CHAPTER

After Harmona Fairfax’s birthday reception at church, the family returned home to enjoy a special birthday celebratory feast. She gifted her growing brood of children, including the New West children, with her old pots and pans because she no longer needed them, for which they used for making imaginary mud cakes and pies for an imaginary bakery. It became their new favorite activity.

The New West children, otherwise known as Gale’s other siblings, showed up most every day to play, or “patronize” the Fairfax/Olivet establishment, renowned for their fine mud cakes and mud cake products. The children’s imaginations gleefully filled the yard with make-believe commerce, as invisible consumers clamored for the young Fairfax’s “baked” goods.

Of course, it had taken a bit of coercing to convince Ray to join them. Due to his advanced age, he would only consent to watch the proceedings. He pointed at his dogged responsibility of supervision as to why he’d hang around at all. But he would have no part in the frolic. No, sir. These sorts of games were akin to playing house. And boys don’t play house! And then, there’s Russel New West.

The game was fine for Linda Lee, Auddy, and the baby, April May, but Russell was an embarrassment. He was Ray’s age. Ray was embarrassed for him if he didn’t already have the good sense to feel the shame for himself. For goodness sake, it’s as if his reputation meant nothing.

But the cunningly clever Dorthea knew what she was doing. It was slight of hand, the way she does things. Just a ‘no-big-deal’ request, a throwaway, like, ‘can you hand me that?’ ‘Say, for Linda Lee’s sake, could you just pretend to…’ ‘Sake’s alive, Ray! You look very dashing standing like you work here, too.’

An hour in found Ray checking an imaginary oven timer to avoid burning Dorthea’s bread. He was so adept at it, she hired him on the spot. Part time. He had some dignity.

But he had to admit mixing their mud batter was much more fun than he could have imagined. Even Tyron’s little brother, Jefferson, could only watch from his bedroom window for so long before giving in to the laughter. He set his latest read down and left the confines of his room to join them. Ray soon laid aside his embarrassment to finally enjoy a rare moment of his youth. Ray was just thankful the property’s size allowed for anonymity.

Right before lunch, Ray wheel-barrowed Rusell around the yard, playing a separate concurrent game of their own. They would occasionally visit the ‘bakery’ during the alternate activity’s intermission. They pull up to a comically haggard Dorthea asking, “What y’all want?”

“Oh, um,” Russel began. “Hey, bucko, what you want? Blueberry muffins. I want blueberry muffins.”

“I like oatmeal,” Ray says. “Get me oatmeal…with raisins. And nuts.”

“And you call me weird.” Then to Dorthea, “An oatmeal, with raisins, too.”

 “Are they covered in chocolate?”

“Chocolate sauce? That’s extra!” Today, Dorthea was managing the store. “We charge an extra nickel for nuts.” She advertised.

“Nuts!” squealed an included April May. “Nuts! Nuts!” She swiped a fly swatter from the makeshift counter, began searching the air.

 “Shok-la nuts!” April repeated, swatting at insects near her work station, a pit of excavated dirt.

“Gimme two more,” Rusell New West said. Then added, “But put ‘em in a new bag. I saw Poppi and April May spit in that one.”

“What? Why didn’t you say something?”

“I dunno. I probably should have told you she’s ate two of those fly cookies, then?”

“Nuts and butts! Choka-la nuts an’ butts!” April May stood from her dirt mound and ran off singing, Nuts and Butts! Nuts and Butts!”

“Poppi?” Dorthea inquired of her master baker. “You done with the blueberry muffins?”

Linda Lee found herself in a multi-verse where she was a powerful owner of a Cajun diner in Minden and simultaneously the adolescent daughter of Dorthea. And a famous singer sometimes. Youth enjoys a freedom all its own. “We outta flies!”

“Use the cockroaches for berries.” Dorthea called back.

“You said they was caramel.”

“Pretend!” She yelled to a complying diner owner and singer.

They played through midmorning, breaking for a lunch of fried bologna and cheese sandwiches and stalks of sugar cane. Near noon a dark model vehicle entered the property, driving slowly, inconspicuously up the driveway. Darwin Fairfax receives so many visitors of all types that the children don’t notice the comings and goings of a black model T wagon putting toward them.

“What if I wanted the whole cake?”

“You don’t need no whole cake.”

“Uh-huh! I got eight… no, nine kids at home, and we having a party,” Ray laughed.

The drive from the main road was equal or close to three quarters of a mile. The path snaked around bends in a scenic way. When the wagon reached the top of the drive, the driver parked on the south side of the barn, out of sight of the children playing in the yard.

“Where’s my mixing spoon?” Ray wondered aloud.

“Over near the big blue bowl.”

Two men exited the wagon, the driver checked off something listed on his clipboard. The other straightened his black-tie set against the all-white medical jacket, uniformly dressed as the other man.

“It ain’t here,” Ray says.

“Find another one.”

“Go ask Miss Harmona for another one. She won’t mind.”

“Okay,” he says. Then to his little brother, “Auddy! I’ll be back.”

“Okay.” Auddy replied. Something was amiss.

Ray rounded the rear corner of the home, and approached the very back door they used the morning Peetry left them there. The surprise of seeing two men in white uniforms spark feeling he felt festering in the pit of his stomach all morning. He surveyed the looks on his foster parents’ faces. Darwin, looking as if an iron weight fell on his foot from circumstances he had caused himself, and not wanting to look the fool, attempting to pretend the consequences were acceptable. His wife, however, expressed the anguish of a mother helplessly witnessing predators rip her infant apart. He had no further questions.

Play site

Poppi appeared before Dorthea to present her with his new pastry filling.

“Looks creamy to me. It looks fine, Poppi, but… why is it that color?” Dorthea stuck an index finger and thumb into the concoction Poppi mixed and pulled out a sample. “Where did you get this?” She asks, rolling it about on the tips of her fingers.

“Him go over to the hogsty, and mixed they mud with him mud!” Linda Lee ratted.

Dorthea frowned and sniffed her fingers, then the bowl. It had a musky, rotten odor of pig feces.

“Ew!” She tossed the bowl away from her.

Poppi laughed loudly before briskly walking clear of his sister’s angry reach.

“Damn you, Poppi!”

“NO!” Ray’s protest broke the children’s veil of play, and they craned their respective necks in the direction of the big house.

They heard muffled sounds of arguing; one of the voices was Ray’s. Russel glanced at Auddy, curious to see if they had come to the same conclusion. Auddy didn’t wait that long. He set off on wings at his brother’s distress call. All of them sprinted behind him.

They met an encounter already in full swing; Ray was trying to avoid the corral of two adult men, pulling away from one of the servicemen. His fight was impressive, but he was much too small to win this battle.

Auddy attacked the man holding fast to Ray’s shirt collar, biting him in the quadricep, intending to rip a chunk of meat from the leg. The man let out a horrific scream, and he let Ray loose. He reached for Auddy, instead. When he bent over, Ray pushed him. He lost his balance and fell face first into the dust. The children screamed. Harmona slipped from her husband’s embrace and moved forward.

“Please, Auddy, come to me.” Harmona cries fell on blood-filled ears.

“Run, Ray, run!” He screamed, frantically.

“Auddy...” Her voice broke, and she fainted just as Darwin reached her. She was conscious but fell silent.

The second attendant sprung forward and grabbed Auddy by the mouth. Auddy bit his hand and scurried after Ray. The first man regained his composure and stood straight away. No sooner was he fully erect when a sprinting Ray crossed his path again and struck the man in his privates with a small ball-peen hammer. Getting up this time would prove more difficult.

They’d never been apart, Ray and Auddy. In their world, people often lost sight of one another for one reason or a thousand others. And chances were great they’d never see each other again. That possibility, for them, meant death was a better option. They fought to keep that from becoming their reality.

The Fairfax’s watched on. The children’s interference was a swarm of hungry flies. A bombardment of small fist and biting rained on their lower halves of their bodies. Russell fumed, as mad as he was frightened, rocking indecisively on his heels from side to side. Dorthea threw her pig mud. It was her best idea. In the end, the men wrapped Ray in a bear-like embrace and marched him toward their vehicle. Jefferson, the preacher’s second child, glared disapprovingly at his stoic father standing near the rear door of the house.

Darwin dropped his head in shame and turned to walk into the house, unable to return the gaze of his own son. He would reappear a moment later from behind the kitchen window.

The men tossed Ray into the back of the wagon. Auddy couldn’t read the words displayed on both doors. There were bars installed where a window once was. Auddy skated through the jungle of grasping arms to jump onto the wagon’s bumper. The two boys clasped hands.

“Ray! Ray, what’s happening? Where they takin’ you, Ray?” Auddy cried through the bars.

“I don’t know!” Ray’s voice reached a pitch Auddy had never heard before, and it scared him. His knees fell weak. His insides felt more air-filled than atoms or bone, and that air now swirled inside him like a worrisome windstorm. Over Auddy’s shoulder came a growing shadow; a rush of large fumbling feet; and time momentarily stalled. Ray’s eyes said so much, but only had time to say, “We all we got…”

The words set off a strange reaction that reverberated from every bit of Auddy’s being, and for a split second he was inundated with a rush of vivid colors and images so real, his oratory senses activated, and he could smell the situation. His eyes shot to the back of his head and a pulse of energy escaped his epidermis, sending an electric pulse through the first man that touched him. The shock of the sensation sent the man into the beginnings of a panic and he drew back instinctively. He recovered, quickly, but his experience was jarring, and he drew stares from his partner, the Fairfax’s, Bertrice, and Dorthea. Unfortunately, the shock didn’t deter the kidnapping.

Both men rallied, but the attendants became increasingly disturbed by the amount of pressure they had to apply while attempting to separate the brothers from one another’s embrace. It felt as if their tiny limbs would sooner break before their will. The longer the struggle, the louder Auddy wailed. The louder he wailed, the more resolute Ray’s defiance. It was a last stand doomed to fail.

“Let him out,” Auddy screamed. “Let him out!”

“Come now, son.” The first attendant wanted only to get this over and done. “Where he’s going ain’t gonna be so bad. You can visit him, I’m sure, huh?” He shot a look at the kitchen window. The look on the preacher’s face told him nothing.

“Please, let him out. You can’t take him. You can’t.” All the children screamed.

“No. Let him go! Peetry?” Auddy had never done this before, calling out for his dad. And it scared Ray. “Peetry? Help us! Help us!”

Harmona’s influence fell flat. No one notices her, anymore. “Please, be careful,” she begged. “They’ve never been apart before. Please don’t hurt them.”

“Hurt them? Lady, I’ve known an easier time rastlin’ polecats.”

Ray fought like a caged animal for as long as he could ignore the burning muscles caused by the oxygen dying in his body. As he struggled, he took notice of Auddy, twisting and pulling himself from the custodians, and feared he would rip his own arms from their sockets. He knew then that the game was done. He deflated, allowing the men to finish the work. When the worker was confident the fighting was over, he firmly gripped Ray by the elbows and guided him into the automobile where he finally was able to shackle him.

“Auddy!” Ray pressed his dusty face against the bars. “Auddy! Listen to me. I’m alright. They can’t keep us apart,” he said. “You know that, right?” He kept his voice was low, choking emotions into submission for Auddy as best his tiny heart could. “So, don’t fret, none. I- I’ll come back for you.” Then to the New Wests siblings, he said, “Rusell, take care of him. Dorthea, you in charge now. Never thought I’d trust a girl to do anything important.” He smiled weakly, and she returned it with a tinge of pain. “Don’t let nothing happen to him. You hear me? I’ll be back.”

“I won’t,” she promised, heartbroken. “I won’t, I swear!”

The wagon made a turn around and, slowly, pulled away from the house with a sad crew of children racing along the side. Ray vowed his return over and over, as they descended the long driveway. Eventually his voice was too small to hear, but an awestruck audience could still him yelling a quarter of a mile away. Auddy bawled until his own voice gave way, and for quite some time after this day, only the air in his lungs escaped his lips.

-- coming spring '25 --