Dudley Sergeant

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4524-8313-9
Verlag: Smashwords
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 285 Seiten

Alone with six young kids on the Illinois plains, Annie Hanigan survives to see justice served.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dudley, Will

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE: A HOUSE BURNING “Hide and watch, boy. You want to learn something, just hide and watch.” The Sergeant liked to say that; Robbie was hiding and watched him string a rope over the back porch rafters and tie it off to a bucket handle. There was gas in the bucket; the Sergeant was being careful not to get any on his clothes, probably because he was wearing his brown Air Force shirt. He had on his khaki shirt with the six stripes on the sleeve that Annie had sewn there for him. “Six stripes, one for each of us kids,” Robbie imagined. He had just been promoted to Master Sergeant and the stripes were blue and silver with a little star in the middle. He pushed the nylon parachute cord through a hole in a fat church candle and tied it off to a nail. It was a hot day in July and the boy did not have a shirt on. “You’re going to be sunburned,” Annie had told him. Robbie didn’t care; he didn’t know what sunburn was. He could feel the sweat, though, coming out of his armpits, rolling down both sides of his small body and over his ribs and stomach. His forehead glowed, and more of the salty wetness dripped from the hair in front of his ears. It tickled. His feet were bare and dirty, and the grass between his toes felt cool in the shade. The shade made the smell of the lilacs stronger. A bee buzzed nearby, but the boy didn’t care, he liked bees. It was a honeybee, and he wondered if it smelled the Kool-Aid on his face. His brother Sean was allergic to bees, and his sister Eva was afraid of them, but Robbie always liked them. “Mama makes music and the bees make honey,” the boy thought to himself. The bush smelled as good as a bush can smell in July, and grew only a few feet from the porch of their sorry ass farmhouse on the outskirts of what was barely an Illinois farm town. The boy and his home were surrounded by green fields of tall corn. The Sergeant knelt in the sawdust and wood chips strewn all around the old back porch, then cleared an area and lit the candle. As he stood, he turned his bald head and looked straight at the boy. The child’s dark blue eyes became dark blue saucers. The Sergeant squinted and stared at the bush. “Come here, boy.” Robbie didn’t move. He was staring at his father when Annie yelled. “Robert! Robert Francis Hanigan, you get your skinny ass out here and into this car.” She stood by the hood of the old gray Chevy yelling, but not as loud as she could, and the boy knew that for sure. She could see him from the street and glared hard. All that red hair, her only vanity, hung on her shoulders, and looked like it was on fire. She wore a clean pair of faded blue farmer’s overalls and held the twin two year olds in her arms. Robbie didn’t hesitate; he ran to his mother as fast as he could, away from the Sergeant.  “What the hell are you doing hiding back there? No shoes? And why aren’t you wearing a shirt? Robbie, you’re hopeless; and where in hell is your father?” The questions came so fast that he couldn’t answer. He was getting ready to say something but couldn’t speak. Then the Sergeant rounded the corner of the house; the look on his face spelled danger as he pointed his index finger straight at the boy. "You get in the car." Annie and the Sergeant both said it at the same time. Climbing into the back seat of the old gray Chevy, Robbie started salivating; he smelled the chicken his mother spent the latter part of the morning frying. He didn’t know exactly what he had seen the Sergeant doing, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to see it. Eva protected the picnic basket full of food. She had her arms over the top of it; it was so big she could never have picked it up. She was only slightly larger than Robbie, older by thirteen months. It didn’t matter; she had the chicken and she wasn’t giving her brother any. The Sergeant opened the driver’s side door and moved the cushion that allowed him to see over the dashboard; he got in the car, then turned around and looked at Robbie and scowled for a second. “When I say ‘Come here, boy,’ the next thing I see better be your little ass moving in my direction,” the Sergeant barked. He raised the back of his hand and then put it back down as Annie got into the car. It was a scary move, one the boy knew might be followed by a back handed slap. Robbie shivered a little and looked down as his father’s gaze wandered back toward the front seat. The Sergeant looked like the most dangerous man in the world to the boy, even if he was only five feet and one inch tall. The army waived their height requirement when he came out of the Minnesota woods back in 1942. “I fought in the Pacific,” he would say without elaboration whenever asked what he did in the war. Robbie had heard his mother say that he ate the wrong bugs and slept in the rain too long in the war. She forgave him his temper and drinking, but the boy was petrified of his father, who could be mean when he drank too much from the little flask he always carried in his hip pocket. The Sergeant reached for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket and lit a Camel. “You got the food, Annie?” Annie looked at the basket full of food in Eva’s lap, rolled her eyes and nodded her head. Rockwell Hanigan turned the ignition key. After listening to the sound of the idling engine of the ’51 Chevy for a moment, he turned his interest again toward the back seat, where the older four of his six children were sitting. "Hand me a piece of chicken, Eva.” The Sergeant smiled and Eva made a show of reaching into the picnic basket and finding the plate next to the potato salad. She never saw danger in the Sergeant’s eyes. “Yes, sir,” Eva said with the enthusiasm only a six year old on the edge of a seat can muster. She saluted him with a smile and handed him a piece of chicken. He sank his teeth into the dark meat of a thigh, smiling at Eva, the apple of his eye, then cast his gaze once again on Robbie. His smile disappeared. "Robbie." "Yes sir." "You look like shit.” Robbie disappeared further into the corner of the seat, trying to grow even smaller. His brother Sean looked at him and grinned a sheepish smile; all Robbie was wearing was an old pair of baggy green shorts and some dirty underwear; he was ashamed of them now. “You look to me like you want to catch pneumonia again,” the Sergeant said. Robbie had suffered a cough and pneumonia last winter, and it hadn’t been the first time. The boy was frail and high spirited, too smart and too little to be that smart. He didn’t want to get that sick again, remembering how he couldn’t breathe without pain and had a fever. "Robbie doesn't have a t shirt...," Sean sang under his breath. He sang it again, only this time Eva sang it with him, in a little whisper. Annie gave them a look that said they better shut up, and they did. “I can see I’m going to have to line you out,” Annie said. “Eva, sit by this door. Robbie, you stay right behind your father.” They did just as she said. In the hospital Robbie had lived under a big plastic tent and spent whole days having to stay in bed. It was a scenario he was far too familiar with and detested. The hospital was where he learned to read, though, and it was an accomplishment that five year old Robert Hanigan was very proud of having mastered. He didn’t want to go back to the hospital; they stuck him with needles and kept him under the plastic tent. When they finally let him come home, his little brother had surpassed him in weight and height; Robbie was now the older, smaller brother. "Wait here, Annie, I'm going to get this little fool a shirt." “Bring back a wet washcloth, Rock. His face needs washing. So does Sean’s.” The Sergeant looked at his wife and disappeared back into the house. Annie looked down into the back seat at her oldest son and shook her head. “What are we going to do with you, Robbie? Are you ever going to learn not to piss off your father? Eva, give him one of those legs, he’s skinnier than one of your daddy’s toothpicks.” “How come he can have one and we can’t?” “Give him a Goddamn chicken leg, Eva, and do it now.” Eva’s eyes lit up and she stuck her hand into the basket, coming out with a chicken leg. She threw it onto the seat next to her little brother, sticking her tongue out at him in the same motion. When Annie turned her attention back to the twins, Eva made a face at her mother and reached into the basket, taking her hand back out with a finger full of chocolate cake, which she stuck in her mouth as she smirked at the back of her mother’s head. A moment later the Sergeant returned with three t shirts and extra sox and shoes and threw them into the back seat. He tossed a damp warm washcloth into Bernadette’s lap. She was the oldest, and in the Sergeant’s view that made her responsible for her siblings. "Bernie, make sure he doesn't put these on inside out and backwards, and get that Kool-Aid off his damned face. Now, kids, I'd say this little lost patrol is going to see some real fireworks tonight. You think, Sean? Think you’d like to get out and see some fireworks?" Sean grinned and saluted the Sergeant. "Hell, yes, sir.” The Sergeant grinned and Annie scowled, looked down and arranged the twins on her lap. Eva gave Robert another look similar to their mother’s harsh stare, only younger. In fifteen miles they would be at the drive in theater...