Jubilee's Journey

by Bette Lee Crosby

Carmella offered those pledges with an open heart and paid no heed to the fact that Wyattsville had no orphans, no homeless, and no soup kitchen in need of food. The Saint Peter’s Thrift Shop was the only thing Wyattsville had to offer when it came to charitable organizations.

  It was on the sixth day that Carmella had begun adding an extra request to each and every prayer. It was the same every time. Once she’d pleaded for Sidney’s life and vowed to do good deeds she added, “And, Father, in the name of all that’s righteous and merciful, punish those who did this to my Sidney.” On several occasions she detailed the punishment she deemed most appropriate. At times when she was feeling benevolent the punishment was simply living with the guilt of their sins, but when she was angriest it was death.

  Three days earlier Carmella watched the detectives take the boy from the hospital in handcuffs and felt God was at long last answering her prayers. But that was three days ago, and since then nothing else had changed. The respirator still whooshed air in and out of Sidney’s lungs, the monitors continued to count his heartbeats. Yet Sidney’s eyes remained closed.

  On Monday when the Wyattsville Daily announced Paul’s arrest, Carmella bought two copies of the newspaper. She kept one copy at home to serve as a reminder of answered prayers. The second copy she took to the hospital so when Sidney awoke she could prove to him justice had been served.

  But two weeks of hoping and praying had taken its toll on Carmella, and she felt weary as a woman who’d given birth to quintuplets. When the alarm buzzed at six-thirty Wednesday morning, she simply could not pull herself from the bed. Carmella silenced the alarm and buried the clock in the bottom drawer of the nightstand.

  When Sidney Klaussner’s eyes fluttered open, he was alone in the room. Groggy and dazed, he tried to remember when he had fallen asleep. Then he heard the machines and felt the weight of tape against his forearm. Slowly he began to realize this was not home. He was not lying in his own comfortable bed. He was lying on something that moved. He could feel the pressure of swells rising and falling beneath him. He tried to call out, and only an indistinguishable grunt came from his lips. Fear grabbed Sidney by the throat, and when he lifted his hand to his face he felt the tube. That’s when his heart began pounding against his chest, hammering to be free of whatever prison this was.

  Barbara Walsh was on duty Wednesday morning, and when Sidney’s heart monitor beeped its warning she went flying into his room.

  “Good Lord, you’re awake!”

  Within minutes Sidney’s room was crowded with nurses and doctors.

  In the frenzy of explaining to Sidney that he’d been shot and was now in the hospital, no one thought to telephone Carmella.

  Twenty minutes after he opened his eyes, Carmella pushed the entrance button for the ICU ward and spotted a number of nurses coming and going from Sidney’s room.

  “Oh, my God!” she screamed and took off running. Circling around an orderly she’d never before met, Carmella pushed her way into the room. Before she could squeeze past the crowd of nurses hovering over the bed, she realized the respirator was no longer whooshing.

  “Sidneeeeeey!” she screamed and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  When she came to, Carmella was sitting in the chair on the far side of Sidney’s room and Barbara Walsh was holding a cool cloth to her head.

  “You fainted,” Barbara explained. “Nothing’s wrong. It was simply the stress of all you’ve been through and the shock of…” Her words droned on, but Carmella heard nothing else. She was looking at Sidney and trying to believe that what she was seeing was not another dream but the actual answer to all her prayers.

  Sidney was sitting up and the tracheostomy tube that had been taped to his face was gone. He was neither smiling nor frowning but had a look of confusion stretched the full width of his face. Carmella waved Barbara off, then rose and wobbled across the room to stand beside the bed.

  “Oh, Sidney,” she said, “you have no idea how worried I’ve been.”

  “Worried?” he repeated quizzically.

  She nodded. “I thought you might never wake up. I thought—”

  Still not fully comprehending the situation, Sidney said, “I was asleep.”

  Carmella leaned over and allowed the full weight of her bosom to settle on his chest. For several minutes she remained in that position, her body blending with his, her finger tracing the edge of his face, her lips whispering how terrified she’d been at the thought of losing him. When a spasm grabbed hold of her lower back, she stood and lifted his hand into hers.

  One by one she kissed his fingertips; then she held his hand to her chest and placed it in a spot where he could feel her heartbeat. “I love you, Sidney,” she said. “Love you more than life itself. If you were to die, I’d surely follow you to the grave.”

  Sidney wrinkled his brow and asked, “How long was I asleep?”

  “Asleep? You weren’t asleep, you were in a coma.”

  “Coma?”

  “Yes. After they removed the bullets—”

  “What bullets?”

  “You were shot. Don’t you remember?”

  Her question went without an answer, and with each new revelation Sidney appeared more and more confused.

  Carmella began at the beginning. She talked of how it had been a perfectly normal Wednesday morning; they’d had breakfast together and he’d gone off to open the store.

  “An hour later,” she said, “I got a call saying you’d been shot.” She told him of the horror she’d felt as the ambulance sped crosstown toward the hospital. “I didn’t know if you’d live or die.”

  Sidney gave a slight smile. “I’m too ornery to die,” he said. “Seems you’d know that.”

  As she continued to tell the story, bits and pieces became familiar to Sidney. Not the whole picture, just tiny snippets. He remembered Martha Tillinger walking into the store and asking where the cake mixes were but little beyond that.

  Before Carmella got to the part about Sidney shooting one of the would-be robbers, Barbara Walsh, who’d been in and out of the room numerous times, pulled her aside and suggested she switch to another subject. “When a person’s been through such a trauma, it’s not a good thing to keep reminding them of it.”

  Carmella, who wanted nothing more than her husband’s return to health, did as suggested. She began talking about how she couldn’t wait for Sidney to come home.

  “We’ll take a vacation,” she said. “Maybe drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains, or maybe spend a few weeks in Ocean City. Agnes Shapiro went there and she said it’s wonderful. Lots to do…”

  As the minutes of the day ticked by, Carmella rambled on. She spoke of vacations, planting spring flowers, Crystal Otto’s new baby, and dozens of other things. From time to time Sidney smiled, but most of the time he just listened, his face expressionless. When he dozed off, Carmella kept watch over him. She waited for each rise and fall of his chest to make certain his breath was steady and even. Long after the final visitor’s bell had chimed, Carmella was still sitting beside Sidney.

  The Final Shot

  Tom Wilson was the newest detective on the Pittsburgh police force. He was full of energy and enthusiasm, and after spending five years as a beat cop he knew what life on the street was like. He didn’t just know what it was like; he was determined to make it better. While Charlie, his partner and a twenty-year veteran on the squad, was ready to write off Butch Wheeler’s murder as something that was justified anyway, Tom was not. He spent two weeks gathering evidence, pulling together the ballistic reports, and talking to everyone who’d ever known Butch. When the finger of guilt pointed to Hurt McAdams, Tom began interviewing everyone who had ever known Hurt, including the elderly Kubick who lived next door to the house where Hurt grew up.

  “Sure I seen him,” Kubick said. “He came looking for his daddy.”

  “How long ago?” Tom asked.

  “A week, two maybe.”

  Kubick explained that George McAdams had moved
off to some place in Florida, but by now he had no notion of where that someplace might be.

  “You tell that to Hurt?” Tom asked.

  Kubick nodded.

  Tom’s next visit was to the Camp Hill Correctional Institute. After that Tom knew his hunch was right. There was no longer any question about it. Hurt McAdams was the one who put a bullet in Butch Wheeler’s head.

  That evening an All-Points Bulletin went out. It said Hurt McAdams was armed and dangerous. The bulletin said McAdams was most likely seeking shelter in Florida with his father. The whereabouts of the father were unknown.

  When the bulletin arrived in Miami Beach, it sat buried beneath a stack of other killers, kidnappers, and wife-beaters, all supposedly headed south.

  For five days straight Hurt had gone to the Tropical Park Racetrack looking for his daddy, and for five days he’d returned to the sparsely-furnished room disappointed. During those five days, he’d not showered or changed his clothes. At night he removed the sticky leather jacket and draped it across the back of the straight chair beside the bed. Before he hung the jacket, he removed his gun from the pocket and held it in his hands throughout the night. That gun was the one thing Hurt trusted. It was the one thing that could right the wrongs he’d suffered.

  On the sixth day Hurt climbed out of bed and pulled on his jacket. His eyes were burning and his throat felt parched. In the room there was no food, no drink, and no glass to drink from. Two days earlier he’d gone on a rampage when thoughts of his daddy banged into his head. He’d paced the floor and screamed obscenities until there was nothing more to say. That’s when he hurled the bathroom glass against the wall and smashed it into smithereens. While Hurt was at the racetrack someone had swept away the broken glass, but they’d not bothered to replace it.

  “Cheap dump,” Hurt growled as he stumbled to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and cupped his hands. He scooped the flow of water to his mouth, and as he drank it dribbled down his face and onto the leather jacket. When Hurt caught sight of the dark stain, he found a new level of anger. It rose up and raged inside of him. He cursed the fate of ever being born, then pounded his boot against the pipe below the sink until it burst open and began flooding the room. With water pouring from the broken pipe, he turned and walked out the door.

  He didn’t need that room. He didn’t need a place to stay. He didn’t need shit. Today he was going to find his daddy. He’d do what he came to do, then move on. Before the day was over he’d be gone from Miami.

  When Hurt stepped out onto the street the heat of the day was already crusted over the concrete. Before he had gone two blocks he was drenched in perspiration and thirstier than ever. He stopped at an orange juice stand and ordered a Coca-Cola.

  “No Coke,” the boy at the window said. “Just juice.”

  Hurt shot his fist through the window, knocked the boy to the floor, then walked off.

  Continuing his trek toward the station where he would take a bus to the racetrack, Hurt walked three blocks, then stopped in an air-conditioned coffee shop and again ordered a Coca-Cola.

  The pretty blond waitress smiled. “Coming right up.”

  Hurt hated friendly. He hated people who went around smiling at one another for no apparent reason. “Phony bullshit,” he muttered. When she sat the Coke in front of him, Hurt downed it without taking a breath, then stood and walked out.

  “Hey, mister,” the waitress called. “You forgot to pay.”

  Hurt kept walking and didn’t bother to glance back.

  When the early bus left for Tropical Park Raceway, Hurt was on it. He was first off the bus and first in line to purchase a ticket. When he entered the racetrack, there were only a handful of early-comers wandering about. He walked past the hot dog stand and circled around to where most of the betting windows were. Once he thought he saw George, but when he came closer he could see the man was an Oriental and looked nothing like his daddy.

  Hurt rubbed his eyes. The brightness of the ever-constant sun made them burn and ache. It was a pain that drilled holes through his vision and ricocheted around the inside of his head. He had to find George today. He had to find George and leave this scorching hell.

  Once Hurt had circled through the park he returned to a spot close to the entrance, a spot where he could watch the people who came through the gate. A spot where he was sure to see George.

  He waited. And watched.

  As he stood and watched the faces pass, Hurt counted up every angry word that had ever been spoken. He thought back to the sting of George’s hand across his face and the shame of being dragged down the street by the scruff of his neck. The hatred swelled in his chest and pushed up into his throat.

  Sweat trickled down Hurt’s forehead and dropped into his eyes.

  More people pushed through the gate. They came at him so quickly Hurt couldn’t catch all the faces. He thought he saw his daddy’s beard, then a corner of his ear, an eyebrow, a thick neck, an angry voice, but a complete picture of George never surfaced. Today was the day. Hurt knew it; he felt it in every twinge of muscle. Today was the day he would find his daddy.

  All afternoon Hurt stood there with the sun baking him and the taste of bitterness stuck to his teeth. Then shortly after the sixth race had been called and scattered groups of people had begun to leave the track, he spotted his daddy. Not the face, but the back of him. He saw the belligerent swagger he had come to hate and a swatch of long grey hair hanging from the back of a baseball cap. Hurt wiped the sweat from his right eye, then pulled the gun from his pocket and stretched his arm toward the back of a daddy he’d spent a lifetime hating.

  A woman shrieked, “He’s got a gun!”

  Gun…gun…gun. The word echoed through the crowd and people began running, dropping behind trash cans, lying flat with their faces to the ground and their hands covering their heads.

  Hurt lost sight of his daddy for a moment; then he spotted him running toward the ticket booth. Everything was moving. It was fuzzy. Hot. Spinning. The sting of sweat and sun blinded him. He no longer saw the people around him. He no longer heard the screams. It was just his daddy, his daddy coming at him with a raised fist.

  He blinked back the red sun, squeezed the trigger, and fired. He couldn’t know the man he thought to be his daddy was actually an elderly woman, a woman with arthritis in her knee and a limp that caused her to swagger.

  Hurt did not hear the call to drop his gun, nor did he see the officer. The two shots came in rapid succession; Hurt’s went wild, flew over the heads of people scrambling to get away, and lodged itself in the roof of a lemonade stand. The second shot fired at almost the same moment tore into Hurt’s chest. Before he felt the pain he fell backward and crashed against the concrete.

  “Get back! Get back!” the officer screamed. In three long strides he closed the gap and leaned over the shooter.

  “Why’d you do that, Daddy?” Hurt moaned. “Why, Daddy? Why”

  Those were the last words Hurt ever spoke. He was gone before the ambulance even arrived.

  Two days later Hurt was identified through his fingerprints, but it was another week before Detective Kurtzman was looking through the pile of APBs and came across the one on Hurt McAdams.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “This is the shooter from the racetrack.”

  That afternoon Tom Wilson received a message saying his APB suspect was now in the Miami morgue.

  Three weeks passed and no one claimed Hurt McAdams’ body, so he was eventually given a number and buried in the Florida state cemetery.

  Visiting Anita

  Mahoney waited until Friday before he called Olivia and asked to pick up Jubilee for a visit with the elusive aunt. “I think once Anita meets her,” he explained, “she’ll feel differently about having the child.”

  That was exactly what Olivia was hoping wouldn’t happen. Once her days with Jubilee were numbered she wanted to stretch them out, make them into more than they were and shove the inevitable into the distant fut
ure. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the way it was destined to be. After losing Charlie as she had, Olivia knew that closing your eyes to reality didn’t make it disappear. Whether or not you looked it square in the face it was there, waiting to rip loose the comfort you thought you had. After several minutes of trying to persuade Mahoney that Monday, Tuesday, or even some time next fall would be better, she gave in.

  “You can come by about three-thirty,” she said. “Ethan Allen will be home from school by then.”

  “It’s got to be earlier. Anita goes away most weekends. I don’t want to chance that she’ll leave early and we’ll miss her.”

  “Ethan doesn’t get home from school until after three.”

  “That’s okay,” Mahoney said. “I think it’s better for Jubilee to go alone.”

  “Alone?” Olivia gasped. The thought of sending a seven-year-old child off to face the unknown was horrifying. She said so and argued the point for a full five minutes. Weary of listening, Mahoney finally agreed that Olivia could come if she was willing to wait in the car while he took Jubilee inside to meet Anita. The time was set for one o’clock.

  While the children were eating breakfast, Olivia sat across from them at the kitchen table. She tried to picture Anita, but the image was always contorted: angry eyes, a sharp nose, a mouth set straight and rigid. Try as she might, she could not conjure up the picture of a plump rosy-cheeked aunt who would hug Jubilee to her generous bosom. With a long face and heavy heart she finally said, “Jubilee, that phone call was from Detective Mahoney. He’s going to take you to visit your Aunt Anita today.”

  “Paul too?” Jubilee asked warily.

  “No.” Olivia let her gaze drift to the salt shaker sitting at the end of the table. It was an insignificant thing, like a dish towel or a can of beans, just something that enabled her to avoid looking directly into the child’s eyes. “Paul can’t come this time.”