Do Not Forsake Me(110)
“Yes, sir…I mean, Jake.”
Jake tossed a twig into the fire. “My father’s name was John William Harkner, and he was from Connecticut. You can give Peter that information if he needs it. He left home at a young age and somehow worked his way to Texas, where he got involved in some of the shit going on between Texas and Mexico. I’m not even sure what all he did before I came along. I only know he liked Mexican women, the younger the better, and he drank…a lot. He was big like me. I’m pretty sure he bought my mother off some drunken Mexican man, and I have no idea if he ever really married her. I only know she was very good to me, very loving. But my father… I remember him beating my mother often, and if my brother or I tried to stop him, we got it too…always with that goddamn belt, often with the buckle end of it.”
He drew on the cigarette. Lloyd tended the fire, listening quietly.
“When I was eight…he stabbed my mother to death right in front of me, and when my little brother started crying, he slammed a fireplace poker against his head. I kept trying to wake him up, but he was dead too.” Jake closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “His name was Tommy. Later my father made me help bury both of them. I had to stand there and throw dirt on their faces.”
He spoke matter-of-factly, chain-smoking while doing so. Jeff suspected he was trying to hurry before breaking down. “I tried to run away then, but he caught me and taught me to never try that again. Life was hell for the next seven years—his drinking binges, running with the worst kind of men imaginable, whoring around, and always the beatings. Whores became my mothers and sometimes… When you’re twelve or thirteen years old, it’s easy for an older woman to entice you, so I learned about women at an age when I should have been playing pretend shoot-outs with other boys my age. Whores were just a part of my life, Jeff.”
He tossed the stub of his cigarette into the fire and lit yet another one.
“Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew there had to be something better. Every place we went, I saw husbands and wives with their kids, saw normal homes, farms, people living a normal life. Part of me wanted that. When I was fifteen, I befriended a twelve-year-old Mexican girl named…”
Finally he hesitated, the memories getting more difficult. He cleared his throat.
“Santana.” He swallowed before continuing. “She looked more like fifteen or sixteen, and she was beautiful. I started getting the idea that maybe when she was a little older, I could get away from my pa and marry her and live like people were supposed to live. We started meeting secretly, but I never touched her, because to me she was special…and too young. And then one day I came home to find my father drunk and…raping Santana.”
He cleared his throat again.
“She was…crying and trying to get him off of her…and I tried too. But even though I was already pretty big at fifteen, I still wasn’t as strong as he was. He climbed off her and laid into me with that belt until he beat me right to the floor. Then he turned around and put his filthy body on top of Santana again.”
Again he smoked for several minutes, saying nothing. Jeff knew he didn’t dare say a word.
Jake breathed deeply before finally speaking again. “I spotted my father’s handgun hanging on the wall nearby, and I was desperate to stop him from hurting Santana…so I took the gun and put it to his neck…and I pulled the trigger. I didn’t even stop to think it could kill him. I just wanted to get him off of Santana. He slumped down and I dragged him off of her…only to see that the bullet had gone through his neck and into Santana’s throat.”
Jake closed his eyes then and ran a hand through his hair. “She just lay there wide-eyed and scared. I told her I loved her and I’d stop the bleeding…but before I could even grab something to press on the wound…she was gone. I was scared and confused and…I wanted to scream. I’d killed Santana. I figured they might hang me for murder, thinking I killed her and my pa both because I was jealous or something, maybe even accuse me of being the one who raped her. I was young and didn’t think things through. I just picked up that gun and saddled a horse and headed north…and thus began the outlaw career of a man who’d killed his own father…and a young girl. I lived like a crazy man for the next ten or twelve years, always running from the law, robbing and killing for money, convinced I was the most worthless sonofabitch who ever lived, because my father made sure to tell me that every day. But always there was that little desire to live like a normal person.”