Chapter 13 #2
“Yep, but they live out by the highway. She won’t do that, confront them right out there on the highway.”
“You don’t think so?”
Kyle thought for a minute, then sighed. “You’ve got a point.
Who in the world knows what she’s got up her sleeve?
It could be anything.” As his eyelids closed, he thought about Margie Ivitts.
Would living right on the highway keep her from doing something ridiculous and dangerous? Anybody else, yes.
Margie? Not a chance.
“Yeah. There they go.” Margie sat in her car behind the barn down the highway on the other side of the Miller farm and watched Gina’s truck go by.
She’d been sitting there for three days, leaning against the inside of the door, her head resting on the glass, and waiting.
Sure enough, it always came in at the same time.
“So now I know when you’ll be here, even though I don’t know when that pervert boyfriend of yours will be there.
He works on the farm, so I ’spose he’s there all the time, but—” A loud rapping sound interrupted her and she jumped, banging her head on the glass.
A man stood outside the car door, so she put the window down. “You want something?”
“Uh, yeah. I’d like to know what you’re doing on my property. You do realize this is trespassing, right?”
Be nice, Margie, she told herself as she shot him a sweet smile. “Oh! I’m so sorry! It’s just that I babysit my grandkids and sometimes once they go home I just need some peace and quiet so bad, you know?”
“Yeah. I do know. But you’re still trespassing.”
“I ain’t hurtin’ nothin’,” she pointed out.
“You might think you’re not, but I found some antifreeze out here on the ground yesterday where you’ve been sitting in your car, and if one of my dogs licked at that, it could make them sick or kill them.
And that means you’ve got a leak in your radiator hose or something, so you need to have that looked after anyway. ”
“Oh. Well, okay. Thanks for telling me. I’ll have somebody look at it right now.
And I’m sorry if I caused any problems for you.
That wasn’t my intention.” Batting her eyelashes had worked on cops when she was younger, but it looked like that wasn’t an option anymore.
He just stared at her like she had something in her eye.
As soon as the window was up, she pulled out from behind the barn and headed back to Hopkinsville.
“Dumb son of a bitch,” she muttered as she watched the man in her rearview mirror.
It wasn’t hurting one damn thing for her to sit there.
“He should keep his fucking dogs fastened up anyway.”
The next morning, she’d go see Nate again, and she had to have a plan formulated.
He’d said he wanted her to leave them alone, but he didn’t mean that.
She was sure of it. Finding those kids and getting them out of that mess with Gina and that Kyle guy was the most important thing on her mind.
Doing whatever it took would be better than sitting there, waiting for them to ruin those children. Bunch of degenerates.
They had to be stopped.
That same guard was working when Margie got to the prison the next morning. Even though he’d seen her dozens of times, he made her go through the same routine. So did the guys inside. She knew if they could let her in without all the nonsense, they would. They all liked her. She was sure of it.
Nate had a guard standing behind him, as usual. Margie hated that. She’d really like to say some private things to him about what was going on, but she couldn’t, not with that guy standing there. As soon as she sat down, she smiled at her son. “Hey, honey! Good to see you!”
Instead of replying in kind, he just asked, “What’s up, Mama?”
“Oh, same old same old. You know how it is. Some things never change. Especially with that bunch.”
“Mama—”
“I’ve got some ideas for dealing with it. Don’t you worry yourself none, honey. Mama’s gonna take care of it.”
“What do you mean, take care of it?”
Margie glanced up, but the guard didn’t seem to be paying any attention to them, just staring off into space. “I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing. And you won’t have to worry about the kids much longer.”
“The only reason I worry about the kids is because of you!”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ungrateful boy! Margie couldn’t believe it. After all she’d done for him, that was the way he talked to her? “Those two children are in no danger from me! It’s that other bunch you’ve got to worry about!”
“Mama, nobody’s hurting the kids, but you’ll hurt them if you try to do anything to—”
Her voice was a liquid hiss. “Now you see here, boy, I’m gonna do whatever I have to. I’ll get this done and get those kids away from there. Right now, they’re staying out there on his farm. A farm!”
“They’ll probably enjoy it. All kids need to be outside in the sunshine and fresh air.”
“Sunshine? Fresh air? He’s working them like slave labor!”
Nate sat back and glared at her. “So you’ve seen this? These slave labor conditions?”
“Well, no, but you know he’s bound to—”
“Mama, just stop it. Leave them alone. They’re fine. They’re probably having fun playing with his little girl. I bet he’s got a pond, or trails, or big fields they can run in.”
“They’ll get lost! They’ll fall in the pond! And that little girl, she probably has some kind of disease they could catch! Probably has a headful o’ lice! Scrubby little thing! And starving most likely!”
Nate rolled his eyes and it frosted Margie. “Mama, stop. Just stop. Don’t. Leave them alone and let them have their lives. They’re fine.”
“They’re not fine. How could they be fine? They don’t get to spend any time with me!”
There was an agitation about Nate that she hadn’t seen before.
“They don’t get to spend any time with you because you’ve chased them away!
They all think you’re a looney! And you know what?
I think you are too! You’re crazy, Mama!
You need help!” The guard walked up closer to him, but he kept going.
“You’re going to get somebody hurt, yourself or somebody else.
Don’t you see what you’re doing? Don’t you see how wrong it is?
Leave them alone, Mama! Just leave them alone!
” He was yelling and spitting as he talked, and the guard put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.
In seconds, another guard stepped in, and each of the men got Nate by a shoulder.
“Leave him alone!” Margie yelled through the glass.
“Ma’am,” a voice said from behind her, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving! Don’t touch him!” she screamed at the two guards.
It would’ve made sense to her if Nate had started to yell at the guards, but as they dragged him away, all he was yelling was, “Leave them alone, Mama! Leave them alone! Don’t you touch them!” He was still bellowing as they pulled him through the doorway and it closed.
A hand closed on her own shoulder. “Ma’am—”
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you touch me!” She shook the guard’s hand from her shoulder, then felt the presence of yet another person on her other side.
That was the moment when she realized she’d better get herself together.
“I’m okay. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m okay.
Please, just let me leave and I’ll be fine. ”
“You have to leave, ma’am. Your visitation privileges are going to be in review.
” The two guards escorted her to the front desk, where she picked up her things.
When they walked her out to her car, the same guard told her, “Before you come back, you need to call. Your visitation privileges will be reviewed and they may be denied, temporarily or permanently. No point in you driving here if you can’t go in. ”
Margie was exhausted from the whole debacle. “I’m so sorry, sir. I’m just so upset. You can understand, can’t you? You have kids, right? Grandkids?”
“Drive safely, ma’am,” the guard said and stepped back beside his coworker as they waited for Margie to leave, so she started the car, backed out of the parking space, and headed for the guard shack at the gate.
“Margie Ivitts,” she told the guard. Instead of his usual greeting and smile, he opened the gate and waited until she’d driven through.
She drove for a mile until she got into Eddyville, then pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and cried.
No one understood. Her grandchildren were in a perilous state, and no one cared.
No one but her. Not their other grandparents, not even their daddy.
Nobody except her. “I guess it’s up to me to fix this,” she told herself as she dried her tears.
Hadley and Briley would be liberated from their parent-imposed slavery. She’d see to it, no matter what she had to do.
It was time to bring in the big guns—literally.
“I need to speak to the warden! Please! It’s urgent!”
“Who the fuck do you think you are, Ivitts? Some kind of secret agent man?” The guard practically tossed him into the cell and the door slammed shut. “Now shut the fuck up. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”
His cellmate turned to look at him. “Yo mama again?”
“Yeah. She’s gonna hurt somebody.”
“You need to tell somebody, man,” Griff growled.
“Who? The guards don’t listen. The warden did talk to me that one time, but he won’t again. I’m sure of it. I don’t even know if he bothered to talk to the police. Nobody cares. She’s gonna do something crazy. I can just feel it.”
“Feelins’ ain’t no measure of nothin’,” Griff said as he went back to his car magazine.
The guy was serving twenty to life for knifing a man over a fifty-seven Chevy.
The man hadn’t died, but it also hadn’t been the first time Griff had been in a fight over a car and somebody else was seriously injured.
Nate did everything he could to stay on the man’s good side, but some days, there just wasn’t one.