Dark and Bloody Ground (16 page)

Benny said that the caller and whoever was leaving the notes must be some nut. He did not know anyone named Penny. If you’re going to do this to me, Sherry told him, can’t you be a little less obvious about it? Can’t you spare my feelings? Benny stonewalled.

I can’t whup him, Sherry told herself, so I’ll have to try something else. One day when Benny was at the health club, Sherry arranged for a male friend of hers to call this Penny. Benny had driven Sherry to work, the man told the girl, and would meet Penny at Jokers Arcade at two o’clock.

Accompanied by her friend and another man she had known since high school, Sherry drove to the arcade at the appointed hour and, telling her friends to wait in the car but to rescue her if trouble started, walked in and asked around for a girl named Penny.

“Are you Penny?” Sherry asked a tall blonde playing Pac-Man. A smaller, younger girl was beside her.

“Yeah,” the tall one said, and introduced her sister.

“You know who I am?” Sherry asked.

“No.”

“Well, I’m Benny Hodge’s old lady. How do you like that?”

“I don’t know no Benny Hodge.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come you been leaving notes for Benny on my car, bitch?”

When Penny told Sherry to go to hell, Sherry slapped her across the mouth. Penny’s sister grabbed Sherry, Sherry hit her, too, and the three of them fell into a pushing and shoving and hair-pulling brawl. Sherry’s friends rushed in to break up the fight with the help of the arcade manager.

That would have been that except that Penny and her sister, who was only sixteen, went to the police and swore out a complaint. A few days later, Sherry was arrested for disturbing the peace and assaulting Penny and a juvenile.

At the hearing, the judge listened to this story of jealous rivalry and asked who had struck the first blow. Sherry did not hesitate to admit that she had but defended herself. Here this woman had been trespassing on private property to leave notes and pestering a loving woman with phone calls. What was she supposed to do, sit back and take it and give up her man without a fight?

The judge must have been impressed with Sherry’s candor. Noting that Penny stood at least five-feet-ten in her stocking feet, he remarked that Sherry must have had to do some leaping to land a punch. He dismissed the complaint, ordering the women to stay away from one another.

Benny said that he was so moved by Sherry’s devotion and the lengths to which she would go to keep him that he had come away from this incident a chastened man. From now on, he would keep his hands to himself and his pecker in his pants, he promised.

But there were always other women, one after another. Sherry and Benny fought, made up, made violent passionate love, fought again, often physically, with Sherry naturally ending up black and blue from head to foot. Rather than upset her parents, she took refuge with friends after a beating. All of them urged her to leave Benny, but no, she said, she was not a quitter, and she had faith that he would
reform. She was not the type to run off and abandon someone because he had a problem.

She often became depressed. Even the thrills of armed robbery began to pall. She contemplated going to see a marriage counselor or a psychiatrist. Then matters improved, until the next incident.

The friend whom Sherry sought out more than any other during these times of trouble was Pat Mason, who sold cars on a lot in Oak Ridge. Pat was a striking woman in her early thirties, slim and trim, with short, straight dark hair and a manner that gave off independent vibes. She was the only woman Sherry ever saw thumbing through copies of
Playboy
and
Penthouse
at the market magazine rack; occasionally she bought one and, unlike many of the men, did not appear the least embarrassed. Sherry could see that Pat Mason was the sort of person who took shit from nobody.

Sherry felt that Pat was someone she could trust. Of all her friends, Pat was the most adamant in urging her to leave Benny. Pat put the matter with characteristic bluntness: if Benny and Sherry stayed together, one of them would kill the other.

Sherry suspected that Pat was correct in her analysis and prediction. Maybe for one of them to die was the only way for their love to end.

When Benny began hanging out day after day, night after night at Frosty’s service station, coming home grinning like a possum eating shit, Sherry did not believe for a minute that it was because of the ambiance or, as Benny insisted, that Frosty’s had superior video machines. There had to be a girl involved. She concluded that it must be a certain redhead named Carla, who was pretty and just happened to be at Frosty’s every time Sherry went there with Benny.

On a hunch one evening Sherry left work early and drove home to find Carla’s car parked brazen as brass in the driveway. This is it, Sherry thought. Pat Mason was right. I am going to kill one or both of them or myself or maybe all three of us. She went quietly to the backyard, dug up the ammunition box, made sure the .38 was loaded, and entered the house through the back door.

She found them in the bed, the same bed she shared with Benny. They had not even bothered to turn out the light. They sat up. Blind with rage, Sherry pointed the gun at the bed, cocked it, walked toward them and shouted, “Prepare to meet your Maker, you sons of bitches!”

She was ready to fire. She didn’t care which one she shot first.
But Carla leapt up in a flash and knocked the gun from Sherry’s hand. It exploded as it hit the floor, the bullet smashing into the wall.

Sherry and Carla fought, falling down on the bed as Sherry tore at Carla’s naked breasts and screamed that she would kill her and Benny next.

Benny seized both women by the hair and managed to separate them. Carla grabbed her clothes and left.

“Booger,” Benny said. “Have you gone nuts?”

“I have,” Sherry sobbed. “You done made me crazy!” She wept in his arms.

Benny promised never to see Carla again. To try to regain some dignity, Sherry turned up the stereo full blast with Tanya Tucker’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing to Me.” Benny said he understood how Sherry felt. He was deeply sorry.

No longer confident of Benny’s sincerity, Sherry began to think that he simply could not help himself, but that did not mean that she could bear to put up with his infidelities. One way or another, they would have to stop. She asked someone at Frosty’s to tip her off the next time Benny was in there with Carla.

A few nights after the incident with the gun, Sherry came home to find the phone ringing. It was her informant from Frosty’s. Benny and Carla were in there together. Sherry asked to have Carla come to the phone.

“Where’s Benny?” Sherry asked.

“I don’t know. Why are you asking me? Benny and me is through.”

“Don’t lie to me. I happen to know he’s right down there with you.” There was silence. “I think it’s time you and me has a heart-to-heart talk. You get your ass over here, now.”

Carla slammed down the phone. In a few minutes Benny came bursting in, demanding to know what Sherry’s problem was. Couldn’t a man spend a few hours with his friends without his woman making trouble?

“I’m not the one with a problem. You and Carla’s got the problem. She is coming to this house tonight, and me and her’s going to have a talk.” She phoned Frosty’s and told Carla that she had five minutes to get her rear end over there.

“You’d better not touch her,” Benny warned.

“I ain’t going to touch her,” Sherry said. “I’m going to reason with her.”

Carla arrived with two girlfriends in tow for protection. Benny arranged the seating. He placed himself in a chair between Sherry and Carla and directed Carla’s friends to the couch. Sherry began the conversation.

“Carla, do you love Benny?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life with him?”

“Well, I dunno.”

“Then you sure don’t love him very much. Benny, do you love her?”

“What do you mean, do I love her?”

“You know what I mean. Do you?”

Benny hesitated, looking at Carla, at Sherry, at the ceiling. Sherry pressed him.

“Well, yeah,” Benny said, “I do love Carla.”

“Okay,” Sherry said. “You all see that door? You all get out of here till I have time to move my shit.”

The women left. In front of Benny, Sherry telephoned Louise and asked her to come get her. “I’m leaving Benny,” she said, and hung up.

Benny demanded that Sherry give him his share of their money. She fetched a wad from where she had it hidden in the children’s room and threw it at him, the bills falling around the room. That was everything, Sherry said. She didn’t want a dime. She had only kept it to keep him from spending it on Carla and the others. Benny was down on his knees, gathering up the money. He stuffed it into his pockets and stormed out.

Sherry phoned Louise again, who had not left her house, having assumed that it was just another fight and that Sherry would change her mind. No, Sherry said, this was it. She asked to borrow money for a plane ticket to New York, where one of her brothers was living. E. L. came on the phone. He agreed to give Sherry the money, but only enough for a one-way ticket. That was fine, Sherry said. She would not be coming back.

Sherry packed a bag, thinking of how much she loved Benny and how hopeless everything was. She resented him so much for treating her this way, after all that she had done, leaving her husband and child for him, trying to make a life. But she found herself feeling sorry for him, too. He could not help the way he was.

She wrote him a note:

Dear Benny,

I am gone forever. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but you have made your choice. We could not go on like we was. If you ever need a friend, I will be in New York City at my brother’s. I hope you and her are happy.

Sherry

Louise drove her to the Knoxville airport and bought her a one-way, nonrefundable ticket to New York, by way of Atlanta. Kissing her good-bye and telling her to phone when she arrived, Louise told Sherry that this was the right thing to do and that she would pray for her.

The flight to Atlanta took less than an hour, but that was long enough for Sherry to weaken. What would she do in New York? She had never been out of Tennessee in her life. She had no money, no job waiting for her. If she had already shown herself to be less than the perfect mother by running off with Benny, what would Renee think of her now? By the time the plane touched down, she was telling herself that this time Benny might take her seriously. At least it would be a test of whether he really loved her. She could only know that by hearing his voice.

She called him from the Atlanta airport. He was at home, alone, he said, and miserable.

“You better come get me, Hodge-Podge.”

Benny thought this impractical. He was sure that the airline would let her use her New York fare to come home. She should tell them it was an emergency, which it was, after all.

The airline was sympathetic, and Sherry phoned Benny back to tell him when to pick her up at Knoxville.

At Knoxville there were thunderstorms, the radar was out, and by the time Sherry landed, Benny was nowhere to be seen. She telephoned the house.

“Where’re you at?” she asked him. “Couldn’t you have waited? You coming to get me?”

“Take a limo. I’ll pay when you get here.”

They had a tearful reunion and made love all day.

12

T
HE NEXT TIME SHERRY CAUGHT BENNY WITH A GIRL
—as usual, a teenager—she cornered him in the bathroom, aimed the gun at him, and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. She said that she was unable to locate the safety catch.

The next time, she fired and hit the headboard as he was lying in bed. He came at her with his butterfly knife. She screamed that she had not meant to hit him anyway, but he swiped at her and slashed her across the underside of the wrist. He drove her to the emergency room. The wound left a four-inch scar just above the heel of her right palm.

And the next time after that, she begged him to kill her, saying she could not live with his unfaithfulness and that life without him was not worth living. “Shoot me, shoot me!” she cried.

Benny got the gun, cocked it, and pointed it at her as she writhed sobbing on the floor.

“Don’t do it here,” she wailed. “You’ll get caught. Ain’t you got no kind of sense, Benny Hodge? You’d been caught a long time ago except for me. You want to kill me, do it right. Take me up to Buzzard’s Bluff and plug me. I won’t run, I swear it. Throw my body off the cliff. Nobody’ll know.”

Even at top speed in the Charger, it took Benny a good half hour to drive them, with the radio blasting to drown out her cries, up to Buzzard’s Bluff, a favorite spot for lovers and hang-gliders. Sherry
wept and muttered all the way that she had had enough of life, that it was time to end it all, with Benny snarling that he was happy to grant her wish because she was more of a pain in the ass than any man could bear.

The bluff—yellowish rock crowning Walden’s Ridge—was deserted on that hot, hazy day, except for the turkey buzzards circling against thunderheads. The sheer drop was a good thousand feet. Spread out below were the valleys and hills and towns where Sherry had spent her entire life, the railway line and the river, the ribbon of 1-40 stretching toward Knoxville, the towering twin chimneys of the Kingston Steam Plant; and over to the right across the narrow valley was the green dot of the Harriman Holiday Inn, where on her wedding night she had fought with Billy Pelfrey. Somewhere down there was Renee.

Sherry took it all in and turned to face Benny with her back against a tree near the edge.

“Shoot me now, honey,” she said through sobs. “Just remember, I’ll go to my grave loving you.”

Benny took up a position some fifteen feet from her and raised the .38 with both hands, target-practice style.

“You ready? Say a prayer.”

“I’m ready. Do it.”

He fired. The first shot hit the ground two feet from her. She saw that the bullet made a furrow that ended inches from her foot. Benny aimed and fired again and again, four times in quick succession. The bullets kicked up gravel against her legs. After that, she closed her eyes and prayed to die quick.