Protection?
In the 1930’s, with work hard to find and wages low, my dad accepted a job at the local junk yard in rural Kentucky. Room and board, a cabin actually, with utilities paid in full and enough cash for groceries was the deal. The remote location, near a grave yard with a church on the far side of that, made the place vulnerable to thieves.
Mom was against the idea from the start. Dad, however, was convinced it would be the easiest job in the world. They were a young couple with no children though they were trying to conceive ... THAT being part of the contract when their marriage was arranged ... and BOTH wanted children though for different reasons.
At 6’2 ½” and weighing 210 pounds, dad was a former boxer so he wasn’t the least concerned about people ‘breaking’ in and stealing car parts or whatever while they were living there. Dad has muscles galore, enjoyed working out, and was a strong man. Half-Cherokee Indian but, raised by his Portuguese father--who trapped and sold furs for a living--after his mother died when he was three, dad had been teased and taunted about his ’skin’ from DAY 1! He had no qualms about defending himself having been on his own since age 16.
His wife, however, was barely out of her teens, 5’1” and 125 pounds soaking wet. The idea of being left alone at night, from time to time while Lee made his ’rounds’, scared her to no ends. She’d been protected all her life, abandoned shortly after birth by her father and orphaned by her mom via the 1918 influenza, Laura was raised by her mother’s parents who just recently met their maker. She’d never been completely alone before in her life!
The first week was horrible! All the sounds, the wind on the metal scraps, tree limbs scratching at the window, the shuddering of mice and what-not out and about them, made Laura issue an ultimatum.
“Lee, you may not mind living here because you don’t hear all the noises around us but, I’m not deaf.” Laura stood up to him for the upteenth time, “either you buy a gun and teach me how to use it OR I’m leaving ... with or without you!”
“We’ll go to the pawn shop, buy a used one and put it in my name. Nobody will ever know that you have a gun in the house.”
“I could still go back to prison just for having one in the place. It doesn’t have to belong to me to violate my parole.” Lee’s voice was calm but obviously unhappy. “That isn’t what you want, is it? Who would take care of you?”
Lee loved Laura, without doubt, but she made LIFE Hell! Now that he no longer supported her aging grandparents while she cared for them, she’d better get pregnant soon or Laura WOULD leave him. Beautiful but a spit-fire, her heart belonged to another man when they met. However, a chambermaid only winds up with the Masters’ son in fairy tales. Too bad Laura still believed in them. Still, she was young enough to find someone else to start over with. The thought made him cower to her shrill voice.
Dad, having served time for involuntary manslaughter, was exceptionally law abiding. If he hadn’t been severely hearing-impaired, Lee would have heard NOT to release the rail car while working in the train yards where a co-worker was crushed between two cars. It was an accident that cost him three years in the State Pen! Dad tried to tell them it was a ‘mistake’ but no one would listen--the “Injun’” halved a ‘black man’ and would ‘do time’. Never mind that the two guys were ‘friends,’ somebody was responsible.
Nonetheless, as in all things, Laura won.
Lee cleaned the gun, set up a target area in a secluded place where the bullets would do no harm and began teaching Laura how to use it. It was slow going. Laura thought the gun was too heavy and was a tad squeamish. Thankfully, that meant she would be less likely to use it.
Once or twice every night, Lee was to ‘scout’ about to insure there were no ‘fence jumpers’, thieves, etc. Sometimes he locked the door; other times, the weather biting fiercely or howling with snowflakes, he didn’t. Laura never noticed one way or another.
She did notice nausea in the morning, that she was late and frowned. This was no place to bring a kid into the world, she didn’t love her husband and it would RUIN her chances at having a normal life.
A mess of conflicted nerves, thoughts and misplaced energy, Laura tried picking fights with her husband over every little things but, unfortunately for her, he always caved. The stress inside the cabin, between them, filled every inch of the abode.
“Lee, I can’t live like this anymore!” Laura shouted, angry. “Either we move or I’m leaving!”
“Bbb..ut!” Lee noted her disappointment but was surprised at yet another demand. “Where do you want to go? There’s not a lot of places that will hire an ex-con, you know.”
“I don’t care! Find something else to do, somewhere else to live or I’m leaving you!”
Lee felt the verbal punch and withdrew. He spent all day walking around town in hopes of finding ‘anything else’ but returned desolate.
“I tried, Laura,” he wrung his huge hands. “I really did but there aren’t any jobs right now.” A half-smile crept across his face. “I even tried to enlist, you know, so I’d be out of your hair for a while and to serve my country.”
Laura sighed heavily, turned and walked away from the dinner she’d sat on the table. Lee sat down to eat alone. A tear lingered in the corner of his eye but he dare not let it slide. She already KNEW how he felt about her; it was her turn to feel something for him. You can’t make anyone LOVE you ... love doesn’t work that way.
That night Lee was out on his second ‘round,’ in the bitter cold but glad of it as it kept him alert, without locking the door behind him.
Shivering awake, the door had blown ajar, Laura scoffed, locked it, then crawled back into the warm bed.
Shortly afterwards, awakened by someone turning the door knob, Laura grabbed the gun out from beneath her pillow.
Whoever it was moved to the window as she patiently loaded the gun. She gasped as they scratched at the icy glass but couldn’t see them for the slick coat.
Laura walked into the living room, both arms extended with the gun pointed straight at the front door.
“Lee, is that you?” She stammered just now noticing that he wasn’t in bed. Obvious to the fact that he couldn’t hear her, she repeated the question. “Lee, is that YOU?”
The door knob rattled again, several times, and then whoever it was began hitting the door. She could see the bulge as they pressed the full weight against it time after time.
“Lee, don’t scare me like that!” Laura screamed outraged. “I’m going to shoot the next time the door moves!”
Dad, hearing nothing, nearly frozen, turned to wrap himself in a nearby tarp to fend off the chill just as a BOOM splattered the upper center of the door!
Throwing the tarp aside, Dad burst through the door before Laura could pull the trigger a second time, wrestled the gun away from her and laid it aside.
“Hell, woman, what did you shot at me for?” Rejected, torn, surprised, Lee yelled.
Laura, knowing she’d nearly killed her husband, collapsed in his arms. “I.I.I.I’m pregnant and this place is scaring me to death!” Sobbing uncontrollably in Lee’s arms, Laura murmured, “You promised to take care of me. I HATE this place! I HATE being sick all the time! I HATE you!”
Lee only heard the part about being pregnant, the part he wanted to hear. “Ah, Honey, that’s the hormones talking. You’ll be fine. I’m fine! We’ll move! I’m going to do better by you!” He gestured around the place looking disgusted. “This ain’t no place for a baby.”
“Oh, Lee!”
They kissed and made up then and there due to a hole in the door that should’ve been through his chest. He thought no more of it and they moved immediately ... for Laura’s peace of mind.
Dad died when I was five years old of cancer (natural causes), but mom told this story over and over to us kids.
To me it raised too many ‘why’s:’ ... why did they need a weapon, why did mom shoot when dad was out ‘there’ AND hearing impaired, why did dad overlook it so easily, why did her pregnancy make a difference (when the baby came, it was stillborn)???? Despite trying, of the four pregnancies during their first 10 years of marriage, none survived past 24 hours. Why didn't she leave dad? She never spoke of being 'in love' with him ... just felt 'sorry' for him.
Forget that Lee changed his name prior to their wedding (to protect her from being connected to an ex-con or from bringing shame to their offspring), sometimes worked two or three jobs, she didn’t LOVE him! Now that had only herself to take care of, she HAD to undo this horrible mistake somehow. This wasn’t the time for babies!
copyright 2008 Sandra S. Corona
She KNEW he wasn’t allowed to possess a weapon as he’d done time, was an ex-con but the lass was stubborn.
