Carnivàle - "Quiet", Ben Hawkins, PG
Title: Quiet
Author: lindentree
Rating: PG
Character(s): Ben
Word Count: 3,497
Summary: No, Ben was the one who made all the bad noise.
Notes: A little Ben character study. Everything is pre-series, with vague allusions to the series itself. Loosely based on some of the information given about Ben's background.
Thanks to the_wanlorn for the beta. ♥
I
The first word Ben Hawkins learned was quiet.
Ben grew up on a remote farm in Oklahoma with his mother and his grandfather. Flora Hawkins liked things quiet. Living outside of town was a quiet way of life, with only the barnyard sounds of chickens and cows, and the birdsong of larks and flycatchers to break the silence. But it wasn't really those sounds that bothered Flora.
No, Ben was the one who made all the bad noise.
Sudden or loud noises distressed her. “Quiet!” she would hiss, turning to glare at him, her nostrils flaring in anger. Ben learned to move slowly, softly, carefully, so he didn’t shuffle his feet or bump the table or knock anything over. It wasn’t enough, though. Sometimes she got angry at a soft whistle in his nose, or his jaw clicking while he ate, or his stomach growling in the night.
When she turned on him, her hands white-knuckled on the table, Ben would look to Grandpa for help. But Grandpa would just stare at his daughter like the thin, wild-eyed woman at the table was a complete stranger and not the bright-haired, laughing girl he had once spun in his arms.
“Your mama wasn’t always like this,” Grandpa told him one night as she wept and raged at some invisible foe in the other room. “She was only like this after -“ he stopped himself, glancing at Ben with bewildered pain in his eyes.
He didn’t need to finish. Ben knew.
II
Be quiet. Stay out from underfoot. Get out of my sight.
It got worse after Grandpa died.
Grandpa caught diphtheria in the fall, when a bunch of town folks came down with it. His neck swelled up and he was delirious with fever, and he couldn’t talk or barely breathe for how raw his throat was. The doctor came and stood and shook his head. After he left, Mama held the bill in her hands and cried soundlessly, her mouth closed in a thin line and her eyes looking hard at nothing.
Ben tried to help, or at least stay out of the way. Mama stayed up with Grandpa, nursing him and talking in a low voice about times long before Ben was born, and whispering calm things from the Bible that Ben too could recite by heart.
He saw how it hurt his mother to see Grandpa this way. He watched her hands as they carefully tended him, tenderly touching his burning face. Ben watched her hands say “I love you” every time they brushed his forehead.
Ben lay awake on his pallet in the kitchen, watching from under lowered lashes as Mama tucked Grandpa in and went to her own bed, leaving the lamp burning. Ben listened, perfectly quiet, until her soft breathing slowed and he was certain she was asleep.
He padded softly across the clapboard floor to Grandpa’s bedside. The old man was asleep, his face pale and clammy with sweat. As Ben stood watching, Grandpa’s breath was slowing. Ben glanced over his shoulder at the thin sheet which divided the small bedroom into two tiny bedrooms.
Grandpa gasped, his torn throat rattling. The sound gave Ben a sick feeling in his stomach; he had to do something. He reached out and placed his hands on Grandpa’s chest. Immediately, the horrible rattling stopped. Grandpa’s breathing slowed, steadied. Ben pulled his hands away. His grandfather slept on, his breath peaceful and unhurried. Ben turned out the lamp and went back to bed before his mother woke.
Ben slept in the next morning, and when he woke he expected to get a thrashing for neglecting his chores. But his mother said nothing, humming as she washed dishes in the dishpan.
Grandpa’s bed was made, but he wasn’t in it. Ben wondered aloud if he was already well enough to be out working.
“No,” replied Mama. “He’s dead.”
Ben turned and stared. She pressed a small bundle wrapped in a burlap sack into his hands.
“I found the kitten in the bed with him. You’d best go bury it before it starts to smell.”
Then it was just the two of them.
III
You’re marked, boy. Marked by the Beast.
Ben was old enough to go to the school outside town, but he didn’t go. Grandpa had already taught him to read using the Bible, and Flora figured there were better uses for him than sitting in a schoolhouse. They didn’t have much to do with town, as it was - poor, crazy Flora Hawkins and her illegitimate son were pariahs, and Ben hated that mixture of disdain and tepid pity in people’s eyes.
He tended the fields, snared rabbits, and fished sometimes. Things went along best if he kept his head down, did his work, read his Bible, and didn’t ask questions. He often caught his mother staring off into space, looking down the road or out the window at something (someone) that wasn’t there. He wanted to touch her hand and say I’m sorry he left us and I’ll never leave you and I love you. Instead, he went outside to feed the chickens.
When Ben was 10 years old, the carnival came to Milfay. Ben only found out because he was working in the far southern end of their property and could see them setting up on the outskirts of town. Hesitantly, he mentioned it to his mother at dinner.
Flora put her fork down carefully and looked at Ben squarely over the table.
“Do you know what kind of people you find in those places?”
Ben shook his head, wishing he hadn’t said anything.
“Thieves. Liars. Whores. Reprobates. Degenerates and drunks. Filthy, sinful people who will degrade themselves for money. They are all going to burn in hell, and unless you want to burn with them, you won’t go near that den of sin. Do you hear me?”
Ben nodded readily, his stomach twisting. Later, after his mother was asleep, Ben sat in the dark at the window, looking at the carnival lights in the distance. It didn’t look like sin. It looked like magic.
That night he dreamed that a skinny little girl about his age, with dark brown hair and eyes to match, tapped her fingers on the windowpane and climbed into the house. “Wake up!” she whispered, shaking him. He followed her outside, where she took his hand and they ran through the fields until they reached the carnival. It was even more beautiful up close - everything was covered in lights, and a giant star turned against the sky. Music and laughter filled the air. Ben stopped short at the edge of the cornfield. The little girl turned back to look at him.
“Come on, come out!” she called, waving to him.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have to stay.”
The girl cocked her head at him thoughtfully before walking back and standing in front of him. Her shrewd gaze locked on his as she scrutinized him.
“Okay,” she said, blinking. She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be seeing you."
He spent the whole next day distracted in his work, standing up every few minutes to check the horizon. But the carnival was already gone, and they didn't come back.
IV
I'll never leave you. I love you.
The first year the drought came, Flora said it was a trial of the spirit. They read the Book of Job and prayed hard for the strength to endure.
The second year the drought came, it brought locusts with it. They descended in a noisy, rasping wave, and devoured every dried, papery husk of corn on their land. They ate every wilting shoot and every wildflower and every thorny weed. They even ate the clothes off the line. It all happened in the space of an hour. Ben and Flora stood silently at the front windows and watched until finally the locusts dispersed and the sun emerged. Flora sat down and opened her bible to Exodus. Ben went out to the barn and fixed the broken plow, whose existence now seemed rather pointless.
The third year the drought came, instead of locusts, it brought dust. Dust from every other dried-up farm for hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles. The wind howled and the dust whirled and the seeds that were planted didn't even emerge as seedlings - they dried up and blew away.
"You did this," said Flora, holding her cross to her chest and shaking her head. "You did this."
Ben was 16 years old that summer, and he started walking to town from time to time, seeing as there was no farming to be done. He met Fred Smith outside the co-op when he asked Ben for a cigarette. Ben stood and smoked with him until Fred's gang shuffled out of the store. Clarence Collins, Jack McGrady, and the Thompson brothers, Earl and Harry. The five of them made up the criminal element in Milfay, and although they were young, cocky, and restless, their bark was worse than their bite. They also weren't too smart, as far as Ben could tell, for they mistook his aloof silences for a gruff, arrogant toughness. They all came from good homes in town with two parents and a Ford and a front room for visitors. As far as they were concerned, Ben's presence in their midst legitimized them as a gang of troublemakers.
Ben didn't mind, though. It was a strange feeling to be surrounded by people who wanted to be with him. Mostly they drove around in Jack McGrady's father's old jalopy, drinking and shooting out people's porch lights.
On Fred's birthday they drove thirty miles over the state line into Texas, to a cat house Jack's brother had told them about. Ben drank steadily the whole way there, and by the time they arrived, he could hardly see straight. He didn't know what was happening until he found himself shut up in a room with a whore who looked younger than he was. She had curly brown hair and pale skin, her clear blue eyes ringed with dark circles and make-up, her mouth painted to look like Clara Bow's.
"What'sa matter?" she asked, sitting next to him on the bed. "You shy?"
Ben shook his head, embarrassed and miserable. "This was their idea."
"Oh," she said. She was quiet for a moment before she leaned in closer and whispered, "Maybe you don't like girls?"
Ben frowned, not understanding. He liked girls all right. He didn't hardly know any.
"Well," she said, standing up and getting a cigarette from the battered bureau in the corner, "We can set a while and if you want a slice, you just let me know."
She handed him a cigarette and settled herself up against the headboard with an issue of Photoplay. Ben hazarded a sideways glance. Her cheap peach-coloured bed jacket had fallen open to reveal long skinny legs and more lacy underthings. Ben's face burned, but he became distracted by the purple bruises all over her thighs, their edges turning green and yellow as they slowly healed.
"That looks like it hurt," Ben said, pointing.
"Huh? Oh, that," she sighed, attempting to cover herself. "Make-up won't cover it. Sorry."
"How'd you do that?"
"I didn't do it," she said with a shrug, turning a page in her magazine. "Some fellas get rough."
Ben stared for a minute at her face, pretty and young underneath the make-up, despite the darkness that crouched there. He reached out, gently placing a hand on her naked thigh. She looked up, thinking he had gotten himself ready. But a strange sensation caused her to look down, and she was astonished to see the bruises disappearing as if absorbed by his hand.
"What did you do?" she breathed, breaking the eerie silence that descended. Ben snatched his hand away and stood up, pacing the room. Glancing back at her face, full of fear and wonder, he felt sick to his stomach and made for the door.
"Wait!" she said, jumping off the bed and grabbing his arm. "Don't go out yet! It ain't been long enough. It's okay - I won't tell nobody. I'll make a real fuss about how great you are, your buddies don't ever gotta know. Unless you wanna...?"
Ben shook his head, looking away.
"All right, then!" she said, and proceeded to jump up and down with gusto on the rickety iron bed and make horrendous noises the likes of which Ben had never heard in his life, occasionally punctuated with a lusty, "Oh yeah, honey!" She grinned down at him the whole time, stifling her laughter. She suddenly looked the right age, and Ben knew she couldn't be much older than 13. He left a wad of crumpled one dollar bills on her bureau, and when they all piled out of the place, the fellas clapped him on his back and whistled.
V
The robbery was Fred's idea. Ben knew he should have listened to his gut and walked away, but he didn't. He wasn't sure why those guys wanted to rob a bank anyway - none of their families were hurting for the money. Not like other families in the county who were starting to get shuffled off their land and were heading west with what little they had strapped to their trucks.
They drove to Blackwell to rob the Savings & Loans, and Ben ended up holding a shotgun and keeping watch at the door while Fred strutted and shouted around the bank, destroying the high ceiling with bullets. Ben nearly got shot when the law showed up and knocked down the door, and the next thing he knew he was face down on the floor with some deputy's knee digging into his back.
All those boys had fathers and money, so when it came time for the trial, Ben found that his friends and their lawyers had decided that it was all Ben's idea. The jury sent him down to Leavenworth for 20 years.
His cell mate was a guy named Ernie who hated everybody who wasn't exactly like him, but especially women. He could go on forever and a day about backstabbing, money-hungry whores, and his chatter made Ben miss the long empty silences of home.
Ben hadn't seen his mother since the day they robbed the bank, when he left home in the morning and told her he'd be back for dinner. He never got back, and she never came to the county jail or to the courthouse to see him, so that he wasn't sure if she even knew where he'd got to. If she cared at all, or was relieved that he was gone.
Which is why he wasn't expecting any mail, and was surprised to receive a letter one day. It wasn't from her, but from the town doctor, who wanted to know how he planned to pay for his mother's treatment. She had dust pneumonia and was dying, and there was no money in the farm because the bank was going to repossess it.
Ben read the letter five or six times, then folded it and shoved it in his pocket. He laid awake most of the night, staring at the concrete ceiling and smoking. The next morning, he started a fight in the exercise yard and got sent off to a chain gang.
He never intended to hurt nobody.
Most of the guards on the gang were pretty lazy and just stood over with one another, talking and spitting. But there was one fella who took a lot of pride in his work and kept a close eye on them. He was kind, though, or as kind as a prison guard could be. Ben managed to wear his chains out and sneak off one afternoon, and he had made it as far as the safety of a copse of trees, thinking he was home free, when he heard a voice.
"Stop, kid!"
Ben froze and turned around. It was the guard. The good one. He was panting hard, but he had caught up.
"Hold on just a minute there, son," he said, catching his breath. "Think about what you're doin', here. They're just gonna add another five, ten years to your sentence. But if you keep your head down you might get paroled. You don't gotta do this."
"Yes sir, I do. My ma's dyin'. I gotta get back home."
The guard looked at him, compassion evident in his eyes. "I'm real sorry about your ma, kid. But you can't throw your whole life away. You still got a chance in this world. How old are you? 17?"
"18," Ben replied, hearing dogs barking in the distance, shouts. He began backing away.
The guard removed his gun from its holster. "I don't wanna shoot you, kid. Stay right where you are."
"I don't want you to shoot me either, but I gotta go. I won't hold no hard feelings. You're just doin' your job. But I gotta go."
The barking came closer - the other guards were coming, and they had dogs. Ben turned to run for the creek, and the guard lurched forward to grab him, stop him, and a shot split the air.
Ben stumbled, thinking he'd been hit, but when no pain blossomed on his body, he turned and saw the guard lying flat on his stomach, shot accidentally from behind by one of the other guards who must have mistaken him for Ben. His stomach plummeted. He took a step towards the prostrate guard, but the guards could be heard crashing through the bush only a few feet away. Ben hesitated, then turned and ran.
His heart pounding, he crossed the creek bottom and ran through the trees on the other side. He followed it for miles and miles until it drained into the Cimarron River, always moving, always hearing the hounds and the men behind him. The journey took three days.
He skulked along the outskirts of tiny Milfay, and nailed to the outside of a closed gas station, his fears were confirmed.
WANTED
BENJAMIN KROHN HAWKINS
CHAIN GANG ESCAPEE
MURDERER
In the dead of night, he walked across the barren, dusty plain which had once been their cornfield. The house was dark and silent. He let himself in and listened.
A wet gurgling sound came from the other room. Ben moved closer and recognized it as the sound of his mother struggling to breathe. He groped in the darkness until he found a lamp, which he lit with his lighter. The room was still dim, but he could see his mother's form huddled in her bed. She was filthy, covered in sweat, shaking in her sleep with the effort of drawing breath.
Ben set the lamp down and went to her. Her face was drawn sharply into a frown, her hands clutching her little wooden cross and her Bible to her narrow chest. Ben knelt by her side, watching her sleep. She was seized suddenly by a fit of coughing, and Ben watched helplessly as she gasped, his eyes prickling with tears.
He thought of Grandpa, and the kitten, and the little whore in Texas. Taking a deep breath, he reached out a trembling hand and placed it on her chest. He could feel her thin sharp bones under her skin, which was so hot it felt like it could burn him where he touched her.
She woke suddenly, her hand gripping his wrist. She dug her nails into his skin and shoved his hand away with what strength she had.
"No!" she choked, coughing. Blood spattered the dirty sheets. "Don't you touch me. Don't you ever touch me! I know what you do. The devil's work. Like him. I hate you both! I wish I'd drowned you. That's what we did on the farm when I was a little girl. Drowned the unwanted things."
She began to weep, then, as though tapping a deep well.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I did this. I was weak. The flesh is weak. I only loved him and now... and now..." Her words trailed into another violent coughing fit which carried on until she was gasping desperately for breath.
Ben shushed softly, resisting the urge to touch her. He wanted so badly just to touch her.
Finally her breathing slowed and she closed her eyes once more. Ben stood slowly, noticing for the first time how sore his entire body was. Wearily he walked into the other room and sat at the old wooden table, thinking he should probably clean the place up or get her some food or find a way to saw the chains off his ankle.
But the night was quiet and unusually cool, and he was tired in a way he had never been tired before. He slumped forward and rested his head on the flat, hard surface of the table, and went to sleep.
-end-
Author: lindentree
Rating: PG
Character(s): Ben
Word Count: 3,497
Summary: No, Ben was the one who made all the bad noise.
Notes: A little Ben character study. Everything is pre-series, with vague allusions to the series itself. Loosely based on some of the information given about Ben's background.
Thanks to the_wanlorn for the beta. ♥
I
The first word Ben Hawkins learned was quiet.
Ben grew up on a remote farm in Oklahoma with his mother and his grandfather. Flora Hawkins liked things quiet. Living outside of town was a quiet way of life, with only the barnyard sounds of chickens and cows, and the birdsong of larks and flycatchers to break the silence. But it wasn't really those sounds that bothered Flora.
No, Ben was the one who made all the bad noise.
Sudden or loud noises distressed her. “Quiet!” she would hiss, turning to glare at him, her nostrils flaring in anger. Ben learned to move slowly, softly, carefully, so he didn’t shuffle his feet or bump the table or knock anything over. It wasn’t enough, though. Sometimes she got angry at a soft whistle in his nose, or his jaw clicking while he ate, or his stomach growling in the night.
When she turned on him, her hands white-knuckled on the table, Ben would look to Grandpa for help. But Grandpa would just stare at his daughter like the thin, wild-eyed woman at the table was a complete stranger and not the bright-haired, laughing girl he had once spun in his arms.
“Your mama wasn’t always like this,” Grandpa told him one night as she wept and raged at some invisible foe in the other room. “She was only like this after -“ he stopped himself, glancing at Ben with bewildered pain in his eyes.
He didn’t need to finish. Ben knew.
II
Be quiet. Stay out from underfoot. Get out of my sight.
It got worse after Grandpa died.
Grandpa caught diphtheria in the fall, when a bunch of town folks came down with it. His neck swelled up and he was delirious with fever, and he couldn’t talk or barely breathe for how raw his throat was. The doctor came and stood and shook his head. After he left, Mama held the bill in her hands and cried soundlessly, her mouth closed in a thin line and her eyes looking hard at nothing.
Ben tried to help, or at least stay out of the way. Mama stayed up with Grandpa, nursing him and talking in a low voice about times long before Ben was born, and whispering calm things from the Bible that Ben too could recite by heart.
He saw how it hurt his mother to see Grandpa this way. He watched her hands as they carefully tended him, tenderly touching his burning face. Ben watched her hands say “I love you” every time they brushed his forehead.
Ben lay awake on his pallet in the kitchen, watching from under lowered lashes as Mama tucked Grandpa in and went to her own bed, leaving the lamp burning. Ben listened, perfectly quiet, until her soft breathing slowed and he was certain she was asleep.
He padded softly across the clapboard floor to Grandpa’s bedside. The old man was asleep, his face pale and clammy with sweat. As Ben stood watching, Grandpa’s breath was slowing. Ben glanced over his shoulder at the thin sheet which divided the small bedroom into two tiny bedrooms.
Grandpa gasped, his torn throat rattling. The sound gave Ben a sick feeling in his stomach; he had to do something. He reached out and placed his hands on Grandpa’s chest. Immediately, the horrible rattling stopped. Grandpa’s breathing slowed, steadied. Ben pulled his hands away. His grandfather slept on, his breath peaceful and unhurried. Ben turned out the lamp and went back to bed before his mother woke.
Ben slept in the next morning, and when he woke he expected to get a thrashing for neglecting his chores. But his mother said nothing, humming as she washed dishes in the dishpan.
Grandpa’s bed was made, but he wasn’t in it. Ben wondered aloud if he was already well enough to be out working.
“No,” replied Mama. “He’s dead.”
Ben turned and stared. She pressed a small bundle wrapped in a burlap sack into his hands.
“I found the kitten in the bed with him. You’d best go bury it before it starts to smell.”
Then it was just the two of them.
III
You’re marked, boy. Marked by the Beast.
Ben was old enough to go to the school outside town, but he didn’t go. Grandpa had already taught him to read using the Bible, and Flora figured there were better uses for him than sitting in a schoolhouse. They didn’t have much to do with town, as it was - poor, crazy Flora Hawkins and her illegitimate son were pariahs, and Ben hated that mixture of disdain and tepid pity in people’s eyes.
He tended the fields, snared rabbits, and fished sometimes. Things went along best if he kept his head down, did his work, read his Bible, and didn’t ask questions. He often caught his mother staring off into space, looking down the road or out the window at something (someone) that wasn’t there. He wanted to touch her hand and say I’m sorry he left us and I’ll never leave you and I love you. Instead, he went outside to feed the chickens.
When Ben was 10 years old, the carnival came to Milfay. Ben only found out because he was working in the far southern end of their property and could see them setting up on the outskirts of town. Hesitantly, he mentioned it to his mother at dinner.
Flora put her fork down carefully and looked at Ben squarely over the table.
“Do you know what kind of people you find in those places?”
Ben shook his head, wishing he hadn’t said anything.
“Thieves. Liars. Whores. Reprobates. Degenerates and drunks. Filthy, sinful people who will degrade themselves for money. They are all going to burn in hell, and unless you want to burn with them, you won’t go near that den of sin. Do you hear me?”
Ben nodded readily, his stomach twisting. Later, after his mother was asleep, Ben sat in the dark at the window, looking at the carnival lights in the distance. It didn’t look like sin. It looked like magic.
That night he dreamed that a skinny little girl about his age, with dark brown hair and eyes to match, tapped her fingers on the windowpane and climbed into the house. “Wake up!” she whispered, shaking him. He followed her outside, where she took his hand and they ran through the fields until they reached the carnival. It was even more beautiful up close - everything was covered in lights, and a giant star turned against the sky. Music and laughter filled the air. Ben stopped short at the edge of the cornfield. The little girl turned back to look at him.
“Come on, come out!” she called, waving to him.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have to stay.”
The girl cocked her head at him thoughtfully before walking back and standing in front of him. Her shrewd gaze locked on his as she scrutinized him.
“Okay,” she said, blinking. She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be seeing you."
He spent the whole next day distracted in his work, standing up every few minutes to check the horizon. But the carnival was already gone, and they didn't come back.
IV
I'll never leave you. I love you.
The first year the drought came, Flora said it was a trial of the spirit. They read the Book of Job and prayed hard for the strength to endure.
The second year the drought came, it brought locusts with it. They descended in a noisy, rasping wave, and devoured every dried, papery husk of corn on their land. They ate every wilting shoot and every wildflower and every thorny weed. They even ate the clothes off the line. It all happened in the space of an hour. Ben and Flora stood silently at the front windows and watched until finally the locusts dispersed and the sun emerged. Flora sat down and opened her bible to Exodus. Ben went out to the barn and fixed the broken plow, whose existence now seemed rather pointless.
The third year the drought came, instead of locusts, it brought dust. Dust from every other dried-up farm for hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles. The wind howled and the dust whirled and the seeds that were planted didn't even emerge as seedlings - they dried up and blew away.
"You did this," said Flora, holding her cross to her chest and shaking her head. "You did this."
Ben was 16 years old that summer, and he started walking to town from time to time, seeing as there was no farming to be done. He met Fred Smith outside the co-op when he asked Ben for a cigarette. Ben stood and smoked with him until Fred's gang shuffled out of the store. Clarence Collins, Jack McGrady, and the Thompson brothers, Earl and Harry. The five of them made up the criminal element in Milfay, and although they were young, cocky, and restless, their bark was worse than their bite. They also weren't too smart, as far as Ben could tell, for they mistook his aloof silences for a gruff, arrogant toughness. They all came from good homes in town with two parents and a Ford and a front room for visitors. As far as they were concerned, Ben's presence in their midst legitimized them as a gang of troublemakers.
Ben didn't mind, though. It was a strange feeling to be surrounded by people who wanted to be with him. Mostly they drove around in Jack McGrady's father's old jalopy, drinking and shooting out people's porch lights.
On Fred's birthday they drove thirty miles over the state line into Texas, to a cat house Jack's brother had told them about. Ben drank steadily the whole way there, and by the time they arrived, he could hardly see straight. He didn't know what was happening until he found himself shut up in a room with a whore who looked younger than he was. She had curly brown hair and pale skin, her clear blue eyes ringed with dark circles and make-up, her mouth painted to look like Clara Bow's.
"What'sa matter?" she asked, sitting next to him on the bed. "You shy?"
Ben shook his head, embarrassed and miserable. "This was their idea."
"Oh," she said. She was quiet for a moment before she leaned in closer and whispered, "Maybe you don't like girls?"
Ben frowned, not understanding. He liked girls all right. He didn't hardly know any.
"Well," she said, standing up and getting a cigarette from the battered bureau in the corner, "We can set a while and if you want a slice, you just let me know."
She handed him a cigarette and settled herself up against the headboard with an issue of Photoplay. Ben hazarded a sideways glance. Her cheap peach-coloured bed jacket had fallen open to reveal long skinny legs and more lacy underthings. Ben's face burned, but he became distracted by the purple bruises all over her thighs, their edges turning green and yellow as they slowly healed.
"That looks like it hurt," Ben said, pointing.
"Huh? Oh, that," she sighed, attempting to cover herself. "Make-up won't cover it. Sorry."
"How'd you do that?"
"I didn't do it," she said with a shrug, turning a page in her magazine. "Some fellas get rough."
Ben stared for a minute at her face, pretty and young underneath the make-up, despite the darkness that crouched there. He reached out, gently placing a hand on her naked thigh. She looked up, thinking he had gotten himself ready. But a strange sensation caused her to look down, and she was astonished to see the bruises disappearing as if absorbed by his hand.
"What did you do?" she breathed, breaking the eerie silence that descended. Ben snatched his hand away and stood up, pacing the room. Glancing back at her face, full of fear and wonder, he felt sick to his stomach and made for the door.
"Wait!" she said, jumping off the bed and grabbing his arm. "Don't go out yet! It ain't been long enough. It's okay - I won't tell nobody. I'll make a real fuss about how great you are, your buddies don't ever gotta know. Unless you wanna...?"
Ben shook his head, looking away.
"All right, then!" she said, and proceeded to jump up and down with gusto on the rickety iron bed and make horrendous noises the likes of which Ben had never heard in his life, occasionally punctuated with a lusty, "Oh yeah, honey!" She grinned down at him the whole time, stifling her laughter. She suddenly looked the right age, and Ben knew she couldn't be much older than 13. He left a wad of crumpled one dollar bills on her bureau, and when they all piled out of the place, the fellas clapped him on his back and whistled.
V
The robbery was Fred's idea. Ben knew he should have listened to his gut and walked away, but he didn't. He wasn't sure why those guys wanted to rob a bank anyway - none of their families were hurting for the money. Not like other families in the county who were starting to get shuffled off their land and were heading west with what little they had strapped to their trucks.
They drove to Blackwell to rob the Savings & Loans, and Ben ended up holding a shotgun and keeping watch at the door while Fred strutted and shouted around the bank, destroying the high ceiling with bullets. Ben nearly got shot when the law showed up and knocked down the door, and the next thing he knew he was face down on the floor with some deputy's knee digging into his back.
All those boys had fathers and money, so when it came time for the trial, Ben found that his friends and their lawyers had decided that it was all Ben's idea. The jury sent him down to Leavenworth for 20 years.
His cell mate was a guy named Ernie who hated everybody who wasn't exactly like him, but especially women. He could go on forever and a day about backstabbing, money-hungry whores, and his chatter made Ben miss the long empty silences of home.
Ben hadn't seen his mother since the day they robbed the bank, when he left home in the morning and told her he'd be back for dinner. He never got back, and she never came to the county jail or to the courthouse to see him, so that he wasn't sure if she even knew where he'd got to. If she cared at all, or was relieved that he was gone.
Which is why he wasn't expecting any mail, and was surprised to receive a letter one day. It wasn't from her, but from the town doctor, who wanted to know how he planned to pay for his mother's treatment. She had dust pneumonia and was dying, and there was no money in the farm because the bank was going to repossess it.
Ben read the letter five or six times, then folded it and shoved it in his pocket. He laid awake most of the night, staring at the concrete ceiling and smoking. The next morning, he started a fight in the exercise yard and got sent off to a chain gang.
He never intended to hurt nobody.
Most of the guards on the gang were pretty lazy and just stood over with one another, talking and spitting. But there was one fella who took a lot of pride in his work and kept a close eye on them. He was kind, though, or as kind as a prison guard could be. Ben managed to wear his chains out and sneak off one afternoon, and he had made it as far as the safety of a copse of trees, thinking he was home free, when he heard a voice.
"Stop, kid!"
Ben froze and turned around. It was the guard. The good one. He was panting hard, but he had caught up.
"Hold on just a minute there, son," he said, catching his breath. "Think about what you're doin', here. They're just gonna add another five, ten years to your sentence. But if you keep your head down you might get paroled. You don't gotta do this."
"Yes sir, I do. My ma's dyin'. I gotta get back home."
The guard looked at him, compassion evident in his eyes. "I'm real sorry about your ma, kid. But you can't throw your whole life away. You still got a chance in this world. How old are you? 17?"
"18," Ben replied, hearing dogs barking in the distance, shouts. He began backing away.
The guard removed his gun from its holster. "I don't wanna shoot you, kid. Stay right where you are."
"I don't want you to shoot me either, but I gotta go. I won't hold no hard feelings. You're just doin' your job. But I gotta go."
The barking came closer - the other guards were coming, and they had dogs. Ben turned to run for the creek, and the guard lurched forward to grab him, stop him, and a shot split the air.
Ben stumbled, thinking he'd been hit, but when no pain blossomed on his body, he turned and saw the guard lying flat on his stomach, shot accidentally from behind by one of the other guards who must have mistaken him for Ben. His stomach plummeted. He took a step towards the prostrate guard, but the guards could be heard crashing through the bush only a few feet away. Ben hesitated, then turned and ran.
His heart pounding, he crossed the creek bottom and ran through the trees on the other side. He followed it for miles and miles until it drained into the Cimarron River, always moving, always hearing the hounds and the men behind him. The journey took three days.
He skulked along the outskirts of tiny Milfay, and nailed to the outside of a closed gas station, his fears were confirmed.
WANTED
BENJAMIN KROHN HAWKINS
CHAIN GANG ESCAPEE
MURDERER
In the dead of night, he walked across the barren, dusty plain which had once been their cornfield. The house was dark and silent. He let himself in and listened.
A wet gurgling sound came from the other room. Ben moved closer and recognized it as the sound of his mother struggling to breathe. He groped in the darkness until he found a lamp, which he lit with his lighter. The room was still dim, but he could see his mother's form huddled in her bed. She was filthy, covered in sweat, shaking in her sleep with the effort of drawing breath.
Ben set the lamp down and went to her. Her face was drawn sharply into a frown, her hands clutching her little wooden cross and her Bible to her narrow chest. Ben knelt by her side, watching her sleep. She was seized suddenly by a fit of coughing, and Ben watched helplessly as she gasped, his eyes prickling with tears.
He thought of Grandpa, and the kitten, and the little whore in Texas. Taking a deep breath, he reached out a trembling hand and placed it on her chest. He could feel her thin sharp bones under her skin, which was so hot it felt like it could burn him where he touched her.
She woke suddenly, her hand gripping his wrist. She dug her nails into his skin and shoved his hand away with what strength she had.
"No!" she choked, coughing. Blood spattered the dirty sheets. "Don't you touch me. Don't you ever touch me! I know what you do. The devil's work. Like him. I hate you both! I wish I'd drowned you. That's what we did on the farm when I was a little girl. Drowned the unwanted things."
She began to weep, then, as though tapping a deep well.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I did this. I was weak. The flesh is weak. I only loved him and now... and now..." Her words trailed into another violent coughing fit which carried on until she was gasping desperately for breath.
Ben shushed softly, resisting the urge to touch her. He wanted so badly just to touch her.
Finally her breathing slowed and she closed her eyes once more. Ben stood slowly, noticing for the first time how sore his entire body was. Wearily he walked into the other room and sat at the old wooden table, thinking he should probably clean the place up or get her some food or find a way to saw the chains off his ankle.
But the night was quiet and unusually cool, and he was tired in a way he had never been tired before. He slumped forward and rested his head on the flat, hard surface of the table, and went to sleep.
-end-