Death Sentence (10 page)

That was truly how he felt about her, Ronnie told her, holding her hand. Wherever their lives took them from here on, he assured her, he never would be able to repay what he owed her. She could always depend on him, no matter what. He could not have dreamed at the time what a price that promise would put on his future.

Ronnie got a job that summer at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant where his father once had worked. His supervisor had been his father’s, and he still spoke highly of him.

“You sling Pepsis just like your daddy,” he told Ronnie as he trained him.

Only a couple of weeks after Ronnie started the job, his supervisor met his truck when he came in at day’s end.

“How about I give you a ride home today?” he said, a somber look on his face.

Ronnie was frightened. “Is something wrong? Is my mom okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. There’s been an accident. Your house has burned again.”

The supervisor was concerned that Ronnie might not be able to handle another fire so soon after the one that had taken his father’s life. They arrived to find Velma standing in the front yard with Jennings Barfield and his daughter Nancy. The smell of smoke hit Ronnie as soon as he got out of the car, and it immediately took him back to the day his father died.

This time the damage was far more extensive. The fire had been concentrated in Ronnie’s room, and everything in it was destroyed: his clothes, books, typewriter, his golfing trophies, all his graduation presents, including the new set of golf clubs his aunt Arlene and uncle Erroll had given him. The volunteer firemen determined that the fire had begun near an electrical outlet under Ronnie’s desk and theorized that a wiring problem had been the cause.

Ronnie could not understand how such awful things could keep happening to his mother. How much more could she take? Everything would be fine, he told her. The house could be repaired, the insurance would pay. It would just take time. This was not a disaster, only a setback. Meanwhile, Velma, Ronnie and Pam moved in with Murphy and Lillie.

By the spring, Ronnie and Pam had become aware that their mother had been seeing Jennings Barfield occasionally, but they thought this was just two lonely friends with similar losses comforting one another. Ronnie realized before Pam that the relationship was growing deeper than that, but he still was taken aback in July when Velma told him that she and Jennings were going to be married. Although years later Velma would acknowledge that she never loved Jennings, had merely felt sorry for him, she now assured Ronnie that she did. She knew that Ronnie would understand her desire to get married again—and he did—but she was concerned about telling Pam. And with good reason. Pam was outraged when she learned about it.

Her daddy was hardly a year in his grave and her mother was marrying somebody else! How could she do that? If it was her blessing that Velma was seeking, Pam made clear, it would be a long time coming. Nobody—
nobody!
—would ever replace her daddy.

Although Pam deeply loved her mother, she had always been strong-willed, and the two sometimes clashed. This was more than a clash, however. It quickly became a widening rift.

Ronnie didn’t want any more discord. He was happy that his mother was moving on with her life. Perhaps a new marriage would bring her drug taking under control. After all, she always seemed to take less when she knew she would be seeing Jennings. Ronnie tried to win Pam over, but she remained adamantly opposed to the marriage, and she and Velma frequently had words about it.

Pam was as opposed for Jennings’ sake as for her own. She was convinced that no matter how many promises her mother made she would not stop abusing drugs without far stronger intervention than she and Ronnie had mustered. Jennings, she knew, was a sick man. He wouldn’t be able to deal with that. And while she knew Jennings was aware that Velma took medicines, she was certain that he had no idea how bad it was.

Pam felt that he should know, and she called Jennings and asked to talk with him. He came to her grandparents’ house, and the two sat in lawn chairs under the pecan tree. Pam told him that she liked him, had nothing against him, appreciated the kindness he was showing her mother. But the marriage, she thought, was not best for either of them.

Jennings listened thoughtfully as Pam went on to relate her mother’s problems, but she could tell that he didn’t believe her.

“You know,” he responded, “I have a daughter who’s opposed to this marriage, too.”

His eldest daughter, Ellen, was against it as much as she was, he told her, and while he and Velma respected both, they had to make the decision that they deemed best for them. He loved Velma, he said, and she loved him, and he was certain that they could make each other happy and handle whatever problems they might encounter.

Pam saw that her effort had been futile, but at least, she thought, he couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned.

The wedding was set for August 23, 1970. This time Velma would have the church wedding she’d dreamed about as a girl but had been denied when she married Thomas. Encouraged by Ronnie, Pam reluctantly accepted the inevitable and even agreed to take part in the ceremony at Jennings’ church, Carroll Memorial Baptist in Fayetteville.

For her wedding dress Velma chose a pink suit, honoring the memory of her childhood pink dress. She also wore a pink pillbox hat with a veil, pink shoes and a pink corsage. Jennings, more than sixteen years Velma’s senior, was only fifty-four, but he looked older, distinguished and grandfatherly in his light summer suit. Both families attended, as did friends of Pauline and Thomas.

Ronnie had cautioned his mother about getting nervous and taking too much medicine before the wedding, and he was pleased that she took his warning to heart. The ceremony came off without any hitches, and all of the guests gathered for a reception in the church fellowship hall, which was decorated with pink carnations, pink gladiolus and pink roses. The cake was trimmed with pink icing, and the fruit punch, too, was pink.

Velma’s brother Tyrone took home movies of the reception. Throughout it, Velma was smiling and laughing. She looked almost radiant, Ronnie thought. He even allowed himself to hope that this new beginning might set her on a different path and bring her the happiness she deserved.

Jennings lived in a modest white house on Natal Street across from the Purolator plant in Fayetteville. Velma moved in with him and his daughter Nancy, who was sixteen. Velma’s own house had been repaired by this time, and she had rented it.

Pam, who still had a year to go in high school, decided to live with her grandparents so she could stay in Parkton. Ronnie, too, was staying there temporarily. He soon would be going to college, something he had not dreamed possible. And he had his mother to thank for it.

Ronnie hadn’t even applied to any colleges because he knew he couldn’t afford tuition. Despite his good grades and the desire of some of his teachers to help him, scholarships were rare at that time for students at small-town schools in eastern North Carolina. Even so, before her wedding, Velma urged him to apply. She had talked to Jennings, she said, and he was willing to pay for at least one semester. Ronnie did as his mother said and was quickly accepted by the University of South Carolina. He had been a longtime fan of the university’s basketball team.

Soon after the wedding, Velma and Jennings drove Ronnie to Columbia to enroll. But when time came to pay tuition, Velma looked at Jennings, who said nothing and made no move to produce the money.

Ronnie quickly realized that there had been a drastic misunderstanding. Jennings seemed unaware that he was to pay. And neither Ronnie nor his mother had the money. Not wanting to put any stress on his mother’s new marriage, Ronnie moved to alleviate the uncomfortable situation.

“I’ll talk to the financial aid office,” he told his mother.

He went ahead and checked into the dorm, and Jennings and Velma returned home. Over the weekend Ronnie mulled over what to do. He wondered if in her desire for him to continue his education, his mother hadn’t just fabricated the whole situation, thinking that if she got him there, Jennings surely would pay. Or perhaps the drugs she was taking made her delusional.

When Ronnie talked with the financial aid office on Monday, he discovered that no money was available. He had no choice but to withdraw. Not wanting to bother his mother and Jennings, he called Velma’s brother Jimmy, who lived in Lancaster, sixty miles away, and asked if he would come to get him. When Jimmy asked why he was leaving, Ronnie told him that he was just homesick.

After returning to his grandparents’ house, Ronnie called his mother to tell her he was back. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “You’ll get back there. I want you to go to college.”

Ronnie, in the meantime, was faced with a harsh reality. The Vietnam War still raged, and many young men from Robeson County had already gone off to fight—and die—in it. Ronnie knew that without a student deferment he soon would be drafted. Though he went to work at a gas station in Parkton owned by Pam’s basketball coach, he soon began talking to military recruiters. He wanted to see Pam through her final basketball season before taking any action. The coach let him remain as scorekeeper for the team. And his mother still continued to come to all the games, despite the long drive.

Velma’s growing addiction compelled her to keep finding new sources for drugs, and just eleven days after her wedding, she went to Jennings’ doctor, Neil Worden, complaining of migraine headaches. He gave her painkillers. A month later, Jennings had to bring her to the emergency room, and Worden was summoned. “She couldn’t even stand up, and she couldn’t talk,” the doctor later recalled. “Her pupils were dilated.” He diagnosed an overdose and admitted her to the hospital overnight. The next day Jennings drove Velma straight to her parents’ house. He didn’t know what to do with her, he told Lillie. He couldn’t deal with it.

Ronnie was distressed when he found out what had happened. He knew that drugs kept his mother from considering the consequences of her actions, and he had another of his long talks with her, insisting that she had to get control if she wanted this marriage to succeed. She acknowledged that he was right and promised to try harder. After a few days Jennings came for her and took her back home.

Shortly afterward, Dr. Worden received a call from a pharmacist that Velma was getting refills on some of Jennings’ medicines more frequently than he should be needing them. Certain that Velma was taking the medicines herself, Worden called Jennings to tell him, but Jennings didn’t want to believe it.

In November, after Velma had been taken to the hospital with another overdose, Jennings called Ronnie and asked him to come over. Nancy was upset and wanted to talk to him. She and Ronnie had become friends—he had taken her to play miniature golf—and they got away from their parents to talk. Velma was drugged up all the time, Nancy told Ronnie. She staggered around and fell and sometimes couldn’t talk. They couldn’t keep pills away from her. They found them stashed all over the house. Ronnie knew that Nancy was undergoing what he and Pam had been suffering so long, and his heart went out to her. Her father was the sick one, Nancy went on. Velma should be looking after him instead of the other way around. He was too feeble to pick her up off the floor when she fell, too weak to drag her to the bed. Nancy was afraid that the strain of her father’s struggle to care for Velma was going to kill him.

Ronnie apologized and promised to do what he could. Once again he talked with his mother.

“He still wants you to be his wife,” he told her, “but he can’t keep putting up with this. If you want this marriage to succeed, you’re going to have to get yourself clean.”

“I know I need to do better,” she said, crying. “I do want it to work.”

Even if his mother was floundering, early in December, Ronnie made a decision about his own life. With the draft closing in, he enlisted in the Army for four years, a year longer than the normal enlistment, so that he could be trained as an Army security specialist. But he had the enlistment deferred until the basketball season ended.

In February, Jennings took Velma to the hospital after yet another overdose. This time she was kept for nearly a week. When Ronnie went to see her, she told him that the marriage had been a mistake. Although Jennings had to use a respirator for his emphysema, he still smoked and sometimes passed out before she could get oxygen to him, she complained. He wouldn’t watch his diet despite his diabetes, and that caused additional problems. Taking care of an invalid husband was more than she had bargained for. He wouldn’t listen to a thing she said, and they frequently argued. She was clearly miserable.

Ronnie reminded her that she had known about Jennings’ conditions before she got married. She had to expect some adversity. She needed to try harder.

Jennings took Velma back home from the hospital, but by this time he, too, had realized that the marriage was a mistake. He had led an upright life. He was a devout churchgoer, a Mason. He cared what people thought of him. He knew that people were talking about Velma’s behavior and it bothered him.

After this overdose, Dr. Worden had another talk with Jennings about the seriousness of Velma’s drug problem. This time Jennings did not doubt him. He told Worden that he was thinking about divorce.

In the meantime, Pam’s team won the county championship for the third straight year, and Pam, at center, was named most valuable player. Ronnie couldn’t have been prouder. Soon he would be leaving for the Army, and he knew that he would miss his sister deeply.