~ William Jefferson Clinton

Prologue

Summer, 1975

The Oklahoma sun parched the child’s neck and shoulders. Her diminutive limbs ached from squatting, hovering over the seedling trying to protect it from her father’s charges. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

    Charlie maneuvered with a single-minded ruthlessness when he was drunk. And he was drunk. Drunk and engaged in one of the cruel games he played with a five-year-old daughter who only wanted him to love her.

    "I’ll mow the fucking yard when I get god damned good and ready," he’d told Mavis weeks before. He hadn’t been ready when the weeds were ankle deep or when they reached halfway up his calf.

    Finally, though, he’d decided that mowing day had dawned. The growth was nearly knee high in places, but that detail had not incited him to act. Charlie was mowing because one of the seeds had finally sprouted.

*  *  *  *  *

The little girl had run all the way from the highway, clutching the piece of crumpled paper in her tiny hand. She swung the screened door open, and ran to her mother’s side. "Look what I have, Mamma," she said with excitement.

    Mavis placed a rinsed plate in the drain rack and, drying her hands on her apron, crouched to inspect her daughter’s treasure. "What is it, sweetheart?"

    "Seeds! Watermelon seeds. Look," she said, carefully unfolding the paper to reveal a dozen dark, sticky, teardrop-shaped seeds.

    "How nice," her mother said. "I suppose your new friend gave them to you?"

    "He did. He told me I could plant them and grow my very own watermelon."

    And she did plant them. She planted them in the sandy patch of soil on the house side of the oak tree – the only place the weeds had not overtaken. She watered them faithfully and checked at least a dozen times a day to see if anything had come up yet.

*  *  *  *  *

That first day, after Charlie had come back from town drunk, Willard had decided to forfeit the week-in-advance fee he’d paid for the spot. Only twenty dollars, he’d told himself, not enough to put up with a drunken Injun over. He’d changed his mind, though, after meeting the little girl and, later, seeing her mother’s bruises. Maybe he’d just stick around long enough for the bastard to sober up.

    But Charlie hadn’t really sobered up yet, and Willard had been on the edge of Charlie’s property selling melons out of the bed of his pickup, paying twenty dollars a week for the privilege for over a month. Every two or three nights, depending on how good business had been, he’d drive over into Arkansas and pick up a fresh load, but he’d be back in his spot, set up and ready for business before the sun came up the next morning.

    On one of those mornings, he had arrived to find Charlie sprawled in the yard, halfway between his battered old truck and the house. On another, he found the tosspot had made it to the front porch before passing out against the door.

    Willard called himself an "Itinerant Vendor". He’d seen that on a roadside sign somewhere warning peddlers that they needed to obtain a permit if they wanted to do business in that particular county, and he’d liked the ring of it. Made him sound like a professional of sorts, he thought. He trucked and peddled whatever was in season: melons, sweet potatoes, onions, peaches, and the like; he went where he pleased, set his own hours and took a day off whenever it suited him. He got by, and Willard was his own man.

    He had decided to try his luck with watermelons over in eastern Oklahoma, and had simply been driving along the highway looking for a good spot to set up when he had come upon Mavis and Charlie’s place. Perfect, he’d thought, when he saw the wide sandy shoulder shaded by the branches of a massive old oak tree. On a straight stretch of road where folks coming from either direction can see me in plenty of time to stop.

    He’d struck a deal with the property owner without too much haggling. Twenty-five dollars was Willard’s limit; he wouldn’t pay more than twenty-five dollars a week for the only concession at the World Series. They had agreed on twenty dollars for the week, and twenty dollars was within his budget – especially for such a fine, shady spot.

    The owner had immediately headed for town with the crumpled twenty-dollar bill, and had returned a few hours later, raging drunk. Willard shook his head as he watched the man stumble toward the small frame house, cursing loudly as he made his way through the weeds. Nothing meaner than a drunk Injun.

    The little girl had materialized shortly after the shouting began, dirty-faced and barefooted, her raven hair braided into pigtails. She stood well out of the way, hands clasped behind her back, as Willard arranged a few of the larger melons on the ground and propped a hand-lettered sign against the side of the truck. She said nothing. Willard could hear the sounds of dishes breaking, furniture being overturned up in the house, but pretended not to notice the ruckus or the girl.

    He went about his business in his baggy-seated overalls and tattered straw hat as if she were nowhere around, humming lowly to himself and arranging his produce with slow, exaggerated movements. Finally, he made a great show of selecting just the right watermelon, and, having made his decision at last, carefully placed it on the tailgate of the truck. He took a red bandana from the pocket of his overalls, shook it out, and commenced to polish the melon as if it were the rarest, most precious thing on earth.

    Tentatively, the little girl sidled a bit closer. Still, she had not made a sound.

    When the polishing was done, Willard produced a wide, ten-inch-bladed knife from the cab of the pickup, and, with a ceremonial expertise befitting the Supreme Potentate of the Melon Patch, quartered the sacred melon with two precise cuts. He then took one of the quarters and sliced it in half.

    Taking one of the halves in both hands, he brought it to his face and took a large, slurping bite. "Ahhh . . ." he said, wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve, "delicious. Shame there’s nobody here to share it."

    "I’m here, mister," a tiny voice said.

    Willard quickly looked up and around. "What? I thought I heard a voice. Hmm . . . just my imagination, I suppose." He returned his attention to the melon, taking a second juicy bite. "This has to be the best watermelon I’ve ever tasted."

    When he again wiped his mouth, the girl was standing at his feet, looking up at his bewhiskered face with the saddest, most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. One brown, the other blue.

    He pretended to be startled. "Oh!" He placed his piece of melon on the tailgate, and scrutinized the child. "Nobody told me there were midgets in these parts."

    The child’s expression was unchanging; she said nothing.

    "I don’t suppose you like watermelon, do you?"

    She nodded, barely.

    "Bet you can’t eat this," he said, offering the other half of the quarter he’d sliced.

    She accepted the challenge solemnly; she was a gladiator bowing to her next opponent in the Coliseum. She took the melon slice, turned and walked the short distance to the tree, sat and leaned her back against its sturdy trunk.

    Willard watched her, furtively watched as she took her first bite, watched as the sweet, sticky juice trickled down her chin. He watched as her expression began to change. The change was barely perceptible, but it was there - just a slight brightening of those remarkable eyes at first, then what could almost pass as the beginnings of a smile.

    The girl lay into the succulent red meat with the passion of a Golden Gloves competitor in his first bout, pausing only occasionally to spit a seed from the corner of her mouth. By the time she reached the rind, the front of her cotton print dress was soaked, and her arms were sticky all the way up to her elbows.

    The first real smile came after she marched back to the tailgate where Willard sat and presented him with the decimated remains of her opponent.

    Willard would think of the little girl often during the remaining years of his life, and, when he pictured her in his mind’s eye, it was usually that first triumphant smile that the old man saw. The smile, and, of course, those disarming eyes.

*  *  *  *  *

The old peddler had been selling melons down by the road for nearly a week by the time Mavis chanced leaving the house. She had watched him through the window over the sink as she stood doing dishes, watched him sitting on the tailgate of his truck reading aloud from a paperback novel as her daughter sat on the ground looking up at him. At times, she had stood and watched long after the dishes were done.

    She had waited until she was sure that Charlie would stay passed out for a spell, then taken off her apron, smoothed the front of her dress, and ventured out into the yard and down to the spot where the peculiar-looking old man had situated his nomadic business.

    "I want to thank you, mister, for being nice to my little girl," she had blurted out once she was within hearing distance.

    The man turned and smiled, but waited until she was closer to reply. "No ma’am, I thank you for letting her visit. She’s just the kind of company I like," he said, winking at the girl, "Let’s me do all the talking."

    Mavis looked at her feet. "Her daddy don’t like her making noise."

    "Well," he said, "anytime she’s got something to say, I don’t mind the noise a bit." He gave the little girl a smile and another wink.

    Mavis gave a slight nod, then turned and headed back to the house. He saw the bruises, she thought. Just too polite to say anything.

    "Ma’am?" Willard called out.

    She stopped and turned.

    "Is there anything I can do for you?"

    Mavis shook her head as if to say there was nothing anyone could do, turned again and resumed her forlorn trudge.

    Willard watched until the screened door closed behind her. How, he wondered, does a woman like that – young, blonde, attractive – wind up marrying an asshole like Charlie?

    The irony of her life was that Mavis had only married Charlie to get away from her abusive father.

*  *  *  *  *

Willard watched the cruel game with a growing sense of loathing. The sobbing girl hovering over the tiny plant, her hands shaking. Her drunken father charging to within inches of her little fingers, laughing, taunting. A man like that doesn’t deserve to have a daughter.

    Finally Mavis appeared on the porch. She had been watching from the kitchen window, praying that her husband would tire of the game before he ran the mower up over the girl’s hands.

    But he did not grow weary. He seemed, in fact, to become more enthusiastic with each pass of the mower. And, with each pass, he seemed to be coming closer to the child’s hands.

    She knew the consequences of interfering, but she could stand it no longer. "Charlie!" she shouted from the edge of the porch, "That’s enough. You’re going to hurt her. Stop it!"

    Charlie either failed to hear her shouts over the noise of the mower or chose to ignore them.

    Mavis jumped off the side of the porch and ran across the yard. She grabbed Charlie’s shirtsleeve and tugged. "Stop it, Charlie! That’s enough!"

    Without looking around, or even slowing down, Charlie backhanded his wife. She fell to the ground.

    When she got up, she did not grab him again. Instead, she ran back into the house.

    Willard had about seen enough. He was not in the habit of interfering in another man’s business, but he was prepared to make an exception. Charlie was forty years his junior and stronger by a damn sight, but Willard simply could not sit by and let this continue.

    The screened door opened and Mavis emerged carrying a shotgun. She headed straight for Charlie. "Stop it, you son-of-a-bitch. Stop it right now or I swear I’ll kill you."

    Charlie’s expression was one of stunned amusement. He let the mower’s motor die. The only sounds were the girl’s muffled sobs. Charlie slowly swaggered up to his wife. He grabbed the shotgun by the barrel and the stock and wrenched it from her shaking hands.

    Despondently, Mavis dropped her hands to her sides.

    Charlie swung the butt of the gun violently, connected with the side of his wife’s head. She crumpled to the ground. He kicked her in the ribs, then, again, in the head. Mavis lay motionless.

    Intent on delivering a final crushing blow, he raised the shotgun as far above his head as his arms would stretch. Then, just as he began to bring the weapon forcefully down, he stopped - frozen in time for a second – the shotgun clattered to the ground. Charlie’s countenance became one of utter disbelief.

    He fell to the ground, face down. The handle of a knife protruded from the middle of his back. The knife, which had never been used for anything more violent than slicing melons, was buried in the Indian’s back to its hilt.

*  *  *  *  *

The girl came through the screened door the next morning, and apprehensively stepped out onto the porch. Her father’s body was gone. She hoped that he was still dead.

    Her eyes moved from the spot where he had fallen to the spot beneath the oak tree. Old Willard was gone too.

    She boarded a southbound bus with her mother that afternoon. From that day forward, neither the mother nor the daughter ever spoke to the other of Charlie. They had finally awakened from a bad dream and had chosen to leave it in the darkness where it belonged.

    The girl never knew if the seedling that she had hovered over and protected produced a watermelon, but for the remainder of her childhood and well beyond puberty, when she knelt beside her bed at night she did not pray to Jesus or to the Great Spirit of her father’s people.

    It was not some unseen omnipotent power of the universe that she asked to watch over and protect her. It was the melon man.

*  *  *  *  *

    Present Day

The bank of television monitors was recessed in the richly paneled conference room wall. Each of the screens displayed one network’s current panorama of the story it had been reporting since early afternoon. The volume on each of the receivers had been muted.

    But sound was not necessary for one to understand exactly what was being reported. The various news teams were reporting one more in what had become an all-too-familiar series of school shootings.

    One screen showed a reporter interviewing two sobbing girls – both had lost friends. Students, parents, teachers and other school personnel wandered on and off camera in the background, looks of loss and bewilderment on their faces.

    Another network’s helicopter-borne cameraman transmitted aerial views from a variety of angles. Assemblages of law enforcement and emergency vehicles were seen all over the campus.

    A third monitor replayed scenes captured earlier in the day: students running from the south side of the building, the first police cars arriving, stretcher-bearers going into and coming out of the building.

    Yet another showed a gathering of reporters waiting for a sheriff’s department spokesperson to step to the microphone for another briefing.

    Though the topic of discussion was directly related to the goings on being reported, the eight somber-faced men at the mahogany conference table in the center of the room paid no attention to the screens.

    Each looked to be in his mid to late fifties, wore an immaculate dark suit, a starched white shirt and a conservative necktie. From their appearance and demeanor, they could have been a gathering of undertakers discussing final arrangements for the teacher and the three students who were so recently departed.

    The man seated at the head of the table said, "All seems to be going well."

    The others nodded in concurrence.

    "Today’s reports are, of course, part of the derivative benefit we anticipated." He smiled thinly. "Lagniappe, as the Cajuns say, a little something extra."

    "This is the third peripheral action, is it not?" asked the man seated closest to him.

    "But certainly not the last."

    There was a sharp double knock and the conference room door opened, and a balding man in his shirtsleeves hesitantly entered. He held a single sheet of paper in his hand. "Excuse me, gentlemen," the man said, "but I thought this was something that you would want to see right away."

    The man who had been speaking raised his eyebrows. "Very well," he said, taking the document and dismissing the underling with a wave of his hand.

    The others waited in silence as he scanned the text. When he was through, he removed his glasses and said, "It seems we have a problem."

Copyright © 2000, 2001 Jasper Newton.  All rights reserved. 

Web Page Design by GINUWINE GRAPHICS

Disclaimer: Jasper Newton neither controls the banner ads appearing at the tops of these pages nor endorses the products or services they may advertise.