Cruel Harvest (10 page)

“Nobody reported sexual abuse when we were little. That is part of why I waited so long. I was afraid nobody would believe me.” She looked down. “The officer questioned me for a long time. They told Mr. Johnson that they needed
corroborating
reports. I didn't understand at first, until he said I would have to go back home until they got a warrant. The sheriff said that they'd have to go out and talk to Daddy, and the rest of you.”

“He would have killed you,” I whispered.

She nodded. “I begged Mrs. Johnson not to send me back”

“I remember when they came for him,” I said, thinking back.

The sun had
barely started to peek through the trees, and I lay in my pile of rags and listened to the birds chirping outside. The peace and quiet was soothing compared to the tension from the night before. Early mornings had always been a special time for me, even to this day. Back then, when Daddy was drinking as he did, he usually spent mornings recovering instead of cussing and beating us.

That morning, however, was different. The quiet turned to chaos when the door to the bus crashed open. Glass broke and metal slammed against metal as the police and sheriff stormed the bus. Everyone else was still asleep but were jarred awake by the crash and the pounding of heavy footsteps. I saw the sheriff and two other officers at the end of the aisle, their guns raised. I screamed in terror at the shock of it.

The officers rushed down the narrow aisle toward us. At that instant, Daddy sprung up, wide-awake. One of the officers was on him before he had time to escape. The officer wrestled Daddy to the floor of the bus, but Daddy fought hard. I watched in terror as the officer brought out his handcuffs.

Daddy thrust back his elbow, landing a hard blow to the man's midsection. The officer doubled over with the breath knocked from his lungs. Daddy used the narrow aisle and the clutter of bodies to his advantage; it kept the other officers from reaching him right away. He reared back and landed a vicious kick to the downed officer and was able to scramble free. He lunged for one of the open windows and jimmied his body through the tiny opening like a snake seeking cover.

Susie gathered up the children as far away from the fight as was possible. Robbie climbed over the top of my head in an effort to get out of the way. An officer reached my daddy just as the top of his legs were disappearing through the window. At the same time, the sheriff ran out of the bus. He confronted Daddy from the other side as he hung in midair, helpless. The sheriff cracked him over the head with his lead blackjack. Together, the two officers still inside grabbed Daddy's legs and roughly yanked him. Daddy came flying back into the bus, the fight knocked out of him by the blow he'd taken to his head.

By then, all three of those officers were on him. They threw him down, smashing his face against the metal flooring. Daddy struggled, but that just won him an even harsher beating. Billy clubs flashed in the dawn sunlight. I saw blows land on Daddy's head, and my hand went to the scar on my temple left from the last beating he'd given me.

None of us dared move when the beating continued. No one said a word. Mama did not jump up and try to stop the officers. Nor did we cheer the violence. It was as if time just stopped, and none of us knew exactly how to react to what we were seeing.

One officer got the cuffs on Daddy while the others held him down. They picked him up and dragged him off the bus by his arms and feet. Mama followed behind them with us in tow. I peeked around her back and watched.

I stared, unable to move. The sheriff pushed Daddy into the back of his patrol car, and I caught a glimpse of him as the door slammed shut. Blood oozed from his hair and covered the side of his face. One eye was already swollen closed. He looked small, almost harmless back there.

We all just watched as the patrol car rolled away, carrying Daddy out of our lives. Relief built up inside me as the sheriff's car disappeared. He was really gone. The police had taken him away, and he would not ever be able to hurt us again. We were free!

Chapter 8
One More Piece

Wayne came in
to Brenda's kitchen when we finished talking and gave her a big hug. It warmed my heart to see how she had taken to Wayne. I was not surprised though. Wayne was a kind, gentle soul who attracted animals and the helpless to him like a magnet. Late one night in the middle of a horrific thunderstorm a few years before he found Brenda, the wind blew our barn door open and Wayne had to go out into the pitch-black night to get it closed. The electricity was out, the lightning was flashing all around us, and the rain gushed down in torrents. When he got out to the dark barn, something grabbed him around his legs and wouldn't turn loose! When he realized it was a stray dog, scared to death and drenching wet, his heart melted. This dog actually wrapped his front paws around Wayne and held on as if asking for help. I think Wayne was as scared as that stray mutt before he realized what had attached to him in the dark. But, needless to say, that dog had a home for life. That is the way Wayne was made; he always helps every living thing. I have never seen him kill a ladybug or moth; instead he returns them to the outdoors. He adopted Brenda as his sister the day we walked into her home. It was nice to know we felt the same way.

When I hugged Brenda good-bye, I held her close to me. I did not ever want to let her go. I was still afraid that I might lose my family again. When we finally got into the car and Wayne pulled away, I fought back tears and tried to stay strong.

“I don't ever want to lose her again,” I said.

“We won't,” he assured me. “She seems happy.”

“Yes, she does.” But I knew she had not forgiven our dad for the sixteen years of misery she lived through.

Wayne and I started the long drive home. I stared out the window, my mind walking back through the door and into Brenda's kitchen again. It was so hard to leave her after missing her for so many years.

At the same time, my heart felt different than it had prior to that visit. It was not fully healed, but a piece had returned to fill part of the hole inside me. I had finally found family. My prayers had been answered. Wayne seemed to read my mind. He glanced over at me as he drove the car down the highway.

“It's different this time.” He smiled at me. “This time it's all going to work out.”

I knew what he meant. This was not the first time Wayne had tried to reunite me with my broken family. Years before, he had tracked down Susie only to learn she had died of pneumonia at a hospital in California. On the phone, an attendant told Wayne that her ashes had been mixed with those of other bodies who had not been claimed and buried in a single, seven-inch space with no marker. I could not bring her home to rest. The man on the phone felt awful, but he told Wayne that they had held on to the ashes, on a shelf in a cardboard container, for someone to claim. No one had shown up.

Finding out Susie had died all alone with nobody to claim her remains broke my heart. Then Wayne located my little brother Robbie. I can remember it like it was yesterday; my husband walked into our kitchen with a large piece of typing paper in his hand and an even larger smile on his face.

“I think you might want to sit down, sweetie,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

Wayne could barely contain himself as he dangled the piece of paper in front of my face. On it was written my little brother's name and his address. My heart pounded and I started to hope, but I tried to stay calm. Slowly, I dried my hands on a dish towel and sat at the kitchen table beside Wayne, afraid to trust my eyes.

“Is it really him?”

Wayne nodded, still grinning. “It's really him!”

“Are you sure?”

He laughed. “Yes, honey. We've found your baby brother.”

Tears ran down my face, one landing on the paper in my hand. I talked my next move through with Wayne, debating whether I should pick up the phone and call him. We decided it might be best to write him a letter so he could prepare for the news. I got right up from that table to do just that, but first I hugged Wayne around the neck with all my might. We were both laughing and smiling when I went to sit down to write that letter to my little brother, whom I had not seen since I was nine years old.

In the letter I told Robbie who I was and how much I would love to come and see him. I carefully enclosed two pictures of me, one current and the other from when I was nine, taken at Connie Maxwell Children's Home. I sealed the envelope, placed the stamp on perfectly, and took it directly to the post office. For the next week I felt as though I was pacing every second of the day. I could hardly wait to hear from Robbie. Time crawled, and I checked the mailbox dozens of times each day.

When I saw Robbie's return letter in our mail the next week, I was too excited to even open it. I ran into the house yelling and jumping up and down.

“It's here, it's here!” I was beside myself with excitement.

Wayne came racing into the kitchen to see what I was carrying on about. With trembling hands, I passed the letter to Wayne and asked him to read it aloud. He glanced over it, and it only took a few seconds for his face to fall.

I could barely get the words out. “What does it say? When can we go see him?”

“We can't,” he sadly whispered. The hurt in Wayne's voice turned to anger. “He doesn't want to see us.”

I took the letter, trying to convince myself that Wayne had read it wrong. He had not. My brother wrote that he had a new family and he had no interest in finding his original one. He asked me to lose his address and his phone number. He wrote, “Do not bother me or my family again.”

When I finished reading, I reached inside the envelope and found he had returned my letter. Turning it upside down, I watched as the two photos I'd sent him slid out and floated to the tabletop.

I almost gave up hope. My dream of finding my family, my connection to this world, did not just fade. It crumbled. My hurt turned into anger in that moment, and I slapped his letter down on the table. I just about made up my mind that day that I would not hope again.

Wayne seemed to
know that was what I was thinking about as we drove away from our wonderful reunion with Brenda.

“You know, I prayed real hard that night,” he said.

“What night?”

“The night after we got your brother's letter.”

“What did you pray about?” I asked.

“I asked God to not allow me to find any other family members unless they were alive and
wanting
to be found,” he said.

I smiled at Wayne. “Your prayer was answered.”

He reached up and pulled something from behind the sun visor. He passed me a small photograph that he had taken of Brenda and me holding hands and sitting at the dining table together on Thanksgiving Day, which he had printed for me sometime during our three-day stay. I keep that picture on my refrigerator to this day, where I can look at it any time I want. When I do, I never feel alone.

Wayne's prayer was
answered with another miracle in the spring of 2005. Wayne and I were invited to appear on a local television station in Greenville, South Carolina, called Dove Broadcasting. I had been asked to share my story of survival and salvation with their audience and to sing a few songs as well.

We had a wonderful time, and hundreds of people from North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina called into the station wanting to talk to me. I was overwhelmed and humbled by the response! We arrived home in Greenwood, South Carolina, the next day, exhausted but content, knowing I would be leaving again to visit a small ministry at Mary Black Memorial Hospital in Spartanburg the next morning.

While Wayne was bringing in our bags, I rushed into the house to the kitchen phone to check the voice messages, hoping some of the listeners who had called the station the night before might have tried to contact me at home. To my amazement, the machine was full. I was thrilled to my toes, and I grabbed a pencil and paper to copy down the names and numbers so I could call each one of them back. I was concentrating, trying to keep up with the messages, when a voice on the tape stopped me in my tracks. I felt as though the world had stopped moving. I listened to a man's voice on my answering machine.

“I am not sure this is the right number, but I believe you are my aunt Frances,” a deep male voice said. “My name is Tony. I think my dad is your older brother Jimmy. We live in Greenville.”

When he said that, I felt my soul stir. Something wonderful happened inside me. I had just been in Greenville the day before. He had seen me on the television program. I was certain that God had ordained this miracle!

This time, I did not hesitate. I called my newfound nephew, Tony, and told him I was indeed his aunt. I talked with Tony long enough to learn that he was a preacher! Tony, in turn, gave me Jimmy's number. I hung up and tried to dial my brother. It took a good half hour to work up the courage, but I did it. When Jimmy answered, I knew right away that I had every reason to hope again. He had the deep Southern drawl that I remembered, but his voice had matured into a rich baritone. His voice was full of love and excitement. We talked for two hours! He told me he had five children and many grandchildren, and even a few great-grandchildren.