Page 10 of Archie

Standing up, telling her to come to him so that he could pound her head and then show her what a real dick looked like, she laughed and walked back down the hall toward where she’d come from. No amount of threatening her would make her come back and when the door slammed behind her, he let his temper go and pounded on the bars, his commode as well as the walls to burn his frustrations out.

~*~

Mikey didn’t move around very much. It hurt to just blink his eyes right now. But his sister was there with him, her bed next to his so that they could hold hands. He noticed that she needed it as much as he did. The contact with each other. When the door opened to their room, he was sure it was his father coming back, but it was Jameson. He was smiling when he pulled a chair up to talk to him. Sissy was sleeping, having gotten some pain medication from the nurse a little while ago.

“There are several things that we need to talk about. I’m glad that your sister is sleeping. Even though she’s younger than you, she will need to be made aware of a few things later. When she’s better. All right?” He told Jameson that he was ready. “Ready? I guess that would be something that you’d feel like the way that you grew up. All right then. Your grandmother on your mother’s side is going to take the two of you in. I’m sure you’re aware that your mom is gone.”

“Yes. I was too late to save her.” Jameson told him that had he been there when she was killed, then he might well have been murdered as well, leaving Sissy all alone. “I guess so. But she was all the family that we had.”

“As I said, you have a grandma that is going to take you in. Also, you have all of us that will be there for you. The reason that I’m here is that I’m going to represent you, I’m an attorney when the case is brought before the court. It will have to be done, even though he’s dead, so that you and your sister can collect on the insurance that was taken out from when your biological father was killed. And Benson is the one that killed him.” Mikey nodded, knowing all his life that Benson had had a part in his dad’s death. Not what he’d done, but all the same, he knew that he’d been the one who had killed him. “You know anything else that I can look into for the two of you? So you understand, the sloth will pay your grandmother for raising the two of you. If she does anything wrong, not that I think she will, but if you have any trouble, you just come and find one of us, and we’ll take care of things.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know I had a grandma so that will be new to us.” Jameson said that he’d not known either until he spoke with Carrie. “She’s a nice lady, you know? I like her a lot.”

“So do I. She’s very special to all of us, as is Sunny, Nash’s mate.” He said that she scared him. “To be honest with you, Mikey, she scares me as well. But I don’t tell her that. I don’t want to be hurt.”

They both laughed and he realized that he didn’t hurt as much as he had before. Maybe it was because he knew things were going to be all right or that his bear was making it better. Either way, he was glad for the company that he had.

Jameson talked about the things that were going to happen to him and his sister. The sloth leader, Roger Mann, said that a fund was being set up for him and his sister to pay for them to go to college, too. That was the best news that he’d heard all his life. That he was going to be able to go to college. He loved school.

When the nurse came to check on him and Sissy, Jameson told her that he needed something for the pain. He was correct, he was hurting pretty badly, but he didn’t think it was very nice of him to get the meds when he had company. Jameson told him that he was going to have to make sure that he didn’t get too overwhelmed with the pain. He told him that Carrie had given them a bit of magic so that he and Sissy would heal quicker.

When he started to drift off, he remembered about his mom. Feeling his eyes, even though they were closed, fill with tears at how she was gone. She had been the best mother in the whole wide world, and he didn’t know what he was going to do without her there for him and Sissy all the time. He was just going to have to make sure that his sister was safe now that he was the man of the house. He knew that it was a lot of responsibility for a ten-year-old, but he thought that he was up for it. Plus, he had the Shepherds to look to when he needed advice. He wasn’t entirely sure what their grandma might do for them. Mikey was slightly untrusting of a lot of people and was worried that she’d be just like Benson had been—he decided right then and there that he wasn’t going to call him dad anymore.

Drifting in and out of sleep, he woke up a couple of times when he had to go to the bathroom. His wounds weren’t on his legs, so he figured that he could go on his own. He barely made it to the bathroom and had to call for help to get him back to bed. Mikey had never felt so weak in his life as he did right now.

Archie was in his room when he made his way to the toilet the second time. He had a pizza with him, a cheese on one half and a pepperoni on the other half. He ate the cheese side, and his sister ate most of the other side. He’d never had a hot pizza since he’d been a little boy. It was a treat that he loved a great deal.

“How are the two of you feeling?” The chocolate milk was another thing that he’d not had in a long time. Drinking half of it in one drink, he smiled at Archie when he told him that he had more milk if he needed it. He told the man that he was doing a lot better now. “Good. I have some news for you both that I think that you’ll like to hear about. Your grandma is coming by tomorrow to talk to the two of you. She thought that the two of you were dead. That’s what Benson told her. She’s been grieving so much lately. She told me that she was so happy to have you both come and live with her. She really seems like a very nice lady. I think that you’ll love staying with her.”

He told them things that Jameson had told him about the college education as well as other things that would come to them as they were orphaned now. Sissy cried a little bit, but she stopped when Mikey hugged her.

“The house that you were living in when your father passed away and Benson moved into is going to be torn down and rebuilt. As soon as it’s finished, the three of you will move into it. It’s going to be bigger than the one before with each of you having your own rooms along with your grandma.” Mikey hadn’t had his own things before and told Mr. Archie that. “I know. You two have had a bad life for a long time and we’re going to help you as much as we can. You won’t have to worry about a lot of things, including not having enough to eat again. I swear if I have it, you two will as well. And your grandma is going to benefit from taking you in as well, so you don’t have to worry about her.”

Archie was true to his word and Mikey had all the milk, switching to white milk after dinner that he wanted. His sister wanted some juice and he thought it was odd that he had some of that in his bag as well. Not wanting to mess things up for them, he didn’t voice his questions but enjoyed having a good hot meal, the first in a very long time.

After Archie left, promising them that he’d be there in the morning before his grandma showed up to make sure that things were all right between them. Mikey was a little afraid, not remembering his grandma all that much. But he was assured, several times by Archie that he and his sister were going to be in good hands. He hoped so. He’d hate to have all this taken away from him now. It was nice to have clean clothing on and food in his belly when he wanted it.

Dozing off, he thought about his mother and Benson. He’d been so mean to his mom that there were times that he wanted to kill him himself. Mikey had wanted to grow up fast so that he could be big enough to make Benson gone but he was also glad now that he didn’t do anything stupid. What Carrie had told him when she’d come to visit him earlier. When his sister said his name, he looked over at her and smiled.

“Will we be all right, you think? I don’t want to go anywhere anymore if people are going to hurt us. Do you?” He told her what Archie had said. “I know that people have different faces, Mikey. One that they show the people from the welfare and the one that they show us. I’m worried that our grandma has been showing them the other face and that when we go and live with her, she’s going to be like Benson.”

“Don’t you remember her from when you were little?” Sissy told him that she didn’t remember her at all. “Well, I remember some of her. Christmases were so nice. There was so much food on the table that I nearly burst. She had so many different kinds of cookies and cakes. I just remembered what she told me once. That Christmas was for sweets, and Thanksgiving was for food. I forgot about that.”

He grinned, holding his sister’s hand while he told her of other stories that he was just remembering about grandma. The one about his grandpa, who he’d forgotten about until then, made the two of them laugh.

“Grandda used to read the Christmas story to us. He held you in his lap, and you just stared at him like he was speaking right to you. He might have been, now that I think on it.” She laughed asking him to tell the story to her again. “We’d lay out cookies and milk for Santa, too. He even had some carrots that he put into storage that still had the tops on them. He told me once that the reindeer loved the tops more than the carrots themselves.”

Mikey had long since given up his belief in Santa. It was mostly because Benson had told him he was a baby for believing in him. But he’d keep believing if he could see how happy it made his little sister to believe.

“He’d sing with us too. I never told him, but he was a terrible singer. But he did it with gusto, as mom used to say. I was so sad when he passed away. He’d been really old, in his fifties, but he had a bad heart that nobody knew about, and it took him from us.” Mikey was going to tell his sister stories about their mom, too, things that had to do with before Benson came into their lives. His dad, too. So she’d know what awesome people they were. “Dad was the only one besides Grandma that would eat pecan pie. I don’t remember if I got to try it, but Dad would be sick the next day for eating too much of it. He’d swear that he wasn’t going to eat it again, only to eat it again the next year. He was funny like that.”

Mikey told his sister about birthdays, his and hers, until he was too tired to speak. Sissy had been asleep for a few minutes when he finally thought that he could sleep too. Closing his eyes, he let rest take him under and hoped that he didn’t have any bad dreams tonight. Mikey couldn’t believe how much better he felt, just talking about the family with Sissy than he had in a very long time. He decided that he was going to get him a notebook and write some of the things down that he remembered so that he could share them with his sister. And her kids, if she had any. Mikey didn’t think he’d ever have children. Benson had told him that he was just too stupid and ugly to have a mate.

His dreams had always been nightmares. Tonight, it started out with the same dream he’d had every night since being in the hospital. It was his mother being dead and Benson trying to kill him. It was all out of order this time, but he saw things that he’d not remembered before. Like his mom telling him how much she loved him and Sissy as she hid away from Benson. How sorry she was that she’d not been able to protect them better. There were other things, too, good things like the stories that he told his sister that he’d loved. Mikey finally felt at rest when his mom, as she used to do before Benson, kissed him on the forehead and told him that he was the best little boy in the world. Rolling to his side, he remembered believing her and he wanted to be able to remember things like that all the time.

Chapter 6

Carrie thought that the entire town had turned out for the trial for her brother. It was just as well, she thought. Carrie thought that there wasn’t a single person in town who hadn’t been hurt by some of the actions of her brother. Some of them more than she had. Once the judge, the honorable Judge Harold J. Cutthroat, was seated, a very fitting name from what she’d heard, things were called to order. Since this was the only thing he had on his calendar today, he told everyone in the room he was willing, if they were to not read the charges against Douglas, to forego the reading of the list of charges that had been brought before the courts concerning Douglas. Of course, he stood up and disagreed.

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