The Last Jeskey
By
Karen Singer
Chapter 49
(Epilogue)
Freaky
All that was a long time ago now. All that is ancient history. It’s all water under the bridge.
I distinctly remember though that it seemed like an army of
people were there at the farm, driving back and forth into those woods for a
very long time.
Pamela came out one day to tell me that the D.A. had decided
not to even think about pressing charges against me for killing Gary. “I think he actually considers that you did
the world a favor,” she told me.
“Why in the world would they arrest her?” Shantel
demanded. “He was gonna kill not just
her, but all of us.”
“It’s probably best if I don’t go into that,” Pam had
said. “Just know that you’re all in the
clear. You can all get on with your
lives.”
“Isn’t that what we was doin’?” Shantel had replied.
Aunt Kathy started to visit me once in a while, often
bringing some of her kids with her so I could get to know more of the family,
but there were other visits where the two of us just visited, going out for
lunch together or getting a mani-pedi, something she seemed to enjoy quite a
bit.
Pam, Natalie, and my Aunt Kathy started paying Lisa and
Shantel a lot more money and they wanted to give me a big weekly allowance too,
but Lisa wouldn’t let them give me more than a hundred dollars each week to
spend on myself. She said I needed to
learn how to handle the money better first and a hundred dollars a week was
probably too much for me already. Money
still confused me at that point, but I was starting to get the hang of it. I did discover though that buying things was
fun!
Shortly after I had killed Gary, all three of us became even
happier when they came and installed a new washing machine and dryer for
us. Although I still hung most of my
clothes on the clothesline behind the house because I simply liked the way it
made my clothes smell.
And then there was the day about a year later when Pam,
Natalie, and Aunt Kathy came back to see me again. They sat down with all of us at the table and
laid things out for me. I thought I knew
a lot about money by then. I thought I
knew a lot about a lot of things, but I was only just then beginning to realize
how much there really was to learn.
“There was a lot of money that was found under that hidden
space in the closet,” Pam told us.
“Fifty-thousand dollars. That’s
the money you’ve all been living on so far.
And then they pulled two million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars
out of that place under the old water pump.”
“Million!” Lisa had exclaimed.
“Two million,” Pam had confirmed. “And when they got that safe open that they
found in the woods, it contained four million, eight hundred thousand dollars.”
“Four!” Shantel exclaimed.
“And now,” Pam had continued, “the legal battles over the
land that you should have inherited from your father and grandfather have
finally been settled. There are several
Knoxville area councilmen who are now in very big trouble for the dealings they
made with the land developer who bought it, and one former police chief as well
who decided to simply have you declared dead long before he should have in
order to receive a cut of the proceeds. Not
to mention that one of those politicians is in big trouble for seizing all of
your father’s money from the bank in the name of the area council and having it
transferred directly into the council’s budget, then taking it out the same day
to pay a company that he owned for a contracted job he simply made up, essentially
laundering the money so there would be almost no trace of it.”
I had been told about the investigations going on shortly
after I killed Gary, but at the time I hadn’t understood any of it. Several months later, Pam had told us of the
court proceedings that were taking place about what was found. I didn’t really understand any of that
either, but I was trying.
“Because there was so much money mishandling going on,” Pam
told us. “The courts had to look into it
all and come to a conclusion as to how much, if anything, you should be awarded
from it. Since it should have been all
your money to begin with, we were pushing hard for you to get every last penny
you should have been owed. Unfortunately,
the courts only partially agreed with us.
I think giving you everything that everyone made off that money would
simply have caused too many problems down the line for a lot of different
places and people, not just the ones who are probably going to wind up in jail. However, we think the court was fairly
generous towards you. While you didn’t
get as much of a settlement as we had hoped, they still awarded you fifteen
million dollars. As I said, the rest
would have simply hurt the local area economy too much.”
“Fifteen million?” Lisa exclaimed in disbelief.
“Yes,” Pam said. “The
money the developer made off of those two large farms was more than anyone
imagined. Well over a hundred million
dollars. Your fifteen million cut is
actually nothing but a drop in the bucket.
All totaled, between that and the money that was illegally seized from
the bank, and the money that was found around here, that’s a little shy of
twenty-three million dollars. And since Bo,
Ben, Steve, Dave, and Gary are all dead, the only remaining heir for it all is
you.”
“Damn!” Shantel exclaimed
“Twenty-three million dollars!”
She looked over at me. “Girl, you
ain’t just rich, you is filthy rich.”
The truth though was that it meant nothing to me.
“We’re going to have to sort the taxes out still,” Pam had
told us. “Plus, there’s our fee that
we’ll take. But you’re still going to be
left with quite a lot.”
Taxes was a subject I was currently trying to struggle
with. Lisa had told me that pretty much
everyone else struggled with it too. But
as much money as that was, I didn’t really care. I was happy and content living just the way I
was in that house with my two best friends at my side.
Lisa filed for divorce and soon no longer worried about
whether she loved her abusive husband or not.
Shantel simply told her it was about damn time! Of course, Shantel was getting busier and
busier as she started going to different churches with the reverend to give
concerts. A few years later, she finally
married her beloved reverend. Despite
that, she still comes out to the farm, day after day, to help out where she can…whenever
she isn’t touring somewhere with her music.
But Lisa stayed with me, having no interest at all in finding another
man. The two of us are simply happy
living here together.
I eventually got my high school diploma, and later did a few
years at the local collage, but I never got a degree. I wasn’t interested. I had other things to occupy my mind. Important things.
Eight years after I killed Gary, we broke ground on a new
building at the farm. A very large
building that was designed to have everything we thought we could possibly
need. It took over two years to finish
that building, but when it was done, the Jeskey Women’s Shelter was born, with
Lisa and I both running it together.
That was what we had decided to do with our time and my money. Money that I was now fully in charge of, and
I felt like I actually understood.
But as far as I was concerned, killing Gary was the real end
of it all. There was just one other
little thing that happened that kind of put the period at the end of the
sentence of it all for me. And that
something happened back shortly after Gary had died.
Shantel was sitting and playing her new guitar and singing
for us again like she did most nights.
At the end of one of the songs, I said, “Shantel, I never really thanked
you for saving my life when you hit Gary with your guitar. Thank you.”
Shantel had just looked at me, then had gotten up and came
over to stand right in front of me.
“Honey Pie,” she said. “You have
given me my life back. I can never thank
you enough for that. I got a decent
place to live, and I got the music back in my life, and most of all I got God
back on my side. I owe you my life
child. I owe you and God everything I
have, everything I am, and everything I ever will be. You need something, you just ask, ‘cause I’m
all yours. I love you to death Baby
Doll.” With that, she hugged me tightly.
When she sat back down though, there was something important
that was still on my mind. “Nobody seems
to like my name,” I told both Shantel and Lisa.
“Honey Pie,” Shantel said, “If’n you like it, that’s all
that matters! And to hell with what
anyone else thinks.”
“Yes,” Lisa had said.
“All that matters is what you want.”
I considered that for a moment then said. “I’m wondering if I may have lied a bit,” I
told them.
“About what?” Lisa asked.
“I do sort of remember a man and a woman when I was real
young. But like I told everyone, I
really don’t know who they were. They’re
just images. But when my…grandfather
was here that day, and he asked me if I remember being Brian, I told him no, I
didn’t. Which was pretty much true at
the time. I didn’t really remember it at
all. But what he said kind of brought
something back to me. Something that used
to be kind of a nightmare for me. I
started remembering Bo taking me somewhere once, and being tied down to a table,
and some woman doing something to me between my legs. I remember hurting a lot for a while, but
it’s all so vague now that I really can’t tell you anything about it. But because of that, and what my grandfather
asked, I’m thinking that maybe when I was real young, maybe I was a boy…somehow. And maybe back then, my name really was
Brian.”
“Honey Pie,” Shantel said.
“Leese and me knew there was things that was wrong with you from the
time we had you in that shower back at that women’s shelter.”
“Natalie also told me a bit about what the doctor said that
one time you had been examined after they first found you,” Lisa told me. “Shantel and I both know you can’t have sex
like a normal woman, but as far as we’re both concerned, since it’s not hurting
you, then there’s no sense in worrying about it. According to Natalie though, you just need to
keep taking those vitamin pills you take every day. In your case, they’re actually good for you.”
“If you was a boy back then,” Shantel said. “You for sure ain’t one now.”
I nodded. “Thanks,” I
said. Then I pressed on, trying to get
to what I really wanted to talk about.
“Back then,” I said. “Back when
all that started, Bo never actually gave me a name that I know of. They all only ever called me the freak. And that’s what kind of stuck. So I’m wondering if maybe a better name would
be a good thing for me now.”
“You want a better name?” Lisa asked. “Freaky is fine, but as you said, people do look
at you funny when they hear it.”
“What did you have in mind?” Shantel asked.
“I don’t know,” I told them.
“Something…nicer that people won’t look at me strangely for.”
Lisa and Shantel started throwing out names, making
suggestions. A lot of those names we all
actually liked. And then Lisa suggested
another name. A name that kind of struck
something in me. A name that I knew
instantly was the one. It was a name
that I finally chose because it would forever remind me of who I was, and where
I had come from. A name that was…me.
As I said though, all that was a long time ago. And so at the urging of Lisa and Shantel,
I’ve written this story in the hopes that this little slice of my life can
inspire others who have been downtrodden to find the courage to overcome their
circumstances, as I truly believe they can.
Yes, I know that the first thing you’re going to say is that
I had money. But it wasn’t the money
that made the difference. In fact, Lisa
and I still live in that same old house on the farm where we’ve always lived,
and other than fixing it up to make it more comfortable and look better, the
house is basically the same as it was.
But the truth is, the money had nothing to do with helping
me. What it took was time,
determination, hard work, and mostly the help of some very good friends who
were also my teachers. As Shantel often
says, “It took all three of us, to pull all three of us, out of our own
individual hell holes.”
And that idea is the driving force behind my women’s
shelter. All the women helping each
other to overcome whatever hell hole they’ve gotten themselves stuck in. Yes, we have a couple of psychologists on
staff, but the real work is done by the women themselves, helping each other.
So that’s my tale.
That’s a little bit of the story of my life. I came from the worst circumstances possible,
and I built a place where I could help others find the courage to move on from
whatever problems they have.
I’ve made arrangements so that the women’s shelter will live
on long after me. The name of the
shelter will eventually be the last reminder of my family name and who I was. Hopefully it will be a place that people will
associate the name of Jeskey with something good instead of the horrors of Bo
Jeskey.
I am the last of the Jeskey line. There will never be another Jeskey of my line
after me.
With that I’ll simply say, love to you all.
Brianna – the last Jeskey.
The End
