Gods of Mischief (13 page)

But there would be no happily-ever-after for these two young lovers.

They moved into a twenty-foot travel trailer off a dirt road in the Golden Valley, where Billy began beating her on a near-daily basis, the physical violence escalating until the day he crushed her nose. Jenna checked in at the emergency room to have the nose repaired, but doctors refused to give her pain medication. When she asked why they told her she was pregnant.

After throwing a tantrum, cursing at doctors and slapping the walls, Jenna returned to the trailer to plan for her abortion. Seemed like the thing to do. After all, junkies are a self-serving breed, and babies only get in the way of that me-first lifestyle. Jenna wasn't in the best of health at the time either. After three years of slamming heroin and taking every other drug imaginable, she was justifiably afraid her kid would pop out looking like something from a carnival freak show.

Because Arizona frowned on abortion, she and Billy scraped together all the cash they had and headed for Nevada. Only a funny thing happened on the way to the doctor. The idiots detoured into a casino and gambled away all their abortion money.

Now it was back to Arizona, where Jenna resumed the high life. So high, in fact, that before she knew it six months had passed and now, by law, it was too late to abort. Meanwhile Billy started injecting speed, and that sent Daddy into a whole 'nother level of violent. He and Jenna were driving the back roads in his Impala, arguing as usual, when Billy pulled a gun and tried shooting his girlfriend's foot off. The bullet missed its target, went through the floorboard and shot out the tire instead. Billy regained control of the car but lost control of himself. After pulling the Impala off the road, he dragged Jenna into the street by her hair and beat the snot out of her. When he was finished he shoved her back into the car and drove on three tires going one hundred miles per hour back to the trailer, where, out of his mind, he kicked Jenna until she fell unconscious.

As Jenna's due date approached, her mom drove out to Arizona and took her daughter back to California. A few weeks later Jenna delivered a daughter one month premature. Miracle of miracles, the kid wasn't born with a craving for heroin-in-a-bottle.

Now a young mother, Jenna tried to do the right thing and clean up her life. She started by going back to school while her mom watched the baby. The girl might have been a drug addict, but she was a damn smart one. Although she'd spent most of her high school years high on dope, she still graduated one year early. Despite her best intentions,
however, the old cravings soon returned and Jenna tumbled back into drugs. To survive, she turned to welfare and sold dirt weed to finance her heroin addiction. The state stepped in, took the baby away and handed temporary custody to Jenna's mom, passing the child from one addict to another.

Then, just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, Billy came back into her life. He assured Jenna he was a changed man, ready to be a faithful husband and loving father. Hell, the new- and-improved Billy even came bearing gifts, a passenger van with a kiddie seat strapped in back. But their kumbaya moment didn't last. As soon as the couple climbed into the van they were right back to arguing again. You can pretty much guess what happened next—and if you guessed Billy plunging a screwdriver into Jenna's back, you would be correct.

He shoved her out of the van and hit the gas as Jenna was punching him through the open window, causing the van to veer headlong into an olive tree. Jenna didn't bother checking on his condition. Instead she ran off and called the police. Billy ended up behind bars on an assault and battery charge.

Ah, young love.

So that was the
young woman sitting beside me at the OK Corral bar; the fire chief's daughter who had already packed a lifetime into twenty-two years of hard drugs and violent abuse.

As the drink arrived in front of her, Jenna said to me, “The first time I ever saw you, you were on your bike in the parking lot at Mickey's Liquor Trade. Do you remember?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I remember you. You looked so confident. The way you held yourself with your head so high. I asked Billy who you were and he said, ‘That's George Rowe. Why? Do you want to fuck him?' Then he hit me.”

She said this as a matter of course and took a sip of the Zombie—a drink guaranteed to kick anyone's ass.

“You know, I've heard things about you,” she said after a moment.

“Oh, yeah? What have you heard?”

“Well, it's not good,” she said coyly. “Whenever I've asked people about George Rowe it's never like, ‘Yeah, I know that guy.' It's more like, ‘I hate that fucking guy,' or ‘That dude used to sell me dope.' ”

She took another sip and looked at me hopefully. “Do you still sell dope?”

“Not anymore,” I answered, taking a pull on my bottle. “I got clean about ten years ago.”

“And now what?”

“I own a tree service.”

Jenna played with her drink then said offhandedly, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Not really,” I answered. Which was a lie. I was seeing Christie at the time.

Jenna set her half-empty glass on the bar and studied it a moment.

“What are we doing here, George?”

“You mean in this bar?”

She turned with a level gaze. “You know what I mean.”

“I already told you. Billy wanted me to check on you.”

“That's all?”

I thought for a moment, then said, “And he doesn't want you pressing charges.”

Anger flashed in her eyes—a look that, unfortunately, would become all too familiar.

“He can go fuck himself,” she hissed. She drained her glass and ordered another Zombie. “You know we've got a kid, right?”

“I heard you have a little girl.”

“Did you know Billy tried to kill her?”

“When was this?”

“Last year in Arizona, before the baby was born. He was cheating on me. I saw him go inside this tweaker pad with this chick, so I grabbed a
pickax from the shed and started hitting his fuckin' Impala with it. I put holes all over that thing.”

Jenna paused as the bartender showed up with her drink.

“People tell me I have a temper,” she said, lifting the glass.

“No shit,” said I.

“I get it from my mom. I remember she used to say to me, ‘We don't need no stinkin' men because we are badass babes.”

She smiled at the memory and took a drink. “Where was I?”

“With a pickax.”

“Right. So Billy comes running out of the house and chases me across the yard with a broom handle. I tried to climb a fence, but I was seven months pregnant and couldn't make it, so I just sat on the ground and let him beat me. But then he started kicking me, so I decided I'd better run. When he caught me again he started hitting me in the stomach with that broom handle, and the whole time he's screaming, ‘You're not going to have that baby, bitch. You're not gonna have my kid.' ”

Jenna lifted her glass in triumph. “But guess what? I had his fucking kid.”

She took a healthy swallow, then paused to reflect.

“That asshole was always doing shit like that. Like this one time he had me pinned to the floor of our trailer with one hand and he's got a gun pointed at my face with the other. And then he started shooting. The bullets are hitting all around my head and ricocheting off the concrete slab under the trailer. I could smell my hair burning, that's how fuckin' close those bullets were. When he let me up there were holes in the floor the shape of my head.”

“That's messed up,” was all I could think to say.

“So the next morning I grabbed my pink lady—that was this little gun I owned with a pink mother-of-pearl grip—and I straddled Billy while he was sleeping, pointed the barrel at his nose and said, ‘Good morning, motherfucker.' ”

I grinned at this. “Should've pulled the trigger.”

“I never got the chance. He grabbed the gun out of my hand and hit me in the head with it. Then he starts yelling at me, ‘Run, bitch, you got six seconds' and started counting. And I ran too, because I knew that sick fuck would kill me. I ran into the desert and hid behind a Joshua tree until I knew he was gone.”

I shook my head. It was just too crazy. Jenna drained her Zombie and set the empty glass on the bar. Man, that girl could drink.

“Thank you, sir,” she said to me, “may I have another?”

After we left the
OK Corral I took Jenna back to the shack in Valle Vista. Old Joe came out of his trailer to introduce himself, but my date was shitfaced and made a lousy first impression.

“She's younger than Christie,” Joe scolded when Jenna was out of earshot. “What are you doing with a kid?”

I wasn't sure myself, but I had a pretty good idea—and it wasn't exactly a noble one. I'd really like to say I was a gentleman, that I did the right thing and tucked that poor girl into bed to sleep off her drunk. I'd like to say that, but I'd be lying. Truth is I wanted to fuck her brains out.

But when Jenna shed her clothes, my stomach nearly turned. Jesus Christ, if you could have seen the shape that girl was in. Never mind that her body was emaciated, it was also covered with ugly welts and bruises. Swear to God, she had black and blues that literally ran from her head to her toes. Never in my life had I seen a human being that looked like that. Here was the poster child for battered women, and, man, it really pissed me off.

Of course, that didn't stop me from screwing her. Hell, no. I downed another glass of Wild Turkey, then Jenna and I did the nasty all night long. The next morning, after I'd driven her back to her girlfriend's place, Billy called from the detention center, anxious to know if I'd talked to Jenna about dropping the charges.

“Check this out, Billy,” I said, swallowing my anger. “I fucked her instead.”

“Wait? What's that?”

“Yeah, I did your old lady last night. Not only that, but I'm not gonna ask her to drop the charges. How's that sound?”

The phone went silent a moment before Billy spoke again.

“Well, that sounds fucked up, George,” he said bitterly.

“Not as fucked up as you. What kind of man are you anyway? Christ, I've never seen a woman beat up so bad. And she doesn't even own a decent pair of shoes.”

Figured I'd throw that one in for good measure.

There was another long pause before Billy said, “Know what? I'm okay with it, George. I probably would have done the same thing.”

I didn't know if the kid was serious, stupid or just angling for another shot at getting those charges dropped. Didn't matter, though. Whatever the reason, I was done with that asshole and hung up the phone. Over the course of the next few days Billy tried calling back, but I refused to talk to him. Eventually he took the hint, and that was the last I heard from that sonofabitch . . . at least for a couple of years anyway.

Now that I was through with her old boyfriend, I had Jenna all to myself. In the following weeks I was drawn to that girl like the slots at Soboba. I just couldn't get enough. And before I realized enough was too much, it was too late. I'd invited her to share my home.

Old Joe thought I'd made another mistake of Godzilla-like proportions. He still hadn't gotten over the fact I was working with the feds; now I was bringing a heroin addict into the apartment. Not only did he think my timing was incredibly bad, but according to him, Jenna was an out-of-control bitch.

“I don't get it,” he said to me one day. “What's the attraction?”

“Well, the pussy's pretty good,” I answered with a stupid grin.

But Joe wasn't laughing. My friend thought I was a goddamn fool, being led by my dick instead of my brain—not the first time he'd seen
that behavior. “You've gotta learn to separate your wants from your needs, brother,” he lectured me. “You might want that girl, but you don't need her. Especially not now.”

Once again the man had a valid point, but Old Joe didn't know the whole truth. With Jenna it wasn't just about getting into her pants. No question the girl was an all-pro in the sack, but like my decision to go under for ATF, taking that damaged soul under my wing had less to do with her pussy than my past.

Truth was I understood the fire chief's daughter. We were birds of a feather. I'd fallen into drug abuse about the same age and remember wishing someone would intervene and save me from my own self-destruction. Not only that, but Jenna had been evicted from the tweaker pad where she'd been crashing and had nowhere else to turn. She'd torched every bridge.

When you're using and abusing you really don't care how your addiction impacts others—even those you love most. Every person that touched that girl's life had been put through hell. Her mom didn't want her, her dad didn't want her. Nobody on God's earth wanted that addict around—except maybe her misery-loves-company junkie friends. If I didn't help that drowning soul, who would?

So I tossed her a lifeline and dragged a crazy woman into my home.

Right out of the gate it was nothing but drama. I quickly learned that trying to contain Jenna was like trying to wrangle a wild horse. You couldn't get a rope on her. And just when you thought you had that bitch corralled, she'd jump the fence and off she'd gallop, looking for her next high. Of course, there wasn't far to go at first. I kept that untapped supply of cancer pain meds stockpiled in the medicine cabinet, and from day one that girl was into them like a kid run amok. All that candy was at her fingertips now, and Jenna couldn't swallow it fast enough. Within a few months the whole stash was wiped out.

I guess in that way she was a lot like her mother, whose pill addiction began when Jenna was thirteen. One day her mom was drunk and tried to move a pot of hot chicken soup from the stovetop to the fridge.
The lid came off, and the broth splashed over her legs and feet, scalding them so badly she was checked into a burn unit for two weeks of skin grafts. The woman came out the other side with scars on her legs and a taste for painkillers, spending her days at home popping Fentanyl and pounding whiskey.