Overcomer - The Journey, Judy Colella [book reader for pc txt] 📗

stopped, jabbing an index finger at the paper. “Shady Dale, or a little way outside of it.”

“Where’s that? I’ve heard the name, something to do with the Pony Express, I believe, but I don’t know where it is.”

“Like I said, in the middle of nowhere – Jasper County. The town only has a population of about two hundred and fifty or so and it’s historic, but this place isn’t even in town. It’s a little southwest of there, off Highway Eighty-Five, almost in Macon. And by the way, there’s no record of him ever having attended school there, either. The only reason I have any of this information is because the social worker’s papers were located in a kind of lost-and-found at the hospital where she was taken after the accident.”

Mr. Bell shook his head. “Incredible. So where is Jasper County?”

“The closest bigger city is Monticello. In fact, if I remember the map, it’s almost exactly in a straight line between Monticello and Madison.”

“Okay. Heard of those. So how did he end up there?”

“I told you. He was living in the home of a CRS worker –”

“Think I’d like to have a chat with the CRS. Want to go?”

That surprised her. “Why’re you asking me?”

“Because.” He shrugged, giving her the first genuine smile she’d seen since he’d entered her office. “I believe you really care about this case, and it might help if you got involved in rescuing the kid – assuming, of course, that what we’ve heard is accurate and he needs rescuing.”

“Thank you.” Her voice and pulse returned to their usual calm state. “I would sincerely like to do that.”

“Excellent! Shall we?”

Felicity nodded, grabbed the file from the desk, her jacket from the back of her chair, and joined him. “We shall.”

“Oh – what’s the address for the CRS anyway?”

She opened the case folder and leafed through the papers again. “Uh... here it is – right here in Atlanta, um, Suite One-forty... it’s on North Druid Hills Road.”

 

*********

 

Cian made himself as small as possible, curling up at the end of his mattress where the shadows were deepest. Four days had passed since he’d heard any activity upstairs. His foster mother had locked him in the basement with the promise that he would never get out again, but now strange people had come into the house. Cian was sure they were not the family. The footsteps sounded different, slow, and no one was speaking.

On that day two years earlier when he’d come home from the hospital, things had taken a bizarre and terrible turn. The beatings with the electrical wire had stopped, but the woman’s cruelty had found new avenues, ones that were in their own way much worse. Dr. Lee had seemed to believe him about what she’d done, but the day after their talk the doctor had been in a car accident and a day after that, had died from his injuries.

Cian learned of this while still in the hospital, and he’d mourned the man who had been so kind to him despite having to deal with his ugliness. After being released from the hospital a week later, he noticed that Buddy wasn’t saying much, and at sporadic moments throughout the next several weeks, he would run upstairs to his room, tears coursing down his face. He never asked why, but didn’t think it had anything to do with Dr. Lee who – as far as Cian knew – Buddy had never met. So what was his foster brother so upset about?

So many things about this family made no sense, like when he’d first come to live with them. On his third day there, he’d heard strange voices through the flooring overhead, followed by the sound of Buddy and Retta crying hysterically. Later that day, the sobs were replaced by a deep silence, which he interpreted as the absence of his foster family. By the next morning, everything was back to normal. He didn’t understand it all back then, since no one had told him until several years later that here had been a foster father and what had happened to him.

The morning he’d left the hospital, Letitia made a snide remark about the doctor’s death, something about “comeuppance.” Buddy’s strange behavior and Letitia’s attitude were making no more sense than the other bizarre things that characterized life with the Pettijohns, but he had little time to think about his. After dropping him off, Letitia had gone out, returning a short while later with a tape recorder.

“This is for you, Unacceptable – and believe me, you’re going to wish you’d kept your ugly mouth shut in that hospital!” She had taken the recorder into the shed out back, and begun screaming words Cian couldn't make out from the basement.

When she was finished, she’d entered the basement and plugged the recorder in next to his mattress. He was still in a lot of discomfort from the beating, and had been told to stay on bed rest for another week. That didn’t happen.

Letitia had made him sit up with his back pressed painfully against the wall, and then tied his hands in front with an old clothes line. She’d then attached the ends of the rope to the crank that once opened the window above his pathetic excuse for a bed, raising his arms at an uncomfortable angle. She’d gone to the far side of the basement to fetch a jar, which she opened and placed on the windowsill, winding part of the rope around it.

“That’s sulfuric acid, boy. You try to stand up to get yourself loose, or raise or lower your arms, and it’ll fall right on your head. And if you think you’re ugly now, you should see what that stuff’ll do to you! It can eat right through your flesh, muscle and bone.”

She’d bent down and turned on the tape recorder, raising the volume to its highest setting, and Cian finally knew why and what she’d been screaming out in the shed. Up close, her yelling was almost deafening, but her words were far worse than the sound level. Every minute of a thirty-minute tape had been filled with a non-stop, earsplitting diatribe of hatred. Almost as soon as it was over, it would replay from the beginning, and because Cian couldn’t move, couldn’t stop it, and couldn’t cover his ears for the next two days and nights, he was all but destroyed by the time she’d finally returned and switched it off. He had carefully shifted sideways to rest his arms against the wall, but was still in the same basic position in which she’d left him, his eyes swollen from crying, and he’d messed himself several times.

“You stink.” Wrinkling her nose, she’d removed the jar and untied the rope.

He had promptly collapsed sideways, rolled over, and thrown up, then lay in his vomit and stared at nothing, not moving, scarcely breathing.

“I’m going upstairs. If you aren’t cleaned up by the time I get back in 20 minutes, I’ll play the tape again. You got that, mister?”

He hadn't answered, so she’d muttered, “Whatever,” and picked up the tape recorder.

Cian had heard her go upstairs and lock the door. Still groggy, he’d acknowledged that he couldn't handle more of that tape, so he’d forced himself to sit up, despite being thirsty, starving, and exhausted from his nearly three-day ordeal. The healing wounds had pulled tight when he moved, and his arms – his whole body – were sore from lack of mobility, his head pounding.

But she was going to be back in 20 minutes and would turn that horrid tape on again if he didn't get up. In a desperate effort that brought a throbbing, stinging pain caught as a sob in his dry throat, he had stood. Stumbling and gasping, he had made his way into the dank bathroom where he’d used water from the toilet to wash himself after peeling off his soiled clothes. Then, naked and shivering, he’d gone back out to the dryer, hoping there would be something clean in it for him to wear, but had found it empty.

Returning to the bathroom, he had picked up the clothing, took it to the washer, added more items from the laundry basket with some detergent, and started the machine. The effort had been expensive, costing him almost all the energy he had left, and between the agony of movement and the throbbing headache, he almost hadn’t made it back to the mattress.

No sooner had he started to lie down, than he’d realized it was every bit as fouled as his clothes and body had been, the odor overpowering. At first, he hadn't known what to do, because the ability to think was nearly out of his reach at that moment. Then he’d pulled himself together and removed the pine-scented cleaning liquid and a scrub brush from the cabinet above the washer. Jaw clenched with pain, he had retrieved a bucket from under the stairs, poured out a bit of the cleaner, and then opened the washer. It was still filling up, so he had been able to get some of the water into the bucket.

After setting this on the floor, he had scooped out several mouthfuls of water from the washer with his hands, nearly weeping with relief as the cool liquid slid down his throat.

A box of old rags sat next to the bathroom door, and gagging from the stench, he’d used one to wipe the vomit from his mattress. That done, he’d dipped the brush into the bucket to get it soapy, and scoured the surface. He finished before his foster mother returned, and propped it up on its side under the window to dry, using more rags to clean the mess that had been sloughed onto the floor.

The key had turned in the lock at the top of the stairs, and the boy had grabbed another rag from the box and tried to cover himself.

“What in the name of blue buttermilk are you doing, boy?” the woman had asked, peering into the gloom at him as she’d come down the steps.

“C-c-cleaning up,” he’d said, hoarse, finding it difficult to speak. In addition to the dehydration, his throat was raw from yelling, which had been the only way he’d been able to block out some of the horrors on the tape.

“Where are your clothes?”

“In the-the washer,” he’d croaked, eyes wide with fear.

“You put anything else in there, or are you wasting a whole wash load on one outfit?”

“I – I put other things in there t-too.” I’m stuttering! What’s wrong with me? This realization had been yet another blow.

She had nodded and stepped closer. After peering up at him for a moment, jaw set, she’d lashed out and backhanded him across the face. “You’re disgusting.”

“Y-y-y-yes, m-m-ma’am.

She’d stepped back, hands on her hips, and regarded as he stood shivering and crying noiselessly before her. “Well, I’ll be,” she had said softly. “It’s about time.” And then she’d thrown back her head and let out a loud, ugly laugh. “I finally broke you, didn’t I!”

He’d been looking at his feet, his usual stance to keep his face from being seen, and at this, had lowered his head further and nodded. He’d known she was right. He had nothing left inside with which to defy her.

“You pathetic asshole – my poor little moron. Huh…”

Leave me alone!

“Know what? You’re even too stupid to know that you ought to kill yourself. Maybe I should keep reminding you.” She’d turned and gone back upstairs.

Sobbing, the boy had fallen to his knees, knowing what she was going to do. She was going to get the tape recorder. He couldn’t handle it again so soon. Death had begun to look like a welcome option.

When the washing machine had stopped, the silence hadn’t register for several minutes. When it did, he’d gotten up and put the clothes into the dryer as he’d wondered why he bothered. He’d thought about the mattress, his clothes, the reason they needed to