Not in Utter Nakedness

By Jeanelle Johnston Troutman

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796074222

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The rain started again. It made a pattering sound as it beat against the magnolia leaves, making them gleam dark green and shiny. The man raised his head and listened, then lowered it again, nodding it drunkenly from side to side. A low-pitched moan escaped his lips. He began to murmur unintelligibly in a low drawl, Drunk agin. Ole Fathe’ is drunk agin.

He raised one hand as if to ward off his own thoughts. A half-filled bottle of whiskey stood on the table at his left elbow. He raised his head and took a long gulp of the fiery liquid.

This southerner spoke with a clipped yankee-fied accent. Damn the luck!

The clipped brogue and the whiskey didn’t mix very well.

He began to wail a Jimmy Rodger’s tune, T for Texas, T for Tennessee, T for Thelma, that gal that made a W-R-E-C-K-K out of me! The bottle rattled to the floor and the bawdy song ended with a belch and a deep moan.

The man was on the verge of a crying jag. In an inebriated slur he muttered, Maybe she’ll die this time. He groaned again, Don’t care if she does, the hell with her.

A wretched sob escaped his lips, his head slid forward on the table between his arms and he fell into the deep dreamless sleep of a drunken stupor.

*     *     *

Twenty miles away, in the state charity hospital, his wife lay suffering with the pains of a difficult childbirth. She was grotesquely swollen, not just her abdomen, but her whole body was distended with fluid. Yet even the swelling in her face couldn’t completely eradicate its beauty. The main problem that she suffered from was extreme toxemia. The large blue-grey eyes, even while puffy, were lovely, and they looked into the faces of the doctors with a simple, almost childlike faith. Her long dark hair was pinned back from her forehead in a roll as was popular in the 1940’s.

The woman, Virgie Jordan, was used to suffering; her life was lived in endless trauma. She was not possessed with a keen intellect as was her drunken husband. Her intelligence was limited almost to the point of simple-mindedness. Although she was forty-five years old and was giving birth to her thirteenth and final child, the baker’s dozen, she’d retained a dogged, obstinate manner and she reacted to the desperate hardships of her life with astounding courage. She had a stubborn, defiant disposition and balked at times when her strong will was opposed. She was entirely without guile and was as transparent as glass. Virgie was as sinless as a child. She spoke only a few words in a flat country drawl with an odd twang. Water. Give me water.

As she lay in the grimy hospital bed bathed in perspiration and agony, her mind raced backwards through the years, and it touched on each meaningful event until she reached the point of her early marriage. She had been married at fifteen, and her young husband had been seventeen. They had eloped one moonlit night on horseback. She’d fallen head over heels in love with the handsome, brilliant young man with blond hair, dancing brown eyes and who possessed an indefinable air of breeding. At first, he’d been a good husband, although he’d always been wild and reckless. He’d gone to a tradeschool at eighteen and had become a skilled mechanic. They’d had the whole world before them. Then the children began coming, at first every two years, and Theo began to change. He couldn’t handle the awesome responsibility and after a few years of the endless dirty mechanic’s work, he grew irritable and restless. He turned inward and selfish and since he loved to hunt and fish, he often headed for the woods instead of going to work. And he began to stray. He first began to be swayed by the undesirables in the community: gamblers, loafers, alcoholics. He learned to drink hard, gamble high and, on occasion, to loaf.

People said Theo had genius. The Jordan genius. She closed her eyes for a long, bitter moment. She was sick of the Jordan Genius. Jordan craziness was more like it.

The woman grimaced not only with childbirth pains but also with her recollections. Vossberg. She hated the town, it was surely the most wicked spot on the face of the earth. It was the dastardly place where Theo first began to stray and where he’d learned his vices. The town council had fought progress and advancement every step of the way, refusing even to allow a high school to be built within the community. Whiskey stills flourished and there was even a shabby little house where a man could buy a woman’s favors. She threw her arm over her face and bit her lip as she recalled the time when one of the disreputable women had spoken to her. Virgie Jordan, you’re the only decent woman in Vossburg.

There were others, of course, but she thought with pride of how she’d always been a lady and above reproach. ‘God help me,’ she thought wretchedly. ‘The bad women flourish and the good ones fade away in poverty and childbirth.’

She looked miserably out of the dingy, murky hospital window, scarcely noticing the rain or the budding spring foliage. She’d never given up on life simply because no one had explained to her that her life was hopeless. But she would have never believed it if she’d been told.

Seven physicians were at her bedside, two doctors and five interns, and they observed the patient with interest. (One of the doctors, Dr. Boone, was sent to the lowly charitable institution by Albert Jordan, her husband’s wealthy brother, who was concerned for his brother’s suffering wife.)

Virgie hated all the staring, curious eyes. Casting her eyes about the room, she noticed the local newspaper, the Laurel Leader Call. Its headline boldly declared, AMERICAN PLANES HELP TO STOP NAZIS.

Her painful thoughts ceased for the moment and her eyes softened as she thought of her boys. Girls, once they had passed the babyhood years, were unimportant creatures, but her boys were a source of pride and joy. She uttered a silent prayer that her sons would be spared if America entered wholeheartedly into this dreadful war.

One of the lounging interns reached for the newspaper and dropped indolently into a chair, yawning. The woman knew he was getting bored with her long, difficult delivery and that he wished for action. He began to skim over the paper and she could see the back page of advertisements which offered silk hose for fifty cents a pair and evening gowns from sixteen ninety-eight to twenty two ninety eight, both at the town’s most exclusive clothing store, Carter Heide. J.C. Penney offered ladies dresses for a dollar and thirty three cents each and Marcas Furniture featured a one hundred and one piece set of Fairfield china and a large lace dinner cloth, all for fourteen dollars and ninety five cents, fifty cents down and fifty cents a week. She thought of the cheap green enamel covered aluminum plates that her own family ate from as well as the mismatched odd and end glasses and pickle jars that they drank from.

She sighed deeply and steeled herself as the pains grew sharper. Virgie had nice china and crystal that she never used.

The rain continued to pepper down on this day of April seventeenth, nineteen hundred and forty one and it added to the warm mugginess in the small town of Laurel in the state of Mississippi. On summer days, the humidity would get so thick, it could almost be cut with a knife, and even breathing was difficult. But the April rain was fresh and gentle, bringing to blossom the sweet-smelling flowers.

The county was Jones, writer James Street’s country, Land of Lebanon, The Free State Of Jones, this free state having been organized during the Civil War by renegade murderer Newton Knight and his band of riff-raff and cut-throats. It had blatantly defied the Confederacy and fought not for the Union nor the Confederacy, but for self preservation, at any cost.

It was a pretty town, with its antebellum and post-Civil War houses, stately rising up from lawns that were already a thick, rich carpet of green. Azaleas crowded each other for room on the front lawns and sidewalks, distinguishing not between the fine homes in the north side of town or the shabby ones in the south side. A few newly opened magnolia blossoms shone like creamy-white stars in the rich dark-green background of leaves in the tall full magnolia trees. Here and there, a round camelia bush showed its deep rose-red color or perhaps a vibrant pink with its numerous roselike blossoms. The wisteria drooped lavendar, grapelike clusters toward the earth in the misty rain.

The woman gave birth before the day was over to a female child. The infant entered the world with a wailing cry. She was already showing signs of impending beauty, being well proportioned and having a head of dark hair and small regular features. The tiny morsel of humanity looked about the scrubby room almost immediately, as if observing her new surroundings.

The woman, when given the baby to hold, looked down at it in a detached manner. Her husband had already hinted broadly at giving this baby away as an unmarried old maid, middle-aged school teacher had already offered to adopt it if it was a girl.

Abruptly, a flood of fierce love and loyalty rushed into her whole being. She would keep this child, raise and nurture it as she had the other twelve. But she would name it herself and would accept no help nor advice from her older daughters in this matter. Theo didn’t want this child, but she did, maybe because he didn’t. This child was all her own and she would call her Jana.

One of Jana’s earliest memories was at the age of four. She awoke abruptly from a fitful sleep just in time to see her drunken father hit her older brother, Roger, on top of his head with a huge board. It made a horribly loud whack! The small child was filled with terror. She sat up in bed and began to sob, Mama, mama.

Her brother, Bobby Wayne, hissed, Shut up, young ‘un. Jana began to tremble violently. She had to reach her mother, she was terrified of her father in his drunken rages. He would get her, she was certain, and so she had to hurry. But in which direction did the safety of her mother lay?

Ignoring Bobby Wayne, she slipped quietly out of bed, making herself as small as possible, and stood tensely between the two doorways, one of which led into the living room and the other into the long, dark hall.

Jana, a voice called to her in a secretive whisper. The voice came from the pitch-dark living room where her mother, Virgie, and Caroline, her older sister were hiding and whispering furtively. The child quickly slipped into the room and climbed into Caroline’s lap. Hey, sugar. Caroline took the trembling child into her arms.

Instantly, a flood of love and relief washed over the child. She was safely wrapped in love and in the protective dark of the night. Her fearful brute of a father roared abusively in the next room, but she snuggled securely in the comforting arms of Caroline. She could reach out and touch her beloved mother, who sat next to Caroline on the couch, the two people in her cruel and shaky world whom she loved the most.

Caroline’s garments smelled faintly of good smelling soap, as if they had just been brought, sun drenched, from the clothesline. The darkness strangely impressed the child. She felt as if she would be forever safe in the opaque inkiness of the night, as long as these two loved ones were close by. Even though she couldn’t see her, she knew that her sister, eight year old Mary Beth, was crouching surreptitiously in the darkness also, close to their mother.

Her mother sobbed quietly, helplessly as the din in the next room seemed to grow more desperate. Caroline tried to divert the small child’s attention by whispering Let’s make a church and a steeple. She gently guided Jana’s index fingers into the facsimile of a pointed steeple, with the two thumbs as the doorway. She tried to intertwine the small fingers into the people and chanted in a gentle whisper, Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open it up, she gently prodded Jana’s hands open, and here’s the people.

At last, Caroline turned to their mother and stated in a veiled murmur, He’s settling down, I think.

Thank God, sighed Virgie.

The alarming uproar was growing audibly calmer. Caroline patted Jana’s head gently and kissed her on the cheek. The child took a deep breath and began to smile in the darkness.

As the child grew, it was plain to all who beheld her that she would be a beauty. Beauty is as beauty does, Virgie admonished sternly. She had been a beauty herself and where had it gotten her? Beauty counted for naught. Nevertheless, the dark hair had lightened to locks of soft, wavy, golden brown. Her deep brown eyes were inquisitive and intelligent and they beamed from the small face with an infinite curiousity and with something else, a wisdom and a perceptive insight on life, a maturity far too advanced for her age. A maturity that was born of unhappy knowledge, of a continuous intrusion on her naturally serene nature by her menacing father, whose drunken rages filled the lives of his family with terror. Jana, because of her tender, sensitive constitution, suffered even more than the other family members.

She was an earnest, inward child, prone to playing alone. Just glancing at the child, one would think of her as being almost ordinary, until one noticed her eyes. They illuminated her very soul with a steady glow, twin pools of vivid, expressive, warm brown. Her eyes reflected an inner serenity that lay hidden deep within her being, overshadowing at times the foreboding sense of unhealthy apprehension that threatened to emerge.

When Jana smiled, which was often, but to a choice few, her whole face became aglow and it radiated an odd happiness a serenity found in few youngsters, especially those born into the quagmire of misery to which her environment forced her. When she smiled, her dimpled face reflected an inner light, and she was oddly beautiful.

CHAPTER 2

Theo’s drinking habit had, over the years, acquired a pattern, an unhappy one for all members of the family. At least once a month, he would come home drinking, or drunk, with a pint or two of whiskey in his possession. He would blow the car horn long and loud, thus announcing his arrival. He would walk or stagger into the house, often bawling out a Tex Ritter or Jimmy Rodgers tune at the top of his lungs and announcing to one and all that he was home. He would flop down at the kitchen table, open a bottle, and continue to drink while he picked a quarrel with his wife as he sullenly watched her perform her domestic duties. This always led to a vicious battle, as they could never discuss anything without quarreling, especially when he was drinking.

The children wondered with anxiety why their mother always needled their father, knowing what would happen. The argument would turn violent and Virgie would run, screaming, out of the house as Theo would threaten her life. As he became more violent, the whole family would rush out into the night and run for their lives in terror. Often they spent the entire night in old dusty wrecked cars in the junkyard on Ferrell’s (the oldest son’s) property. At other times, they would attempt to sleep in the corn barn and Jana would be terrified of the large rats they’d hear crawling among the corn.

On summer nights, they’d sleep in the open pasture, miserably tossing on the hard ground. Jana loved her mother dearly and feared her father terribly, even as she loved him.

Virgie made idle promises that she never kept, which were that she was leaving Theo, moving to Meridian or to Laurel and that she would be getting a job.

It was small Jana’s dream from the time she was old enough to reason things out, to move away forever, to be free of the fearful monster, to live a happy, carefree life. But it never materialized. Virgie never kept her word. It was just a dream.

Tonight was no different. Virgie’s slow, stolid, deliberate movements and her dogged rhetoric stirred Theo to a purple madness. Almost from the beginning, a mad, mad war was waged between them that gave every indication of continuing until death.

They say that corn likker leads to death after a while, Virgie was saying. I wish it would hurry up and do something. They say….

They say. They say. Who the hell cares what they say. What I say is all I’m worried about. And I say I’ll drink and raise hell as long as I please.

The war raged on. Virgie’s remarks were cunningly calculated to bring out the fury in Theo.

The children were caught in the middle, as in a vise. The two older boys punched and cuffed each other silently. Mary Beth, aged nine now, sat as still as a statue, her big blue eyes staring at nothing.

Five year old Jana cradled her dolly, Deborah, lovingly in her arms. At each remark her father made, she hummed in a low-pitched hum and in this way failed to hear his remarks. This ruse worked until Theo noticed.

Baby!

Si...Sir.

What the hell are you doing?

Hu…humming…

Well, stop it right now.

She stopped. Immediately.

The child held the doll as tenderly and as gently as she would hold an infant. She stroked the doll’s head lovingly and rocked it gently.

Virgie continued, And no one else would ever put up with you for a minute.

Theo answered nonchalantly, You know what I always say: The G—damned road is open at both ends.

Suddenly, the dolly irritated the small child irrationally. She trembled with suppressed fury. The doll’s blank, staring eyes infuriated her. She turned the dolly over and wordlessly paddled its bottom. But it didn’t relieve the nameless, gnawing anger. The eyes, when Jana beheld them, looked blamelessly up at her.

Suddenly, she hugged Deborah to her flat bosom. The child was heavy-hearted and repentant. Oh, how could she have spanked the guiltless doll! Jana wiped the imaginary tears from the doll’s brilliant, glass-blue eyes.

The battle had culminated in the climactic action of Virgie, who charged from the house with the two boys and two girls trailing after. Theo choked with fury, recovered and called out in a great booming voice, Woman! You Charles Covington (her father) looking thing, you better run! To which he added a line of expletives and curses for good measure.

Now they found themselves out on the dirt road in the dark. Virgie used her feet clumsily and walked with a flat-footed tread. But she walked with resolution. She meant to see that justice reigned, this time.

Thomas, being the responsible lad that he was, had grabbed the lantern and so they had light. He reacted to the strain of his life with laughter, soft, slightly irrational laughter. It was his reaction to everything. Bobby Wayne was sensitive, serious. In his babyhood, he’d often been mistaken for a girl with his large blue eyes and blond curls. His father’s savage terrorist tactics had badly damaged his character. He was almost thirteen, and Thomas, almost sixteen. The older children had all left home.

One of the minor problems, which was threatening to erupt into a major problem, was that the boys fought continuously, like cats and dogs.

Stop that! Virgie demanded. Stop that fighting right now. Walking in the dark is bad enough.

The boys paid not the slightest heed to their mother, for notwithstanding her hard tone, she was as harmless as a dove. I’ll skin your hides, she added. They ignored her completely.

The lantern swung recklessly about in flickering yellow arcs. Virgie had to grab it to keep it from smashing to the ground and extinguishing the only light they had.

We’ll be in to it if you boys put out that light! Do you hear?

Where are we going, mama? asked Jana.

To the sheriff’s house. Mister Frank will put that crazy where he belongs. She added with some satisfaction, In jail.

Are we going to spend the night there? asked Mary Beth.

I don’t know. We’ll wait and see.

They trudged forward in the blackness of the night. Gravel crunched beneath their feet. Night sounds, the humming of katydids and the croaking of frogs could be heard as clearly as if they were only a foot or two away. The lantern speckled the night with dim, yellow, quavering light. The boys grew too exhausted to quarrel and agreed on a rare truce. The stars glittered brightly. It was a clear night and now a silent one.

After two miles, Jana grew so tired and sleepy that her legs trudged mechanically forward, as if she were in a dream.

Jana barely realized that her mother was washing her grimy face, hands, legs, and feet. Virgie was wonderfully gentle, even in her exhaustion.

But she lacked the necessary discipline and as her children reached the two-digit stage, as were the boys, they were often slightly rude and unkind, wounding the gentle woman.

After a hasty supper of leftover potatoes and cornbread, Mister Frank’s wife kindly bade them to spend the night.

As Jana drifted off to never-never land, with Deborah entwined in her arms, she did so to the accompaning veiled threats, whispered between the boys who were arguing as to who would sleep on which side of the bed.

The doll proudly wore her slightly grubby Sunday dress of pink taffeta. Her delphinium blue eyes closed along with Jana’s great liquid brown ones as Virgie laid them both gently down on a big, fluffy, snow-white bed.

When Jana awoke, she realized that she was on the floor. How she got there was a mystery, but on the floor she was, in a strange kitchen. Early Daylight shone softly into the room.

A sturdy pair of legs protruding from beneath a brown skirt bustled about and strong capable hands tossed chunks of wood into a wood range. The hands stirred something frying on the stove something meaty. The contents smelled delicious.

The small girl drifted back into a pleasant doze. She dreamed that she was in heaven. She floated on warm downy clouds.

She next awakened as her mother gently shook her.

Jana, Jana.

The child was brought, sleepy-eyed, to the breakfast table and there sat primly as salt pork, large, golden, hand-mixed biscuits, eggs, and blackberry jam were served to her on a sparkling clean white plate.

Her father, she learned, had not been incarcerated but had fallen into a drunken stupor and had been allowed to spend the night in his own bed. The children were disappointed.

Actually, Virigie had been sorely afraid to have her husband thrown in jail as she feared recriminations when he was released.

After breakfast, Jana slipped outdoors. She experienced a wonderful feeling of freedom, a lightness, an airiness, as a bird might, who for a little while, is released from the cage.

It was early spring, a spring so beautiful it seemed to Jana that she would burst. She felt so happy and exhilerated. It was wonderful to be alive. The exhilaration was so sharp it could hardly be borne and Jana held out her skirt and danced around the side of the house where she saw the Taylor’s ole mean rooster prancing and sidling around one of the hens. She was free! Free! Free!

She smiled at the chickens and the dog and skipped around a cedar tree. Hey, dog. Hey, chickens. Hey, tree.

Suddenly, the girl ceased skipping and began whirling round and round. She had to give vent to the brimming exaltation within her.

As she whirled, the blue of the sky mingled with the green of the grass and the grey of the unpainted house. She laughed the rare laugh of the carefree. She was safe here at the home of the sheriff, safe and warm and secure.

The whirling ended abruptly. She slid to the grass with a bump, feeling light-headed and giddy.

Jana was a quiet child, gentle and obedient. Her niece, Wanda Rae was the same age as Jana but was of a different temperament. She was domineering and bossy and she was continually telling Jana exactly what to do and what not to do. The gentle child submitted meekly. Wanda Rae would color in Jana’s coloring book with swift broad strokes, often breaking her crayons, and Jana objected to the ruinous pages that resulted. Wanda Rae would color the legs and the arms of a child purple or green and she’d color a train purple and red and Jana was horrified and offended but was afraid to say anything.

One afternoon, the two girls were playing games in the lot yard, next to the lot where Jana’s mother was milking the cow Buttercup. Wanda Rae, as usual, was ordering Jana about, and Jana, as usual, was meekly obeying. Wanda Rae reached out and struck the other child. Rage swelled up in Jana and her dark eyes gleamed. She was holding her little old fashioned sunbonnet in her hand and she lashed out with it. You’re not my boss, she sobbed. It brushed Wanda Rae across her cheeks. She stood perfectly still with amazement. She had never known the other child to stand up for herself in any way. She was not hurt at all, but was mortified. She opened her mouth and wailed loudly.

Jana was horrified. She was afraid of what she’d done. Wanda Rae stalked to the cow pen still wailing with all her might and Jana heard her pause long enough to tell her story to Virgie.

Grandmother, Jana hit me! Jana heard her mother laugh and speak soothingly to the child. Wanda Rae wailed and stomped past Jana, and flung these awful words at her: I’m going to tell Dee on you!

Jana was struck still with terror. Dee was her father and how she was going to get a beating. She hung around the lot gate sitting on it, trying to think. Fear clutched at her innards and she wondered if she could stand it. It would be hours before her father came home from work. The child had the nightmarish feeling that it would go on indefinitely. But when her father finally came home and Wanda Rae ran to him with her news of Jana’s mistreatment of her, Jana was surprised and vastly relieved to see that he took it as a joke. Baby (Jana) finally got a little grit in you, huh? He laughed as her mother had done. Jana was wonderfully relieved. Once again, life was sweet and good to her.

A short time later Jana had a severe case of the measles. She was very ill, with a high fever. Reality came and went, voices and faces loomed near then far away. Jana awoke to hear Wanda Rae’s voice, I want Jana’s grape drink.

No, it’s for Jana, answered Virgie. She’s sick.

I wa-a-ant Ja-a-na’s dr-i-i-n-n-k, wailed the child.

Wanda Rae, you hush right now or I’ll get a switch, said Louise, her angry mother. (Jana’s oldest living sister.)

Jana raised up in bed and saw Wanda Rae run out, jump from the front porch and begin to dig in the black dirt, streaming it in all directions, wailing still. Jana’s head felt funny, as if it was full of cotton and she ached all over. She wanted to see what happened next but she was too sick. She sank back and fell into an uneasy dose. Wanda Rae’s voice grew fainter and fainter as if she were falling in a well.

CHAPTER 3

Jana watched her drunken father weaving and reeling toward the house. Virgie saw him too. Here comes trouble, she mumbled, big as life and twice as ugly.

Theo stumbled on the bottom porch step, picked himself slowly up and swore lustily. He then proceeded to sing a song popularized by Jimmy Rodgers in the ’30’s, "He’s in the jailhouse now, he’s in the jailhouse now.

"I told ‘im over agin. Stop drinkin’ that whiskey, lay offa that gin…

He’s in the jailhouse now…

As he stepped into the house, he glowered darkly at his wife for a long moment and rocked back and forth on his heels and toes. He opened his mouth and bellowed out another verse of the foolish tune:

"I saw his ole gal Sadie,

She said, have you seen my baby?

I said that that he was downtown in the C-A-A-N…"

Abruptly, he noted Jana’s wild-eyed apprehension. Hey, Baby, he drawled. How ‘bout you and me going to the store and buying you a little ice cream?

The child’s eyes shifted anxiously to her mother. Leave the young’un alone, began Virgie argumentatively.

Theo’s eyes narrowed. Who told you to butt in, buttinsky?

Virgie doggedly mumbled a muffled reply.

The man’s eyes narrowed to slits and they glinted menacingly. You wanna git slapped, huh? His voice rose to a booming shout and Jana began to tremble violently. You wanna find your G—damned head up there on the shelf along side them peaches?

Jana tried to move, but she was rooted to the spot. This was what she anticipated and feared the most, the times when her father threatened her mother’s life. She began to breathe rapidly. She felt a painful agitation spread through her whole body. A band was constricting her chest and it pulled tighter and tighter. Her fists clenched involuntarily and her palms grew cold and clammy.

Virgie edged closer to the door, measuring the distance between herself and her abusive husband. You devil, you, she hissed.

‘No, mama, no!’ Jana’s heart thumped painfully as she screamed the words inside her mind. She knew better than to speak them out loud. Her mother was always so bullish and foolhardy.

‘Mama, don’t say anything else, don’t!’ She tried to will her mother into silence. She knew better than to argue with him, anybody knew better. Jana realized only too well what would happen and she tried to steel herself against the attack. Her father would knock her mother around, and she’d run screaming, with a bruised eye or a bleeding mouth out into the night or the cold or the rain. And this time night had not even fallen.

The air was electric with terror and fraught with danger. Through narrowed eyes, Jana watched the gut-wrenching scene. Theo, as in slow motion, balled his hand into a fist and swayed toward his wife, who edged closer, ever closer, toward the door. Suddenly, the man stopped and stared bleary-eyed at the child. Something about her stiff, terrified stance had caught his attention for a moment.

What’s the matter with you, Baby? he bellowed.

Leave her alone, expostulated Virgie doggedly.

Jana wet her panties. The band around her chest had tightened to a stranglehold and a blackness threatened to envelope her. She drew her breath in odd, short, painful gasps.

To her vast relief, her father paused again and stared at her for a long moment, as if he dimly realized the child’s part in the situation. He drew his hand across his face and muttered vaguely about leaving his half-pint in the car.

He paused in the front door and, to Jana’s immense alarm, motioned for her to get into the car.

C’mon, Baby. Le’s go git some ice cream.

Don’t you go anywhere with him, ordered her mother sternly.

Luckily, Theo ignored the remark.

Quickly, Jana ran to the car, before her foolhardy mother could get herself killed. Always, Jana felt she had to protect her stubborn, simple-minded mother, who would never back down to save either herself or her children from their father’s deadly aim.

The wet clothes were uncomfortable, and she was ashamed as she was a big girl now, almost six years old. She should be able to hold her water no matter what her angry father did. But that was of small importance now, as she climbed into the dark, shabby auto and her father drove slowly away.

Gotta keep it between the ditches, huh, Baby, he muttered. He never drove fast, but now they crawled along at a snail’s pace.

Jana could smell his strong liquor breath. His constant drunken mutterings frightened her. She hated to be alone with him and was acutely self-conscious.

As terrified as she was, she knew she had to get through this time in her life, just as she’d gotten through the other times, the time she saw her father kick her mother down the back door steps, the time he shot at them when they were hiding in her brother’s house and the shots had rattled through the attic. Jana had been unable to keep still and had dived under the bed and slammed against the boxes that were stored under the bed. Thomas had snickered nervously, then all of them had tittered uncertainly. Jana had giggled self-consciously.

Better to laugh than to cry.

Now Jana thought ‘If only Mary Beth was here…’ But she was away on a visit to Caroline’s home in Laurel.

Theo turned the car as if it were in slow motion and they pulled into Bound’s store.

The locals were used to Theo’s eccentricities and his drinking problem. He never starts trouble in public places, the coward. He waits till he gets home, Virgie often complained, and the customers glanced in Theo’s direction for only a moment or two.

He steered his daughter to the refrigerated box where the ice cream was kept. Baby, how many popsicles can you hold?

When she didn’t answer, he laughed. Somehow his soft laughter always seemed strained, as if the laugh was on him. Bet you can hold at least four or five.

He reached into the box and pulled out several Eskimo Bars and motioned for her to begin eating.

Jana didn’t want to eat. She was anything but hungry, but she had to, so she slowly peeled the paper off the first bar and nibbled without appetite at the corner.

Theo turned and spoke to the owner, arguing mildly as to the repair of some part of the electrical equipment in the store. He was inordinately proud of his ingenious ability to repair anything and often wrote various companies, giving them his ideas for inventions or improvements on complicated machinery. He charged only a minute amount for his mechanic’s work and without fail, guaranteed it or money back.

Jana stood with her back to the ice cream refrigerator trying to conceal the telltale dampness of her clothes. She ate another and still another of the ice cream bars, before they could melt. She dared not stop. After she’d eaten four, she paused, nauseated.

I can’t….eat…anymore, she whispered. She belched loudly.

Got a belly-bait, eh? laughed her father.

He paid for the ice cream in what he considered a jaunty manner, by slapping the money on the counter and saying, Keep the change.

Mercifully, they started on their way home. Jana noticed with embarrassment, the small figure of a girl coming toward them on the far side of the highway. It was Sybil Satcher, her friend from church. Theo saw her too, rolled down his window and yelled, Hey, Baby.

Jana cringed as low as she dared in her corner of the front seat. She fervently hoped Sybil hadn’t recognized her.

As they drove into the yard, Theo began blowing the horn. He announced, Here we are, at the whole hog and biscuit house.

Jana had held the nauseating fullness as long as she could. She ran around to the back of the house and vomited.

CHAPTER 4

Jana was very excited. Today was going to be pleasantly invigorating as she and her family were going to town. The little girl wore her frilliest hand-me-down pinafore and her glossy golden-brown curls bounced as she walked. She patted the side curls gently for she’d already been warned not to muss her hair.

Theo Jordan lay under his shabby auto. Occasional strings of swear words erupted from underneath the car like an angry hive of bees. He was all set to drive to Laurel, and now he had to make emergency repairs on the car. It was beginning to get hot and Theo crawled from under the car and called irritably for a glass of water. Jana ran into the house and quickly returned with a fruit jar filled to the brim with ice water. Her father slowly emptied it.

Theo was slightly less than average in height, and, at fifty-three, was rather slimmer than most men his age, women considered him built up. He had the sharp piercing eyes of an outdoorsman, and a stubborn chin that mirrored his unyielding nature. His hair was beginning to grey only slightly at the temples. This gave him, if not for the slightly stained clothes, a distinguished appearance, for he was a handsome man in a John Wayne sort of way. When he wasn’t working, hunting or fishing, or in one of his drunken rages, he paradoxically demanded peace and absolute silence from his brood. Don’t speak unless you’ve been spoken to first, seemed to be his motto.

He was in a foul mood today, having lost time and energy because of the damned tin Lizzy, as Theo called the 1938 Ford. He was sober and sharp-tongued, as touchy as a he-bear newly emerged from hibernation, and heartily wished the clear, cold water was whiskey. He reluctantly crawled back underneath the car and from time to time called tersely for this tool or that, and Jana, careful of her white clothes, concentrated frantically, trying to to remember which tool was which, as he called for it: a flat-headed screwdriver, a crescent wrench, a ratchet. She dared not hand him the wrong tool, as he would bellow and swear at her. The pleasant morning was getting hotter and more unpleasant by the minute.

When drunk, Theo was a hell-raiser. When sober, he was laconic, intense, self-centered, and extremely private. He spoke little to his family, and this with decided emphasis, bawling out a reprimand to one or another of the children. He was especially hard on the boys and set them a perfectly hopeless example.

Now, knocks, bangs and swear words continued to erupt from beneath the old clunker and Theo emerged once or twice, wiping his perspiring, grease-smeared face and neck with a dingy rag. Damned hunk o’ junk, he muttered in disgust. Baby, run git me some more water.

Theo was disallusioned with life, with his work; I’m sick and tired of working on car guts, and with his attractive but unfortunately simple-minded spouse. Following thirty years or so of married life and the birth of thirteen children, he summed his wife up in a single sentence: Virgie’s a few bricks shy of a load.

He desperately craved relief from the grinding burden of hot, grimy work and from the never ending support of his numerous offspring.

Theo had liked his work in the beginning, but after a few years of the same endless, dirty labor, he grew restless and weary. Since he loved to hunt and fish, he often headed for the woods instead. Thus, he lived a restless, financially unproductive life.

He was one of the finest auto mechanics in the area. But he shied away from the responsibility of owning anything, preferring mainly to work for others. With his brains and skill, Theo could have been wealthy. This was not the case and his wife and children were generally lacking in luxuries and many of the necessities of life.

Unanalytical, he never realized that he also needed someone to assure him that he was appreciated and cherished, someone who would share his innermost thoughts and dreams, for Theo, in his youth, had dreamed dreams. Now, he simply wanted relief but refused to take the necessary steps in order to obtain a successful, meaningful existance. He spoke few kind words and so received few in return.

Theo was a prideful man and sensitive but only in regards to his own person, his own needs, his own comfort. (To hear Theo tell it, he was the only man to ever work hard or to have problems.) The discomfort of his wife and children bothered him not in the least. The Jordan clan did not pull together. They seldom helped one another in times of need, illness or distress.

He and Virgie lived in the same house, had formally shared the same bed, but seldom shared tenderness nor charity toward each other. He never concerned himself with his children, other than filling their growing bellies with food and sometimes not even that. He never talked man to man with the boys nor gently counciled the girls. Let them deal with life the best way they can, was his motto, or Let Virgie manage them, knowing Virgie was inadequate.

Almost from the beginning, Theo had realized the marriage was a misalliance, but he never concerned himself with his wife’s inner thoughts or feelings. He never allowed her or anyone else to interfere with his pleasures, whether they be food, hunting or sex. Once or twice, in the beginning, he had clumsily tried to bridge the gulf between his world and that of his wife’s, but words hadn’t come easily to him and Virgie had not attempted to comprehend Theo’s complex inner self. Virgie viewed the world with the determination and courage of a raging bull and ruthlessly judged everything as being either black or white. But Theo had been, as a child, stunted emotionally and was unable to..or unwilling to change or to mature. His domineering parents had never ceased to bicker and quarrel, both determined to be the aggressor, neither giving an inch. But Theo had revered his parents and never, to his dying day, would he speak a word against them. Theodore Franklin Jordan, his father, was a saw-filer who held the important position of keeping saw mills in top-notch running order, a job not without prestige. He made thirteen dollars a day during the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, when the average laborer brought in a dollar if lucky. Theo’s handsome blonde-haired, blue-eyed but hard and aggressive mother, Rose Ann, demanded complete subjugation from her family. The Jordans, as a clan, were few in number (as a rule), but this branch of the family tree was well thought of in their community and had owned the first piano as well as the first automobile in Stonewall. When Theo had been fourteen, and the oldest sister in college, his parents were divorced, leaving eight confused and broken-hearted children. Rose Ann Jordan, proud as a peacock, refused to take a penny from her former husband, who promptly remarried, and her children, even nine year old Fred, were forced to go to work, miserable and ashamed, in a lowly cotton mill. All but Theo. He had his memories of his mother’s fine clothes and the large house, of his father’s hearty laughter as he rolled in barrels of oysters, carried in whole hoops of cheese, a gallon of pickles, anything or everything that took his fancy. Oliver was never known to do anything halfway. Memories were all Theo had, at fifteen, but he refused to demean himself by working in the cotton mill.

He cased the joint, seeking out the prettiest girls to flirt with and when he saw Virgie, he was immediately mesmerized by the girl with the long jet black hair, hair so dark it seemed to have a bluish cast. He was enchanted by the clear innocent looking blue-grey eyes, and he turned on the charm. And Theo could be tremendously charming. He knew not and cared not for the fact that he and Virgie were completely incompatible.

At last, at eleven o’clock, the car was in working order and Theo washed up and changed into other clothes, garments as dingy and as grease-stained as his previous ones, having been washed nevertheless.

At least they all looked decent.

Finally, they were on their way. Mary Beth and Jana sat quietly in the back seat.

Almost at once, Jana was car sick. The shabby auto invariably smelled of gas and burnt motor oil.

It’s your imagination, Mary Beth whispered to her white-faced sister. You always plan on getting sick.

I do not, Jana whispered furiously back.

Mary Beth and Jana, although raised together, were not as close as sisters could be. Their lives were woven in a tangled Jordan web of love, hate, strife, misery, fear, honor, and bitter hopelessness.

Mary Beth, when very small, had been beautiful, with large eyes as blue as cornflowers. In her babyhood, she had a crown of golden curls and a delicate bone structure. As she grew, she became quite slender and her eyes were too large within her serious face.

An extraordinarily intelligent child, she had been the baby for four years and had refused to relinquish this honor without a fight. The smaller child seemed an interloper to her, an unwelcome one, but as they grew older, she accepted Jana, at least partially, however grudgingly.

The Jordans were not, by the thinnest stretch of imagination, a happy family. There was little real communication between the parents, with each other or with the children. Their father was terse and brusque quite sarcastic and his drinking bouts filled the hearts and lives of the children with chronic fear, and they suffered from strained nerves.

Since there was little communication within their lives, conversation was kept to a bare minimum, small talk and happy chattering voices were glimpsed only by watching an infrequent movie. They saw very little of other people and their lives were governed and molded by the ignorance, mistrust, and misunderstanding that were their lot.

If the girls had been aware of the need to talk more freely, they would scarcely have had the vocabulary, as their strict father would permit nothing but plain, straight talk. He allowed no giggling nor prissy behavior, among his girls. No foolishness was allowed.

Jana and Mary Beth called their father, respectfully, Daddy, or by his nickname of Dee, (christened by Mary Beth when she was learning to talk). That is, to his face…Mary Beth referred to her father as Him or you know who behind his back, and Virgie frequently referred to her husband as that devil or that ape. (Once she’d bidden Jana to call that ape to dinner. Jana had obediently stuck her head out the door and yelled, Ape, come to dinner. Virgie had turned white-faced and sternly reprimanded her foolish daughter: You want to get beat to death? You can’t say that to him! It was all very confusing and not a little frightening.

Jana always jumped with apprehension at the few times when her father called her by her Christian name. Theo always called his youngest child, when he noticed her at all, Baby. He called her Jana, only when he was angry with her.

A type of cynical humor was bred into them all and became a part of their thoughts and helped to soften the harsh contours of their existence. A strained silence prevailed among them when their father was part of the family group, but when he was away, free conversation was indulged in, as well as devilment. Mischieviousness often broke out among the boys as they shamelessly took advantage of their gentle mother. But they respected & loved her.

If Jana was unhappy growing up, she was not aware of it. She had no other life with which to compare her own. Her father had abused the older children physically, whipping them with ropes, chains, or whatever was the easiest to reach. But by the time Jana