Equal Access

by A. E. Branson

  “Here.” Shad shook the cloth open and handed it to her.

  Charissa took the handkerchief and wiped at her face. When she tried to give it back to him, Shad motioned for her to keep it.

  “You might need that for a while.”

  “I’m ... I’m supposed to tell you ... I don’t want Mom and Dad to get a divorce. And I don’t.” Charissa blew her nose into the handkerchief. “But Mom’s dying. And Dad –” Her voice cracked. “I want my dad ... when he’s not mad. If I would be good enough –” Charissa took another shuddering breath. “He just gets mad when I’m not good. I want my dad –” Her voice cracked again. “But I want my mom, too!”

  Shad blew out a slow exhale as he began to softly pat her on the back again. “You can’t stop your dad from getting mad. That’s why it’s better for Uncle Eliot and Aunt Tess to adopt you.”

  Charissa wiped at her nose as she hiccupped again. “They’re not just being mean to Dad?”

  “No. They love you and they want to do what’s best for you.”

  She sniffled into the handkerchief for several seconds before speaking again, and Charissa’s voice was less tremulous. “Did your mom die, too?”

  He shook his head. “Remember when we were talking about people who are supposed to love you and take care of you? The woman they adopted me from, she wasn’t like that. She didn’t take care of me.”

  “What about your dad?”

  Shad drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he found the words to explain his situation. “I never knew him. He left us before I was born.”

  Charissa frowned slightly. “So when you said your parents told you about miracles, you were talking about the people who adopted you?”

  “They’re the only real parents I ever had.” Shad smiled. “And you know what? They didn’t just tell me about miracles. They showed me miracles by teaching me how to see them. And one of the biggest miracles I’ve seen was when they adopted me. Actually, I think all adoptions are miracles.”

  Charissa twisted a corner of the handkerchief around the tip of her index finger. “I already have real parents.”

  “I know.” Shad sighed. The idea that suddenly hit him renewed his encouragement. “That makes you lucky, you know. What a blessing it must be to have not only natural parents, but also have people who love you and take care of you even when your natural parents can’t. You can give them special names if you want, because they’re special people to you. You know what I call my parents? Mam and Pap.”

  “Mam and Pap?” A faint hint of a smile trembled on her lips. “Those are funny names.”

  “My mom, Mam, came up with the idea. Since I was so old when they adopted me, they thought I might not feel right calling them Mom and Dad, so they asked if I wanted to call them Mam and Pap.” Shad smiled again. “Maybe one day, at the time it feels right to you, you’ll want to call Uncle Eliot and Aunt Tess by different names.”

  Charissa looked down at the handkerchief she grasped. “I want to believe you when you say things like that.”

  “I’m really, really sorry I said you could fire me. If it will make you feel better, just burn that hanky when you’re done with it. While you’re at it, burn this tie, too. And my socks. No, maybe you’d better hold off on those. Might release too many toxic fumes.”

  A peep escaped from her. Shad wasn’t sure if Charissa had laughed slightly or was starting to cry again. But when she returned her gaze to his face there was a little more of a smile on her lips.

  “You remind me of Dad when he’s nice.”

  Shad stopped patting her back. He wasn’t entirely sure how to take that comment.

  “Except Dad never said he was sorry.” Charissa leaned against him and her head rested under his left shoulder.

  “I’m just a sorry son of a gun,” Shad muttered. Her proximity to him was beginning to sink in. And there was an eerily familiar sensation stirring in his core.

  “Do you mean it, Mr. Delaney?” Charissa wrapped her arms around his left thigh. “Nothing bad is gonna happen to me?”

  That despicable longing ache unfolded within him as Shad became acutely aware of every point of contact she was making with him. The poor child was reaching out to him because she saw Shad as one of the few people who might actually fulfill her needs, and that was exactly what the demon within him wanted to take advantage of.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to keep anything worse from happening to you.” Shad’s voice was a bit hoarse as he decided to end this session as quickly but delicately as possible.

  “You’re not gonna tell Mom, are you?”

  “I have to.”

  “Don’t.” Charissa sat up to look at him but left her arms around his leg. “She’ll think ... I’m bad.”

  “Charissa.” Shad managed to keep his voice steady as his empathy for the girl struggled with a less noble impulse. “I’m not gonna keep a secret from your mom. She’s your mom. Part of being a parent is ...” Shad tried to come up with something a little less colorful than Pap or Karl would say. “... you’d face down the devil himself to do what’s right for your child. The things we’ve talked about might hurt your mom’s feelings, but she’d rather have her feelings hurt than let anything happen to hurt you. She loves you. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

  Charissa studied his face. “It would make me feel better if you didn’t tell Mom.”

  If he were an actual molester, this would have been a dream come true. Her maneuver was a perfect setup to establish a “secret” between them. Charissa might as well have been gift-wrapped for him.

  Gift-wrapped ... gift ... a gift from God ... Dulsie.

  His resolve not to give in to temptation just got its reinforcements. “You don’t keep secrets from your parents.”

  She frowned slightly. “Even if it’s a surprise?”

  “What surprise?”

  “Vic is gonna take us to his friend Drake’s houseboat one day. But he said not to tell Mom because it was a surprise.” Charissa’s face brightened. “I’ll get to ride in a boat.”

  “Then that’s different.” Shad removed his hand from her shoulder. He felt as though there were two dueling forces within him. For the moment they seemed evenly matched but he wasn’t sure how long that would last. He placed his hand over Charissa’s wrist but didn’t immediately move her arm. “Thank you for talking to me about this, Charissa. It will help me to help you.”

  “Do you have to go now?”

  Shad moved Charissa’s arm to her side and released it. “I have to. I ... have other clients I have to see.”

  “Can I talk to you again?”

  Shad hesitated in the process of getting to his feet. His side of light urged caution while the demon was intrigued by her question. “If you want to tell me more ... to build my case, sure.” He didn’t look at Charissa while he stood, but then glanced down at the child with an expression Shad was certain to be grave. “Remember, though, about your mom. No secrets.”

  Charissa frowned slightly as she gazed up at him, then with a sigh she returned her attention to her book.

  As Shad turned to leave the room his memory dredged up various aspersions the boyfriends had used against him. Only this time Shad used the most hateful remarks he could think of against himself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Great is peace, seeing that for its sake even God modified the truth.

  --Babylonian Talmud

  To this day Shad didn’t trust anybody immediately. Before he turned eleven, Shad assumed anybody who made pretensions of friendship toward him would either try to take advantage of him or decide he was unlikable and mistreat him. When Erin began visiting with him at the library, Shad believed she would figure out he was a twerp and quickly distance herself from him.

  So when Erin started giving him food, Shad got a little confused. He definitely appreciated the sandwiches and fruits and vegetables she would hand to him, but Shad told himself Erin had to have an ulterior motive. One evening she showed him pic
tures of her parents and of the farm where she grew up, and then asked Shad if he would like to go there for a week. Shad figured something terrible would happen to him if he went, but just the night before Brody had launched a particularly vicious attack on him, so Shad decided he could either be killed by Brody or killed by strangers. At that point in time discomfort of the unknown became actually preferable to the pain of the familiar. He chose to go to the strangers.

  So that woman sent him off with this person she didn’t even know, and Shad was a little surprised when he actually arrived at a real farm. Erin had to go back to St. Louis after the weekend, but every night during the remainder of the week she would call and chat with him on the phone. Every day Shad did wonder when Erin’s parents, especially Mr. Delaney, would turn on him and do something like slice open his throat the way Mrs. Delaney and her sister did with those chickens on the third day of his visit. When on the fifth day they asked Shad if he wanted to stay longer, like for the duration of summer vacation, Shad took that as a sign he was doomed. But he replied in the affirmative because Shad figured his fate was sealed, and until they actually did him in life wasn’t so bad. Besides, he still didn’t want to return to Brody.

  Erin’s contact with him became less frequent but remained steady and dependable. It took nearly a year before Shad decided that these people he started calling Mam and Pap could actually be trusted, but he also developed a solid anchor of respect for Erin. When he could finally take his new lifestyle for granted, Shad never forgot it was Erin’s intervention that had brought him here.

  It wasn’t until after Pap’s hospital stay that Shad learned how divine that intervention had really been.

  When he got up from bed that Saturday morning, Shad told himself to be cheerful. He was always glad to see Erin again, especially since her younger sister Iona had a friendly, but not as close, relationship with him. Shad had moved in on the heels of Iona’s move out to begin college early, so he never got to know her as well as the rest of the family.

  Erin and her husband Stan had two children and lived in the Rolla area, about an hour south of Jefferson City. Stan was an instructor at the university and Erin was still a librarian. Their son, Grady, was ten years old, and they had a daughter, Ida, who was six. They were coming out to visit this weekend since they had spent the Fourth of July weekend with Stan’s family. As Shad got dressed in chino shorts and a light green, button-down shirt, he thought again how there was a certain convenience to his and Dulsie’s families being so close.

  Around mid-morning Dulsie drove to the Delaney farm after Mam telephoned to tell them Erin’s family had arrived. The farm was located on yet another back road, and the driveway that led up toward the house was about half the length of the Wekenheiser’s driveway, but it was still considered long. The land was a mix of crops, timber and pasture in a patchwork quilt pattern on river bottom and hills. The Osage River, outsized in this state only by the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, created a physical border on the back side of the farm. On the hills at the front of the property sat the house and various outbuildings: garden shed, chicken coop, well house, granary, machine barn, and most impressively the enormous timber frame barn. Although the exterior of the barn was covered with sheet metal to protect the over one-hundred-year-old oak planks, the interior was all wood and dirt and hay with a ground-floor plan that accommodated horse stalls and milking stanchions for an era long ago.

  The two-story house was the second largest building on the farm but shared the barn’s venerable age. Like many of the older homes in the area the house sported a corrugated steel roof that had weathered to a dull gray. It was a roughly T-shaped building, although the lower floor had an additional room on either side of the back wing. Its newer but still older-looking clapboard style siding was a soft wedgewood blue and the railing that graced the semi-wraparound porch and the trim around the windows were white with red accents. At the beginning of World War II, in a fit of patriotic fervor, Pap’s Grandpa Ward originally applied the red paint to sections of the columns on the porch and the windows, and Pap felt duty-bound to keep it maintained.

  The silver, mid-sized SUV parked near the faded green Delaney pickup belonged to Erin and her husband Stan. After Dulsie parked their own car near the other vehicles, Shad helped her carry the food they’d brought toward the porch. No sooner did they reach the front steps than the two kids raced around the corner from the other side of the house. Mam’s and Pap’s two dogs, one that resembled a border collie except its coat was uniformly red, and the other a beagle, were gleefully running alongside them.

  Ida almost bumped into Dulsie as the girl sprinted up the concrete steps and grasped the first column on the right when she reached the short distance to the top.

  “Safe!” Ida gasped as she hugged to the post. Then she grinned at the adults. “Hi Uncle Shad! Hi Aunt Dulsie!”

  “Ida cheated!” Grady was more winded and he grasped the railing that bordered the steps. A brown-haired boy with his grandmother’s – and mother’s – green eyes, Grady was wearing denim shorts and a blue tee shirt with a Chinook helicopter pictured on the front.

  Both Dulsie and Shad greeted the kids. Then Dulsie spoke again. “Ida has to cheat. She’s younger than you.”

  “No she doesn’t.” Grady frowned up at his sister. “Mom told me not to run as fast as I really can.”

  The dogs sniffed around Shad’s and Dulsie’s feet, but neither patted the animals because their hands were full with boxes or bags. Ida continued to hug the post as though her well-being depended on it.

  “Bull hockey!” Ida replied. She was also wearing denim shorts but her tee shirt was green with white stripes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her eyes were brown. “You still run fast.”

  Shad regarded Ida with false seriousness. “Does your mom know you use that kind of language?”

  “Hockey isn’t a swear word,” Ida replied earnestly.

  “Do you know what it means?” Shad asked.

  “Poop!” Grady blurted.

  Dulsie smiled. “Really? I thought it was a game you play on ice with sticks and a puck. Or is that hooky?”

  “Hooky’s skipping school.” Ida grinned.

  “Do either of you ever play hooky?” Shad maintained his demeanor as he glanced at both kids.

  “Ida does!” Grady looked at his sister.

  She gazed down on her brother in defiance. “Bull hockey!”

  They finally made it past the kids and into the house where Mam and Pap were visiting with Erin and Stan in the living room. Shad and Dulsie took the food to the large dine-in kitchen that spanned the width of the home before Shad was able to hug Erin and shake hands with Stan while Dulsie hugged both. Their visit didn’t last long because both kids burst into the house and reminded everybody they were supposed to go fishing after Uncle Shad and Aunt Dulsie arrived.

  So Pap loaded fishing poles, tackle boxes and a small cooler full of dirt and earthworms into the bed of his pickup. Behind the barn and next to the woods bordering the pasture was a three-acre fishing pond that Shad had always known as a sure source to catch bluegill, bass, or catfish every outing. They did fill a stringer which Mam said they could fry for supper that night, and then the kids wanted to go out in Pap’s two canoes he kept in a shed on one side of the pond bank. Shad and Grady went out in one canoe and Pap took Ida in the other.

  Then it was time for lunch, and Jill and Karl, also bearing food, arrived at the home. In the kitchen everybody sat at the large oak table which Quaid himself had built from lumber produced on the very farm he had saved for Grace. It was just large enough to accommodate all ten of them, although the kids had to sit in wooden folding chairs. Pap and Mam took opposite ends of the table, while Shad, Dulsie, Stan and Erin sat on one side. Grady, Ida, Karl and Jill filled the other side.

  About fifteen minutes into the meal and conversation, Ida asked in a clear voice, “Why is everything around here so old?”

  The adults chuckled an
d Erin replied, “It’s an old house.”

  At first glance people might think Erin looked like Jill because they both had dark hair and green eyes. It was actually Pap’s side of the family whom Erin favored however, including the Delaney height which made her the tallest woman in the family. She also had on denim shorts and wore a red button-down blouse.

  “It is like coming to a museum.” Grady looked around at the yellow pine floors, natural black walnut trim, and white bead board ceiling. “Even your TV is old.”

  “It still works.” Pap smirked.

  “Do you even have a computer?” Grady asked.

  “Thanks to your Uncle Shad, I do.”

  Shad cast a glance toward his nephew. “It’s a dinosaur.”

  “How come you don’t have email?”

  “We got rid of all that internet stuff after Shad moved out.”

  “How come?”

  Pap smirked again. “Because Shad moved out.”

  Mam chuckled. “If Grandpa can’t fix it with a wrench or a welder then he figures it’s not worth having.”

  “I think your grandpa’s on to something there.” Karl leaned forward. “My truck’s not so new, either, but it’s still got computer chips and high-tech gizmos that keep me from just fixing it with a wrench. Most of that stuff is probably surveillance equipment for the government to keep tabs on us.”

  Most of the adults smirked because they knew Karl got a kick out of conspiracy theories. Jill just shook her head.

  “All those computer components are supposed to be there to make your truck safer to drive.” Stan shrugged. His hair was not as dark as Erin’s and he had brown eyes. Like everybody else he was wearing shorts, and the polo shirt he wore was blue.

  “Safer?” Karl jabbed a thumb toward his daughter. “Shad and Dulsie can’t even buy a used car these days without it having airbags all over it. But they have to turn around and get the airbags disabled because those things could kill Dulsie. No, the government is sticking its nose more and more into our business.” He suddenly twitched and then looked at Jill beside him. “Hey, that one hurt.”