Benji held the phone to his ear, a fabricated smile of hope displayed for Jane’s benefit. The phone started ringing and both his confidence level and the sincerity of the grin grew.
“James?” squeaked the voice on the other end of the line.
“Nae, its Benji. James let me have his phone. He stayed back with Grandpa and the others, but do ye think ye can come to The Trees? I need a ride. Oh, and make sure ye bring the truck. I brought a friend and I dinna think all three of us will fit in that sweet blue ‘Vette of yers.”
“Uh, okay. I mean, no, I mean…Oh, shit…I mean, shoot. I’ll be there, but not in the truck, but I promise that the rig will be big enough to hold at least two people your size and me,” Billy said, biting off the words, ‘and anyone else I decide to bring along, like your son.’
38 Busted
I t wasn’t Billy’s classic pickup truck that pulled in, but it was a Dodge. Benji held Janie close to him as they walked up to the golden chariot pulling in under the huge realty for sale billboard with the SOLD sign slapped across it. Billy stepped out of the Grand Caravan, leaving the driver’s door open as he ran into Benji’s one outstretched arm. “It looks like you found someone, eh?” Billy sang as he walked up to the newly arrived travelers.
“Aye, I did. Ye were right about waitin’ on the Lord. I assure ye I wasna lookin’, but when I saw her, it couldna been any plainer than, than that sign up there,” Benji said as he pointed to the 8’ tall letters S-O-L-D. “This is Jane, my fiancée. Janie, this is Billy, my friend, and as ye can probably see, Wee James’s brother.”
Jane nodded and squeaked, “Pleased to meet you,” and dipped her head.
“Oh, no you don’t, girlfriend,” Billy teased as he grinned and shook his shoulders. “If you’re his fiancée, then you’re family. Gimme a hug, sweetie,” Billy said, as he reached around the giantess’s waist and gave her a ‘welcome to the family’ squeeze.
Jane didn’t know what to do, but let him clutch her close, rocking her side to side with excitement in a familiarity that she wasn’t used to nor expecting. He finally let go and said, “Now you, too,” and reached around for a brother-in-law welcome back. “I never thought I’d see you again,” he exclaimed, not even trying to contain his excitement. “So, you got to see Evie?” Billy turned to Jane and explained, “Evie is my brother’s mother-in-law. I guess we’re kin now, kind of…” Billy’s jubilant enthusiasm suddenly slowed down. “Oh, and I’m a father now,” he said with reserved pride and a wince. “We had a baby.”
Benji looked up from his conversation and shared hug with Billy, and saw Jane walking toward the open door of the van. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the metal goliath. She had heard the baby’s cry and was climbing through the portal to the source of noise.
“She’s really from the 18th century?” Billy asked softly.
Benji nodded and said, “She was a slave. I, um, bought her, sort of. At least I traded some hard labor fer her. That’s why I came back. We couldna be man and wife back there. This was, is, the only place for us. And it looks like she’s adaptin’ pretty fast. I thought she’d be terrified of cars. She climbed right into the belly of the beast; or is this ‘the Beastess?’” Benji asked jovially. Billy had called his Dodge truck ‘the Beast.’
“It’s just the family rig. I went ahead and sold the ‘Vette. Peter fell in love with the Prius, so he’s driving Leah’s old car, but you knew that. This is big enough for the baby’s car seat and all the diapers and formula he goes through. We take it on visits to the park, and we’ve even been camping with it twice already,” Billy said, then asked nervously, “and are you sure she’s okay in there? I mean, she’s never even seen a car.”
“Aye, but she has seen a baby. They must be fine since I canna hear either one of them cryin’,” Benji joked, as they walked toward the van.
“Are you all right in there?” Billy asked, then pushed the button on his keyring to open up the side door.
Jane yelped, but didn’t scream at the sudden noise and movement. “He’s beautiful, but he was hungry,” she said as she patted the baby’s head, his face pressed to her chest.
“You can do that?” Billy and Benji chorused at the same time, both of their voices an octave higher than normal with the shock of seeing her nursing the baby.
“I mean, did you just have a baby?” Billy asked, his eyes wide with shock.
Benji added, “I dinna think ye could get milk all at once like that. I mean, I ken how it is with other mammals.”
“My mother was the same way. They’d give her a baby to feed after the master’s wife decided that it wasn’t proper for her to put her breast in the baby’s mouth. Her own baby!” she added with a scolding tone. “It took a day or two, but she got milk even though she hadn’t had a baby since I was born.”
“Yes,” Billy said slowly, “but he seems to be getting sustenance and you two just met…”
Jane looked down at the baby’s head, but didn’t speak.
“Ahem, ahem,” Benji cleared his throat. “I think I may have, how shall I say, primed her a bit in the past few days… I mean, I have a vow on my head and I canna, um, have relations until I’m marrit, but there are other things I’ll allow myself to do,” he said bashfully, then added a provocative double eyebrow pop at the end.
Jane didn’t say a word, but looked up at Benji with a pained frown. “Is he hurtin’ ye?” he asked. “I mean, Billy, did ye happen to bring a bottle fer the lad?”
Billy reached in the van and grabbed the diaper bag, pulling everything out of it, looking for the formula. “Shoot, no, I forgot. I just packed us up as fast as I could and got right out here.”
“He isn’t hurting me,” Jane said softly. He wasn’t causing her pain, but she was definitely feeling bad. She put her finger in between her nipple and the baby’s mouth to break the suction, then lifted him up to be burped. Billy saw her exposed naked breast and turned back in embarrassment. Jane saw that her bareness made him uncomfortable. A slight smile crept onto her face as she covered up. She might just like this time where her body was her own…
“I said, what’s his name?” Benji asked for the second time. Billy had returned to his uneasy posture. “And am I keepin’ ye from yer work?”
“No, I mean his name is Billy Burke Melbourne, Jr. and you aren’t keeping me from work. I’m on family leave for a year,” he added with a sigh.
Jane looked at Billy, then Benji, then back at the baby who was now nursing on her other breast. Benji couldn’t see why the mood was so dour, so ignored it and asked, “So where’s Peter? Ye told me that we had a baby. Now, yer not gonna tell me that Peter birthed this here lad? I mean, medical science canna changed that much so soon!” he said brightly.
“No, no; Peter is now a manager and works out of town about two weeks out of four.” Billy said somberly, then sighed and started again. “That’s why I’m the stay at home parent. But Mom helps, too. We all live in the big house you helped build. She’s doing fine, by the way—no more cancer. She may not have been able to be a fulltime mother, but she’s definitely a hands-on Grandma!” Billy bragged, then took a deep breath and fell back into sad mode.
Benji finally asked, “Am I missin’ somethin’ here?” but got no reply. “Okay,” he said in resignation and decided to change the subject. “So what do ye call this fine red heided lad: Billy Junior, Wee Billy, BB…” Benji trailed off in his suggestions, waiting for an answer.
Billy had never planned for this scenario. “I’m his father on the birth certificate, but I wasn’t the biological, well, you know. We call him Mac after the, um,” Billy faltered, then didn’t say a word, but looked at the ground, kicking a stone in frustration at not being able to handle the situation.
“Sperm donor?” Benji asked, then laughed. No one else was laughing, though. He looked at Jane who looked back at him, then down at the baby who was now asleep on her chest.
“Oh, shit,” Benji whispered. “Dinna tell me that it was Mac
Kay…” he practically begged.
“She came to me with a note you had written a few months before. She needed help, but I wasn’t going to give her what she was asking for!” Billy said sharply, referring to her wanting an abortion.
The worst was over, he hoped. Benji now knew he was a father. But one look at Jane’s face, and Billy saw that there was much more to this. “You said that you and Jane couldn’t, um, get together, um, well, hell! You said you wouldn’t have sex with her because you had a vow on your head. So what was that all about? And just so you’re clear on this,” Billy said, his bashfulness suddenly overridden with indignity, “I’m not asking for me, but for her. She can see that he’s your son, can’t you?”
Jane bit her bottom lip and nodded.
Benji took a deep breath then snorted, frustrated, embarrassed, and exasperated, all at the same time. “Life is sometimes about sacrifices,” he said cautiously, hoping he would be able to explain his side of the story so they’d understand. “I took a vow as a young man. I vowed that I wouldna have relations with a woman until I was marrit. And I meant to stand by it. I’d give up that special pleasure—well, save it—if He’d spare me. Now, ye see this?” Benji said, and raised his right pinkie finger with the tip at the first knuckle missing. “This was a small price to pay fer savin’ a man’s right hand. I was given a choice and took it. I had a rough life, but I always managed to get by with jest about everythin’ intact,” he held up and wiggled his pinkie again. “But I had to make a choice for Autumn. I couldna jest give up the end of a finger. The man who held her said that I had to have…” Benji shook his head, trying to erase the image of the scrawny, drugged out young girl and the box of weapons that was beside the film producer’s desk. “I would have to have sex with her or she would be the star in a snuff film.”
Benji turned to his fiancée. “Janie, remember I told ye about the movin’ pictures they put together so other people can see stories. They call it a film or a movie, and they’re of jest about everythin’ there is in life: people, animals, goin’ fishin’, war, happy times, sad times… Weel, sometimes they make the pictures of people havin’ relations, sexual intercourse. Now, I can see that bein’ a source of entertainment if everybody’s havin’ a good time and doin’ it of their own free will; then that might be fine. But, I dinna want to do it, and neither did the lass, not really. They were keepin’ her, her, well, she had some bad medicine she was wantin’, desirin’, somethin’ fierce. She’d do, did, anythin’ to get it. But, I dinna want to do it! I let them beat me rather than break my vow. I wasna goin’ to, to, weel, I jest refused to do it. They finally realized that I meant it. I guess the man’s arm wore out before my back did. So, they had to find another way to get me to cooperate.
“They do some horrid things here, Janie; jest as bad as in yer time.” Benji looked at Jane first then Billy, desperately trying to get them to understand, practically in tears as he told them, “They said that they were gonna kill her and film it, make a movie of it! He showed me the box of knives, hammers, screwdrivers, and power drills, tellin’ me how they would poke her full of holes unless I… Well, ye get the idea.”
Benji was finished with his story. Emotional fatigue had completely overwhelmed him, and tears were now dribbling down his cheeks. He looked up at both of them for forgiveness, “I dinna ken where to look, but I’m sure that somewhere in the Bible there’s some sort of special dispensation fer breakin’ a vow in order to save someone’s life, isna there?”
Billy looked at him, a small smile of forgiveness and compassion overtaking his hard-featured scowl of anger and indignation. “I’m sure there is, and if there isn’t, then we’re just not looking hard enough. I mean, what that man meant for evil turned out for good. What you did for Autumn afterwards, keeping her from drugs, saved her. She stayed clean.” Billy turned to Jane and said, “That means that she didn’t need or want to use that bad medicine anymore. And she had a great, perfect pregnancy. But there were complications with the delivery, and she died the same day he was born. She did get to hold him, though. She even signed the birth certificate and gave him his name. He was only six hours old when she started bleeding real bad. They couldn’t stop it and then,” Billy gulped and started crying, his chest heaving as he sobbed, “then, then she was gone.”
Benji approached Billy hesitantly and put his arm around the man’s now shaking shoulders, pulling him close for an encouraging, brotherly hug. “I’m sorry fer yer loss, but happy fer yer gain. I mean, ye did get to keep the son, right?”
Billy sniffed back some tears and wiped his face with the shoulder of his shirt, keeping his face low. “I hope I do. I mean, I don’t want to let him go, and I don’t want to fight you for him. Legally, he’s mine, but if you wanted to challenge it, you could request a blood test. Then there’d be the lawyers, and they’d want to know where you were for the last year and …” Billy looked up to see if Benji realized how sincere he was about keeping his son, even if he was not his biologically.
“Can I be his godfather?” Benji asked as his reply to Billy’s feared custody issue. “And I kinda like the nickname. Makes me proud, even if I dinna make him on purpose. Janie, are ye okay? I mean, when I said that we couldna, you ken, have relations, it wasna because it was ye. If we can get the paperwork done today, we can be marrit by tonight. That is, if ye still want me.”
Jane nodded her head in acceptance of his proposal, but looked down at the sleeping baby, and then at Billy. “You give him milk out of a bottle? I mean, all the time?” she asked pensively.
“Well, these ducts won’t work for that!” Billy said as he looked down at his own chest, puffing it out just a little. He saw the yearning look on her face, and toned the levity down a couple of notches to lighthearted. “Why, are you volunteering?” he asked hopefully. He really did care for Benji like a brother, and would love for him and his bride to stay with him and his little non-traditional family.
Jane looked at Benji for his okay before answering. Benji saw ‘the look’ of desire, but reticence to answer, her slave upbringing still undercutting her self-assurance about making a decision. “How much room do ye have left in that house ye share with Peter and yer mother? And do ye think ye have room fer a handyman and a wet nurse?”
39 A Great Day for a Wedding
“H ere, let me put him in his car seat,” Billy said to Jane as he reached in to take his son from her. She carefully unclenched the boy’s fist from her sarong and let Billy have his child. “You go ahead and sit here and Benji, do you want to buckle her in and tell her a little about what to expect? I don’t know what you’ve told her about cars and such.”
“Weel, this here is a seat belt,” Benji said, as he pulled the nylon strap across her chest and clicked it into the latch. “Ye see, these cars go so fast that if they happen to make a mistake or the car aheid of them stops too quickly, and there’s...” Benji saw the terror flash in Jane’s eyes. He changed his approach. “It’s the law,” he said simply. “And fer the bairns, it keeps them still. Is yer owie okay?” he asked, grinning as he adjusted the diagonal belt across her.
“Aye, it’s fine,” she answered. She paused for a moment then looked up. “How fast do we go?” she asked anxiously, suddenly remembering some of the stories Benji had told her about racing cars.
“Faster than a burp, but slower than a sneeze,” he replied comically then issued a fake sneeze.
“Bless you,” said Billy, happy that the mood had brightened. “And, after I get a few questions answered, I can make some phone calls, and we can get your wedding set up for this evening. Unless, of course, you want to have some, ahem, friends and family fly in from overseas...”
“Ye dinna call anyone, did ye?” Benji asked, his voice squeaking like a scared little boy. He realized the fear he had inadvertently shown and added with a stern bravado, “I mean, ye did say ye wouldna talk to anyone overseas, aye?”
“No, I told you I wouldn’t, and I haven’t. I just thought you might
want to invite them to the biggest event of your life!” Billy said sternly, then literally bit his lip.
Billy huffed in resignation when Benji didn’t reply. Not even the multiuse comment of ‘hmph!’ had boomed through the big man’s angry chest.
Benji continued to stare straight ahead, obviously still irritated at the reference to a verboten subject. Billy tried again. He didn’t want to anger his friend; it hadn’t been his intent. “But I understand completely if you want to have a small, verra private ceremony. I mean, it’s just as legal, and whenever you decide to, to…” Billy stuttered.
‘Think fast man,’ Billy scolded himself. ‘Sweet Janie speaks English and knows something is going on, but probably doesn’t know he has a family, and he evidently doesn’t want her to know, at least yet.’
“Just let me know when you want to have a big reception. Peter and I had a small wedding, and James and Leah did, too. I guess you’re right,” he admitted sincerely, hoping his honest feelings were evident in his voice, “small weddings are better at keeping the stress down, aye?”
“Aye,” Benji agreed flatly, hoping the subject was closed. He turned around and looked to see how Janie was reacting to the conversation. He groaned softly as he realized that he had forgotten to ask her for her opinion. “Did ye want a grand wedding, or will a small affair be okay with ye?” he asked gently.
Janie gazed at the little red headed baby who looked so much like the twins, Wee Julian and Raymond. She responded to his question with a shrug of her left, unrestricted by seatbelt, shoulder, and shook her head minimally, letting him know that she didn’t care either way. She could feel the atmosphere of contention between Benji and his friend—kin she remembered—and she didn’t want to add to it with how big or small she felt a wedding affair should be.
The sound of the engine starting caused her to twitch; she had successfully swallowed the yelp she had feared would escape. Her eyes opened wide with wonder at the smooth movement of the car over the ground, crunching the gravel noisily beneath them. This was nothing like a wagon ride. She turned her gaze away from the baby, looked out the window, and gasped. “How fast?” she asked again.
The Great Big Fairy (The Fairies Saga Book 4) Page 31