Page 44 of Moonshine Lullabies

She didn’t cry right away, just gripped my arm where I crossed it over her bare chest, as I crouched behind her and pulled her back into the shelter of my arms.

“Why is this happening?” she whispered horrified. Then the sobbing came, as the silence rolled in, deafening in its stillness in the aftermath of the fucking carnage.

“You’re gonna be okay,” I promised her. “I’ve got you. It’s all gonna be okay…” But by the way she trembled in my arms, I couldn’t tell if she believed me or if she even heard me.

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

Jessie-Lou…

I sat in my robe, wrapped with a blanket around my shoulders, in the back of an ambulance while they repeatedly took my blood pressure and other vitals and asked me all kinds of obnoxious questions. It was starting to get old. My front porch light was out, and the front of my house looked like Swiss cheese with all the holes in the wood-shake siding.

One of the medics was cleaning up my legs and putting band-aids on the cuts in my knees while the red, white, and blue lights strobed my front yard and the front of my house which was blocked by a sea of emergency vehicles.

I couldn’t tell you how many of the Parish Sheriff’s cars and SUVs were out here. All I could do was stare at Collier standing aside as cool and collected as he could be, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his feet bare and his jeans barely hanging onto his hips after he’d hastily pulled them on.

I was waiting for the Sheriff’s office to bring me my baby when John-Paul pulled up on his motorcycle, our daddy right behind him in his truck. My momma stood nearby, tears streaming down her face, and she went to my daddy. I’d asked the ambulance crew to keep her away from me for right now. I didn’t want to be touched and fussed over anymore than what the ambulance crew was doing – unless it was by Collier.

He was just about the onlynot-overwhelming thing in the midst of this shitshow.

“Jessie-Lou!” J.P. called out, and he was headed my way. I sighed and struggled to my feet, the medic trying to get me to sit down. But J.P. was comin’ at us like a freight train and I knew the medic was liable to get hurt if he got in my brother’s way.

“Where’s Tater?” he demanded.

I said immediately, “He’s fine! He’s at his buddy Bertrand’s tonight. The cops went on to go git ‘im.”

J.P. did something that surprised me next. He pushed past the medics, hauled me onto my feet and crushed me in a hug, his chest heaving.

“We’re all okay,” I comforted him and I hugged my brother back.

He looked over at the house and the ruin through the bullet-riddled front door, then over at Collier, then back to me.

You could call my brother a lot of things – an oaf, a redneck, or a big fucker – but you couldn’t call him dumb. He looked down at me and something passed behind his eyes. I pointed a finger in his face and demanded, “Don’t you start. This ain’t the time or the place.”

His mouth thinned down in a grim line and he asked me, “What do you wanna do?”

That was the second surprise of the night. Usually, he didn’t give a good goddamn what I wanted. Like our daddy, he just made a decision and the rest of us were expected to tow the fuckin’ line.

“I don’t wanna stay here – and I definitely don’t wanna go to Daddy’s. Figure it out,” I told him quickly as our mother and father headed this way. He gave me a curt nod, and we turned to face our parents. The third surprise of the night was J.P. didn’t let me go. He kept his arm around my shoulders and me tucked right on up into his side protective-like.

What ensued gave me the biggest headache as J.P. and I had to argue it out with Mom and Pops over how we were gonna handle things from here. It only got worse when Tate arrived with the Sheriff’s deputy and my mom started her hysterics and hollerin’ about her baby, while my kid, who was already pale and frightened, was trying to get past his mimi to his mamma who he knew had actuallybeen herewhen this whole thing had gone down.

It didn’t matter how much or how often I was put aside and ignored for other people and their feelin’s and shit to come first, it still hurt every time.

I turned my face away as tears gathered. I breathed through that hurt and caught sight of Collier’s ghostly blue eyes fixed on me from all they way where he stood and something changed for me in that moment.

A strength was telegraphed through the look he gave me and the tears dried before they could spill. I found myself able to stand a little straighter. He gave a nod, and I knew that he wanted to come to me. To be the one to hold me and to comfort me, and to be my pillar of strength. But we both knew that right this minute, it would just cause more drama for the lot of us with my parents carryin’ on like they were.

Collier’s eyes left mine, bouncing up, and I turned and looked up at my brother who was lookin’ his club brother’s way. I could tell there would be another headache in my future and that a reckoning was comin’ mine and Collier’s way.

I don’t think J.P. was gonna like how it would end, because as much as I loved my brother in that moment, he was gonna be sore after this conversation. I wasn’t about to let Collier go.

J.P. let me go to my son who was upset and cryin’ and I led my boy away from all the hootin’ and hollerin’ from his grandmother.

“Are you okay?” he asked me, tears leakin’ from his eyes and his voice cracking with emotion.

“I’m alright. Right as rain, an’ everything is gonna be okay,” I promised him.

“What happened?” he asked. I shook my head and gave him a look. He nodded swift, knowin’ just what I meant. He straightened up, my brave boy, as yet another truck pulled into the front yard and cut its engine and lights.

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