Page 40 of They Call Her Dirty Sally

Hated it now more than ever before.

Like the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. She prayed like never before that tonight wouldn’t be the night she would have to start missing Paul. Losing him might be worse than losing her own father. God rest his soul.

She lay there another hour listening…hoping…praying no one would come back.

Except maybe Paul. She would do anything to have his assurances that all would be well. When he didn’t return, she closed her eyes and drifted into the first fitful sleep she’d had in weeks.

They madeit three more months. Four of the best months of her life. Turns out four months is enough months to confuse you into thinking a new routine is a forever way of living. Long past a habit, more than a lifestyle. Paul’s home became her home even without the benefits of family.

Four months was better than nothing, she supposed. But it was an awful lot to grieve.

The end came when they were almost to the basement back door. There was no warning or reason to suspect tonight was any different than all the other nights, though she supposed she should have known in hindsight.

Jack’s mother had witnessed her walking home that morning through her kitchen window. Sally hadn’t seen the woman’s face, but she saw the telltale flutter of the lace curtain as it fell back from where she stood spying. Patricia Hardwick was a known gossip, but Sally had forgotten. If only she had remembered. If only Sally had walked home both ways in the dark before the sun came up and Mrs. Hardwick’s curiosity came out to play.

But she hadn’t because contentment brings your guard down, and Sally’s had always stayed up as a matter of survival. Not this time. Not with Paul.

“What do you think you’re doing, bringing that girl here?” Paul’s mother’s cold voice greeted them that night, coming from the open slit of the basement door. Hand in hand, they halted at the sound, struck mute as they stared at the door. It was cracked an inch, intended both to welcome and reject. In the end, Paul walked through it, and Sally walked back to the shack alone. Tears she hadn’t cried in months fell in rivers to her chin.

“She’s not welcome here, Paul. We’ve told you this over and over.”

We’ve told you.

We’ve told you.

In all her time with him, Sally was only aware that Paul was hiding her to keep her safe, warm, well rested, and fed. She never once considered that he was defying an order already in place. From the first time she set foot inside his home, she was already unwelcome. An intruder. An outcast. Off-limits. A dark mark on their otherwise pristine home. Daughter of a rumored killer. At best, daughter of a dead trash man.

Dirty like she’d always been.

15

October 1998

Finn

Sally slept with Jack, and Jack is my father. Out of everything Paul Ford told me—and it was a sad story,the saddest, really—that’s the part I can’t absorb. Slept with him once at fifteen…or more? So many questions without a single answer.

It’s time.

It’s time.

The only place to go now is direct to the source. I made the decision this morning, and now I’m working up the courage to follow through on the plan. This story, my story, is meshed with a larger, more pressing issue. What happened at the hospital is the main one. I have an article to write, after all. One due in only a few days.

But what happened to me is the other.

Rain hits the windshield in blinding sheets because apparently, Arkansas has gotten itself confused with Seattle. With a growl at the ever-dripping weather, I push down on the blinker and make a left turn onto a spottily paved two-lane road. Billi is supposed to meet me here, and I’m a few minutes early. I intended to introduce myself first and scope out the situation to put Billi, and who am I kidding—myself at ease. Now, I’m not so sure showing up alone was a wise idea.

A vacant gas station sits on one side of the road and a partially collapsed barn on the other. I stare at the second-story barn loft, remnants of long-forgotten straw dangling from a rotted windowsill. Useless, abandoned, like so many other things in this backward town. But barns hold generational secrets, and I’ve always been curious about the past. The entire reason I’m here.

The barn disappears and a paper supply card store blurs past to my left, followed by a couple farm houses and a large greenhouse. A dilapidated sign that reads “Ford’s Country Gardens” dangles from what appears to be a single rusty nail from its perch beside the road. The sign sways a bit in the breeze; I wouldn’t want to be standing nearby during a strong wind.

Right past the sign is Sally’s house. I slow to a crawl as my pulse ratchets up, the woman’s reputation preceding my arrival. Suddenly Billi’s fear has done a swift job of morphing into my own, not the best look for a big-city reporter.

While I wait, I roll the passenger window down a few inches to take the structure in. The house might have been nice at one time but now it is nothing more than a shack.

A small section of the roof is caved in at the back, a three-foot strip covered in a tattered gray tarp to keep the rain out. In my mind, I picture a row of metal buckets placed side by side on the kitchen floor, quickly filling up with drops, gathering the remnants from what a plastic tarp couldn’t possibly do. The front entrance is nothing more than a two-by-six hole. Rough and weathered two-by-fours make up a door that hasn’t seen a coat of paint in decades. A cheap screen hung askew and slapped against it in irregular intervals.Slap bam! Bam bam bam! Slap…bam!I’m mesmerized by the sound, staring straight at it briefly in a trance-like state. How any human could live in these conditions is beyond me.

Movement catches my eye in my peripheral vision and cuts off my internal musing.

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