Page 14 of Kinsey

“Meggie, you’re babbling.”She said she knew that and wasn’t going to stop until she could see Kinsey.“All right.I’ll go too.The boy was starting to grow on me, and I’d like to make sure that he’s all right, too.So long as you’re sure you’re not driving.You know how Roger can be.He’s slower than I am when it comes to driving.”

“He’ll be fine.We’ll get there in one piece and we’ll be fine for it.”She looked at her grannie as she tied her tennis shoes.“He’s really all right, isn’t he?I don’t want to go there and find out that he passed away after we just made up.”

“He’s fine, honey.Get your phone.I have a feeling that you’re going to need it.”They were out the door in twenty minutes.Roger did drive the speed limit, but he got them there on time, and that was all that mattered to her.Now to find Kinsey and Wylie.

She’d called the brothers and told them what was going on while riding to the hospital.Raphael was home today and was going to come in with the others.Since Kinsey was at a larger hospital, they didn’t need to have instructions on how to find it.She loved these men too and would tell them whenshe saw them.It was Gleason who asked several times if their brother was all right, but she found that she didn’t care.Saying it to him made her feel like he really was all right and that he was going to be fine, too.

Meggie was having a hard time getting any information from the people at the hospital.She wasn’t his wife, so they’d not tell her much more than he was there and being looked at.It wasn’t until the other four showed up that she was shown not just where he was but allowed to be with him while the doctor spoke to him after he was examined.Which was taking a good deal longer than she thought it should have.The doctor told her that he really was fine, but cut up pretty badly.

“I’m going to keep the two of them overnight.That way, we can make sure that they’re not going to have any trouble with concussions tonight.Wylie Pennington isn’t hurt as badly, but he did hit his head on the dashboard when the truck was totaled.Kinsey Pennington sustained more injuries due to his being upright when the truck was pushed up under the semi in front of him.Mr.Winchester has also made it very clear that you’re all going to be staying the night to keep an eye on the gentlemen.”The doctor smiled a little.“We’ve known Mr.Winchester for some time now, and what he wants, he gets.We know better than to do anything differently.He’s a good donor for this university and the hospitals.”

Kinsey was getting his head examined, and she’d still not gotten to see him as yet.When Wylie said her name, she went right to him and held his hand.Wherever his brother was, he’d better be getting as good care as they said, or she was going to know the reason why.Telling him that she had him, Wylie sobbed like he’d been hurt worse than she’d been told, and it worried her.

“You should have seen him, honey.Barking out orders like he was in the service.I don’t know why I thought that he’d be hysterical, but there he was, calm as one of the cows after milking them.”She laughed and he did too.“He’s just fine, Meggie.I saw him.I know you guys have to see him, too, but I promise you that he’s just fine.We’re both going to be sore tomorrow, but we’re alive and that’s all that matters, don’t you think?”

“I do, Wylie.I really do think that’s all that matters.”She put her forehead to his.“If you didn’t want to be my date tonight, there are lots of better ways to get out of it instead of having an accident.”

“You were all he talked about while we were waiting on the police to come.Me shoved up under the dash, and him holding me there.He kept telling me that he had me, and it calmed me down that he did.”A nurse came in and told him he was going to go to X-ray.“I just need to tell you one more thing.He loves you.When we were at the tailors, he told me that he didn’t remember if he told you or not.I told him that was a pretty important thing to forget about, and he assured me that he was going to do it daily from now on.I hope he marries you, Meggie.It’ll be the greatest love story to tell our kids someday.”

While he was gone, she saw David.The man was driving everyone crazy, making sure that they had everything they needed.After being introduced to the other men, she told him to sit down and shut up.She couldn’t believe it when he did.Especially after his wife showed up.They were alike, the two of them, barking orders to get everyone taken care of.She’d never realized how old the man looked until right then.He was old enough, she thought, to be the men’s father and wondered if he felt that way toward Kinsey.It would make sense, she thought.He was making sure that they were all taken care of, including herself and her Grannie.

Meggie thought that she might be a little bit in love with David too, in a father sort of way, and smiled when he asked her for the fourth time if she was all right.Then Kinsey was wheeled in, and there was no one else but him.But she did find herself waiting until his brothers got to see him.Sobbing when she was finally able to touch him, she told him several times that she loved him and was glad that he didn’t have any issues with telling her the same thing.She was only as strong as the man who was holding her, and that was pretty good, she thought.

Chapter 7

Walton read about the accident in the newspaper.He’d been reading an article about the prison system being too kind to prisoners when the headlines said there had been a trucking accident that nearly took the lives of four people.Then, after reading it, he didn’t understand the four people any better than anyone else would have.As his family was just fine.

“Fine enough to come see me once in a while, you’d think.”He didn’t care that people stared at him for talking to himself.He was here for life without parole.They needed to be doing what he said and not the other way around.“I ain’t seen hide nor hair of them since I’ve been in here.You’d think that I didn’t mean anything to them.”

He knew that he more than likely didn’t mean shit to them.He’d killed off their mother, and that’s all that they saw about him.Durn near twelve years now in here and not one of them had even written him a letter or sent him any birthday money.

“Ingrates.All of them.”He had to think how old the oldest one was now.The youngest, he was still in school when he’d killed Martha.However, he didn’t know their names anymore other than ingrates, but that was fine by him.He’d get out of here one day, and they’d be sorry for leaving him behind like he didn’t mean shit to them.“Ingrates.Damned shits are all they are.”

Martha hadn’t even been good to him when she’d been alive.She’d never wanted to marry him in the first place.Bitching about this or that, and how the farm was making her sick.And how there wasn’t enough money to go around to feed them all.He was just unlucky at cards, that was all.And he killed her because she told him she was leaving him on the farm on his own.Well, that’s what he told people.She wanted him to leave the farming to her and the ingrates, and he just didn’t cotton to that.

“I’d showed her being sick, didn’t I?”Sometimes the words up in his head made more sense than they did when he spilled them out.“Stupid bitch just had to beg me to kill her, didn’t she?Couldn’t leave well enough alone.Not her.The stupid cow.She had to have the last word in—”

“You’ve been told about that, Pennington.Keep your trap shut if you aren’t talking to someone directly.You make the other inmates afraid of you.”He said that he didn’t mean no harm.One thing that he knew, you didn’t piss off the ones with the guns, no sir.“See that you keep your mouth shut too when it’s dinnertime.I’m sick of you making it so people have to crowd into one table because you’re acting like you’re off your meds again.”

“I’m not on any meds.You know it too.”He just walked away with his hand on his gun.Stupid screws were forever trying to piss him off.“I’ll be quiet when I want to, too.You’ll see.I ain’t got nothing to do with them crowding into one table either.”

He, of course, said that barely under his breath so that he’d not be in trouble again.They put him in solitary confinement when he acted out.While he didn’t like people, he hated his own company even more.

Looking at the article again, he wondered if any of them were married yet and taking after him.He hoped so.His greatest pleasure would be introducing his kids around to the others in here.It was a big deal to some of these people when a son or two followed in your footsteps and ended up in the big house.

Walton thought that he’d like that.To have some of his kids following in his footsteps.Be just like the old man.His momma would have had a fit, though, and she was the one who held the purse strings all the time.He wondered what had happened to her and decided that she must have died some time ago.

“She was already old when I came out of her.”He looked around to see if any of the guards were close to him and decided that they were giving him the eye, and he went back to his cell.There wasn’tanything in there to occupy his mind, so he took the paper with him.He still wanted to read that article about the prison system being too soft on their prisoners.“Like hell they are.”

Walton had been in prison more than he’d been out.This here last time had put him in for good, and there wasn’t any way he was getting out.He liked to talk big about it, saying that he was going to have that overturned, but in the years he’d been in here, nobody ever told him that he had a parole hearing or nothing.

When he was just fourteen, he was put into the system.His momma told him he could rot in there; she wasn’t going to get him out.So he spent the next four years of his life in and out of juvey homes until he got to go to the big house.It was his eighteenth birthday when he was caught stealing his momma’s car.And damned if she didn’t call the police on him before he was out of the driveway.He got arrested and spent the next week waiting for someone to come and bail him out.It was then that he met Martha.

She’d been a bit older than him and had herself a real job.Working for the city, she would go into the jails and clean them up.He wooed her as much as one can for a stupid kid, and she kept right on coming around when he was sentenced to six months of highway duty out on Route 40.Easiest job he’d ever had in his life.

After getting her knocked up the first time, he had to marry her.Her daddy held a gun right to his head when they were saying their vows at the justice of the peace.No peace about it.She sobbed the entire time, telling her daddy that she wanted nothing to do with him and that he’d just beat her if she were his wife.Of course, he did that, and her dad never said a word.Said they was married now and she’d have to put up with whatever he gave her.

She had him a little boy the first time, and he felt like he was king of the hill that first night.Right up until he got caught robbing the convenience store down the road from where they were living.Nobody believed him when he said it was for diapers.He had nearly forty dollars on himself that didn’t belong to the store.

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