Fertile, Missouri
1928
THE WOMAN CLUTCHED THE SLIM tin box tightly to her chest, hurried down the street to her house and up the stairs to her bedroom. She closed the door and sank down on the edge of the bed, sucked in gulps of air and waited for her heartbeat to settle into a regular rhythm.
The vile, rotten, lying, conniving sonofabitch had hidden his dirty little secret well! She muttered her fury, unable to find words to describe just how despicable she found him to be. If he were not already dead, she would kill him again and again. She fervently hoped that he was burning in hell!
She never would have found out the sinful things her husband had done if not for the leak in the roof at the hardware store. Water had come down the wall in back of the counter. When shelves had been emptied and moved out, she had found in the wall behind the bottom shelf a box that contained not only a ledger but bow ribbons, garters, buttons, snips of hair tied with a string: his mementos. In an envelope were Kodak pictures of his bastards: a shaggy-haired boy in overalls too short for his skinny legs, a small girl with blond curls, another girl with dark braids, a tall boy standing beside a board fence and a baby in a carriage. She wondered how he managed to get the pictures.
She had told her brother, when he asked what she had found in the box, that it was her personal diary she had put there for safekeeping and that it really was of no consequence to anyone but her. She had not realized then the significance of the ledger, but she had figured it out later when she scanned the names. One name jumped out at her:
Julie Jones—July 1917—girl March 1918 named Joy. Below he had written: I couldn’t have picked a better name myself.
Now in her room behind a locked door, she moved to the chair beside the window, opened the ledger and began to read. An hour later she was too angry to cry. Pregnancy had resulted from his intercourse—he didn’t consider it rape— with twenty of the fifty-seven women and girls he’d penetrated with his mighty sword, as he had so disgustingly called it. Only a very few of his encounters had been consensual. His notes made it clear that he preferred a challenge and thoroughly enjoyed stalking the women and girls he had chosen to have his children and forcing them to accept his seed.
Her husband had kept a careful record of each conquest and was proud that only two miscarriages and the death of one of the women had been the result of his desire to procreate. He regretted the death, but his victim knew who he was and he’d had no choice but to kill the girl.
In a note written in 1917 he explained his compulsion to rape: I will sow my seed in young females and leave behind a part of myself when I leave this earth that will go on and on into the future. When he died, he left eighteen children and three pregnant girls. Two girls from neighboring towns had received a second dose of his sperm when he discovered that they had failed to catch the first time and the opportunity had arisen for him to copulate with them again. Behind these names he had written: Second time was even more satisfying because the bitches knew that they were going to get plowed deep and long.
The woman stared out the window at a boy riding his scooter down the sidewalk, then watched the iceman stop across the street, go to the back of his truck and hoist a large chunk of ice to his back. The boy was waiting when he returned to the truck and was given a chip of ice. As he skipped away, she wondered if he was one of her stepchildren.
Her hands curled around the arms of the chair. She had grieved for Ron Poole for five years, the same number of years they had been married before he was killed. He had never expressed regret that they had not had children. The first year of their marriage he had demanded sex morning and night and sometimes in the middle of the day. He had been a gentle lover, but when, after a few years, she hadn’t conceived, he seldom touched her and had begun to act more like her brother than her husband.
Looking back, she remembered him as being kind to her and acting the doting husband in public. His standing in the community was important to him, and it helped to make it all the more difficult to believe that he was a rapist.
She covered her face in shame as she remembered lying in bed waiting for him to come to her, love her and satisfy her sexual hunger. She realized now that the rutting stud didn’t need his wife. He was getting his satisfaction from young girls, not only here but in surrounding towns.
An idea began to form in her mind, a way that she could get even not only with him but with the stupid, careless women who had allowed him to take advantage of them. With a goal in mind she skipped a few pages in the ledger and began to make her own list.
When she finished, she realized that she knew nine of his children. They lived right here in Fertile. Some had been raised as brother or sister to the girl who had given them birth. Some of the girls had married as soon as they realized that they were pregnant and passed the children off as their husbands’. But the man for whom she had grieved for all these years had known better; and, according to the notes he had posted beside the birthdates, he had received an enormous amount of satisfaction watching their development.
He appeared to be fond of all his offspring. Beside their names he had noted physical descriptions and whether or not they appeared to be healthy. Beside two names he expressed regret that he had not been more careful when he chose their mothers. He was not pleased with the care they were being given. He was even exploring the idea that if something happened to the mothers, it might be possible for him to adopt the children.
The woman sitting in the rocking chair began to rock energetically. She felt suddenly as if she had come alive. The mantle of grief for her lost love had slid from her shoulders. She’d often heard that hate was very close to love and that nothing energized the soul as much as hating someone and seeking vengeance.
The dull and listless life she had lived since his death was over; she now had a goal in mind. It would be a few years before the offspring he had so proudly sired would be old enough to fit into her plans. But that was all right. She was in no hurry. She would spend the time getting to know each of them, and when the time came, she would be ready.