Home Grown: A Novel

by Ninie Hammon

  And there was a body lying on the floor beside a whiskey barrel. Neither of them knew who it was.

  Both boys were coughing and choking. Ben let Sarabeth down onto the floor and dropped beside her. The air was a little fresher there. Then he began to drag her to the trap door in the floor that led to the cellar and the tunnel. He got to the steps, picked her up and carried her to the bottom and placed her gently on the cellar floor before racing up to help Jake with the other two.

  As Ben dragged his sister’s limp body through the tunnel to the glow of twilight sky at the entrance, he prayed, prayed as he had never prayed before. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead. He just prayed she’d breathe.

  • • • • •

  Darrell Hayes was on a roll. This was his third televised interview and he had the story down so pat now he could embellish it, add little touches like, “Sonny grabbed my hand, told me to tell his little girl goodbye, that he loved her.”

  He said that into the camera, so sincere the cutie-pie reporter from WHAS 11 News in Louisville hung on his every word. “You knew he had a daughter, didn’t you?” he said to her. “His wife drowned and he was raising her all by himself—a Down’s Syndrome child.”

  Even though the sun had set, the roaring fire on the hillside provided plenty of light for the television crews to film their stories for the 11 o’clock news. Hayes knew his face would be on every channel. Well, maybe not Channel 32. That interview had been interrupted by the explosion of the Quart House a little while ago.

  What a spectacle that had been! And all Bubba’s and Hayes’ problems had gone sky high with the blast. It had been a glorious sight. A few minutes after the roof fell in, the building exploded, blew up with a thunderous roar. It was the combination of the whiskey barrels inside and those stone walls. But the most spectacular part was the hole the explosion blew in the rock fence behind the Quart House, like somebody’d shot a Howitzer through it. And then all the burning bourbon that had pooled around the Quart House had flowed out through the hole into the river, and set the Rolling Fork on fire. The firemen had been scrambling then!

  Chief Craddock had come tearing down the hill in a pumper truck and took off around the knob. Probably planned to intercept the blaze at St. Stephen’s Bridge, try to hold it there. Though how he intended to put out burning bourbon on top of water … well, that’d be a challenge. And, of course, the fire in the river had set both the riverbanks on fire, too.

  The news crews had gotten all carried away with that for quite awhile, but the choppers were getting video coverage now and Hayes was back as the center of attention again.

  “I looked into Sonny’s face and I promised him, I said, ‘Sonny, I swear on my badge that I’ll take care of your baby girl.’”

  There was a commotion of some kind among the gawkers off to his left and Hayes turned to see what it was. And all at once, he couldn’t breathe. His jaw literally dropped open. Coming toward him, staggering out of the crowd on her brother’s arm was Sarabeth Bingham!

  Her hair was wet, tangled and matted, her clothes were muddy and torn, and one eye was swollen shut.

  But her face! The look of naked hatred and blind rage there hit him like a fist in the gut and he literally staggered back two steps. The news anchor wannabe stopped her report in mid-glib and turned to see what he was staring at. The cameraman turned, too, and caught Sarabeth live.

  That was the story that was on every channel’s 11 o’clock news that night. The footage of Sarabeth Bingham advancing on Darrell Hayes like death walking.

  “Murderer!” she growled, her voice contorted by rage and damaged by smoke inhalation into a gravelly bark. “Murderer! You killed him, you shot Sonny Tackett in cold blood.”

  She let go of Ben’s arm, turned and searched the crowd for a sheriff’s deputy.

  Spotting Jude Tyler, she cried, “Arrest him, Jude. He killed Sonny, shot him. I watched him.”

  Tyler was stunned, looked confused and undecided.

  Then Seth appeared at Sarabeth’s side. Jake was gone. The boy had helped Seth stumble through the woods after he and Ben had dragged the three injured people across the river.

  The river, ahhh, how good that water had felt! Ben had been holding her up as they crossed and it scared him when she abruptly went under. She’d just wanted to get her head wet, she explained, wanted the feel of the cool water on her face.

  Jake had sent some gawkers back to see to Billy Joe where they’d left him propped up against a tree, and Seth had leaned on the boy’s broad shoulders as they elbowed their way through the crowd. But Seth was standing tall on his own now.

  “I saw him, too,” Seth said, and the low rumble in his voice was pure loathing, not smoke damage. “He killed Sonny Tackett, shot him down and watched him die. And he tried to kill us, too!”

  Then Seth lunged at Hayes. Before anyone could stop him, he drew back his fist and slammed it into the state police detective’s jaw, knocked him backwards so hard his glasses went flying and he crashed on top of the hood of his cruiser and then tumbled off onto the ground.

  When he rolled over, a gun fell out in the dirt—a gun with black electrician’s tape wrapped around the handle.

  “That’s the gun he shot Sonny with!” Sarabeth said. “It’s Jimmy Dan Puckett’s gun, the one he used to kill Maggie Mae Davis.”

  Tyler acted then. Reaching down, he grabbed Hayes and yanked him to his feet. Then he slammed him down on the car hood, yanked his hands behind his back and locked handcuffs around his wrists.

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Sonny Tackett,” he growled. “You have the right to remain …”

  Seth swayed. Sarabeth reached out and took his arm to support him, though she didn’t feel all that steady herself. She turned to her brother … but he wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Ben?”

  Ben was gone.

  Chapter 30

  “Daddy.”

  Bubba whirled around, almost fell out of his chair. Nobody sneaked up on Bubba Jamison! But there stood Jake in the doorway of the house, looking like an earthquake survivor.

  Bubba had been sitting on the back deck watching the flames light up the sky above the knob. It was an amazing sight, even more extraordinary at night. The fire turned the top of the knob into a glowing fireball that sent exploding flares up into the black cloud of impenetrable smoke with resounding booms he could hear clearly here, almost three miles away.

  He could smell the stink here, too. A sticky-sweet stench that reminded Bubba of barbecue sauce.

  He would have liked to have seen the fire from a front-row seat on the other side of the knob, but it was better to stay away, keep a low profile. He wasn’t going to be allowed the pleasure of seeing Sarabeth, Seth and Billy Joe die, anyway, wouldn’t be able to watch their faces as death bore down on them. He could only imagine it, and he could imagine it sitting on his own deck as well as he could standing around with a crowd of rubber-neckers in the road.

  What was obvious even from this side of the knob was that the whole distillery hadn’t burned. Nothing he could do about that. Blame it on the wind. With a 40-mile-per-hour wind blowing the flames away from the other buildings, Double Springs had survived. Probably best in the long run that it had. If the whole distillery had gone up—and the eight barrel warehouses in the woods—the fire would surely have swept all the way down this side of the knob and burned his house, too.

  Wouldn’t that have been a kick! Bubba wouldn’t have cared, of course. He’d just build another house. It was only money. And the next time, he’d build something totally to his own tastes, wouldn’t have to factor in what suited some woman.

  He’d been considering that very thought, in fact, when Jake had startled him. His kneejerk response was rage. But the anger didn’t have time to form because everything about the boy was profoundly wrong.

  His clothes were wet and muddy. Dress clothes, too, what he’d worn this morning to Jennifer’s visitation.

  Jenni
fer. Bubba slammed that door as soon as it opened. He wouldn’t let himself think about that, walled it off like it never happened.

  “Where’d you come from?” he growled.

  “I know what you did, and you didn’t get away with it this time,” Jake snarled. He stepped out of the shadows into the light from the big lanterns that stood on posts all around the railing of the deck.

  Jake’s shirt was torn, his hair wild.

  But what was wilder still was the look in his eye. Bubba had never seen anything quite like it before in his whole life. No human being had ever looked at Bubba Jamison like that.

  And the boy was holding a gun.

  Any other man would have been frightened, at the very least unnerved by the visage of Jake standing there, dripping dirty water into a puddle on the floor. Bubba was merely curious.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, and lifted his massive girth out of the chair with an ease that always surprised people not used to a big man who moved as gracefully as a cat.

  “You tried to kill Sarabeth Bingham, Seth McAllister and Billy Joe Reynolds, but you blew it, Daddy. Your own sick perversion ruined your plan. You wanted them to watch death come for them. Well, it didn’t. Ben and I got them out of the Quart House about a minute before the roof collapsed.”

  Bubba went pale and took a step backwards, the wind knocked out of him. Not only by the information—they were still alive!—but by the demeanor of his son. The sheer magnitude of the boy’s rage and loathing was so powerful it was a physical force as solid as a blow from a wrecking ball.

  “It’s over, Daddy. Over. You’re through. You’re through ruining people’s lives, maiming and murdering. You’re never going to hurt another living soul. It stops here. Tonight.”

  Jake lifted the .357 magnum he had removed from his father’s gun rack moments earlier and pointed it at the big man’s chest.

  Bubba didn’t back down.

  “You ain’t got the guts to shoot me, you snot-nosed little brat.” He spat out the words with contempt. “I should have choked the life out of you the day I strangled your mama.”

  Jake recoiled with the same horror he’d felt when he saw that the brutally beaten man they’d hauled out of the Quart House was Billy Joe Reynolds.

  Panting on the riverbank, gasping for air, Jake had watched Ben give mouth-to-mouth to Sarabeth. Then she began to cough. And Ben began to cry, just reached down, gathered her up into his arms, hugged her close and cried.

  Jake pulled himself out from under Seth McAllister, who’d rolled over on him after they all collapsed just outside the grate. Billy Joe lay beside Seth, where Jake had dragged him out and dropped him. And there in the fading twilight, Jake realized who he was—and saw the mangled ruins at the ends of his arms! For a moment, he thought he was going to be sick.

  Daddy. Daddy had done that. Had done that!

  The horror never ended. It just went on and on and on. It never would stop as long as Bubba Jamison continued to draw breath.

  Bubba was judging the distance between him and Jake. The boy was a little too far away, just barely out of his lunging grasp. He needed to buy a few more seconds to edge a little closer.

  “I killed Darlene ’cause she was runnin’ around on me. Your mama was a slut!”

  He expected the boy to react. But instead of getting rattled, he seemed to settle, relax. Focus.

  “Jennifer was pregnant.” Jake said.

  “No! My Jenny wasn’t like that. She was a good girl!”

  “She didn’t even know who the father of her baby was! Jennifer slept with any guy who had a zipper to pull down.” Jake’s voice was cold and quiet. “Because of you!”

  “Me?”

  “You took more than one life the day you murdered Mama. You destroyed the 7-year-old girl who watched you!”

  Bubba sucked in a breath. That’s what it meant, what Jenny wrote in her own blood on the windshield of his truck. The words made sense now: I SAW!

  He glared at Jake.

  “You expect me to say I’m sorry? Well, I ain’t. I gave Darlene what she deserved!”

  “And I intend to return the favor,” Jake growled. He pulled back the hammer, cocked the gun with a loud click. “Goodbye, Daddy. Tell Satan I said hello.”

  Bubba tensed.

  Ben suddenly stepped out of the shadows into the light. He was wet, too, as muddy and ragged as Jake. He barely had enough air to speak. Not because he’d run all the way from Double Springs but because of what he’d just overheard.

  “Don’t,” he gasped. “Don’t shoot him, Jake. He’s not worth it!”

  Jake half turned.

  Bubba lunged.

  Ben’s vision cranked down into slow motion.

  The big man pounced like a lion. He actually roared, made this awful, guttural noise that wasn’t even human as he flew through the air, his huge paws out, grabbing for the gun. He landed on Jake with the blunt force of a sledge hammer.

  BAM!

  The gunshot sounded like a bomb. Louder than the roaring crash when the roof of the Quart House caved in, belching fried air and smoke down into the cellar and out the tunnel.

  Jake settled slowly backwards onto the floor with Bubba on top of him. The boy made a little grunting sound, then he was still and it was quiet.

  “Jake?”

  Ben took two steps toward him.

  Bubba slowly lifted himself up off Jake’s body. Ben’s stomach rolled as he watched; vomit rose in the back of his throat. The big man sat up and turned toward him. The wild hatred in his black eyes was the most frightening sight Ben had ever seen.

  But the boy couldn’t even run, just stood rooted to the spot. Couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

  Then Bubba fell over on his side, made a whump sound when his body connected with the deck floor. A bright, red smear of blood stained the left side of his shirt. His eyes stared sightlessly up into the black shroud of smoke that hid the stars in the summer night. He was dead.

  When Deputy Sheriff Jude Tyler, another deputy and a trooper came crashing into the house with guns drawn a little while later, Jake and Ben were sitting together on the lawn sofa on the deck. The gun lay beside Bubba’s body where Jake had dropped it.

  “I killed him,” Jake said, his voice hollow.

  “But it was an accident,” Ben put in. “Jake was holding the gun and Bubba jumped him. The gun just went off.”

  Tyler holstered his weapon, went to the body, reached down and felt for a pulse on the big man’s neck. He straightened and asked the trooper to go out to his cruiser and call for a hearse. Then he turned and said to the other deputy, “I need a few minutes alone with these boys.”

  The deputy nodded, went into the house and closed the door behind him.

  As soon as he was gone, Tyler said to Jake, “So you had a pistol pointed at your father, trying to hold him until the police got here, and he jumped you and the gun went off—that right?”

  Jake lifted his dark eyes and met the deputy’s gaze.

  “My father strangled my mother, choked her to death in front of my little sister a decade ago. Jennifer told me about it the night before she … committed suicide.” The shrapnel-sharp edge of rage was there again in Jake’s voice. “So, I wasn’t trying to keep Daddy from running away. I was going to kill him! And I would have, too, but he jumped me before I had a chance to pull the trigger.”

  The deputy looked down at Jake and spoke slowly, grinding out each word, his throat tight with suppressed emotion. “Your daddy ordered the murder of Sonny Tackett this afternoon, had him shot down in cold blood. And if Bubba Jamison hadn’t been laying there dead when I got here, I’d … ” He stopped, took a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow stream. “So here’s what happened, son. You were holding your father at gunpoint, waiting for the police, when he grabbed the gun and it went off.”

  Jake opened his mouth to protest but Tyler held up his hand. “Listen to me, boy. That’s what I’m going to write in my report. That’s
how it went down!”

  Ben reached out and put his hand on Jake’s knee. When Jake turned to him, Ben nodded. Jake looked up at Tyler, their eyes met and locked and understanding passed between them.

  Then Tyler stepped back and said, “That’s the end of it.”

  Chapter 31

  The lead story in The Callison County Tribune the week of Thanksgiving, 1989, ran six columns across the front page above the fold: “Federal Grand Jury Hands Down 56 Indictments in Largest Domestic Marijuana Cooperative in U.S. History.”

  It was the story Jim Bingham had given his life for.

  Using the records Jake had dug out of his father’s secret safe, federal marshals had arrested the Callison County men who worked for Bubba in five states. They’d confiscated 182 tons of marijuana, too, with a street value of $400 million. The feds had dubbed Bubba Jamison’s organization the “Cornbread Mafia.”

  But that wasn’t the story that interested Sarabeth. She’d written a smaller story that ran below the fold and she was reading it when a voice asked from her office doorway, “What are you smiling about?”

  Seth. Just hearing his voice planted chill bumps on her arms.

  “I was reading about our good friend Darrell Hayes.”

  She turned to Seth and read out loud. “At a sentencing hearing Friday, Circuit Judge Earl Compton handed out the first death penalty in Callison County history to former Kentucky State Police Detective Darrell Eugene Hayes for what Compton called the ‘ruthless, soulless execution’ of Callison County Sheriff Sonny Tackett.”