Page 6 of Demitrius

“Goodbye, Mr. Jameson. I hope you have whatever life you deserve. I’m going to petition the courts to be allowed not to help you. You just threatened me.” Samuel was confused and told him that. “You’re confused about threatening me? Or simply confused about all of this? Either way, I’m not going to give you what I can simply because you said those things to me. I knew this was going to be wrong as soon as I read over the report. Goodbye, sir.”

Before he could ask about who else was going to be coming back, he was shuffled out of the room and to his cell in a matter of minutes. There was no conversation from the cops that took him back, nor would they let him use the phone. Damn it all to hell, somebody better be explaining to him what was going on or he was going to be pissed off. Again.

Things were off in his cell, too. Like his bed wasn’t made up, but it looked like someone had started to make his bed. There was fresh toilet paper on the stand where his commode was, and on the little table that he had, there was some paper. Of course, no pencil or pen, but he by god had paper if he wanted to fly an airplane. He started banging on the cell bars to get someone to tell him what was going on.

“What the heck do you want?” The officer seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and it startled him a bit. “You stop that noise or I’m going to take away your extras.”

“What extras? I got nothing in here to write with. The toilet paper isn’t the good stuff like my wife used to buy. Hell, I can see right through it.” Ignoring what he’d said, the man told him that he had shower privileges in ten minutes. “Well, where is that? And what sort of clothes am I going to be putting on? This orange thing is smelly.”

“It’s smelly because you are. When was the last time you took a bath or a shower?” He told him that he didn’t like getting wet all over, he just did a whores bath. “I have no idea what that means. Get yourself cleaned up or we’re going to take you out back and scrub you down with the hose.”

“A whores bath? As many times as you’ve arrested women of the night, and you don’t…it’s them washing their delicate parts between customers. Christ, I can’t believe I have to tell you that. What the hell are you doing here if you’re not arresting whores? Why, just the other day I had me one and she cleaned herself right up with one of them moist towels things you get in a bag. Christ, ole mighty, you’re dumber than a rock.”

“You’re to get yourself cleaned up all over your body and hair. You have five minutes to get ready.” He didn’t like to be rushed into anything, so he told him that. “It’s that or the hose, you can take your pick.”

He decided that he’d take the shower. He’d been in this jail before, plenty of times, and if they pulled the hose on you, it would tear skin off on account of them using a fire hose to get you clean. Nothing survived that kind of bathing either. No, he was going to take a shower the old-fashioned way.

Chapter 3

Demi was having a blast with the kids. They were good boys, never getting out of line as he kept an eye on them. Today, they were working in his yard picking up sticks that had fallen from the trees in the last storm they’d had. The pile was getting pretty large when he decided that he should have a bonfire with it and cook out some hot dogs with the two of them.

“Aunt Mandy said that we can only have hot dogs once a week. She doesn’t like them at all.” Demi asked Martin what was wrong that she didn’t like them. “She said she saw a show where they showed how they were made, or something like that. She won’t eat them, and she doesn’t like to cook them for us. It’s all right, you know, Mr. Demi. We like all kinds of other food she cooks for us.”

“Is she a good cook?” Teddy told him that she was really good when she had a recipe to follow. “I can cook anything with or without a cookbook, but I’ve had practice on cooking. I love it. She’ll get better at it, I’m sure.”

“She made us a roast the other day. Used the crock pot and everything. The house smelled so good. But she had to work late, and we ate at Locke’s house that night. I think she put it in the freezer for another night.” Teddy got closer to him and whispered the last part. “I think we hurt her feelings about it. She’d worked really hard making it, and we had hamburgers instead that night.”

“Yeah, Aunt Mandy cries a lot.” Demi asked Martin why they thought she was crying. “I don’t know, but she tries really hard in not doing it where we can hear her, like in her room and in the bathroom. We can hear her, though, and it hurts my heart to hear her. Somebody on the phone keeps calling, and she sometimes doesn’t answer the phone no more.”

He’d been picking up the boys every night while Mandy worked. They were either at Locke’s home or one of the other married brothers through the week, and he thought that it was working out great for all of them, especially for Mandy. He’d take them back to his house, give them a snack, or they’d go to the Crockery with him and hang out. But he only called her when he had them, telling her where they were. It couldn’t be him making her cry, could it? He needed to look into things for her.

After cleaning up the rest of the yard, the three of them decided that it was nearly time for them to get going. They’d been working in his yard so much that it was beginning to look like someone cared that lived there. Putting the bags of leaves at the end of the road for trash pick-up, he was ready for them to go home. He only had a few days left on his ‘vacation’ from work, and he’d been making every second of it count.

He’d been sleeping better since that first night. And now that he was getting out of the house early enough in the morning to get things done, he felt better about himself and what he was doing. Yesterday, he’d spent the entire day sorting through his clothing to get rid of the things that were worn out, he no longer wore, or simply didn’t like. He had purged two large trash bags full of things that were out at the curb, too. Demi was going to have to pay extra if he kept this up with tossing things out.

Also, he’d been ordering things to fill out his home. There were now bunk beds in one of the extra bedrooms for the boys should they want to spend the night. He had purchased a kitchen table over what he’d had before. It had been a large wire spool that he’d been using, and he was sort of ashamed of himself for thinking that it would be all right to use. Then there were his linens.

The towels that he was currently using had been a housewarming gift from Martha. Ten years ago. They were so worn in places that he could see through them. Some of them were tattered so badly they couldn’t even be used for rags, they were in such horrible shape. While he didn’t know a great deal about towels, he knew that he wanted them large and cotton. Getting someplace to order them had been his next obstacle he had to jump through. Where did you go to find towels that he liked? Not online. He wanted to be able to touch them before buying them.

It was nearly six when he was on his way to taking the boys home. Since they never knocked, it was their home, Demi would walk into the house behind them and then leave soon after. For the most part, he and Mandy rarely spoke. Which he supposed was all right. They weren’t dating or anything, so it was fine by him.

“She’s crying. In the kitchen.” He asked the boys to go to their room and he’d see what the problem was. “Okay, but don’t hurt her, Mr. Demi. She seems like she’s going to break to me.”

Going to the kitchen, she was wiping her face with a paper towel. He could tell she’d been crying as her nose was red and her cheeks were too. When she noticed him, she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. Asking her what was wrong, she acted like there was nothing and told him she’d only just got home from work.

“You’ve been crying. And the boys told me that you cry when you think they can’t hear you.” She told him that she’d talk to them about gossiping. “It’s not gossip when it’s true. What’s going on? Who’s been calling you?”

“I guess it’s right for me to assume that they also told you that I don’t always answer the phone, too.” He nodded. “I’m fine. Really. I’ve just been working some overtime at the office and it’s catching—” her cell phone rang and she nearly jumped. Instead of answering it, she put it on the counter, telling him she’d get it later. Demi picked it up on the third ring and answered without saying anything.

“Bitch. You’ll be turning them kids over to me when I get there. It don’t matter to me if you want to or not. I’m not fucking with you.” He looked at Mandy when she said his name. “I don’t want you to get too comfy with their money either. Don’t think that I don’t know you’re getting a check every month to care for them. I’m going to be taking them home and getting me some of that government money, too.”

“Who is this?” She didn’t answer him. “Why are you calling this woman who has devoted her love and time to those little boys?”

“She ain’t got nothing on me. I should have had them. It’s my brother that sired them.” Demi told her that Mandy’s sister carried them and gave birth to them. “This ain’t no contest, dumbass. I should have had them when I was told about their mother being dead. Sammy wants me to have them.”

“I remember now why you didn’t get them. You couldn’t pass the background test. Something about you having a long record of arrests. Yes, I remember that now. You have committed fraud, breaking and entering…to many things for me to—”

“That’s got nothing to do with me raising them boys. And the fact that they get a check every month goes a long way for me to want them. How much does she get?” He told her that it wasn’t any of her business. “We’ll just see about that, won’t we? I’m almost there, and when I get there, I expect them to be ready to go back home with me.” Then she hung up.

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