Husband and Wives

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  The possibility that this black-haired beauty was any kin whatsoever to Max’s red-headed, freckle-faced wife were slim to none.

  ‘So, Andrew,’ I said, ‘either of your wives know Mary Hudson?’

  He stammered around a bit before Max took the lead again. ‘My wife used to babysit for the Hudsons occasionally – when one of Jerry’s other wives were busy – or if they all needed to go someplace where the children couldn’t.’

  Now here Max was, throwing poor old Jerry Hudson to the wolves by mentioning how many wives he had. Take the pressure off good old dad. But OK, Michelle could be a witness to something.

  ‘Hum,’ I said, looking at cute little Michelle. ‘Notice anybody ever bothering Mrs Hudson?’ I asked her.

  Michelle shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘Sister Mary was a wonderful woman and a great mother. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her. I wouldn’t take any money for babysitting, so she made me a beautiful quilt. It’s on our bed,’ she said and blushed, turning her head into her husband’s arm. He patted her head like a puppy.

  ‘So, Andrew,’ I said, turning back to Schmidt Sr. ‘What about your wives? Did they talk to Mary Hudson much?’

  The older woman, Hannah, spoke up. ‘I knew Sister Mary, of course,’ she said, hands still clutching each other in front of her, knuckles still showing white. ‘We weren’t close, though. Different generation.’

  ‘So, Cecile, is it?’ I said, talking directly to the beautiful black-haired woman with the pale skin and black eyes.

  Hannah answered. ‘Yes, her name is Cecile,’ she said.

  ‘Cecile, how well did you know Sister Mary? Y’all would be the same generation or thereabouts.’

  Again, Hannah answered. ‘Not well at all. Sister Mary spent much of her time with the kindergarten children and Cecile spent a great deal of time in the nursery.’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ I said, again speaking to and looking directly at Cecile. ‘Are you mute?’

  Cecile opened her mouth but Andrew grabbed her arm. Again, Hannah answered. ‘Cecile is fairly newly married. And as a young woman she does not speak to men other than her husband.’

  ‘Ya know, that’s funny. Some of y’all do, and some of y’all don’t. Speak to other men. Like I been told Sister Mary didn’t talk to other men, yet her sister-wives Carol Anne and Rene both do. So how can that be, in one family like that?’

  No one answered me. After a long minute, Max moved toward me with a big smile and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Sheriff, are you and Dr McDonnell going to be joining us at the church for fellowship and refreshments?’ he asked.

  ‘Afraid not,’ I said. ‘I still got people to see. I’m investigating a murder, ya know.’

  I scanned the faces of the family. The only one to show anything other than a blank stare was old Andrew himself. He cringed at the word and grabbed the hand of wife number two. Made me want to interview him at the shop. All by his lonesome.

  Jean Mcdonnell – Saturday

  I caught Milt just as the Schmidt family walked away from him. ‘Anything?’ I asked.

  He sighed. ‘Not so you’d notice,’ he said. ‘Hey, wanna see a real live Oklahoma redneck?’ he asked me again.

  I’ve been in Oklahoma for almost ten years, and I thought I’d met and married a real-live Oklahoma redneck, until Milt introduced me to Kenneth Jessup, the man Brother Bob of the Brethren had said might have gotten ‘riled up’ enough to have taken his anger out on someone from the New Saints Tabernacle.

  Milt had me get the address for Kenneth Jessup off the computer in his Jeep (he still doesn’t know how to work it) and I entered it in his GPS (or how to work that either). We ended up in the north part of the county, full of scrub oak and mesquite, rocks and prickly pear, a far cry from the quiet beauty of the cemetery in the piny woods. We turned off the Farm-to-Market road onto a dirt road with broken-down trailers and shacks on either side. Kenneth Jessup’s trailer was in the middle of this, a single-wide with the roof caved in on one side. The dirt drive leading up to it was littered with rocks the size of small boulders, broken-down vehicles of all shapes and sizes, an old refrigerator with the door hanging on by one hinge, and two washing machines that had seen better days.

  A toddler in nothing but a diaper sat on one of the aluminum steps of the trailer, its feet trailing in the dust on the ground. The baby was one shade of brown from head to foot, including the diaper. Darker smudges on its face revealed, I’m afraid, the tracts of its tears. When Milt stopped the Jeep, a mangy dog crawled out from under the trailer, followed by what appeared to be a little girl, maybe three to four years of age, almost as brown as her sibling.

  Before the child could get totally out from under the trailer, the door opened, hitting the toddler in the head and knocking it down the steps. The baby wailed and the little girl ran for it, picking it up out of the dust, while the woman who opened the door said, ‘Destiny, I told you to keep an eye on your brother, for fuck’s sake! What the fuck you doin’ lettin’ him sit on the steps like that? I liked to cracked his head open with the damn door!’

  As she came down the steps, she swatted the little girl in the back of the head. It was hard to tell the age of the woman – anywhere from nineteen to forty. She was probably five foot five inches, give or take, but I doubted she weighed much more than the little girl. She was wearing cut-offs and a tank top, and the body revealed by her clothing was so emaciated you could see the tendons and bones. Her elbows and knees appeared enlarged, as they do on skeletal remains.

  As Milt helped me navigate over the rocks and junk, he whispered in my ear, ‘Speed freak.’

  I nodded: that made more sense than my first thought, which was anorexic or bulimic. This woman saw no need to hide her body; an anorexic always tries to hide.

  We stood together on his side of the Jeep as he called out to the woman, ‘We’re here to see Kenneth.’

  ‘He ain’t here. He’s at work. You the sheriff, right?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he answered.

  ‘I’m Kenneth’s wife,’ she said, holding her head up high.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Miz Jessup,’ Milt said. ‘Can you tell me where Kenneth’s working now?’

  ‘Over at the feed store on the county road, up about five miles that-a-way,’ she said, pointing in a northerly direction.

  ‘When does he get off?’ Milt asked.

  ‘Supper time,’ she said. ‘I always fix him a right good meal, ’cause he works hard at the feed store.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, Miz Jessup. You got a phone?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but we ain’t got no service. They turned it off couple of months ago.’

  Nodding his head toward the two children sitting in the dirt, Milt asked the woman, ‘Those Kenneth’s kids?’

  Head up high again, the woman said, ‘They are now.’

  ‘How long you and Kenneth been married?’

  ‘We’re getting married in a couple of weeks,’ she said.

  ‘So what’s your name?’ Milt asked.

  ‘I like Miz Jessup just fine,’ she said.

  ‘You got a first name?’

  She sighed and stuck out one hip, putting her weight on her right leg. A jutting hip bone was the only thing keeping the cutoffs from falling down. Fishing in the pocket of her cutoffs, she pulled out a crumpled packet of Virginia Slims and a pack of matches. ‘Charlotta,’ she said, then lit up, sucking the smoke in greedily.

  ‘Charlotta what? I mean, before it becomes Jessup.’

  ‘Charlotta Murray, but that’s the last one’s daddy’s name,’ she said, nodding at the children in the dirt. ‘My name ’fore that was Charlotta Cameron, and that was her daddy’s name. My daddy’s name, if you’re interested, was Brown. So that was the name I was born with. Charlotta Mackayla Brown.’

  ‘Well, Charlotta Mackayla Brown Cameron Murray soon-to-be Jessup, reason I asked if you had a phone was so you could call Kenneth and let him know we’re coming to talk to him. Just som
e questions. No big deal. But I guess you can’t. So we’ll just head on up that way. ’Bout five miles, you say?’

  ‘Yeah, up the county road that-a-way,’ she said.

  ‘Well, thank you for your time, Charlotta. You take care now.’

  Milt and I got back in the Jeep. He turned it around and we took the dirt road back to the farm-to-market. ‘How soon can I call CPS?’ I asked.

  ‘Let’s wait until we talk to Kenneth. I just can’t see him being part of the Brethren and living with that,’ he said.

  ‘Those children are in dire need of intervention,’ I said.

  Milt patted my hand and said, ‘Just wait, honey.’

  I grabbed my hand back and sat in the passenger seat, fuming.

  Milt Kovak – Saturday

  I understood why Jean was riled up. Those kids did need somebody other than Charlotta whatever-whatever taking care of ’em. The woman obviously couldn’t take care of herself, much less two little ones. But I needed to see if Kenneth was invested in these kids, and if so how much. If, that is, he didn’t happen to kill Mary Hudson, which was the main reason I was going to see him, after all. Jean had her priorities and I had mine.

  The feed store Charlotta spoke of was another metal building plopped down in the middle of nothing. There were bags of feed and fertilizer sitting out front, along with wheelbarrows, post-hole diggers, and shit shovels – the flat kind that pick up dog shit, chicken shit and horse shit better than just about anything. We went inside to find rows of more feed, more fertilizer, a whole row of vitamins and additives and such and, behind the counter, big as life, was Kenneth Jessup. Kenneth was about five foot six inches, weighed about 150 pounds, but was feisty. Little as he was, I’ve seen him cold-cock a guy twice his size. He had a wolfish face with beady little eyes the color of a lump of coal. His hair hadn’t changed since he was like in the fifth grade, back sometime in the eighties – still in a long, stringy mullet, he had only one eyebrow going straight across his face, and had pockmarks from teenage acne. Lord, he was a sight to see. Pure Oklahoma redneck, just like I’d promised.

  ‘Hey, Kenneth,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, Sheriff,’ he said back.

  ‘This here is my wife, Dr Jean McDonnell,’ I said, indicating Jean. She nodded at him and he nodded at her. ‘Your bride-to-be told us where to find you.’

  ‘My what?’ he said.

  ‘Bride-to-be,’ I repeated. ‘Charlotta.’

  ‘She in my trailer again?’ he said, his face taking on a mean look.

  ‘She came out of it,’ I said. ‘Two little kids outside.’

  He sighed. ‘She’s probably over there cooking me something. She thinks if she keeps cooking for me I’ll marry her. Hell, I don’t even want to bed her. You seen her, Sheriff? Be like fuckin’ a corpse! Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said to Jean.

  ‘So you are in no way responsible for her children?’ Jean asked.

  ‘Hell no!’ he said. ‘They ain’t mine! Nasty little rug rats!’

  Jean excused herself and walked toward the front of the store, cell phone in hand. I figured she was on the phone with children’s services before I got my next words out.

  ‘So, enough about Charlotta and her brood,’ I said to Kenneth. ‘I’m here for another reason.’

  ‘Anything I can do to help, Sheriff. You know that.’

  ‘Yeah, Kenneth, I know. You’re a real helpful guy.’ I was being sarcastic, but I don’t think Kenneth was aware. ‘I understand Brother Bob at the Brethren’s been preaching some about the New Saints Tabernacle and congregants thereof.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Brother Bob’s been saying bad stuff about the people who go to the New Saints Tabernacle, right?’

  ‘You mean them people who marry a bunch of women? Yeah! That ain’t right, Sheriff.’

  ‘Well, it is against the law,’ I had to agree.

  ‘You gonna arrest them?’ he asked. ‘’Cause if you’re looking for, like, a posse, or something like that, you need extra deputies, like, I’d be happy to join up and help you round them people up. They belong in jail, if not in hell and damnation, if you ask me.’

  ‘Seriously, Kenneth, nobody’s asking you. But thank you for volunteering.’ I cleared my throat before I laughed out loud. ‘No, reason I’m asking about them, and what Brother Bob’s been saying is that one of the ladies in that group got herself killed earlier this week—’

  ‘I heard about that! Now that’s just awful. What they’re doing is unlawful, but that’s the men, right, Sheriff? No call to be killing the women, right, Sheriff?’

  ‘No call to be killing anybody, Kenneth,’ I said. ‘Which brings up a point. What if somebody were to think that what those people were doing was against God’s law, decided to take that into his own hands, go after one of these blaspheming men, and somehow ended up hurting one of the women instead? That would be kind of an accident, don’t you think?’

  Kenneth was nodding his head through my entire little speech. ‘Yeah, like an accident,’ he said.

  ‘And you can’t fault somebody for an accident, can you?’ I said.

  ‘Honest mistake,’ Kenneth agreed.

  ‘So, Kenneth, you ever go over to Tejas County, to their church, just to see what was going on?’ I asked.

  He drew back. ‘Who, me? Oh, no way, Sheriff. That’s just nasty, what those people do.’

  ‘You ever go visit one of those nasty men at their home, Kenneth?’

  His face wore a look of confusion when he said, ‘No, sir, I don’t even know where they live. Do they all live together?’

  ‘No, they don’t, Kenneth,’ I said. I was getting nowhere fast. ‘Did you ever meet Mary Hudson, the lady who got killed?’

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘You ever meet any of the wives of that church?’ I asked.

  He recoiled. ‘God, no.’

  I was beginning to believe Kenneth Jessup had nothing to do with the murder of Mary Hudson. Hell, it had been a long shot anyway.

  Jean was waving at me from the front door. I thanked Kenneth for his time and headed toward my wife.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘I called in an emergency removal. We need to meet CPS over at the trailer,’ she said.

  The part of the job I truly hated.

  TEN

  Jean Mcdonnell – Saturday

  By the time we got back to the trailer, CPS was already there. When Milt stopped the Jeep behind the CPS sedan, Charlotta, the mother, came running at us, flailing her arms and ramming the driver’s side window with her fists.

  ‘Why you doing this to me?’ she shouted through the closed window. ‘I din’ do nothin’ to you! You can’t take away my babies! You can’t!’

  A woman with CPS had already picked up the filthy toddler and had him wrapped in a light blanket; another employee, also a woman, had the little girl, Destiny, by the hand.

  ‘Mama, ’bye,’ Destiny called out. ‘See ya later!’

  Charlotta whirled around. ‘You ain’t taking them!’ she screamed, running at the woman holding the toddler, and pulling at her son’s arm. The baby began to cry and the woman holding him grabbed Charlotta’s arm, trying to release her grip on the baby.

  ‘Mama, don’t!’ Destiny cried. ‘You gonna hurt Dustin!’

  Milt jumped out of the car and managed to get Charlotta’s hands behind her back.

  ‘Are you gonna act right or am I gonna have to arrest you?’ Milt asked her.

  ‘They’re taking my babies!’ she screamed, tears and mucus covering her face.

  I managed to get out of the car and get my crutches under my arms. I made my way to where Milt was holding Charlotta.

  ‘Charlotta, listen to me,’ I said, getting in her face to try to find eye contact. ‘Your children are not being taken care of. They’re undernourished, they’re dirty, and you left them outside by themselves—’

  ‘No I didn’t! No I didn’t!’ Charlotta screamed. ‘I was coming right out! Y
ou seen me! I came right out, didn’t I? I didn’t leave ’em for no time! You gotta believe me! Honest I didn’t leave ’em for no time!’

  ‘Charlotta, you’re stoned. You need to get cleaned up and stay that way before you can get your children ba––’

  ‘How long I gotta stay clean?’ Charlotta asked as she pulled away from Milt. ‘I can do it! I stayed clean for a month when I was knocked up with Dustin! Din’ I, Destiny? Din’ I stay clean for almost a month that time?’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ Destiny sang out from inside the CPS sedan.

  ‘No, Charlotta,’ I said, taking her arm, turning her to look at me. ‘You have to stay clean forever. You can’t go back. Are you doing crystal or crack or—’

  ‘Crystal, but just a smidge,’ she said, indicating a tiny amount with her thumb and index finger.

  ‘You can’t do any, Charlotta,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to get clean and stay that way.’

  Charlotta stood staring at me, her hands on her hips. A mean look appeared on her face. ‘You got kids, crip?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re not talking about me, Charlotta—’

  ‘Oh, hell, no you don’t, bitch! I asked you a civil question, gimp! You got kids?’

  ‘That’s enough . . .’ Milt started, grabbing for Charlotta’s arm.

  She pulled away and I looked at Milt, shaking my head. Finally, I looked at Charlotta and said, ‘Yes, I have a son.’

  ‘And they let you keep him?’ she yelled. ‘Hell, you can barely walk! They let you keep your kid! Why can’t I keep mine? At least I got my own two feet and they work!’

  I looked at Milt. ‘She’s stoned. I can’t talk to her this way. It’s your call whether you take her in or not. As long as we get the kids out of here, I’m OK,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh no you ain’t!’ Charlotta yelled, and came at me, arms out, hands curled like talons. I raised one crutch and tripped her. She fell flat on her face in the dry Oklahoma dirt as the CPS sedan pulled out of the dusty driveway.

  Milt reached down to help her up. Charlotta was crying, sobbing like her heart was breaking, and part of me felt for her. Unfortunately for her, the larger part of me felt only for her children. As bad as the system can be, foster care, in this case, had to be preferable to the birth mother.