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BK: What was all that about? Are you okay?
Marie: What are you talking about?
BK: Well, it looked and sounded as though you were about to sing something different before that man started whispering in your ear. What did he say to you?
Marie: That’s the boss.
BK: Does he own this place?
Marie: I don’t know about that, but I do know that he’s in charge of the music. He calls the shots, and he felt that it would be better if I sung “Piece by Piece” instead of my usual.
BK: Why would he care?
Marie: Among other things, he told me that we should be making every effort to put on a big show for our esteemed guest, which I suppose is you.
BK: I’m not sure what he’s talking about. Sorry, I didn’t get your name, mine’s Brian.
Marie: Marie. I don’t know what to tell you about that. All I know is what he tells me, and it’s always better to just play along and do what he asks.
BK: Does he hurt you? I can...
Marie: You can’t do anything, and I’m not here to talk about any of that. I’m just here to tell you my story. That’s why you are here, isn’t it? You want stories. Answers that will make our little world seem a little clearer. I can get you a little closer to those answers, but you need to stop worrying about the smaller things and simply listen to the stories being told.
BK: This certainly seems to be a strange town. How can so many bad things have happened in a place this far off the beaten path?
Marie: Again, you are asking questions that I don’t have answers for. Why don’t I just get to my story, and why don’t you just focus on the task at hand?
BK: Okay then. Answer me this; what was the song that you were originally going to sing before the boss told you to change it?
Marie: Now, that’s a question I can answer. It was “The Thunder Rolls.”
BK: The Garth Brooks song?
Marie: Uh-huh.
BK: Can we talk about that one first before we get to the Kelly Clarkson tune?
Marie: They are both part of the same story, but it is probably best if we go back to the beginning and talk about my life growing up here. Doing that will present you with the full picture, which I’m sure is what you are after. Plus, the boss wants you to be entertained, so why paint a smaller picture when the bigger one has more delightful details?
BK: Start wherever you like, Marie. I have nothing but time.
Marie: Hmm, not true, but okay.
BK: What do you...
Marie: I was born in Redfield and other than a few trips in-state, I have never really left for any great length of time. My family helped grow and work the strawberry fields in the early days, with future generations of my clan deciding that it was a good idea to stay and keep things the way they have always been. Change was something to be feared, so my parent took the path most traveled.
BK: Why did you stay?
Marie: For my mom. She was more than just my mom; she was also my best friend. I knew it would break her heart if I moved away, plus I couldn’t stand the idea of her being stuck here alone with HIM!!
BK: Your father?
Marie: No, he passed away when I was little. I don’t remember a lot about him, but the memories that I do have are all good. My mom would often talk about their life together and what a wonderful man he was. My dad was absolutely the love of her life, but the cigarettes took him early. Mom was still very young and eventually began craving some companionship again. She wasn’t looking for anything serious, but that’s usually when serious finds you.
BK: She started dating?
Marie: Yes. She waited more than three years to get back out there after losing my dad, which should give you some idea of how heartbroken she was. My mom was a beautiful woman and always had men paying her attention. Finding dates wasn’t difficult for her, but she would go on one or two with each man before ending it and moving on to the next. I don’t necessarily think she was being picky, but rather just holding her dates to a ridiculously high standard. She was looking for someone just like my dad, which was something she was never ever going to find.
BK: But she did eventually find someone?
Marie: Oh, I’d say he found her. My mom was an English teacher at Haskins and would routinely meet with parents to update them on how their kids were doing. She was a firm believer in having parents play a role in their child’s education, so she went above and beyond to make sure that they were studying at home as well as when they were in her classroom. There were a few people that came to those meetings as a couple despite being divorced or in the process of getting there. One of the men in that group took a real shine to my mom and actively started chasing her.
BK: How did he do that?
Marie: He would contact the school and ask if he could talk to my mom about his son’s progress in English class. He would always paint it as being concerned for the future of his son and the college he would eventually go to. My mom was impressed that a parent would take the time to play such an active role and always made time for him. It became clear quite quickly that she was smitten with him.
BK: How so?
Marie: In the beginning, she would talk about him in a strictly professional tone, but once she found out that he was single and on the market, things started to change. She took to getting out of bed a little earlier on the days she was to meet with him, fussing over what to wear and taking real care in applying her make-up, which she usually didn't wear very often. She still spoke to me about the meetings and how wonderful he was as a father, but she would also tell me how polite he was and how good he looked in his suit. It was nice to see her so happy, and I was initially glad that she had found someone that she liked.
BK: When did that feeling change for you?
Marie: Not until much later. When they officially started dating he, Martin Jackson was his name, would come to the house to pick my mom up. He was always right on time, and she was always fashionably late in getting ready for the date, so there was always some time for him and I to sit and talk. He was genuinely interested in what I had to say, asking about my schooling, my plans for the future, and a whole bunch of other stuff that only my mom ever seemed really interested in. He struck me as a really nice man, and I remember being glad that he had come into our lives. Before he proposed to my mom, he came and asked for my permission to do so. When I said yes, he also asked if I would help him pick out a ring that my mom would love. I was excited to be a part of something so grown-up, so of course, I agreed to help him find something special for my mom.
BK: How old were you then?
Marie: I was eleven. I was getting to an age where my tomboy ideals were becoming a thing of the past, and I think that was because of my mom. She would always dress up really nice and make herself look so pretty, and I wanted to look and behave just like her, which meant ditching the dungarees that I always wore. Martin said that as a reward for helping with the ring, he would take me on a shopping spree when we went to Atlanta to visit the jewelry stores, and that’s exactly what he did. He took me back home with one small box containing the biggest diamond I had ever seen, while I walked in the front door carrying a mountain of bags filled with new dresses and shoes.
My mom knew that I was taking a trip to Atlanta with Martin, but she thought it was for something else entirely. I don’t really know what he told her we were up to, but she certainly looked surprised, and a little angry, when I walked in carrying all that stuff. Her anger disappeared very quickly when Martin dropped down on one knee and proposed. It was probably the most perfect moment of my young life, and I remember all three of us hugging and crying after my mom said yes. I felt like the second luckiest girl in the world, with my mom sitting just ahead of me on that list.
BK: It all sounds wonderful, but I’m guessing it didn't stay that way?
Marie: It did for a while. Heck, I even took to calling him dad, although I did ask mom if it was okay for me to do so. She took a moment to answer when I asked, almost as though she were looking for permission from my real dad and waiting for a reply. She said that it would be fine, but thinking about it after the fact, I’m sure there was a little bit of hurt in her eyes. It was a fleeting thing, and I might be imagining it all these years later, but I really do think it was there.
BK: Were she and Martin still in a good place when you made that request?
Marie: As far as I could tell, yes. They were always really lovey-dovey and happy, and I never heard them argue or sensed any tension. Things changed when he got a promotion at work. Martin was employed by a big auto parts supplier that had offices a couple of towns over from Redfield. Rather than uprooting us after the engagement, he decided to move into our home, which meant a little bit of a commute each day. It wasn’t a long haul by any stretch of the imagination, and he said that he enjoyed the travel as it gave him time to decompress after a hard day at work.
He was offered a job as the regional sales manager for the company, and while he would still be based in his usual office, he was also expected to travel quite a bit. I remember him calling a family meeting and discussing it with mom and me. None of us fancied the idea of him being away, but mom felt that it would be unfair to hold him back from a career advancement and the money that came with it. Mom said he should take the job and we went out for a big celebration dinner that night. It was the last time I remember us all being happy together under the same roof.
BK: What went wrong?
Marie: The new job changed Martin, and not for the better. He was always a very confident man, which was part of the reason why he was so good at his job, but he eventually crossed the line between confidence and arrogance. The company he worked for was already big and successful, but his region became the best in the country under his leadership, or at least that was the way he told it. He stopped asking mom and me about our day, choosing instead to talk about his. He didn’t head out of town much in the first couple of months on the job, but after that, I remember him being gone for long spells at a time. I’m talking two or three weeks per trip before coming home for a few days and heading back out.
When he was home, my mom practically begged for attention, but he was too busy either talking about work or disappearing into his home office to make those “important calls.” When mom or I complained, he would get indignant and tell us that he was working hard to provide us with a better life. He told us that we couldn’t understand what it was like to be the man of the house and to handle the responsibilities as such. I’m sure he was totally forgetting that my mom did all that in the years between my dad dying and meeting him. He basically turned into a real dick, but then he got even worse.
BK: Worse how?
Marie: He started to become abusive to my mom, although only verbally at first. He started small, complaining about her looks and her cooking. He told her that since he was working so hard, the least she could do was make an effort to look good for him when he came home. I always thought she was amazingly pretty, and I know she made an extra effort on the days he would get back from traveling, but it was never enough. Dinner times were the worst, though, as he would spit out her food and talk about how awful it was compared to the high-end restaurants that he ate at when on the road. The real turning point came the night that he decided to throw his plate across the dining room table, barely missing my mom’s head. He jumped out of his chair and grabbed her, shoving her face against the wall and screaming at her to lick the mess clean.
BK: What did you do?
Marie: I lost my shit. I was about sixteen or seventeen when this went down, and I was going through a goth phase at the time, all black clothes, hair, and make-up, all of which I figured would turn me into a tough chick not to be messed with. It wasn’t really an act of rebellion though, as I think I was going dark to make my mom appear brighter somehow. Anyway, I charged at Martin and tried to drag him off, but he swatted me away as though I was nothing.
BK: He hit you?
Marie: Not really, no. He just pushed out to keep me at arm’s length, and it was really my momentum that sent me spilling backward so quickly. I hit the edge of the table, which hurt, and that made me even angrier than I already was. I picked up a breadknife off the table and yelled at him to leave my mom alone. His face transformed into something truly monstrous when he saw me holding that knife, and I could see the knuckles on his free hand turn white as he clenched his fist. You could see that he was furious, but his voice remained calm and authoritative when he spoke. He called me a spoiled little bitch and told me to drop the knife or he would really hurt my mom. I wasn’t about to call his bluff, so I dropped it and took a step back. I think that my attacking him took some of the fire out of the situation because he let my mom go the moment I put the knife back where it belonged.
BK: What happened in the aftermath?
Marie: Martin bolted out the door in a hurry and stayed away all night. I told my mom that we needed to call the police and let them know what happened, but she rejected that idea out of hand. Instead, she started clearing the table as she always did right after every meal. There were still pieces of food stuck in her hair, and she had an ugly red mark on the side of her face that had been pressed against the wall. I tried to help, but she told me that she was fine and that I should go to my room and do my homework. I gave her a hug, and just as I thought she was about to break down, I felt her stiffen in my arms before she broke the embrace and went right back to cleaning.
I stayed in my room the rest of the night, and it was torture. I wanted to go and comfort my mom, but I could tell that she felt ashamed and that she wanted to be alone. I barely slept a wink that night and heard Martin coming home at about five in the morning. Mom must have been awake and downstairs when he came in because I could hear them talking in hushed tones. I went down there immediately, just in case he decided to put on a repeat performance. They were standing in the middle of the room hugging, and you could tell that they had both been crying. When he saw me there, he apologized and opened an arm to invite me into the embrace, but I told him, in no uncertain terms, where to go. He was back on the road later that day, so I steered clear until he left.
BK: How long was he gone, and how were things while he was away?
Marie: I remember that his first trip away after that night was one of his shortest in a while and was probably no more than a week. My mom seemed to be back to her old self, and while I tried to bring up the fight with her a couple of times, she always just shrugged it off and steered the conversation elsewhere. She seemed genuinely happy to see Martin when he came home, but her joy was short-lived. He spent that first night home complaining about work and the pressure that he was under, and while he didn’t turn any of that negativity on to us, it was still very tense.
Right before bed that night, he came to my room and asked if he could talk to me. I wasn’t really about it, but I also knew I couldn’t avoid the issue forever, so I let him in. He told me how sorry he was for the way he behaved, but he didn’t seem particularly contrite, as most of his speech ended up being about his work and how tired he was all the time. I told him that if I ever saw him lay a hand on my mom again, I would either call the cops or kill him in his sleep, with the latter being the more likely option. That proved to be the conversation stopper for the evening, as he basically mumbled one more apology before hightailing it out of my room.
BK: How did things go after that?
Marie: It felt as though he was really making an effort to get back to being the man he was when he first came into our lives, but you could see that he was struggling to hold it all together. I guess that his job was really stressful and that he was constantly expected to raise the bar and produce bigger and better numbers. In my mind, though, that was just a small part of the problem. I think he enjoyed the jet set life he was leading on the road. He was staying in 5-star hotels and dining like a king every single night, which I assumed made him resent the simple life that he had to return to whenever he landed back in Redfield.
BK: What makes you think that?
Marie: He would generally be a little ornerier when he came home from trips with the other regionals and the big bosses. They would really live it up and go all out on those trips, making it that much tougher to adapt back to a regular life. I’m not saying this to excuse him for his behavior, because the reality is that he was cruel and vindictive towards the end, not to mention violent and dangerous.
BK: Can you tell me a little more about how he would treat your mom when he came back from those trips?
Marie: All I can tell you are secondhand stories that came from my mom. He was very careful to be on his best behavior when I was around. I think the combination of going at him with a knife and threatening to kill him put him on guard around me. I know from the way that I reacted that first time he was abusive that I could absolutely hurt him if it came down to it, and I’m positive that he could tell that I meant what I said and that I would willingly mess him up.
I would see bruises on my mom. Mostly on her arm, so I had an idea that he was getting handsy with her. She would blow it off and say that she was just clumsy, but I knew better. Again, I told her that she needed to get the cops involved if Martin was getting physical, but she said that she could handle him, which she eventually was forced to do.
BK: What was the breaking point for your mom?
Marie: When he choked her out and threatened to kill her. She had become accustomed to his verbal bullshit and his laying hands on her, but the choking crossed the line. I think she had been in a bit of a fog since the dinner table fight, but the choking dispersed the fog and left her with a real sense of clarity. I think it was at that point that mom realized she might actually be in some real danger. She waited until he went to bed that night, then she went upstairs with a baseball bat and gave him some serious whacks, telling him that she was not the only one that should be fearing for their life.
BK: Wow! How did you hear about that?
Marie: Martin told me. He showed me the bruises on his body and had the nerve to suggest that my mom might be coming unhinged. When I asked her about it, mom showed me the marks on her neck where he had gone after her. I called the police that time, but when they came out, neither my mom nor Martin decided to press charges. I told them about all the other stuff he had done, but I knew there was nothing they could do to him at that point given that the only evidence they had to go on was that they were both having a go at each other. The cops did suggest that Martin go stay at a hotel for the night, which is exactly what he did. He was leaving on another business trip the following day, so his bags were already packed and ready to go. He left rather meekly, as the cops stayed around to make sure that he got out of there while he and mom were still both in one piece. It was the last time I ever saw him alive, or fully alive, I should probably say.
BK: Wait, what? Fully alive?
Marie: Yes. He stayed away for a month on that trip. He still called my mom regularly, and she told me that he was dropping hints that he might never come back except to get the rest of his stuff and move on.
BK: How did you mom react to that news?
Marie: Honestly, she seemed relieved. It had become clear to both of us that the man we loved back in the day was gone forever, so it made sense for the man that Martin had become to hitch his wagon and move on. While it was clear that her marriage was dying, mom seemed to take it all in stride. I was getting ready to move out and go to college, and she was thinking about selling and moving out of state. Things at the high school were getting a little weird and tense, and she wanted out.
BK: What was the high school thing all about?
Marie: You’ll find out soon enough, I’m guessing. Anyway, I was working a part-time job to make some extra money for college at that point. It was close to the end of the school year, so I would finish my classes and go put in a few hours working as a cashier at the local dollar store. The owner there was pretty strict, though, and had a no cell phone policy, which meant storing your device in a locker in the employee break room. He was cool about letting me study when things were quiet, so it was tough to feel too put out about not being able to get online.
Anyway, on the day when everything went down, I picked up my phone from the locker and saw that there were a ton of missed calls and texts from my mom. They were all essentially saying the same thing, which was that I shouldn’t come home right after work. She kept saying that everything was fine, and while she sounded calm enough in the messages, alarm bells were going off in my head.
BK: What did you do?
Marie: I clocked out at work and headed straight home. It wasn’t very far from the store to my house, but you better believe that I covered the distance in record time that day. My heart sank when I turned the corner onto our street and saw Martin’s car sitting in the driveway. In truth, it was split between the driveway and the lawn with the mailbox sitting smashed beneath the front wheels. Panic sunk in then and I could hardly get the door open. I was shaking like crazy and close to tears, but I knew I had to hold it together as much as possible because I thought I might be stepping into a war zone of sorts.
BK: What was it like once you stepped inside?
Marie: Quiet. I remember it being just too quiet. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it turned out to be the latter. I called my mom’s name but got no response, so I tried calling for Martin, but I had no luck there either. I could hear my blood rushing in my ears, so I forced myself to try and calm down. It was when I got myself under control that I started to hear a tune being hummed. The noise was coming from upstairs, and I could tell that it was my mom who was making it.
I took those stairs two at a time and went to her bedroom, which was where the noise seemed to be coming from. The whole room was trashed, and there was a pool of blood in the middle of the carpet. My mom was still humming that tune. I could tell that the sound was coming from the en suite bathroom, but the blood and the weirdness of the whole scene made it feel as though I was rooted to the spot. I called her name again but got no response. I knew then that I had to go into that bathroom, even though every fiber of my being was telling me to get out and call the cops.
BK: What did you do?
Marie: I dragged myself into the bathroom and then spent the rest of my miserable existence wishing I hadn’t. The first thing that hit me was the smell. You read stories about blood and how it has the scent of copper pennies, but it’s clear to me now that the people who wrote that have never been in a space soaked in blood and gore. It smelled like days dead roadkill, but there was also the scent of shampoos and soap trying to cut through, making it burn my nostrils like the world’s most ineffective potpourri. The stench was truly awful, but I would have gladly taken that if it meant never seeing what caused all that blood.
BK: I know this must be hard, Marie, but can you describe the scene to me?
Marie: Martin was standing in the tub, his hands strapped together with his belt, which was looped around the shower head. I’m not sure that standing is actually the best way to describe his pose, as I’m sure he would have been in a crumpled heap on the porcelain were he not strapped up so tight. My mom was in the tub with him, her back to me, and I could see that she was holding a knife, the very one I went after Martin with all those years previous, and a plunger.
BK: A plunger?
Marie: Uh-huh. She was carving little slices of flesh off his body and stuffing them into his mouth using the wooden handle of the plunger. When she was forcing the meat in, I could see that his front teeth were all essentially shattered and in ruins, probably from the handle being forced into his mouth. Once mom got a chunk in there, she would cover his mouth and try to make him swallow. If that didn’t work, she would take the business end of the plunger, place it over his mouth, and hammer away at his face as though she was trying to unplug the toilet. She never once turned around, but she must have heard me come in because she said that she had warned me to stay away and that I should have listened.
I assumed that Martin was dead, but as I turned to run, I saw his eyes roll back into his head, his body twitching as she carved another piece off of his leg. Yes, there were times when I wanted to kill him in those later years, but what mom was doing went way beyond anything that was human.
BK: What did you do when you left the house?
Marie: I called 9-1-1 right away and explained what was happening. They were on scene fast, and they made me get in the back seat of one of the cruisers as they went into the house. They weren’t in there for long when I heard shots being fired. They explained to me after the fact that mom wouldn’t drop the knife and that they were forced to shoot her when she rushed them, knife still in hand. Martin had breathed his last by that point. There was nothing they could do to bring him back, which is probably for the best given the shape he was in.
BK: What about your mom? Did she survive the shooting?
Marie: She was gone too. These were small-town cops that were on the scene, and they all panicked when she charged. She never had a chance. I can see that you want to ask me more, but that’s all there is to tell, so it’s time for me to let someone else say their piece.