Cruel Harvest (29 page)

My heart beat in my chest as if it were trying to force its way out. The moment lengthened to the point of unbearable tension. When Nellie's lips parted and the words formed in her mouth, I felt as though the entire world had erupted around me.

“
Get. It. Your. Self!
”

Daddy's face turned to stone. “What did you just say to me, girl?”

“I said,
Get it yourself!
What are you, deaf?” she mocked him.

My mouth hung open. Panic gripped me. I could not believe what I was hearing. All my life, I knew that defying Daddy would be rewarded by the worst fate on earth. I was certain this would lead to one ending: Nellie would die. She had to apologize at once! I prayed hard that he hadn't heard her words. I prayed for God to strike Daddy deaf or Nellie mute! But he
had
heard, and I could tell by his twisted, red face, that she would not get away with it. I held my breath and waited for the murder, or worse, that I was certain would unfold in front of my eyes. I wanted to run, but I was frozen in fear.

Chapter 25
Alone

Tension sparked like
an electric shock between Daddy and Nellie. Neither of them would turn loose. This would be a battle to the death for one, and I knew deep in my heart which one it would be. I sucked in my breath as Nellie started to curse Daddy. This couldn't be happening with her allowed to remain standing! I felt as though I was going crazy, and nothing made sense. She cursed his drinking and his mason jars full of home brew that cost every cent we worked for. She cursed his temper, his sadistic, horrible bullying, and his conscienceless acts toward all of us. She did not hold back. Reaction to the years of abuse poured out of her in a rushing sewage of rage.

“I will never obey you again. I don't care what you do to me. You've done it all already. Why would I care? You're a perverted, filthy old child molester! You're not my daddy!”

Stop!
I screamed inside my head.
Lord, strike her mute!
I could barely stand it. Nellie kept on screaming curses at Daddy until finally he stormed toward her, fists clenched, eyes bulging in his red face. I held my breath and prayed.

What happened next could have been comical if I did not know how truly dire a situation Nellie had put herself in. Amazingly, she held her ground as he lunged at her. His hand cocked back. I knew the force of the strike he had ready for her. I wanted to close my eyes, hide from it, but they refused to shut.

As the fist came crashing at Nellie, Daddy's full weight and the momentum of his lunge behind it, one of the floor planks he'd been working on buckled. He lost his balance and stumbled as Nellie took a strangely calm step backward. Daddy fell flat on his face right at her feet.

I stared at Nellie as Daddy bellowed like an angry bull. He struggled to regain his footing, and for an instant, Nellie just stood there.

“Run!” I screamed.

Nellie's eyes widened. It was as if she suddenly realized what she had done. Her cheeks turned white as snow. A second later, she was out the front door. I saw her jump off the porch and land in the front yard. My heart sank, though, when she planted herself there and turned to face the house. Daddy shook his head, snorting, as he pushed himself up from the floor. Nellie started to shriek at him from the front yard.

“I dare you to come out here you stinking, filthy pervert! You coward! Come on out here, Broadus! Ain't got the guts!”

She continued to curse him. He shook his head again, as if trying to wake up from such an unexpected dream. I watched his face turn a deeper red, and volcanic rage bubbled to the surface. A strange, eerie stillness filled the cabin. He was unusually quiet as he moved silently toward the door.

I knew he had zero control over his rage. Often, when angry at one person, he would lash out at the nearest one just to let out some of the steam. So, I grabbed Mary Anne's hand and put myself between her and Daddy.

Nellie spouted every filthy and obscene word she had learned from him. I was afraid to breathe for fear of attracting his attention, but he did not look at either Mary Anne or me. His attention was locked on Nellie. He stood in front of the door glaring but made no move to go after her. Although I could not believe what I was seeing, I did not trust that this tense calm would last. With an arm around her skinny shoulders, I hurried Mary Anne into the bedroom. Millie joined us there, and we watched the front room in silence. At last, Nellie's screaming ceased for a moment. The silence hung over us like thunder clouds. For a precious short while they were both quiet.

Suddenly, Nellie renewed her barrage, louder and with even more venom. That seemed to break Daddy out of his stupor. Instead of walking toward her, though, he turned and marched into the bedroom past Millie, Mary Anne, and me as though he did not see us standing there. A minute later he stepped out the front door carrying the small cardboard box full of Nellie's belongings. Slowly, he walked out to the front porch, watching her like a cat might toy with a mouse. When he reached the end of the porch, he dumped everything Jackie had given her on the edge of the porch. She could see clearly what he was doing. She stopped yelling for a minute, watching intently. He picked up the tin of lighter fluid and, staring Nellie in the eyes, doused her new clothes.

The two squared off over the small pile. In it was everything Nellie owned. In a way, it was her life there on the porch floor. They stared at each other, neither blinking. Then he struck a match and dropped it. The pile burst into flames.

Nellie erupted in a fury!

“
You dirty, lying perverted horror from a snake pit!
” she screamed. Nellie was totally out of control now, jumping up and down in the front yard, fists shaking, eyes blazing. “He's a liar, Millie. He's a liar! Our mama is
not
dead. He's a filthy, stinking liar! He rapes his own children! Our mama is alive, and he's a bigamist that broke out of prison!”

On and on she pounded, jumping up and down, shrieking like a banshee until she had spit out every secret she'd held inside for sixteen years! I could not see Daddy's face, but I know Nellie's words cut him to the bone by exposing him in front of Millie. He moved as fast as a weasel. Jumping over her smoldering clothes, he reached down and jerked up the long-handled axe that still rested by the woodpile on the edge of the porch.

He lifted it high above his head, slinging it round and round as he leapt down from the porch and raced after Nellie. He was insane with rage and revenge, and I was sure she would die for it. I prayed for God to give wings to her feet as she raced across the yard! Daddy had already attempted to murder us once. Back on that dark highway in Texas, we had done nothing to defy him. Now, Nellie had not only refused his orders, but she also named the dark secret of Daddy's degradation right in front of Millie. I knew he would kill her with that ax as easily as I had seen him chop a chicken's head off to fry up for dinner.

Raw survival instinct overtook Nellie in that moment. I have never seen a human move as fast as she did. She sprang forward as gracefully as a deer, spinning around and racing away. Daddy had no chance of catching her. After running about fifty feet, he realized that. As a last effort, he threw the ax end-over-end toward her back. It struck the earth, and Nellie disappeared into the woods. I breathed for the first time in what felt like an hour.

When Daddy finally turned back toward the house and headed inside, I scurried with Mary Anne and Millie back into the kitchen, as far as we could get out of his reach. We left the door open a crack and watched him. He sat in the chair where he kept his whiskey bottle in the front room. His face was still beet red, and his eyes were bloodshot and bulging. The veins in his neck looked as if they would explode. I knew we were not safe.

As quietly as I could, I inched over to the kitchen door and looked out the window. I scanned the backyard, looking for any sign of Nellie. Millie motioned at Mary Anne to get into bed and stay silent. I turned my attention outside. As night fell over the farm, I watched for Nellie. All the while, Daddy drank from his jug of whiskey and spat out curses.

“I'll bury that ungrateful harlot!” he yelled from the front room.

He continued to curse Nellie, but as the hours passed, his voice became slurred and his outbursts more infrequent until I was sure he had finally passed out. The house was deathly silent. I crept into the living room. Daddy had fallen off his chair, drunk, and he lay in a heap on the floor. Millie and her son were asleep with Mary Anne in the bedroom. I knew nothing short of an earthquake could wake him up now, so I walked just past him, eased open the front door, and stepped out onto the porch.

The night air was bitter. I took a deep breath and could smell the stench of burned cotton and wood coming from the charred mark on the porch. I sat down beside it. The stench was almost overpowering, but I didn't want to move. I was afraid to take a step off that porch. If I did, I was afraid my entire family, the only family I had ever known, might disappear from the world, and I would be totally alone. I felt that Mama, Brenda, Susie, Nellie, and even I would cease to exist. The fear did not make sense; it did not even seem rational to me, but it was more than real. Every person I loved had left.

I sat in the night watching for any sign of Nellie. She had to come back, at least to say good-bye. She could not leave me here alone forever. It was hard enough when I lost Brenda and Susie. I had never been as close to Nellie, but her flight cut just as deeply as all the others. And of course, losing Mama had been worse than anything. Mama had promised and crossed her heart to come back and get us, but she never did. I couldn't allow myself to think about losing the last piece of family. The longer I sat on the porch, the clearer it became. I was alone, the last of us caught in Daddy's evil grip. I knew I would never get away. This would be my lot.

Nellie, please come back!
I wept, the tears rolling down my cheeks in steady streams. A tiny crack inside my heart had started the day Brenda and Susie left. That crack widened when Robbie was adopted and Mama turned her back and walked away from us at Connie Maxwell Children's Home. When Nellie ran into the woods, it ruptured into a gaping hole. I was left empty inside, totally alone and hopeless.

My eyes could
not stay open. The eastern sky lightened, a deep purple replacing the blackness of the night. I was caught somewhere between sleep and the real world. The trees seemed to grow up and tower over me. The porch roof became a wave of earth trying to swallow me up and drag me down. Shadows played with my mind, filled with evil things that took the shape of Daddy.

Still, wrapped in my coat, I did not move. I could not let Nellie go. I refused to give in to the overpowering sense of loss, loneliness, and fear that threatened to swallow me. Instead, I sat on the porch and forced my eyes to open again, to see the world for what it was.

That is when I saw it. At first, I thought it was another trick of my exhausted mind. A shadow moved out of the woods, crawling toward an old chicken shed beside the house. As it neared, I knew it was Nellie. She had come back!

As quietly as I could, I crept back into the house. Daddy snored on the floor, his empty whiskey bottle resting beside him. I feared waking him, but still tiptoed slowly into the kitchen. I wrapped up a piece of cornbread in a rag and then went to the middle room, where I very quietly gathered the quilt from the corner that we used for sleeping. Then I crept back outside through the kitchen door, fearing that Nellie would be gone again before I reached the coop. But then I heard a rustle inside. I climbed in, and Nellie was huddled there. The tears came flooding back, and I handed her the food and blanket. She took it gratefully, wrapping the quilt around her shaking shoulders.

“I ain't never going back,” she said through chattering teeth.

I put my arms around her. Although I was chilled from my night outside, I willed what little heat I retained into her shivering body. Her shaking finally stopped, but my tears did not.

“I'm going into Niles to stay with Sandra, Jackie's sister. She can get me a job at that restaurant where she works. They think I'm eighteen so it ain't gonna be no problem. Daddy lied to them about both of us. They think you're sixteen instead of fourteen, so you can work too.”

Nellie wiped away a tear that stained my cheek. She reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a tattered strip of brown paper. On it was scribbled an address.

“That's where I'll be. Memorize it, then burn it up. Don't you dare let
him
find it. Sandra gave it to me. She said if I ever get away, that she'll take me in. I'm going there today. You got to get away, too, Frances. When you do, go to that address. I'll be there. Okay?”

I broke down, sobbing. Nellie held me for just a second, then pulled away.

“Let me come with you,” I begged through my tears.

Nellie's face changed. Her mouth turned down and she pulled farther back from me. She did not look me in the eyes when she spoke.

“Sandra's struggling hard enough with her two kids and no husband. She can't afford to take both of us in right now. Give me some time to make some money, then maybe you can come.”

I knew she didn't want me to go with her. Nellie wanted total freedom. She needed to be on her own, and she wanted to go by herself. My greatest fear became reality in that moment. She was leaving me with him. I would be the last to get away,
if
I got away. Worse, I knew he would take his anger out on me for her rebellion. He could just as easily kill me in her place.