Esme Takes Things Into Her Own Hands

Esme had never been what you call a looker, but what she lacked in vavavoom she made up for in practicality. While her first husband, Jimmy, was banging her head against the bathroom floor on Saturday night, Esme took a certain comfort in having washed it with Pine Sol earlier that day. She thought about how long it would take for his arms to tire or his head to cool off, counting seconds in time with the thunk thunk; the counting being a habit that stayed with her.

Esme let her mind roll along, imagining herself laying in the hospital, hooked to life sustaining machinery as first her friends, then her family and finally Jimmy filed through saying their goodbyes; begging her forgiveness for their multiple transgressions. With an almost imperceptible nod of her broken head she, one by one, absolved them, saving her most poignant clemency for her father, Harold Harlow, the first man to break a bone in Esme’s body, and for Jimmy, the last. These mental flights of fancy took the place of tears and passed the time somewhat painlessly until her husband’s truck could be heard laying rubber on his way out of the driveway towards town.

Esme knew she had the rest of the night to pull herself into the shower, washing off anything she could in order to assess the damage. During the years of her marriage she cultivated a wardrobe of turtlenecks and ankle-length skirts, scarves, hats and big sunglasses – the uniform of a beaten wife. The night she left Jimmy, the night she heard her jaw snap as it pushed its way up through her teeth, she had wanted to pack these clothes and bring them with her, not to wear them but to leave them at the front door of the post office where he would have to walk past them when he went to work the next morning.

“Hey, Jimbo, isn’t that Esme’s dance skirt – the one I seen her wearing at the hall this past Saturday night? What’s it doin here I wonder,” his mailman buddy would ask and Jimmy would say how the fuck should I know and he’d go inside and punch in. But he’d know; he’d know that he’d pushed one too many times and that she’d finally left him just like she said she would.

When Charlie Devon drove by and saw Esme dragging herself down the concrete stairs, hanging like a wet sweater on the rail in front of Woodshire Apartments, he yanked the steering wheel hard right – banging the tires into the curb in front of where she stood. Esme fell back, a reflex more than anything and Charlie jumped from his seat out the passenger door grabbing a hold of her arm and pulling her into the car.

“What in the hell, Esme, what in holy hell has he done to you now?”

Esme couldn’t answer, she couldn’t move her mouth. She just looked at Charlie – Charlie who jumped out to pump her gas whenever she stopped at the Chevron station on the other side of town – who, truth was, would ride around after he got done work at night to see if Jimmy’s truck was in the driveway or if he was out catting around. When the driveway was empty Charlie would park nearby and wait to catch a glimpse of her standing in a window or putting out the trash. Neither of them had acknowledged the other but Charlie thought about Esme as much as Esme thought about leaving Jimmy and this night they both got their wish.

In the time that it took for her jaw to heal, Esme moved in with Charlie, got a job doing the books at Blue Seal Feed, and with her first paycheck she bought herself two sleeveless blouses and a bathing suit. Other than work, she stayed at home, fearful that Jimmy might be behind every lamppost or mailbox. Charlie paid the bills and asked for nothing from Esme other than an occasional home cooked meal and some company when he got home from work at night. Esme listened as Charlie explained how you top off the tank on the cash sales in order to round it off to the nearest dollar “Saves running back and forth to the register,” Charlie said, “Pete says time’s money.”

About a year after Esme came to live with Charlie, he asked her if she would marry him and when she said okay he asked if he could kiss her. Esme’s jaw still ached sometimes and it ached then as Charlie took her face into his hands and kissed her for the first time but she didn’t mind. And she didn’t mind when he reached his rough hands inside her blouse or when he pulled off her shorts or when she saw that what Jimmy had been calling the best in town was a sorry comparison to what Charlie had to offer.

For a wedding present, Charlie gave Esme an antique gun. “It’s a smoothbore peppergun,” he told her and she laughed. By then she knew that Charlie could be quite a kidder and smoothbore peppergun caught her funny. “No, I mean it Esme; this gun is older than me, older than my daddy and my daddy’s daddy. It’s been in my family since the old days and after my mama died my daddy said it was mine – mine to give to whoever I please and who I please is you” and there it was, her gift of the heart.

Esme gave Charlie a tooth that had been removed from her sinus cavity at the emergency room the night Charlie took her there after sweeping her off the steps of Woodshire Apartments. She had saved it knowing that that the time would come when she’d be glad she did. As Charlie took her in his arms at the Holiday Inn Lenexa, she felt the time had come to let it go and Charlie was who she wanted to let it go to.

After their honeymoon weekend, they brought their treasures home. Charlie put his in a tea cup on his nightstand; Esme put hers under the bed on her side, by the window. Charlie felt strong knowing that Esme trusted him with her broken parts. Esme felt safe knowing the gun was loaded. Their weekdays resumed much like they had been before the wedding, Charlie coming home from work smelling like gas – a smell that always turned Esme on - and Esme having gotten home first, cooking them supper; homefries, pork chops, sometimes apple crisp. Nights and weekends were for rolling around in the sheets, trying out things this way and that way, and going out to dances at the Elks on the last Saturday of the month.

Towards the end of one night, at the Elk’s Christmas party, they were dancing a nice slow one and Esme felt a tap on her right shoulder. “May I cut in,” she heard Jimmy say just before she saw his fist drive into first Charlie’s belly and then his right cheek bone and the snapping sound was what she heard before she blacked out.

Jimmy ended up in jail for 10 days and was served with a restraining order to stay at least 250 yards away from Esme and Charlie. The judge further suggested that Jimmy should consider moving out of town, that “living with your mother is no place for a grown man” especially if he could not contain himself. Jimmy answered “yes, Sir” but he winked at Esme as though to say you’re still mine no matter what.

Charlie’s face never quite took its shape again and neither did his pride. He started riding around after work, looking for Jimmy’s truck at The Clam Shell, Rockin Ricky’s Tavern, and Bubba’s Sulky Lounge. Some times Charlie would go in and have a few while he was looking around and by the time he got home Esme would have wrapped his dinner plate in aluminum foil, put it in the refrigerator and left him a note saying she had gone to bed and she didn’t want to be bothered so he best sleep on the couch.

One Saturday, Charlie stayed late at Bubba’s and he called Esme to see if she would come get him. “I’m too drunk to drive,” Charlie said and Esme said no she was tired of this way – she hung up the phone and went to bed.

Jasmine Russell was wiping down the bar after last call. She and Charlie had known each other since high school, they dated briefly, wrestled in the back seat of his Ford Fairlane at the Winooski Drive-In till she gave him what he was after and then he didn’t call her again. She was getting done work and she offered Charlie a ride and rather than taking him to his home she took him to hers. They both got something they needed that night so as the months dragged by they kept going for it whenever the chance arose.

That October, right before Halloween, Esme got a call from Jimmy. “Guess who,” she heard him say and she looked out the kitchen window to see him leaning against his truck, cell phone pressed up against his ear. Jimmy waved at her and Esme sank underneath the sill of the window.

It was later that night, as she lay in bed, that she heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Quietly, Esme got out of bed and found the shotgun. She came around the corner into the kitchen, saw him standing there and shot. His body spun sideways, his right arm grabbing for the table, pulling it over with him as he landed against the wall under the window. A streetlight shone in, casting a ghoulish pale on the scene, blood splatter like sequins on the front of Esme’s thin nightgown.

It was difficult to make out the facial features – shotgun pellets had seen to that. But Esme would recognize that jacket as much from the smell of gasoline and oil changes as from the Charlie embroidered over the spot where Charlie’s heart used to beat for her. She looked down at his hands, slumped by his sides, hands that while they may have been grasping for something with Jasmine, Esme knew their kindness was meant for her. And while she stared at those hands, she could feel Jimmy’s hands as though he were there, squeezing her head and it awoke her in a cold rage. Esme went into the bedroom and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. She grabbed the tooth from Charlie’s teacup and stuffed it into her pocket like an aspirin. Then she went back to the kitchen, walked past Charlie’s body to the phone and called Pete, telling him she shot Charlie, that he was dead and to please call the police.

- 2 -

Esme dropped into bed without washing her face. Her body ached, the old familiars right along side the freshly minted ones, back and knees, right shoulder and jaw, hell, she thought, even my toes hurt. Her thin frame, loosely housed in a blue jumpsuit, barely made a dent in the hard plastic covered mattress.

Esme had worked in the laundry ever since she arrived at Southeast State Correctional Facility. It wasn’t a bad job for her, she found comfort in the stacks of sheets and towels and kitchen rags. She was seldom assigned to individual laundry detail, her penchant for order had increased being in prison so she got behind what with all the folding and stacking of bras and underwear and socks. Her coworkers came to realize she was not able to do otherwise, no amount of sarcasm or instruction made a difference in her pace. So Esme was left alone to deal with 15 loads of laundry – 85 sheets and 125 towels she counted - each day, every day. And while the rhythm of it soothed her mind it was nearly more than her body could stand.

Big Jan lay in a bed not six feet from the edge of Esme’s, her syncopated wheezing and snoring, while not quite musical, kept a rhythm. It took Esme nearly two years to sleep through the night but now nothing kept her from falling into dreams.

Last week, it was she and Charlie and the abandoned lion cub they were nursing to adulthood. The scene looked for all the world like she had imagined from Out Of Africa but Charlie looked more like the night shift guard than the man she was married to until she shot him. Esme woke up with the pain in her chest. She told Big Jan who looked kind but did not respond. She was the perfect listener as far as Esme was concerned – she didn’t ask questions and she didn’t tell anybody anything.

She also told Big Jan about hunting Jimmy down and shooting him.

“If I only could’ve been as good a shot with Jimmy as I was with Charlie, well they would have put me down with the poison but I would have died without this pain in my chest. It’s like a heart attack that doesn’t kill you.”

“Good you stopped at one,” was all Big Jan said.

It was three years into a five to ten year sentence before Esme could tell her roommate about running her hands up inside Charlie’s jacket and feeling the opening the peppergun had made.

“I tried to die with him, to pull myself in there with him but it was no deal. I felt the hole, I felt the blood and then I felt the bullet hit me. Right here, “ and she thumped her fist in between her flattened breasts, “That was when I knew I had to kill Jimmy. But I only blew off his fucking hand.”

Big Jan got up from her cot and got in bed with Esme. She put her heavy arms around the sparrow body and pulled her tight. Esme could smell all that big woman smell and a groan came from deep in her. Then she reached for Big Jan’s mouth. They stayed quiet, moved only enough to please each other, but the night was hot and sweet and then they both slept. By morning, Big Jan was back in her own bed and the pain in Esme’s chest had lightened.

Big Jan worked in the horse barn that housed The Society for Protection of Animals. As a lifer, she had certain privileges and one was to choose her labor as long as she behaved according to the rules. She never told anyone why she was there but she told Esme she liked horses better than she liked people so spending her days in their company was right for her. As time went by they increasingly spent the lights out hours together, “You’re getting under my skin,” Esme heard Big Jan whisper one night in the dark and two days later she was relieved of her duties in the laundry. She was not working in the barn but she was at least out doors – mowing and haying in the summer, plowing and shoveling in the winter. The air did her good.

And she did the rest of her time this way, working the fields, hanging out with the horses, snugging up to Big Jan in the dark, staying out of turf battles and triangles as best she could. The other women cut her a wide berth, knowing she had killed one man and shot just wide of killing another and also knowing they would have Big Jan to answer to.

One fall night Esme went in the barn to wash up before heading to supper. She did not rush this part of her day, partly because she did not look all that forward to supper but even more she liked to walk past the horses that were there to be put back together. The Belgian, Dakota, who could not stand on her front hooves. Rappa, the Paint, with an abcess the size of a ham on her side from never being unsaddled. Hobbled and unable to run around and be horses. It settled her to stand by Tidbit, the Mustang, and rub her behind the ear till they both sunk into a standing nap.

She stood there that night and dreamed that none of it had happened, she was back living with Jimmy and he was nice. He went to work at the post office and came home at night and they watched TV. In her dream she started losing her fingers, one by one they fell off into her pocket or into the laundry basket until she had only one finger left. She pressed that last finger on Jimmy’s forehead while he napped in the recliner and he came up swinging.

Esme opened her eyes, the bit end of a bridle cold against her forearm. Her back was pressed against the tack wall. The oily leather scent of a saddle hanging just behind her head mixed with hay and sawdust and horse manure, the barn smelled like the one she grew up in. Tidbit had stepped back out of reach - picking through the pile of hay in her stall. Esme heard Dakota slurping water from the fresh bucket Big Jan lugged in before Esme got there. Rappa stood backside to her in the stall at the end of the row. The last copper rays of October made squares of light against the weathered boards.

Esme knew there was no going back, that the truth was the truth and you can’t change it, and she also knew the time would come where she’d leave. When she cried in bed that night, it was loud. Big Jan covered her gently to keep things private. They slept together through the night but in the morning, Big Jan had already gone out to the barn before Esme woke up. And over that last month, Big Jan was snoring in her own bunk before Esme got settled into hers and was up and out before the guards flipped on the lights at 5am.

The night before Esme’s release she waited for Big Jan all night long, covering for her at lights out, and she was still waiting when the new duty officer came to bring her down to the gate the next morning.

“Can I say goodbye to my girls?” Esme motioned towards the barn.

“Those aren’t your girls. You are no longer an inmate here, Ms. Devon.” The driver cranked open the door of the long white van for her to get in the back.

Just before closing the door behind her, she looked toward the horse barn, hoping Big Jan would see her from there.

- 3 –

“Right here is fine.” Esme told the driver.

Naked poplars lined the drive, their trunks swordlike in the November sky. A simple sign hung on the gray wooden post; the carved image of a tree dug into the varnished surface next to

Sanctuary Stables

Cazenovia, New York

James and Jan Bartlett, Proprietors.

Esme’s backpack, with a change of clothes and all her toiletries, hung lightly on her shoulder during the quarter mile toward the main house.

Big Jan’s brother was smaller than she’d pictured, slight framed and a little crooked. In fact, he leaned much like an old barn. But they favored each other in the eyes, both brown eyed like fresh spring dirt.

“I’d be thankful if I could stay long enough for me to get clear about what happens from here.”

James held onto the doorframe and looked her face full.

“Worked with horses?” he asked.

“A little,” she said.

“Well it either takes or it doesn’t.” He grabbed a hat off the peg by the door and pulled it over his balding head. “Seems like it must have taken or you wouldn’t be here.”

Esme left her backpack by the door and put on the wool jacket he handed to her. She walked beside him towards the barn. The sun was as warm as it was going to get.