Chapter Four

King Jeremy the wicked...oh, ruled his world
Jeremy spoke in class today.
Woo... Woo…Wooo….

Try to forget this...try to forget this...
Try to erase this...try to erase this...
from the blackboard...
Jeremy spoke in class today...
Woooooohhh...Jeremey spoke in, spoke in... Jeremy spoke in class today
Woooooohhh...uh huh, uh huh...
Jeremy
Pearl Jam

Saturday was a banner day.  Six hundred bucks richer than yesterday and David was off to the mall to spend it while Danny spent yet another boring day at the library. He even offered to take the little shit with him and buy him something. God knew Danny hadn’t had a new pair of Reeboks in forever; Davy could afford to get him a pair.  But Danny declined saying Mary said their checks from their parents Social Security would be in soon and she was going to take him shopping.

David intended to go to the mall he really did but he ran into a few of the guys on the way and they ended up at the graveyard getting drunk stoned and stupid. That was followed by a trip to the hardware store and the purchase of several cans of spray paint.

By four o’clock a cruiser was pulling up in front of the Cabral house and Officer Graham was hauling David out of the back of it still in handcuffs. “Get used to those boy, I got the feeling you’re gonna be wearing them a lot.”  He brought David to the front door by the scruff of his neck.  “Mrs. Cabral, is your husband at home?”  The cop asked when she opened the door to see them standing on her front stoop.

“Oh, no.” She said softly and took in the red, yellow, orange and blue paint on David’s hands.  “What has he done?” As if that wasn’t clear enough.

“We caught David here and several of his friends spray painting the school.” Officer Graham explained. “Seeing this is the first time I’ve actually had to arrest him…”

“First…what?”

“I’ve been close to catching him once or twice or before but this time, as you can see, we got him….red handed so to speak.” He pointed at David’s multicolored hands. “I’m going to release him to you but if he does this again I’m afraid I’ll have to take him down to the station.”

“Yes, sir, Officer. Thank you very much.” She said as she tapped her foot on the cement stoop. “I’ll take care of this.”

“See that you do. I also found this on him.” Officer Graham pulled a wad of cash from his breast pocket and handed it to Mary.  “This too.” There went the elk horn pipe he’d stolen from Jen and John it slipped into Mary’s hand. Thankfully there wasn’t any weed in it or on him—nope they’d just finished off the last of it when the cops showed up—or he might have gotten busted right then and there for his very first drug offense. As Fate would have it that day would wait two more weeks and he’d be arrested not for possession but for possession with intent to sell.   Standing there on the front steps looking up at her David never forgot the look of disappointment on Mary’s face while Graham took the cuffs off. The boy slunk into the house without a sound. “Don’t suppose you have any idea where he might have gotten that kind of money?”

With his heart slowly sinking to some place south of his feet, David heard the sweetest thing he ever did or would. Mary lied for him. “The boys, they’re foster boys you know, their parents were killed,” she said in a low voice. “The boys receive their parents Social Security each month and their checks came in today.”

Graham was not satisfied with that explanation but he had no reason to doubt it. “He’s trouble that one, mark my words, Mrs. Cabral. He’s nothing but trouble.”

“Well I don’t believe that but thank you for the warning.” She said congenially and then shut the door to see David making his way up the stairs. “Oh no you don’t! You come here right now!”

Ashamed and scared he stood on the bottom step and turned around to face her. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Come into the kitchen with me.”  She walked off without looking back. David stood there admiring the way her butt swished side to side as she went.

He spent the next half hour sitting at the kitchen table watching her face grow redder and redder and then a bit pale as her voice rose up and down.  She didn’t know what to do or to say to him.  “I know life has been hard on you. I know it isn’t fair that your parents died while you and Danny are so young but that doesn’t give you free rein to do whatever you want.” She shook the money at him.  “Where’s the rest of this? What did you spent it on? Drugs?”

David sat there and silently refused to answer her.

“Don’t make me search your room.” Mary threatened.  “You are going to return this money to the people you stole it from, do you understand me?”

By the look in her eye David thought it best not to play with her anymore. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, now come on. We’re going to do it right now.”

“What?” His mouth dropped open.  “I mean…I don’t know…”

“You don’t know who you stole it from? Do you steal so much and so often that you forget?” She accused.

The first word out of his mouth was the first one that came to mind; “Yes.”

Mary dropped the money on the table and hung her head. “How long?”

“What?”

“How long have you been doing this?”

He had to think about it.  “About a year…give or take.” He mumbled.  “Since way before we came here.”

We. That brought around another thought. “Does Daniel do this too?”

David laughed right out loud. “Danny? You gotta be shittin’…”he stopped and cleared his throat. “You have to be kidding me, he’s so straight laced it’s not funny. He’d never do anything like that.”

Mary was very glad to hear that. Daniel got great grades and he never had people calling the house at odd hours.  How could two boys who started life as the same person turn out so differently?  “What do you want to do with this?” She shook the wad of cash again. “Oh, yeah and this?” Mary picked up the pipe.

“Throw that out.” He knew that right answer for the pipe. As for the money he wanted to spend it.

“Don’t you get enough money every month, David? I give you a quarter of what you get from the government and put the rest in an account for you and one for Daniel. Do you need more money? For what? Just let me know.”

David’s foot started tapping on the kitchen floor. So far he’d been lucky she didn’t seem to realize that he was….

“Buying drugs? That’s what you’re doing with it, isn’t it?  I have to punish you for this, you know that.”

“You’re not my mother!” David said heatedly as he rose to his feet. “You are not my fuckin’ mother! You don’t got no right to punish me you ain’t even a step-mother you’re just some barren old bitch who can’t have kids of ‘er own so  you take in poor bastard mutts like me and Danny…..”  David stopped cold.

Mary was crying.

David ran out of the room.

When Bill came home that night he didn’t hesitate to come up stairs and pay David a visit.  “If you ever talk to my wife like that again I’ll throw you out, do you understand?” Bill didn’t wait for an answer. “Ditto if you ever come home in a cruiser or otherwise cause the police to show up on my door. You will tell me, right now, who you stole that money from and I will return it to them, after that you’re on yard detail for the month.”  Since they had two acres of land that meant his days of after school gallivanting were over for a while.  “My wife likes you but let me tell you something, David Jackson, if you ever make her cry again I won’t hesitate to beat the crap out of you. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.” David muttered. He’d been sitting up here all day feeling bad.

“Don’t you have any feelings? Any remorse? Mary stood up for you….”

“I am sorry about that.” He said grudgingly. “I didn’t mean to make her cry.”

“Then I expect you will apologize to her and then start on the yard.  You’re not leaving this house for the next week, is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

At that point, Bill left the room and Davy breathed a huge sigh of relief. Yard duty? Grounded for a week? There was no way Mary told him everything. If she lied to the cop, which she did, and she lied to her husband, which she must have, well then that could only mean one thing; Mary liked him. That was good because he liked her too.

The week of yard detail came and went while David stayed on his best behavior. What choice did he have? His phone calls were monitored and whenever one of the guys came around to see him they were promptly sent away. In the evenings Mary sat down with him to go over his lessons and his work. One night he confessed he knew where he got the money from and even said that he’d be willing to chip in the rest of his own Social Security check to pay the woman back. Mary smiled big and bright and tussled his hair. David blushed. The next day she drove him to the old man’s house where David made a full confession, handed over the money and then listened as Mary pleaded for the old guy not to call the police.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly and at the end of the week he took what was left of his own allowance and bought her a big bouquet of flowers.  He didn’t steal them from the florist or even pick them out of someone’s yard; nope he plunked down his own money. To the day he died he wouldn’t forget the smile on her face or the wetness in her eyes when he gave them to her.  “You can be very sweet, David. Thank you.” Mary leaned down and kissed his cheek before putting the flowers in a blue glass vase and then settling them on the mantle in the living room where everyone could see them. She even propped up the little card next to it.

For the short time it lasted David felt proud of himself. Yep for one week everything seemed good then he was off restriction and right back into his old ways in no time. It happened so fast and with so much ease that he didn’t even notice it.  Just one day he was tooling right along and the next he was on the corner with an ounce of pot in his pocket making a deal with a much older kid he didn’t even recognize.

Wooo.  Wooo.  Wooo.

“Stop right there.”

Yep, that was the day David Jackson learned a very important lesson; do not sell drugs to people you don’t know because they could turn out to be….

An undercover narcotics officer. “You’re under arrest son. Put your hands behind your back. You have the right to remain silent….”

His heart beating so hard in his chest he thought for sure it would explode the cop slapped the cold cuffs on his and put him into the back of the cruiser.  He was finger printed, had his mug shot taken and then left in a room by himself for the next hour while the cops informed Mary and Bill of his whereabouts.  “I knew I’d see you here sooner or later.” Officer Graham said as he settled in the chair across from David.  “I don’t have to ask you if you know why you’re here, do I?”

“No, sir.” He mumbled almost incoherently.  Those words; you have the right to remain silent…sounded like damn good advice. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Yep.” The cop said with a sad shake of his head. “You have been arrested for possession with intent to sell, David and since you were busted with over a full ounce and within spitting distance of a school….”

David didn’t hear too much after that all he kept thinking was that he was a juvenile and they couldn’t do much to him no matter how bad it sounded.  “I think I’d like to talk to that lawyer.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Cabral are bringing their lawyer down here to meet with you, until then you just sit tight.”  Officer Graham stood up at that point and left the room.

In the end, after two court dates and three meetings with the Cabral’s lawyer not to mention several visits from the social worker, David Jackson got four months probation which wasn’t so bad it was better than the look of disappointment in Mary’s eyes. Still, after going through all of that it didn’t stop David from charging full speed ahead into a life that was less than clean.

  If anything, after that things got worse. Now he had a reputation at school, sort of a Made Man if you know what I mean. The roughnecks who previously thought of him as nothing but a little squirt now sat up and took notice of him with welcoming arms.  On anything but his best behavior for four months he ran wilder than the Cabral’s imagined since he not had the expert coaching of those older and more experienced than he.  David showed up to school every day for homeroom then promptly left for the day.  He did stop stealing Social Security checks but only because he didn’t need them for front money anymore.  Once the older kids took him under his wing David had cash and drugs all the time. He had new shoes, new clothes, new records, new boom box and more. The boy was stylin’ in high fashion nothing but the top of the line for him.  Mary tried and tried to talk to him, she even tried to catch him but he was too slick. David spent his days with the guys down in Robert McCormick’s basement mostly. Robbie had a free weight set and they’d sit around getting stoned and drunk seeing who could do the most curls or bench press the most weight.  Soon David was not the skinny scrawny little fuck his brother was. David hit his ‘growth spurt’ a lot earlier than Daniel did, before he was 15 he was just shy of 6 feet whereas Daniel was still struggling around 5’7 or so. So much for the Old Wives tale about drugs, cigarettes and alcohol stunting your growth.

That little pip-squeak Danny, what the hell did he know? Not a damn thing or so David thought at the time. If he stopped to think about it he might have realized his brother knew a lot more than he did but then again David did even know where Danny was half of the time although if he had to guess the little shit was either at the library or at the Cabral’s. Hell, he’d even started calling the place ‘home’ but Davy never would.

Nope David had better things to do and now, with all the time he spent in Robbie’s basement, he was lean and stronger than he knew. David Jackson was well on his way to being very mean and even cruel man. In the back of his young mind he was aware of that fact by the way Mary would shut the door on the guys who came to visit him or call for him when they called on the phone. The fear of them and subsequently him was bright in her eyes and her voice and it grew a little brighter every day.  He should care but he didn’t.

He got in fights at school and on the way home. Not your average teenage skirmish but real knock down drag outs. Twice he’d gone to the hospital for stitches and four times he’d sent some other poor bastard to the emergency room with injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to broken bones.  He got arrested for fighting and then let go. Soon getting arrested (on charges ranging from petty theft, to assault and battery, to destruction of public property…him and Robbie and a few other guys took it upon themselves to dismantle a few of the school buses after which they climbed up onto the roof of the school and tossed the bus tires through the sky lights) and going to court didn’t bother him in the least he was too grown and too cold to notice what was happening to him.  Maybe worst of all he just didn’t give a shit about any of it. As long as he was getting his then screw everyone else.

Then the girls started coming around.

Mary was afraid of the boys he hung with there was no doubt about that but it was the girls that really got her attention; sluts every last one of them. He made no bones about the fact that, still a few months shy of his fifteenth birthday, and he was banging them all and getting his.  In fact he wouldn’t sell to a chick that wouldn’t give it up to him first.  Maybe that was twisting an arm or two but the other guys were the same way. Give good head or a good lay get a discount. Don’t give it up, you get diddly-squat.

Today was different and he didn’t even know it. David got caught in the boy’s room with Julie Rogers between his legs bobbing on his knob for a discount on two grams of coke and the school called home. They suspended him for two weeks for the 5^th time and when they did no one came to pick him up. David figured he’d pushed his luck a little too far with Mary, who by now, was barely speaking to him anymore.  Once she’d been his biggest supporter and champion and now she could hardly stand to look at him.  Every week she came to him with something new that she’d found in his room; cigarettes, booze, drugs, clothes, weapons, porno mags, whatever she found.  David took to stashing his things at school…stupid move but he didn’t feel he had another choice.

In the cold February rain he walked the two miles from the school to the Cabral’s house hoping to find one of the guys or better yet one of the girls on his way but no one was around. Funny how that always happens, isn’t it?  There’s never anyone around when you need them.  So he stopped at the bus stop for some shelter while he smoked a joint of the last of his Purple Haze and took the silver flask from his back pocket, it was filled with Jim Beam today. He smoked the joint and drank the entire flask right there in full view of John Q. Public who didn’t give a shit what he did.  His young hard body warmed by the alcohol and spurred on by the pot he continued his cold lonely walk back to the house.

Opening the front door he walked into a silent house. No radio. No TV. In fact it was so quiet it made him nervous. Bill was at work but Mary’s car was in the driveway. “Hello.” David called out in a tentative voice. “Anyone here?”  If not then that would be good with him. He’d raid the fridge and hide in his room.

No one answered him.  The car was there and that kept nagging at him.  Shaking off his new leather jacket and hanging it in the front hall he kicked off his wet Nikes and grabbed a bag chips along with a can of Coke from the kitchen. “It’s too damn quiet in here.” He muttered on his way up the stairs.  Danny’s room was first, his was next, the bathroom was across the hall and then there was Mary and Bill’s room. The door there was partly open; someone was lying on the bed.  Someone with long shapely legs. David walked into his room put down the snacks and then walked to the bedroom door.

She was crying again.  He could hear that clear as day. She wasn’t wailing or sobbing but just quietly weeping on her bed and next to her was something new; a bottle of pills.  Her back was to him so Mary didn’t see him when he crept into the room.  There she was laying on top of the covers without a stitch on, man she was pretty!  Not like those skanks at school, uh-ah no way.  Not like Julie who was so skinny you could read a newspaper through her. Bill was one lucky dude to get to put it to a woman like Mary night after night.  All the way in the room and right by the bed he stood and she didn’t notice him at all.  David looked at the bottle of pills took in what they were and the date; Valium filled yesterday.

Standing over here he saw she was clutching a piece of paper in her hand, it was all crumpled up and wrinkled and wet with her tears.  He shouldn’t say anything he should back out of the room but….

“Mary?  What’s wrong, Mary?”

At the sound of his voice she jumped on the bed and turned over quickly to look at him. Grabbing for the quilt she pulled it around her naked body. “David,” she mumbled, “when did you get home? School isn’t out yet.”

School isn’t out yet….well…..ok…he was there when the fucking Dean called the house, was that a machine he was talking to?  “Nah, it ain’t but,” he sat on the side of the bed, “I got in a little trouble, remember?”  David glanced again at the bottle of pills. “I got something better than those if you’re feelin’ down.” He offered as he studied the bottle. Thirty pills in the bottle or so it said but that didn’t look like thirty to him.  “What’cha got?” He pointed to her hand.

“Going to give me some of your drugs?” She let out a titter that made his blood run cold.  “They want to take you and Danny away; they say this is not a suitable home for you.  I guess barren old bitches just shouldn’t have anything to do with children, don’t you agree David?”

That was a kick in the gut but he tried not to show it. “No, I don’t think so.”  Truth was this was a great home he just didn’t want to be part of it but Danny did and there wasn’t any reason that he should have to leave.  In fact, Danny with his big old brain was thriving here.  “They won’t take Danny away, don’t worry, Mary, the good son will stay.  It’s me they want.”  Was that alcohol on her breath? Was that a hard-on between his legs?  Yes to both. To be fair to him, good old Dean Warner did interrupt Julie at a most crucial moment when he caught them in the boys’ room. David had been walking around horny, ready and completely unsatisfied since.

“You should leave so I can get dressed.” She mumbled. “I’m sorry you walked in and…..”

“Saw you?” He asked. “I ain’t.  In case Billy-boy doesn’t tell you this, you’re a beautiful woman, Mary.” David complimented. “I look at you a lot.”

Now it was her turn for the blood in her veins turn to ice water.  There was something in his eyes, something deep and shining and down right evil.  She pulled the blanket a little tighter around her naked body.

“You shouldn’t do that.” David said in an uneasy voice.

“Do what?”

“Hide from me.  I like looking at you.”

“You should leave.”

He thought it over for a minute while he continued looking at her and it was almost as though he could see right through that blanket. “Maybe.” David stood up and went to the partially open door instead of walking through it he closed and locked it. “But I don’t think so.” Danny was at school for another hour and Billy-boy wouldn’t be home until after 6 which was still four hours away.  “I think you ‘n me should get to know each other a whole lot better.”

Danger Will Robinson! All the alter signals went off in Mary’s slightly inebriated mind. “David, you should leave.” She tried to sound strong and stern and firm but he just smiled a cold grin.

“C’mon, Mary, it’s a’ight. I listen,” he whispered as he pointed to his ear, “at night, I stand outside the door, I hear you two I know he ain’t ringin’ your bell. I will. I want to.” David continued walking toward her and she started to slide to the other side of the bed so she could put it between them but he caught her before she could.  When she opened her mouth he covered it with his hand. “Just be quiet, ok?  I won’t hurt you.”

Maybe he was only 15 but he outweighed her by thirty pounds or more and stood six inches over her head.  Mary struggled and Mary cried out but it was no use.  If she hadn’t taken four of the pills over the course of the day and treated herself to a few glasses of wine maybe she would have been quicker on the uptake but, well, if wishes were horses beggars would ride and we all know beggars go walking.

Forty-five minutes later Daniel walked in the front door to find his suspended brother sitting on the living room couch shirtless with his feet on the coffee table and smoking a cigarette. He too had seen Mary’s car in the driveway so he knew she was home and that this was not acceptable behavior in the Cabral house.  “What are you doin’?” Daniel chided in a low voice as he looked around for any sign of an adult and found none.

“Enjoying’ myself, Danny, you should try it.”

The look on David’s face frightened Daniel. “What did you do?” David didn’t answer him. “Damn it, Davy what have you done now?”  He knew Davy got caught in the bathroom but that wasn’t it. “Where’s Mary?”

“Takin’ a nap.  I wore her out.”  David blew smoke rings in the air.

Daniel just stood there dumbfounded he didn’t know if he should ask his brother if he was serious or run up the stairs to check on Mary.  “You’re evil; you know that, you’re just plain evil, Davy.”

“It’s better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, my man. To be sure.”

“I don’t believe you. You didn’t sleep with her.”

David smiled a wicked little grin, drew in another puff of smoke and said nothing. Daniel threw his books to the floor and ran up the stairs. Mary was in the shower and he waited and waited for what seemed like forever before she came out and then waited some more while she got dressed thinking it very odd because Mary never showered in the middle of the day unless she’d been working in the yard and it rained all day today.  Finally he thought the time was right and he knocked on her bedroom door. “Mary, it’s Danny, can I come in?”

Silence.

“Mary?”

The door opened and there she stood her eyes red and puffy from crying. “Hi, Danny.” She tried to smile for him.

Later that night Ms. Leavenworth showed up and took Davy away.  Mary said she’d caught him jerking off with a pair of her underwear—Lord knew she’d found enough pairs of her panties in his room to make that a believable story—she told the social worker that the state was just and that she just couldn’t handle him anymore.  Mary also said that Daniel was a good boy and she wanted him to stay with them. She hated breaking the boys up but more than anything, more than the pain of what David had done and the humiliation she felt, she didn’t want Daniel around him for fear that David’s bad ways would rub off on the boy. David packed his bags and left without a word to any of them.

Mary went to Daniel’s room that night in tears sat on the side of his bed and holding his hand while she told him how sorry she was that David had to go away but that she had tried, she had really, really tried with him and she just could not do it anymore.  She was so sorry…so sorry…so so so sorry…. that his brother had to leave.  It was not her fault, it was David's even then Daniel knew that as she sat there making excuses for David and taking most of the blame on her own shoulders. She wasn’t a good enough mother to him, not that she was his mother at all but, well she just, and she shouldn’t have children. Daniel told her that wasn’t true that his brother wasn’t any good and he’d been trouble for a long time now. Mary was a good mother even if she wasn’t their mother.   Daniel was a curious kid and he wanted to know just what the last straw had been as he asked the question he braced himself for the answer, to hear her say what Davy had said that afternoon but instead Mary lied for David one last time. She said that she’d come early from grocery shopping and caught David jacking off into a pair of her panties.  She was afraid of him. That second part was the truth and even though he was only 14 and still not interested in girls all that much, Daniel knew the first part was a lie. But like Mary, over the years it was a lie he would tell himself over and over until he believed it.  It was just…easier that way.  Daniel couldn’t take the thought of his brother telling the truth for once in his lousy life. He had to be lying he just had to be lying.

Mary just kept saying she was ever so sorry that she had to break the boys up like this but she couldn’t do it.  Finally Daniel put his arms around her and told her it was ok, she didn’t have to have Davy around anymore and he wasn’t angry over it. Daniel thought that would make her feel better but she just cried harder.

Even though David frightened her and he’d hurt her, Mary insisted that Daniel spend time with his brother and to that end she had tried to get David to the house for one weekend each month. A weekend when she would be away at her mother’s house.  That worked for a while but in the end it wasn't to be and foster home after foster home soon gave up on David turning him over to the state for care.  Until his last stop before adulthood was a three year stay in Irving MacAllister’s Home For Wayward Boys.

Mary never admitted what David really did, not to Daniel or Ms. Leavenworth or the authorities or even to Bill.  Over the years she might have even come to convince herself that it was only a horrible dream and that David never raped her at all.

Maybe.

Thirty years later standing in Daniel Jackson’s backyard as she and Bill attended Daniel’s wedding and Daniel, a full grown handsome man and more than that a good man, told her that his brother was dead Mary wanted to fall to her knees and cry but she just wrapped her elderly her arms around Daniel and told him how much she’d missed him all these years.

End Chapter Four Of The Life Of David: Blood Ties II
By Moon Mistress
Continue to
Chapter Five