Hell Happened (5 page)

Try as he might, Jerry couldn’t convince Andrea to come back home. She filed divorce papers, took her share of their savings and moved to Seattle to be with her high school sweetheart.

It’d pissed Jerry off and he lost 28 pounds from not caring if he ate or not, and the farm had suffered some as well. Randy and Jerry’s friends from Horizon Church where he worshipped got him through the hell. It was a slow process, but Jerry eventually found a way to make it through another day without wanting to just curl up and die.

Just thinking back to those times caused a flicker of pain in Jerry’s chest, but not the thudding like he’d had three years earlier. It was the past. She was also probably dead. So probably was her high school sweetheart.

Kellie heard him coming and offered her hand as he climbed through the hatch. “Good morning,” she said quietly. He took her hand and lifted himself up. Someone had brought a chair up sometime during the night and Kellie had been sitting in it.

“Good morning. No one showed up?” She’d had the fore thought to also make coffee. She had a mug beside her and offered him some which he took gratefully.
“Nope.
Randy and Eddie said they thought they heard some shots that were really far off, but they weren’t sure. No one saw anything,” she told him.

Jerry sat down on the grass and picked up the binoculars. It was still more than an hour before sunrise, but the eastern horizon was already getting light enough to see five or 10 miles distant. He saw nothing moving.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

Jerry wasn’t sure why Kellie hadn’t gone back to bed. She could still get in a couple more hours sleep before everyone started waking up and making too much noise for anyone to sleep. Maybe she didn’t want to go back down before her shift was really over.

“You don’t have to stay, Kellie. Go down and get some sleep if you can,” he told her, not as an order, but a suggestion. He pulled a piece of grass and flicked it in the air. It was a cool Alabama morning with a light breeze coming in from the gulf, and the air was moist, but not uncomfortable.

“I’m not tired, Jerry,” she said as she sat back in the chair and leaned it back on two legs against a Slippery Elm sapling. “It’s peaceful up here and I want to watch the sun come up. If you’re tired, you can go back to bed,” she offered.

“Nah,” he said absently. “You know me. I’m always up early. It’s that dang farmer’s blood in me.”

“I am learning a lot about you, Jerry.”

Jerry, who’d only been half listening to Kellie, took a moment to realize she was saying more than her words. He stopped scanning through the binoculars and looked over at her. “Huh?”

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Kellie smiled at the farmer and watched as he hesitated a moment, thinking of something to say. When he didn’t come up with anything, he went back to looking through the binoculars.

Jerry was so much like the men she avoided so often in her past. He was a simple man, a man of the earth. He had dirty hands, calloused from hard work and scarred from injury. His face was open and honest, but his nose was already showing veins from too much time in the sun. His eyes were plain green and neither piercing nor expressive. His hairline had already recessed most the way up his head and he had a bald spot that his dirty work hat usually covered.

There were so many things about Jerry she never found attractive before the fall of the world. She’d always been drawn to the “pretty boy” or the “bad boy” type of man who had money to spend. Her ex-husband was of the type. He had been tall, handsome, a full head of dark hair, muscles that were defined from his time in the gym, athletic, well-dressed and a smile that drove the other female teachers, and two
of the male teachers, at her school absolutely green with jealousy. Her friends congratulated her on such a handsome husband, and often told her how lucky she was to have snagged such a kind and caring man.

The new earrings she wore, the lovely necklace, the expensive bracelet, the car, were all gifts from her ex-husband. He was a successful investment broker who made good money and while she didn’t need to work, she enjoyed her job.

She was the envy of the other teachers.

The earrings were an apology for the slap that left a hand print for several days and had to be covered with make-up. The necklace was an apology for throwing a can of beer at her hard enough to leave a bump on the back of her head. The bracelet was his way of saying he was sorry for pulling her hair so hard and bruising her forehead.

The car…that was when she found out he’d been cheating on her with one of the many women with whom he worked.

Seven years of marriage went down the drain. She felt she was lucky they’d never had children, even though she loved kids, but Warren had been infertile. It was something she knew going into the marriage and they’d talked of adopting.

When he first started hitting and abusing her she attributed it to his anger at not being able to have children. His brothers had all sired children, but he never would. The plans they’d discussed about adoption never materialized.

She was happy about that decision.

While she had wanted children, as a teacher, she was able to enjoy them while still having freedom to enjoy the unencumbered life of not having them at home. She thought it was the perfect life that she’d won.

But the violence got worse the longer they were married.

Early in the marriage, it was the sulking and silence from him when Kellie had done something of which he didn’t approve. Then he started getting more demonstrative. He hollered at her more and she still recalled to this day the first time he hit her. He said it had been an accident in which he hadn’t meant to really hit her; it was that she’d made him so angry he just lashed out.

He convinced her with presents and candlelight dinners and that handsome smile that he really didn’t mean it. She forgave him.

Some months after that, he had another accident during an argument over her purchase of a little puppy. She knew it was her fault for buying the little guy without asking him, but he was so cute and Kellie always had loved little dogs. She thought for sure Warren would love the little Pug she named “Rip Van Wrinkles.”

Warren was pissed for a long time and complained about every hair he found in their usually well-kept house. If the dog had an accident, Warren would go on about it for hours and sometimes days. If the dog barked or growled, Warren found a reason to complain. One time when Wrinkles was caught on the bed, Warren pulled the blankets off, dog and all, and threw them at Kellie, telling her to keep the damn dog off the bed or else.

When Kellie had had enough and told him “fine, I’ll take him to the pound in the morning and you won’t have to put up with him,” Warren lost his temper and kicked at and missed the friendly little dog, which scampered out of the way and ran to hide under the kitchen table.

Kellie went to get the frightened dog to calm his fears before he had an accident when Warren, still upset from missing the dog with his foot, threw his beer at the dog and accidentally hit Kellie in the back of the head. He said he was sorry that she’d gotten in the way of his throw.

The heart-shaped necklace with the ¼ carat diamond was accompanied by a dozen long-stem roses sent to her classroom was his apology, but Wrinkles had already been taken to the pound. She forgave Warren, again rationalizing that it was her fault for getting the puppy in the first place.

The bracelet was his apology from when he grabbed her hair and was pulling her into the kitchen to show her how the coffee maker she’d left on by accident had boiled the coffee dry, leaving a burned smell in the kitchen and a cracked carafe. She’d just gotten home from school and he had a beer in his hand when she walked through the door. She was barely able to yelp when he swaggered up to her, a smile on his face, the smile which melted women’s hearts.

Instead of kissing her like she thought he was going to, Warren grabbed her hair and hollered right in her ear “are you trying to burn our house down you stupid cow?” He was already pulling her to the kitchen while she was trying to ask him what he was talking about. He had grabbed her hair hard and she felt it being pulled out when she was bashed into the hardwood archway which separated the kitchen from the dining area. Her left temple struck the hardwood frame and left her dizzy as Warren screamed about the coffee maker and the smell and the carafe, which he threw into the sink, shattering it.

It was later that night, after Warren had fallen asleep that Kellie had left him for the first time. She went to her sister Jennie’s house and cried herself to sleep in her sister’s bed with her sister beside her, just like when they were kids.  Jennie’s husband, Rich, who was a dear man, had offered up his room and wife. He slept in their sons’ room with their three boys while Jennie and Kellie talked through most of the night.

Jennie counseled Kellie to get away, to get a divorce and never go back and offered her home, small as it was, as a place for Kellie to stay until she got things figured out.

Kellie finally fell asleep.

Kellie stayed with her sister for three days, calling the school to say she was sick the next morning, a Friday and the entire weekend. On Monday she went back to school. Jennie sent her husband to Kellie’s house to get a change of clothes and some personal belongings.

Warren wasn’t there when Rich made the clothing run, which was good with him. Rich and Warren never really got along, even when Kellie and Warren weren’t fighting. Also, Warren was huge and Rich was a portly, gentle man. In a fight, Rich would get his ass kicked six ways before he could put his dukes up to defend himself.

Kellie said she was going to contact a lawyer after school, but she was intercepted by Warren with two dozen long stem roses in the parking lot, and made sure Kellie’s friends all saw him there.

Kellie always left the school with two or three of her friends.

She was so predictable and Warren knew it.

Kellie might have told her friends they had been fighting, but he was sure she hadn’t told them he had hit her. That wasn’t the way Kellie was. All of Kellie’s friends would see the roses, would see tuxedo he was wearing, would notice the heart-shaped flower pedals he’d arranged on her car. They’d all be envious of the way Warren apologized with gifts and old fashion romanticism.

Kellie would listen to his apology and know her friends would be eavesdropping or watching from their own cars. Kellie wouldn’t make a scene because it wasn’t her way. They’d all see how Kellie had a man
so big, so wealthy,
so
powerful, bend down to one knee to apologize for some wrong he had done. The other women would go home to their husbands and say things like “why can’t you be more like Warren?”

If they only knew what Warren’s personality was really like behind the façade he made public, they would thank God their husbands weren’t like Warren.

Kellie did contact an attorney, but not that night. That night she really tried to believe him when he said he’d never hurt her again and how he had been upset by losing some big account and every other excuse he could throw in. It was the first time he had admitted that it wasn’t her fault that he’d hurt her.

She really tried to believe him when tears rolled down his face. She contacted an attorney when less than a year later she found a pair of women’s panties in the center console of her husband’s Lexus. They had been going out to dinner that evening when Warren was pulled over for speeding, again. She reached for the registration and insurance papers in the console only to be surprised by something Victoria Secret had sent someone else. Warren might have been able to explain them as a gift he was hiding to give to her later on, except the note that was bobby-pinned to the panties was in someone else’s hand writing and read “Warren, anytime you get lonely again, I’m ready!’ and signed by Suzy with a phone number underneath.

Kellie hid the incriminating evidence while Warren was out of the car talking with the officer.

He talked the female officer out of issuing a ticket and Kellie listened to him as he gloated how he had used his charm to get out of a ticket…again.

She pretended nothing was wrong through dinner because she refused to make a scene in public and listened while Warren told of his exploits at work and how another big account had come to him. All through his ramblings, Kellie kept the face of the adoring wife and Warren ate it up. 

But inside, she seethed at the disgusting bastard.

Back home, Warren took a shower in preparation for a night of loving with his wife and while he did, she put the panties on the bed sans the note which she kept, packed as many things as she could into a suitcase and left.

A new Toyota Sequoia was delivered a week later to her sister’s house, where Kellie was staying until she could get an apartment. It came with a large red bow. Inside were a heart-felt apology and the title for the car in her name.

She kept the car after the divorce and gave her three-year-old Volvo to her sister and brother-in-law. He was going to fight it in court, but Kellie had kept enough proof, and didn’t ask for more than her share of their joint belongings, that in the end he signed the divorce papers and called her a worthless whore.

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