Chapter Five
Snake finally pushed his chair back and stood just as the sun was coming up.
He went over to the coffee maker and made a fresh pot.
Gazing out the window into the woods that surrounded the farm, he thought about what he had learned in the darkness of the night.
He had to wonder how Jesse had gone so far astray from what they talked about while growing up on the south side of Chicago all those years ago.
Two teenage boys had discussed what they wanted out of their lives so many times but no matter how often they discussed it, drug dealing and human trafficking hadn’t ever come up. He shook his head and wondered again how Jesse had fallen so far off track.
When Della wrapped her arms around his waist he almost jumped. So intense with his thinking he failed to hear the bedroom door open or Della’s soft footsteps joining him.
Della chuckled. “What’s up? What were you thinking about so heavily?”
Snake shook his head and heard Bucky whining to go out. He poured her a cup of coffee then walked to the back door and let the dog outside. Then he looked at her and shook his head again. “I need to ask you something and I want the truth.”
Della stiffened then nodded. “Ok, what do you want to know?”
“Why did Jesse turn his back on everything we used to believe in?” he asked softly.
“I mean I realize he never wanted me to leave, but something else had to be going on. When you told me everything that went down after I left I was stunned. The Jesse I knew and grew up with never would have done what you told me he did.”
Della sighed hard then took a sip from her mug and then set it down on the counter.
Gazing out through the window, she replied in a saddened voice, “I don’t know.
His complete turnaround stunned me too.” She turned to look at him.
“I think it was the fact that you walked away from him. When you left, he just fell apart. He didn’t know how to go on without you.
You two were so close. Hell, you never went anywhere without the other one.
Without you there, he started sliding down a hill he couldn’t stop.
He began a freefall that never crashed, not yet anyway. ”
Snake shook his head. “I asked him to come with me but he said he couldn’t leave, he had you and your mom to look out for. That’s why when you told me he offered you up as a sacrifice, I couldn’t believe what you were saying. The Jesse I knew would never do that.”
Della shook her head as she continued to stare out the window. “I think by then he was hooked on the shit he was dealing. I could see it in his eyes. They were hollow of any feeling he ever had for me but you were right, he never would have done that if he’d been right in his mind.”
“When did he start using?” Snake asked.
Della turned her head and stared at him for a moment then she whispered, “I think it started when you began to talk about getting out. He thought you would move on without him and he didn’t think about that.
He escaped through the junk he was pumping into his arm.
” Shaking her head she admitted, “I don’t know if it was the drugs or your absence but he turned his back on everything and everyone that ever meant something to him.
Mom and I weren’t the only ones he left behind. ”
“Andrea?” Snake whispered her name. Jesse had a girlfriend. “I thought he’d marry her someday.”
Della nodded. “He showed up one night higher than a kite and she wouldn’t even let him into her apartment.
He scared her enough with some threats that she called me the next day and said she was leaving town.
Even she knew he was high and that was her dealbreaker.
Well, she got away but he found her a few days later and he was just pissed.
He beat her bad. He even did 30 days in lockup for that beating.
That’s when she stepped out of the picture for good and Jesse never found her again. ”
Snake just stared at her. Nothing she was telling him made any sense at all. The man she was describing wasn’t the young man he left behind.
Della just shrugged. “He wasn’t only using drugs but he was hitting steroids pretty hard too. He was trying so hard to buff himself up so he could be strong enough that nobody was ever going to talk down to him, I think.”
“You said he found you three times since I left, did he hurt you those times?”
Della nodded but didn’t say how.
Snake stayed silent until he figured out she wasn’t going to talk about those times. He growled then opened the back door to allow Bucky to come back inside. Then he clenched his fists and rushed outside to cool off.
Della watched him as a single tear rolled down her face.