“What’re you wearin’ that thing for? You look like a real slut. He came home late and went upstairs and threatened her children. A week earlier, she had decided to go to bed and wait him out there. “The hell you doin’ up?” he snarled as he tried to close the door behind him.Īs calmly as possible, Josie said, “Just waitin’ on you, dear.
But if there had been no fights he often came home looking for a brawl. He liked to fight in the honky-tonks, and after a rough night he usually licked his wounds and went straight to bed. His face had no cuts or bruises, perhaps a good sign, perhaps not. At thirty-four, he was graying and balding and tried to cover it up with a bad comb-over, which after a night of bar-hopping left long strands of hair hanging below his ears. His pale Irish skin turned red, his cheeks were crimson, and his eyes glowed with a whiskey-lit fire that she had seen too many times. He finally kicked it open and it slammed into the refrigerator. He fell against the kitchen door and then rattled the knob as if it were locked it was not. She had prayed for the courage to use it but still had doubts. She had placed it there an hour earlier for protection, just in case he went after her kids. Beside the door and partially hidden in a corner was an aluminum baseball bat that belonged to her son. She went to the kitchen where the light was on and waited. He staggered and stumbled, and she braced herself for what was to come. The car stopped beside the house and she watched him get out. She had worn it before and he had once liked it. Was it weaving and lurching as usual, or was it under control? Was he drunk as always on these nights or could he have throttled back on the drinking? She wore a racy negligee to catch his attention and perhaps alter his mood from violence to romance. On the sofa in the den, Josie took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and eased to the window to watch the car. Those inside should have been asleep for hours, but sleep was not possible during these awful nights. They washed through the house and cast ominous, silent shadows on the walls, then went away as the car dipped before its final approach. It was long after midnight on an early Sunday when the headlights finally appeared. The seclusion of the house added to the imminent horror. The house could not be seen from the road and was accessed by a winding gravel drive that dipped and curved and at night caused approaching headlights to sweep through the front windows and doors as if to warn those waiting inside. The unhappy little home was out in the country, some six miles south of Clanton on an old county road that went nowhere in particular.
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