Home Grown: A Novel

by Ninie Hammon

  Sarabeth’s face turned the color of the flowers on her hat.

  “You’re no slouch yourself,” she said.

  Seth looked positively dashing in a three-piece suit with a rose boutonnière.

  “Do you think I might tempt you with better cuisine than a chili dog? We have tons of food upstairs and the view is amazing from the Double Springs box.” He didn’t say “on Millionaire’s Row,” but he didn’t have to. Everybody knew there was a section in the stands reserved for the rich and famous. “I’d love for you and Ben to join me. He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “He and Jake are in the infield.”

  “It’s a lake out there; he’ll drown!”

  “He’s 17, you think he cares?”

  Seth laughed. She’d forgotten how warm and inviting that sound was. No, she hadn’t forgotten. But she had tried to forget. Just like she’d tried to forget how much she enjoyed Seth’s company.

  “All the distilleries are grouped together in one place.” Seth leaned over and continued in a wheedling tone, “They’re serving all sorts of different drinks up there and I know how much you love bourbon.”

  Jim Beam, Barton, Heaven Hill. She’d read just the other day how the industry was still struggling, still laying off employees. Which, of course, begged the questions—had Seth reduced his workforce? And if he hadn’t, how …?

  She didn’t want to go there. What was the point? More importantly, she did want to go there—to the box on Millionaire’s Row with Seth, to laugh at his humor and revel in his attention. And the degree to which she wanted to go told her exactly how badly she needed to stay away.

  “No, I think I’ll pass.” She had to force the words out. “But thanks for the invitation.”

  Seth had looked terribly disappointed. But more than that, he’d looked tired. Worn out. Like maybe he’d even lost weight. He hadn’t looked like that when he’d crossed the whole length of the crowded church to say hello to her on Easter Sunday. Or when—

  Stop that!

  She really had to quit measuring history in terms of Seth sightings. The time in February when they’d stood in the snow together on the post office steps. The flood she’d shot last month when he’d showed up with the Callison County Rescue Squad, the—

  The reservation agent clicked on the line, announced, ‘Hold, please,’ and was gone again. Sarabeth could hear Harmony Pruitt’s voice at the reception desk outside her office and she tuned in to listen. Harmony sounded quiet and serious. That was odd. Then Sarabeth turned and there in her office doorway stood Wanda Lee.

  Wanda hadn’t been at the newspaper more than a handful of times in the past seven months, what with Gabe in the hospital and then in rehab. And Jesse in jail. Sarabeth had told her to stay home, do whatever she needed to do, her paycheck would arrive in the mail every Friday just like it did when she was working. The rest of the staff found out what Sarabeth had done and before she had time to hire somebody to fill in for Wanda, the others quietly took on extra tasks, did their work and Wanda’s, too, never put down their overtime hours.

  Sarabeth reached over and hung up the telephone.

  “I wanted you to hear it from me.” Tears filled Wanda’s eyes, sunk deep into gray craters in her emaciated face.

  Jesse’s trial in Baker Circuit Court had started yesterday but was expected to go on for several days since all the boys arrested in the barn that day were being tried together.

  “Jury wasn’t even out an hour, found them guilty, all of them.” Her voice had the vacant, disconnected sound of someone reciting the alphabet. “The original charge was trafficking in marijuana in the first degree. That’s a Class C felony. But because they were working in a barn full of it, they said it was ‘manufacturing,’ and convicted them all of a Class B felony, which is …” She couldn’t finish, but Sarabeth knew the penalty. At least 10 but not more than 20 years—in prison. “Sentencing is set for next week.”

  “Wanda, sit down,” Sarabeth said. “Let me get you a glass of water.”

  Wanda remained standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame for support. “They’re kids, just kids.” In Kentucky, a juvenile could be tried as an adult at age 17. “Jesse only did it because Gabe did. And Gabe—”

  “Mama!”

  Wanda turned toward the voice.

  “Mama, I want to see Sarabeth.” The words were slightly slurred.

  “Gabe, I told you to wait in the car.”

  Sarabeth rose from her chair and stepped to the door of her office.

  Gabe lurched through the swinging half door in the front counter, dragging his left foot, his left arm dangling useless at his side. He brushed his mother aside and enveloped Sarabeth in a one-armed hug.

  “I’m gonna help you make pictures!” His breath was nauseating. Drool dripped off his chapped chin onto the front of her blouse. “I make good pictures, don’t I, Sarabeth.” He turned back to his mother, but only one eye tracked. The other appeared to be looking at something else entirely. “Tell Mama I make good pictures.”

  Sarabeth found it unexpectedly hard to speak. “Yes, Gabe, you make very good pictures.”

  “Can we make pictures now?”

  “Sure you can,” Wanda told him as she reached over and lifted the boy’s arm off Sarabeth’s shoulders and started herding him back toward the front counter. “You just go out and sit in the car for a minute, and then you can come back in and make pictures.”

  “Ok!” He shuffled toward the front door under his own steam. “I’ll come back in a little while and we’ll make pictures.” He got to the door and stopped, stood facing it but made no effort to try to open it.

  “He has almost no short-term memory,” Wanda told Sarabeth quietly. “In a minute or two, he won’t remember any of this.”

  Sarabeth’s eyes filled with tears.

  “There’s a center in Bardstown that’s like daycare for adults. As soon as Frazier Rehab releases him, I’ll put Gabe on the waiting list. In a few months, maybe, I’ll be able to come in a couple of days a week.”

  “Wanda, you just take care of Gabe and don’t worry about your job. It’ll be here when you’re ready for it.”

  “I need to come back to work.” Desperation was sheathed in the quiet voice.

  Sarabeth couldn’t think what to say. “Call me if there’s anything I can do.”

  Wanda nodded. “Let’s go home now,” she said to Gabe.

  He turned toward her and the half of his face that still functioned came to life. “Home. Ok, home.”

  Wanda opened the door for him and he stumbled through. She followed and closed it behind them.

  Sarabeth looked around and realized the whole staff was standing there. Everyone had slipped in from the back shop. Ben was there, too, his mouth set in a thin, tight line. He’d never met Gabe, but he’d taken over the job of processing film and printing pictures in the darkroom after Gabe was injured.

  Then Harmony started to cry. Collapsing into her chair, she put her head in her hands and sobbed. Sarabeth walked over and patted the girl on the shoulder, her own cheeks wet with tears.

  • • • • •

  The boy lay on his belly in the tall weeds on the side of the road, cradling the metal ammo box that contained the detonator for the bomb he was going to use to blow up the KGB headquarters while the rest of his team rescued the Russian scientist.

  He looked both ways, gave the secret signal wave and his two teammates appeared out of the bushes to his left and ran across the road to the bushes on the other side. He stayed behind to make sure they weren’t being followed. Jim Phelps always stayed behind to make sure they weren’t being followed.

  Then the sandy-haired 12-year-old bent low and sprinted across the road to where his team was hiding. When he got there he found his sister crying. She was always crying about something.

  “What’s wrong this time?”

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” Maggie Mae fired back at him. She pulled up the leg of her jeans and showed
her brother a red spot on her knee. “I fell down and it hurt.”

  Adam sighed. That’s what happened when you had to drag your little sister with you everywhere you went. She messed up everything. But he had to humor the 8-year-old. If she went running home now, she’d tell Mama they were playing in the woods on the knob and they were never allowed to cross the road.

  “Why don’t you be Shannon Reed today instead of Casey Randal. Shannon used to be in the Secret Service.” He tried to sound encouraging. Those were the only two women on the Mission Impossible force, and Adam figured they were put on the team for the same reason Maggie Mae was tagging along after him—somebody made them do it. He, of course, was Jim Phelps. Eddie, sitting in the grass a few feet away, trying to get the zipper of his jacket unstuck, was Nicolas Black, the master of disguise.

  When the remake of the 1960s series had premiered in the fall, Mission Impossible instantly became the kids’ favorite television show. This week’s episode had been about a Russian scientist and his daughter. Eddie had gotten the old ammo box he’d found laying beside the road and Adam had furnished the wind-up clock to make a bomb they were going to plant in the old shed in the woods on the other side of the knob.

  Maggie Mae stopped sniffling. “And she even kinda has hair like mine, too.” With her red pigtails, Maggie Mae looked like a life-sized Raggedy Ann doll and Shannon hair’s was blond. But Adam wasn’t going to tell his sister that.

  “Are you guys gonna play or not?” Eddie wanted to know. He couldn’t manage to get his jacket zipped. It had been an unseasonably warm spring until Derby Day last weekend, when it had turned cool and stormy. Today the wind was downright cold. “Cause if you’re not, I’m gonna go home.” He was wearing shorts under the light jacket, with scabs riding both knees. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “It’ll be warm in the shed,” Adam told him and Eddie grinned. Going to the shed always produced the tingling excitement of the forbidden, and they hadn’t been there since last fall. Adam had broken his leg Halloween night and it had been in a cast for months.

  “Let’s move out, team,” he commanded in his best Jim Phelps voice. “Keep your heads down and watch out. There could be snipers in these trees.”

  The three children moved silently through the woods, climbed up to the top of the knob and down the other side to the shed worn shiny silver by a 100 years of rain and sun. They’d discovered the building years ago and sneaked away to play there as often as they dared. It was the one secret Maggie Mae had been able to keep, because she knew they’d get their backsides tanned for crossing the road if she told. The building was their private clubhouse and once you’d been inside for a little while, you hardly noticed the chemical stink.

  Eddie moved the thick Kudzu vine back from across the door and dragged it open. He made a hand motion and Maggie Mae and Adam sprinted from their hiding place behind an oak tree, pushed past him into the building and closed the door behind them.

  It was warmer than outside if you left the shed door closed. The dusty, dry smell that unused spaces always had, like the room behind the school where they stored textbooks over the summer, was mixed with the smell of fertilizer and weed killer.

  Though there was no window, the interior of the shed wasn’t scary dark. Shafts of light pierced the shadows where there were cracks between the wall boards. As soon as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they’d set the explosive.

  Eddie heard the scratching of mice in the loft and jumped. Maggie Mae turned toward him and noticed a pile of something lying in the floor just outside the reach of a shaft of light coming through a crack in the wall. She took two steps, leaned over and picked up a piece of paper just as Adam began giving orders.

  She held it out in the dim light. Adam snatched it out of her hand. It was a $20 bill!

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Off the floor. It was over there.” Adam turned to where she pointed. Eddie reached into the darkness and drew back a piece of paper into the light.

  “It’s a $10 bill!” he said.

  Adam shoved the door open wide and wedged a big rock against it. A shaft of sunlight stretched out through the darkness across the shed floor toward the far wall. In the center of the light was a pile of bills.

  “Holy shi—” Adam caught himself before he cussed. Maggie Mae would certainly tell Mama about that! The three children dropped to their knees beside the money and began grabbing handfuls of it.

  Eddie burst out laughing. “I bet there’s a couple of hundred dollars here.”

  Maggie Mae tossed a handful of bills into the air. “Wheeee!” she squealed.

  With the door open, the wind whistled through the shed. Thick, white dust swirled around, along with some of the bills.

  Adam turned to Eddie. “Gimme that ammo box.”

  He dumped out the clock and started stuffing handfuls of bills into the box. “We gotta gather all this money up and put it in here before it blows away.”

  The children scrambled around until they’d gathered up every bill on the dirt floor.

  “There may be more of it where we can’t see,” Eddie said, so they got down on their hands and knees and crawled around, feeling into dark corners. The shack was empty, there wasn’t really anywhere to hide anything.

  “Maybe there’s more up there,” Adam said, pointing to the loft. “Look, there’s a hole in the floor, like somebody was up there.”

  Eddie ran to the wall and climbed the ladder as nimble as a spider. Adam climbed only high enough to see into the loft while Maggie Mae stayed on the ground, dust filtering out of the loft into her hair.

  The powdery dust that was blowing around in a whirlwind in the shed was much thicker in the loft, so thick it was hard to see. There were bigger pieces of stuff in the dust there, too. Edging around the splintered hole in the floor, Eddie stepped toward the back wall and dozens of mice scattered.

  “See anything?” Adam asked.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “Mice. And a ton of mouse turds.”

  When he leaned over and picked up a piece of tattered burlap, mice scurried away toward the corners and startled him. He jumped backward and almost fell through the hole in the floor.

  “There ain’t no money up here, just mice. It’s a regular mouse hotel!”

  It was, indeed, a mouse hotel.

  The field mice that lived outside during the summer fled the cold of early winter to build warm homes in barns and other buildings all over the county. A whole herd of the little creatures had been enticed into the loft of the old shed in the woods by the smell of beer on the huge pile of paper in a canvas bag. They’d chewed their way into the bag and had been feasting on the beer-flavored bills for months, using the rest, and the remains of the bag, to build warm winter nests.

  The only paper that hadn’t been converted into mouse turds or confetti was what had fallen out of the loft through the hole in the ancient flooring. The chemicals in the dirt that formed the shed floor kept the mice away. Eddie saw only what was left of their feast, powdery confetti and small pieces of mouse-chewed canvas and burlap.

  By the time Eddie had climbed down out of the loft, Adam had a plan.

  “We gotta count this and we can’t do it in here. It’s too dark and the wind’s blowing too hard.” He was trying to think like Jim Phelps. “So we’re gonna take this box to Eddie’s barn and spread the bills out in a horse stall and see how much there is.”

  “Are we gonna tell our folks we found it?” Eddie asked.

  “Where did it come from?” Maggie Mae asked. “Whose money is it?”

  “It’s our money now,” Adam said adamantly. “We found it.” Then it hit him. They had found the money alright. On somebody else’s property! In a place they’d been expressly forbidden to go.

  Maybe they could just keep the money and not tell anybody about it, Adam thought, but in his heart he knew that would never fly. Maggie Mae would never keep her mouth shut about something like this.

  He looked at
her. “Unless you want Mama to bust your butt so hard you won’t sit down for a week, you better not tell her we came here. If she finds out we crossed the road, she’ll beat us both half to death.”

  Maggie Mae’s eyes were open so wide she looked like a baby owl.

  “I won’t tell.” She made an X on her heart with the index finger of her right hand. “I promise.”

  Adam believed her. She couldn’t be trusted on much, but when a spanking was involved, his little sister could lie with the best of them.

  “Ok then, here’s the deal. If we tell anybody about this money, and I’m not saying we’re going to, but if we do, we didn’t find it here. Is that understood?”

  “Where did we find it?” Eddie asked.

  “In this box,” he said, pointing to the ammo case. “We were just walking along on our side of the road and we found this box in the weeds by that big maple tree. Got it?”

  The others nodded solemnly.

  “Now, let’s get home and see how much money there is.” Adam picked up the box and the three children bolted into the woods, leaving the door of the shed propped open. The biting wind whipped through the cracks in the walls and out the door, carrying with it a swirling cloud of white confetti.

  • • • • •

  Doodlebug was up under a Chevy pickup about to pull the plug out of the oil pan when he heard it on the eight o’clock morning newscast. He hated rolling up under cars; he was so fat he barely fit. It was a little better under trucks, but not much. The radio sitting on the workbench was turned to the local station, WCAL. It played exclusively country music, and that’s what Doodlebug liked, The Gatlin Brothers, Ronnie Milsap, Hank Williams, Jr., George Jones. He was only half listening when he heard something that turned his blood cold.

  “ … found cash, fives, tens, twenties near Cade’s Crossing … ”

  The shed where they’d stashed the money was only three or four miles from Cade’s Crossing.