nell said. 'Not that that's any excuse. Hell, my sister Marinell was a bigger slut, but she knew better than to brag about it.'

  'Tell me everything,' Sara said. 'Jeffrey won't.'

  Nell shrugged. 'She did things with boys. I don't know, it sounds like no big deal today, but back then, you just didn't put out.' She amended, 'Well, you did it, but you sure as shit didn't let everybody know about it.'

  'I remember,' Sara said. Fear had kept her from giving in to Steve Mann, and shame had kept her from really enjoying it when she finally did.

  'Julia wasn't pretty,' Nell said. 'She wasn't plain, either, but there's a quality girls like that have that makes them ugly. I guess it's some sort of desperation, where they grab onto anybody they think can make them feel better about themselves.' She stared at the pictures of her family that lined the wall. 'I look at Jen and it just makes me cringe sometimes because I see this need in her. She's not even a teenager yet and she's got this unquenchable thirst for approval.'

  'Most girls are like that.'

  'Are they?'

  'Yes,' Sara said. 'Some are better at hiding it.'

  'I try to tell her she's pretty. Possum's just crazy about her. Went to the father-daughter dance with her at the end of school last year. My God, but that man can carry off a baby-blue tux like nobody you've ever seen.'

  Sara laughed, imagining Possum in the tuxedo.

  'She's doing sports now,' Nell said. 'Basketball, softball. It's making a difference.'

  Sara nodded. Girls who participated in sports had more self-confidence; it was a proven fact. She said, 'I look back and thank God I had my mother.' Sara laughed at herself. 'Not that I ever believed a word she said, but she was always telling me I could do anything I wanted to do.'

  'Obviously, part of you was listening,' Nell pointed out. 'You don't get to be a doctor just because you're pretty.'

  Sara felt a tinge of a blush at the compliment.

  'Anyway,' Nell said, folding and unfolding the tissue. 'Julia was kind of loose. She didn't make a secret of it, either. She thought it meant something that the boys would go with her, like they thought she was special or they loved her. Like blowing them behind the gym after school made her some kind of special. She actually bragged about it.'

  'Did she ever go with Jeffrey?'

  'The truth?' Nell asked.

  Sara could only nod.

  'The truth is, I can't tell you. I don't see why he would. I was giving it to him pretty regular then.' She laughed at herself. 'You never know with boys that age, though. A sixteen-year-old boy is gonna pass up on getting laid? Hell, most grown men wouldn't pass that up. Sex is sex, and they'll do just about anything to get it.'

  'Did you ever ask him about what happened?'

  'I didn't have the guts,' Nell said. 'I wouldn't have a problem now, but you know how it is when you're young. You're scared to say something that might piss him off and make him leave you for the next hot thing.'

  'Who was the next hot thing?'

  'Jessie, I thought, but in retrospect I know that he never would have done that to Robert.' Nell tucked her feet under her legs. 'I don't think he did, if you want my gut reaction. Even then, Jeffrey had this thing about him, this sort of guide that let him know the difference between right and wrong.'

  'I thought he was in trouble all the time.'

  'Oh, he was,' Nell said. 'But he knew he was wrong. That's what I kept after him about. He just knew better than to do the crap he did. He had to get to that point where he made the decision to listen to his gut.' She added, 'Your gut's a lot smarter than you think.'

  Sara thought of her conversation with her mother yesterday. 'My gut tells me to trust him.'

  'Mine, too,' Nell said. 'I remember when Julia came to school the next day after she said she was raped. It was horrible. She told anybody who would listen. The details just filtered through so that by lunchtime we were all thinking she was bruised and battered.' She paused. 'Then I saw her in the hall, and she didn't look that upset to me. She seemed to be enjoying the attention.' Nell gave another shrug. 'The thing was, she lied all the time. Lied for attention, lied for pity. No one belie
ved her. She probably didn't even believe herself.'

  'What did she say exactly?'

  'That Robert took her to the cave, gave her some beer, loosened her up.'

  'Where does Jeffrey come in?'

  'Later,' Nell answered. 'The story took on a life of its own, just like these things always do. He swore up and down he was with Robert when it happened, and she said sweet as you please that, by the way, Jeffrey was there, too. Said they both took turns on her.'

  'She changed her story?'

  'From what I heard, but gossip goes both ways. She could have been saying they were both involved from the beginning and I just heard it wrong. It was a mess. By the end of the day there were rumors she'd been gang-raped by a group of boys from Comer. Some of the football team was talking about going after them. People just go crazy with that kind of thing.'

  'Were the police –' Sara stopped. 'Hoss.'

  'Oh, yeah. Hoss was called. Some teacher at the school overheard Julia crying about it and they called in Hoss.'

  'What did he do?'

  'He interviewed her, I guess. God knows he knew where she lived. Right before her father died, Hoss was there every weekend breaking up a fight between him and Lane.'

  'Did he interview Jeffrey and Robert?'

  'Probably,' Nell said, not sounding certain. 'Julia backed off the story real quick after Hoss was called in. Stopped talking about it at school, stopped acting like the injured party. People tried to get her to say something – not because they were concerned but because it was a good scandal – but she wouldn't talk. Wouldn't say a thing. She was gone a month or so later.'

  'Gone where?'

  'To have that baby, I'd guess,' Nell said. 'Fat as Lane is, no one made a connection when she told everybody she was pregnant again. Her husband had just died and we all felt sorry for her.' Nell paused. 'Now, there was a blessing, that old man dying. He was a terror, worse than Lane ever thought to be. Worse than Jeffrey's dad, I'd say. Just a mean, nasty piece of work.'

  'How many children did she have?'

  'Last count, six.'

  'Is the one I saw today – Sonny – her youngest one?'

  'He's a cousin. I don't know why she took him on. Probably for the extra money the state gives her.'

  'That's unbelievable,' Sara said, wondering how anyone could allow that woman to raise a child, let alone two.

  'Julia came back nine or ten months later and there was Eric, her new brother.'

  'No one said anything about the timing?'

  'What were they going to say?' Nell asked. 'And then a few more weeks later, she was gone again. It was just easier to say that Lane was the mother and Julia had run off somewhere. Dan Phillips, one of the boys who'd been on the football team, ran off around that time. There were all kinds of rumors, but they died off pretty quick. It made it easier for everybody, I guess.'

  Nell sat up on the couch and took a photo album out from under the coffee table. She thumbed through some of the pages until she found what she was looking for. 'That's her, there in back.'

  Sara saw a photograph of Possum, Robert, and Jeffrey standing in the bleachers of a football stadium. They were all wearing their letterman jackets with their last names stitched on the front above their football jersey numbers. Jeffrey had his arm around Nell, and she leaned into him like a love-struck young girl. Inexplicably, Sara felt a stab of jealousy.

  'Bastard never would give me his jacket,' Nell said, and Sara laughed, but felt secretly relieved for some reason. In high school, wearing a boy's letterman jacket was right up there with wearing his class ring. It was not so much a symbol of the boy's love, but a way for the girl to make the rest of her friends jealous.

  As if reading her mind, Nell asked, 'Whose ring did you wear?'

  Sara felt herself blush, but more from shame than anything else. Steve Mann's class ring had been a hulking chunk of gold with a hideous chess knight on the side – nothing like the football and basketball rings the athletes wore. Sara had hated wearing it and took it off as soon as she moved to Atlanta. Three months passed before she got up the nerve to mail it back to him along with a note explaining that she wanted to break up. To her credit, she had apologized to him years later, but Sara wondered if she would have given it a second thought had she not been forced to move back to Grant after what happened in Atlanta.

  Nell took her silence for something else, probably assuming someone like Sara had not dated much in high school. She said, 'Well, it's stupid anyway. Jeffrey didn't have a class ring – couldn't afford it – but all the other girls wore theirs like a damn wedding ring.' She laughed. 'The only way they could get them to fit was by wrapping half a roll of tape around the band.'

  Sara allowed a smile. She had done the same thing.

  Nell returned to the photo album, saying 'There' as she put her finger beside a blurry image of a young girl standing behind a picture of Possum and Robert. 'That's Julia.'

  Sara had been expecting something horrible from Nell's description, but Julia looked like any other teenage girl from that time period. Her hair was straight to her waist and she was wearing a simple dress with a floral pattern. She looked sad more than anything else, and as sudden as her previous stab of jealousy, Sara felt a sharp sense of sympathy for the teenager.

  Nell leaned over to look. 'Now that I'm seeing her again, she wasn't that bad. You really can't judge personality in a picture, can you?'

  'No,' Sara agreed, thinking the girl was fairly attractive. Yet, that had not been enough to help her transcend the circumstances of her family life. She asked, 'Was her father abusive?'

  'He beat the crap out of them.'

  'No,' Sara said. 'The other way.'

  'Oh, you mean . . .' Nell seemed to think about it. 'I have no idea, but it'd make sense.'

  'Do you know who the father of her child might have been?'

  'No telling,' Nell said. 'If you wanted a list of everybody she'd been with, it'd end up being half the town.' She gave Sara a pointed look. 'Reggie Ray included.'

  'He was younger than her.'

  'So?'

  Sara conceded the point, then said, 'From what Lane said, it sounds like Eric has to go to the hospital a lot to get treatments. So he has to have some sort of clotting problem with his blood.' She tried to think of other possibilities. 'There has to be an autosomal recessive or dominant transmission.' She saw Nell's perplexed expression and said, 'Sorry, it means that the disorder is genetic. It has to do with one of the two proteins that make up clotting factors.'

  'Is that supposed to make sense?'

  'Bleeding disorders are passed from parent to child.'

  'Ah.'

  'Do you know if Julia had anything like that?'

  'I wouldn't think so,' Nell said. 'I remember one time during home ec, she sliced her finger open pretty bad with a pair of scissors. Whether or not it was an accident, I don't know, but she didn't seem to bleed any longer than a normal person would.'

  'If she had something like von Willebrand's disease, then having a child without proper medical supervision would have been life-threatening,' Sara said. 'There would also be other people in her family who were affected, and Lane pretty much said that wasn't the case.'

  'So you're saying it had to come from the father?' Nell asked. 'I can't think of anyone in town with that kind of problem.' She added, 'Not Robert, especially. He got pretty banged up on the football field and never seemed the worse for it.'

  'Jeffrey, too,' Sara said. She remembered drawing his blood sample. The puncture had bled no longer than usual. Even as she considered this, Sara felt ashamed. She had never genuinely thought Jeffrey could be guilty of either crime, but some part of her was glad that there was irrefutable proof.

  'I could ask around,' Nell offered.

  'It comes in degrees,' Sara said. 'Some people have it and don't even know it. It's not as easy for women because of their menstrual cycles. Generally, they know there's a problem. My bet would be it came from the father.'

&nb
sp; 'A needle in a haystack,' Nell pointed out. 'Who knows, maybe Dan Phillips has it.' She reminded Sara, 'The one who ran off about the same time Julia did.' She reached over and paged through the album. 'Here,' she said, indicating a young man standing in the back row of the football team photo.

  'He doesn't look like a football player,' Sara said. Phillips was on the thin side and his dark hair was combed straight back off his head. He looked healthy enough, though one photo could not give the full story.

  'He mostly played tackle dummy,' Nell said. 'Just being on the team and wearing the letterman jacket was all most of these guys wanted. Go down to the hardware store on game day and you can still hear them talking about it like they were in the damn Super Bowl.'

  'Glory days,' Sara said. It was the same in Grant. She turned the page, looking at the other pictures. There was a black-and-white snapshot of Jared from a few years back, and she said, 'He's growing up to be a handsome boy.'

  'You're not going to tell Jeffrey, are you?' Nell tried to smile. 'Don't answer that.' She put the album back under the table. 'You still leaving town?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Stick around.' Nell patted her leg. 'I'm making cornbread tonight.'

  'Where's Robert?'

  'Possum took him to the store to buy him some clothes,' she said. 'Robert didn't want to go back to the house and God only knows what Jessie did with the stuff at her mama's.'

  'What about Robert?'

  'He'll be okay.'

  'No,' Sara said. 'Robert. We've only been talking about Jeffrey. Did you ever think he was involved in what happened to Julia?'

  Nell took her time answering. 'He was always secretive.'

  'About what?'

  'Maybe "secretive" is the wrong word. Makes him sound shifty. He's just private. Doesn't talk about his feelings much.'

  'Jeffrey doesn't, either.'

  'No, not like that. Like he doesn't want anyone to get too close to him.' She sat back on the couch, her back slumped into a C. 'Everybody thought it was Possum who was on the outside, but I think it was Robert. He never seemed to fit in. Not that Jeffrey treated him that way, but it's that same thing we were talking about earlier. He always waited to see what Jeffrey did before he acted.'