Smithereens, page 1
SMITHEREENS
By B. W. Battin
A Gordian Knot Production
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2015 / B. W. Battin
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Meet the Author
B. W. Battin grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After serving four years in the U.S. Coast Guard, he graduated from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He became a reporter at KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, then moved on to TV stations in Shreveport, Louisiana; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Duluth, Minnesota, where he wrote his first published novel, Angel of the Night. After it was published, he became a full-time writer. One of his novels, Smithereens, was made into a TV movie for NBC. His novels and short stories have been translated into various languages, and he has ghost-written novels for other authors. He lives in Belen, New Mexico, with his wife Sandy, whom he describes as the love of his life. They met in Albuquerque while they were both in the news business.
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SMITHEREENS
PROLOGUE
Getting out of her car, she stood in the dirt driveway, staring at the place. The small white frame house sat on a weed-choked lot about three miles from town. Although the roof didn’t leak, the shingles were old and grubby and worn. Above them on a bent mast stood the remains of a TV antenna, most of whose parts had been stripped away by storms. The paint on the house was beginning to blister and peel. A beer can lay in the weeds at the edge of the driveway. She’d lived here for two years. With Jack. She hated Jack.
He was a crass, mean-spirited man who slapped her around when he was drunk or when things had gone badly for him at work. But then all her relationships with men had been unhappy. That Jack was the most physically brutal of her men made him no worse than the others. She wasn’t afraid of him. Physical bruises often healed more rapidly than the other kind. And what was the worst he could do, kill her? The night he’d held a knife to her throat, she’d calmly told him to go ahead, she didn’t care. It was her ultimate weapon against him, that she didn’t care.
Gloom seemed to hang over the house, defying the brightness of a sunny Alabama afternoon. This was an unhappy house, a place where those who had received little that was good from life passed their miseries on to others. Screw you, Jack, she thought. I don’t need you anymore.
She hadn’t realized that she hated Jack until today. Until she saw the picture in Southeastern States Business Review. Stunned, she’d stared at it. And after a while— she was uncertain how long—she’d gotten up from her desk, walked from the office, driven here. She hadn’t told Mr. Tillotson she was going; she’d simply left. The job no longer mattered. The caption under the photo had read: Georgia’s Businessman of the Year, Stanley Ferguson.
Glancing at her watch, she walked to the front door. It was about four o’clock, and she wanted to be packed and gone by the time Jack got home, about an hour and a half from now. Unlocking the door and stepping inside, she removed the house key from her ring and laid it on the stained arm of a green living room chair.
All the furnishings in the house were shabby. Jack spent his money on things like his shiny new black pickup that stood high off the ground and had a CB radio and rifle rack in the rear window and a row of extra headlights mounted on the roof. Jack loved the truck. He couldn’t give a damn about things like furniture.
The floorboards squeaked as she hurried along the short hall. In the bedroom, she quickly got her suitcase from the closet, opened it on the bed, and began packing. The double bed was unmade. It sagged slightly in the middle.
The stuff from her dresser and the closet all fit into one suitcase. She didn’t care much about clothes, so she didn’t have many. Just a few things to wear to work and some blue jeans. Hurrying into the bathroom, she grabbed her comb and makeup and other toiletries. She wanted to be gone, out of here, on the highway. On her way to a new beginning.
And if it didn’t work out the way she hoped it would, what then? But she didn’t want to think about that. If it happened, she would have to deal with it. For now she was going to hope. How many years had it been since she’d dared to hope?
When everything was packed, she sat down on the edge of the bed, taking a moment to figure out whether she’d forgotten anything. Her eyes darted around the room, coming to rest on the nightstand. Opening its drawer, she removed Jack’s gun and a box of ammunition. He had other guns, rifles, and expensive handguns that he kept locked away in the spare bedroom, in a heavy gun cabinet he’d bought and to which he had the only key. The weapon in her hand was a .25 automatic. She knew a little about guns, enough to load and fire the pistol. She would take this one with her. For protection, she told herself.
And as she thought that, she realized that the term had two meanings: for the defense of a woman traveling alone and another, deeper meaning. The gun might also have to be used to protect her inner self, that part of her that for the first time in years was going to be open, vulnerable. She shook her head. For now she was going to hope. She checked the gun to make sure it was properly loaded. As she pushed the clip back into the handle, she heard a door close. For a moment she froze, her mind trying desperately to analyze the situation, to sort through the possibilities, and then she rushed to the window. Jack’s black truck was outside, parked next to her rusty old Chevy. The front door of the house opened.
“Babe, where are you?” Jack called from the living room. It was all he ever called her, Babe. She was unable to recall his ever using her true name. The house seemed completely silent for a few moments; then his footfalls were coming toward the bedroom.
Quickly grabbing her suitcase, she shoved it beneath the bed, then slipped the gun under a pillow. When she turned around, Jack was standing in the doorway, watching her.
Had he seen what she’d done? An invisible hand gripped her insides, squeezed.
“You going somewhere?” Jack asked. Dressed in jeans and a western shirt, he was a tall man with thinning brown hair and brown eyes that were staring at her icily. And suddenly she knew that, for the first time, she was afraid of him. Because she had hope now, a purpose, a chance. And Jack could take the hope away from her.
“What are you doing home so early?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t reveal how fearful and vulnerable she felt.
“Teamsters are on strike against the cement companies,” he replied. “Can’t do much if we can’t pour foundations, so everybody got laid off.” Jack worked construction. For the past few months he’d been employed by an outfit building a subdivision about fifteen miles from here.
“How long do you think the strike’ll last?” she asked.
Jack shrugged. “Till it’s settled.” His blue eyes studied her. “I asked you if you were going somewhere.”
Had he seen the suitcase? Was he trying to trap her in a lie? “What makes you think that I’m going somewhere?”
“Why are you home so early?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“I … well, I was laid off, too.”
“Laid off?” He smirked, as if he knew she was lying, as if he was enjoying himself.
“Well, not exactly laid off.”
“What then?”
“I was fired.”
“Why?”
“Mr. Tillotson made a pass, and I told him no.” She had to be careful. One lie always led to more, and after a while you had a whole system of them. You lost track of them all. If Jack kept questioning her, she’d trip up, contradict herself. What would he do to her for lying to him?
“You never did answer my question,” he said.
“Which … which question?”
“I asked you if you thought you were going anywhere.”
She caught his use of the word thought. Clearly he had no intention of letting her go anywhere. “I don’t understand,” she said weakly.
“You don’t, huh.”
She shook her head.
He held up her house key. “I found this on the arm of the chair. Lying there like you weren’t going to need it anymore, like you were leaving it for me.”
“My key ring broke. I—”
“Stop lying,” he said, flipping the key and catching it like a coin.
She started to protest, to say she was telling the truth, but there was no point. He knew she was lying. She stared at him, waiting to see what would happen next.
Slipping the key into his pocket, he stepped toward her, and before she knew what was happening, his open hand hit her face, the force of the slap knocking her backward onto the bed. Instantly he was straddling her. He slapped her again. And again.
“Teach you to lie to me,” he said.
She smelled the booze on his breath. He’d stopped off somewhere and had a few. If he was drunk enough, he might beat her bad. It had happened before.
“Jack,” she cried. “Stop it. Oh, God, please stop it.”
He hit her again, with his fist this time, and her vision blurred. The blow had broken her lip. She could taste the warm coppery flavor of blood. Looking up at his face, she saw that he had a distant, distracted look, as if he wasn’t even really aware of what he was doing. He was upset because he’d been laid off, because she was about to walk out on him. It wasn’t really personal with him. He was just taking out his frustrations. Later he’d apologize.
His fist slammed into her face again, and she realized that he might not apologize this time, that he might be planning to really hurt her, worse than he ever had before. She’d been on the verge of sneaking away, without even telling him. Maybe it was personal this time. Maybe he wanted to kill her.
“Ja—” Her cry was interrupted by his fist.
Her arms were pinned to the bed by his knees. She tried to reach back to the pillow under which she’d placed the gun, but she was unable to do so. Suddenly Jack climbed off her, yanking her from the bed. For a moment she was standing, and then she sank woozily to the floor because her legs were unable to support her. Jack kicked her in the side. She was certain now that he was going to kill her.
Grabbing her blouse, he ripped it open. Then he tried to do the same with her bra. When it refused to tear, he yanked furiously at it, the straps digging into her flesh. Suddenly something snapped and the brassiere was ripped from her body. Tossing it aside, he advanced on her.
She tried to crawl under the bed. She had her head and shoulder beneath it when he grabbed her legs and pulled her away from it. She braced herself for another kick, but instead he picked her up and threw her on the bed. He pulled her skirt and panties off, then began unbuckling his jeans. She told herself to just lie still and submit. Maybe if she didn’t resist, it wouldn’t be so bad. His pants were off. He began taking off his shirt. Then she saw the feverish look in his eyes, and she knew that submitting wouldn’t make any difference. He was going to rape her and beat her no matter what she did.
Her hand slid upward, finding the pillow, searching for the gun. It wasn’t under the first pillow she tried, so she slipped her hand under the other one. Still no gun. Jack was down to his undershorts now. He pushed them down, revealing his erection. Suddenly the only thing that mattered to her was finding some way to prevent Jack from raping her. Where was the gun?
Forcing her brain to function, she tried to figure out what could have happened to the automatic. If it wasn’t under the pillow, where was it? And then she knew. It must have slipped off the end of the bed when Jack threw her onto it— or when he was hitting her. Jack was naked now. He’d even removed his socks. He moved toward the bed.
Using all the strength she had left, she pulled herself to the edge of the bed and slipped over the side. Pain shot through her left side when she hit the floor.
“Shit,” Jack said. “Where the hell do you think you can go?” Although she couldn’t see him, she could hear the floor squeak as he came around the bed. She crawled under it.
The suitcase was there, along with a lot of accumulated dust. Still she didn’t see the gun. Jack’s face appeared between the bottom of the bed and the floor. He grinned.
“You think you can hide from me under there?” he asked.
His face disappeared, and then the bed lurched to the side. He’d kicked it, she realized. It moved again, and she moved with it. She had at most a few seconds. He would tire of this and either fling the bed aside or drag her out from under it. Where the hell was the gun? She saw it, just as Jack reached under the bed and grabbed her ankle. It was behind the suitcase. She reached for it, her fingers touching the handle, and then she was being dragged away from it. When she was completely out from under the bed, Jack stared down at her, smirking.
“So you were going to walk out on me, huh.”
She shook her head, pleaded with her eyes. Jack reached for her. She tried to get back under the bed again, but he had her leg. With the other one, she kicked at him, getting him in the stomach. Although the blow hadn’t been solid, it was enough to make him relax his grip on her leg, and she pulled away from him, slithering back under the bed, pushing the suitcase aside, grabbing the gun.
The bed rose and was flung away. Jack stared down at her, angry now, wanting to hurt her some more. He kicked the suitcase out of the way. Finally, he saw the gun. She aimed it at him.
“Shit, Babe, you ain’t gonna shoot me.”
She switched off the safety.
He grinned. “No way, Babe. You ain’t got what it takes to blow someone away.”
The bullet hit him squarely in the center of his chest, a small hole appearing among the curly brown hairs. As he staggered backward, a stunned expression on his face, she shot him again.
Later, after she’d cleaned herself up and felt a little better, she was in her old Chevy, heading northeast, toward Atlanta. She’s used makeup to hide the bruises on her face. Some of her injuries couldn’t be hidden, like her split lip and black eye. But her external wounds would heal. And when she got to Georgia, so might her internal ones.
Ahead was a sign informing her that she was twenty miles from Montgomery. With daylight savings time, it wouldn’t be dark for a couple of hours yet. She’d wait for dusk to start looking for a motel.
She tensed as an Alabama Highway Patrol car came up behind her. The cruiser lingered there a moment, then sped up and passed her. Don’t panic, she told herself. Jack’s body probably won’t be discovered for days. No one ever goes there.
She didn’t feel any remorse about having killed him. He was just another in a whole series of jerks, and he deserved what he got. She’d never loved him, not even at first. She hadn’t loved anyone for a long, long time. She wondered if she still knew how, if she could still give herself, risk the pain. But then it was silly to worry about that, for pain was an old friend, something she could count on.
She hadn’t decided what to do in Atlanta; she needed to make some plans. She couldn’t just barge right in and say, Hello, here I am. It was going to be more complicated than that.
Things will be all right, she told herself. After twenty years of hell, I’ve paid my dues. I’m entitled to get back what I lost.
“Yes,” she said out loud. “I sure as hell am.”
ONE
Terri Ferguson put milk and a box of cold cereal on the table in front of her husband. He eyed the breakfast cereal disdainfully.
“It was your idea to give up eggs, Stanley.”
He sighed. “If I’d known it meant eating cardboard chips in milk, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Reluctantly, Stanley poured some of the cereal into his bowl and added milk. For years the centerpieces of his breakfast had been eggs—boiled, scrambled, or poached. Then, after reading a magazine article about eating for a healthy heart, he’d abruptly changed his eating habits. Skim milk, less red meat, more chicken and fish, no more than two eggs a week. To Terri’s surprise, cutting back on steak, prime rib, and roast beef had been fairly easy for him. Giving up eggs and bacon and sausage in the mornings had been hell.
