Sherry's Story

The Start of a New Life

Disclaimer: I don’t own the rights to anything associated with the Sin City franchise.

lll

The clock struck ten, eleven, twelve. Then one a.m. Where was Ben and why wasn’t he back yet? I was so desperate to know what was going on, I couldn’t stop pacing the floor. Somewhere in the vast expanse of Sin City, the man I loved was with the man I hated and to make matters worse, both were first-rate marksmen.

Oh God, I prayed, please let Ben be all right!

I whirled around when I heard the sound of keys opening the door. No sooner had Ben closed the door behind him did I throw myself into his arms. I could not speak; I was too busy savouring his body against mine and hugged him harder. I heard him wince.

“Ow! Easy there, kiddo!”

My fingers flew over him as I looked Ben over for signs of injuries. And there were more than a few although they seemed to be superficial—cuts, bruises and strange-looking marks on his hands. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.

“Nah, it’ll take more than a few cuts and scrapes to keep me down.”

He’d gone through hell tonight and it was all my fault. I started to cry.

Ben put what he had been holding on the hall table and held me close. “See? I’m all right. There’s no need to cry.” He wiped the tears from my face. “There, that’s better. Let me have a bath and I’ll tell you what happened.”

I watched him go into the bathroom and close the door. Shortly after, I heard the water running. As I turned, I saw a flicker of light from the corner of my eye and I took a closer look. Ben had put a flashlight on the table. It had been a while since I saw one like it but I knew immediately what it was: a standard police-issue flashlight.

My father had carried one when he was on the force and it had his name and badge number on the side. He told me that police-issue flashlights were heavier than the usual household ones; they were made so that they could become weapons if the need arose. I hefted this one in my hand; with enough force, it would be the perfect weapon for bashing someone’s skull in.

I turned it over and engraved into the side were the words:

Property of the Granite Falls Police Department.
Issued to: Tom Dekker, ID #05251977

The casing was bloodied and dented and as I ran my thumb over the light, I found that the blood was still sticky and there were a few strands of hair attached to the clots. Since Ben had a brush cut, the blood and hair wasn’t his: it could only have come from Tom. I took the flashlight to the kitchen and hid it under the sink, burying it under a pile of rags and cleaning items. I knew that Ben was done in the bathroom because the sound of running water stopped. Ben had a towel wrapped around his hips and he went into the bedroom for a minute to put some pants on. Ordinarily, seeing him undressed would turn my knees to water but I was too upset to be aroused.

Ben came back; he’d gone to the bedroom to put on another pair of pants. He sat down heavily beside me. “I don’t think I’ve ever walked so far in my goddamn life. Get me some bourbon and a glass, will you?”

I did as he wanted, wasting as little time doing it as possible. I refrained from asking him any questions until he’d gulped down three shots of the bourbon. After the third glass, he leaned back against the arm of the sofa and sighed from exhaustion.

“After I left you, I drove out to the most private and remote place I could think of—the lake. As I expected, the moment he saw where I’d taken him, he started begging for his life. Started telling me all kinds of things...”

He knew! He knew that Tom had been the first man to make me climax. I’d kept it from him, hoping that he’d never find out…I swallowed. “Ben, please try to understand why I didn’t tell you—”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“I'm sorry…”

“Me too. Aw, c’mon kid, do you think I would ever blame or judge you?”

“I wasn’t sure….I thought that if I told you about him touching me and that I liked it, you wouldn’t look at me the same way anymore. I thought you’d think I was nothing but a slut.”

“Tom had been married to your Ma for years. He knew exactly how to turn on a woman before he came after you. When he did, it was at a time when your body was developing and growing, filling you with a woman’s needs. Your responding to his touch was perfectly natural. I don’t blame you for that.”

“You don’t?”

“Hell, no. I only wish you felt you could have trusted me but…that’s all over now. He’ll never bother you again. When it was over, I walked back into town. It took me two hours just to reach Rich’s place. I told him what I wanted to do and he agreed to help me out. We drove to Momma’s to get everything squared away nice and legal. She tried to put us off but having cash in hand works the best when it comes to people like her.”

I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about but I didn’t interrupt him.

He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out two pieces of paper and handed one to me. My mouth dropped open when I understood what I was reading and the implications it represented. It was my contract and above Momma’s signature at the bottom was the words Paid in Full.

“Rich says it will hold up in any court in the country. You’re a free woman, Sherry. Your life is your own now.”

“You mean it? I’m free?”

“Free and clear and you don’t owe anyone a dime. What time is it?”

I looked at the clock. “Nearly two in the morning. Why?”

Ben was grinning from ear to ear. “You are fifteen years old today.”

“Big deal.” Because of all the evening’s excitement, I had completely forgotten.

“It is a big deal, Sherry, unless you don’t want it to be. Getting that contract verified wasn’t the only thing I did with Rich tonight--I got him to do something else.”

Ben hesitated for a long time before giving me the second piece of paper. I had to read it through twice before it sunk in. It was a marriage licence. I looked into Ben’s eyes; they were filled with such hope, I was overwhelmed at the love I saw in them.

“A girl is old enough to get married at fifteen in this state but I don’t want you to say yes because you feel you have to repay me for taking care of Tom…”

“You want to marry me?”

“After you were left lying on the floor of the Senator’s house, I carried you to the bathroom and held you in my arms. I saw you looking at me as I cleaned you up. I felt something deep inside but I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was because I felt sorry for you--you were so small and innocent and so alone. You had no one who would protect you from the big bad world and all the big bad men in it.

“When you kissed me in your room, I was over the moon. But you were vulnerable and I thought you only kissed me because you were grateful for what I did. When we had our date, I knew I was in love with you. But I was sure there was no way you could feel the same way about me. I mean, you were so young and I was—am--old enough to be your father. I tried hard, really hard, to fight what I was feeling.

“I reckoned that I’d get over you if I didn’t see you but it was useless. Not seeing you only made me feel worse. Every time Sable filled me in on where and when you were hired out, it was like a knife in my heart. Knowing other men were touching you and fucking you nearly drove me crazy. When she told me that you were seeing Richard on a regular basis, I felt I had to do something before you got killed. He was associated with the most dangerous people in Sin City. Then I heard you two talking about marriage outside his room and I was so jealous when you said that you loved him. I waited until his bodyguards left and, well, you know the rest. So whaddaya say?”

I nodded my head. I was crying and smiling and laughing at the same time. I couldn’t speak—I was too overwhelmed. Ben wanted me to marry him! But…there was a problem. A big one. And perhaps to a proud man like Ben, it might be the biggest obstacle for us getting married.

“What if we go out somewhere and a man recognizes me?”

Ben shrugged, the muscles in his shoulders rippled in the light. “So what? If anybody gives you a hard time, I’ll knock his teeth down his throat.”

I smiled as I remembered the voice of my mother saying the same thing to me as I hovered between life and death in the hospital. “But I can’t give you children, Ben.”

“Aw, that’s okay. An ugly mug like me shouldn’t be a dad anyway. Besides, there are lotsa kids out there who need a good home. We can adopt some and give them a better start than what I had.”

“And what kind of a start did you have?” I asked softly. He’d never told me about his childhood and judging from the look on his face now, it hadn't been easy.

“After my parents died, I got shuffled around from relative to relative. Some were okay to live with but most were not. When I was really young, I got beaten a lot—with a belt or a wooden spoon, whatever was handy--until I started growing and learned how to fight back. Then no one laid a hand on me. As punishment, I was never fed enough…and I was always hungry. Once I was fourteen, I left for good. No one was sorry to see me go.”

I held his hand in mine and listened. Underfed and unloved, his life had been worse than mine.

“The only person I could count on was myself. I lived on the streets for a while, not knowing where my next meal was coming from, sometimes going without food for days at a time. After a while, I got in with some kids who were also tossed out by their families for one reason or another. We formed our own gang. We had a few girls in it too—some that went through the same shit you did with Tom and decided they were better off on the streets. We all looked out for one another. We were a family.”

Ben raised the bourbon bottle to his lips and drank deeply, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He turned and looked at me. “You ever see the movie Angels with Dirty Faces?”

“Sure I did. I’ve seen just about every Cagney movie ever made but I like his gangster films the best. Why?”

“Remember there was a group of boys in that movie who had their hideout in a cellar boiler room? Well, that was like me and my gang, only we didn’t have homes like those kids—we lived on the streets.”

“How did you survive? Where did you live?”

“In the summer it was easy—we’d camp out in the park and if it was a clear night, we’d look up into the sky and count the stars and tell each other our dreams for the future. But the wintertime, it was a different story. We stayed warm by huddling together in abandoned buildings. When it was really cold, we’d risk lighting a fire. We ate whatever food we could scrounge up from dumpsters. But sometimes, there wasn’t any, so we’d chase after rats and pigeons. If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. When we needed clothes, we snitched ‘em from laundromats and clotheslines when people weren’t looking.”

The nearest thing to being homeless that I experienced was sleeping on the bus terminal floor for a few hours. I couldn’t imagine what Ben had gone through--living for years on the streets, eating garbage and vermin. I shuddered.

I really didn’t want to hear any more but I sensed that this was something Ben needed to get off his chest. Ben looked sad and my heart ached for him.

“It wasn’t so bad for us older kids—we’d been used to being hungry but the little ones…they suffered. We did the best we could but sometimes it wasn’t enough. The winter of ’31 was the worst. It was the beginning of the Depression. No one had food for their own families, let alone something to spare for us. It got so bad, even the rats were starving. When that happens, they lose their fear of humans. As food became harder to come by, the rats came closer. One night, one of the littlest guys got bit by one but he didn’t tell anyone. The bite got infected. We took him to a friend of a friend who knew something about medicine. He told us what drug he needed but we couldn’t afford it.”

Ben’s breath caught in his throat and I put my arms around his neck. He cried against me. His big heart was still mourning the loss of a fellow street kid more than twenty-five years ago. I wiped away the tears that slid down his cheeks.

“Poor little guy had a fever. He was sweating bullets but he was always cold. Me and Gert would lie on either side of him, trying to keep him warm with the heat of our bodies. It didn’t do no good. He was like that for two days. Finally, Gert left and that night she came back real late but she had the cash. We bought the stuff he needed but it was too late.”

“Did she tell you where she got the money?”

“Yeah,” Ben said his expression hardening. “I wormed it out of her. She’d sold herself to every man who would pay her a couple of bucks and she didn’t stop until she had all the money. I don’t know how many men she fucked, but it must have been a lot because she couldn’t sit down. I was so mad at her, I couldn’t see straight. I mean, she came to live with us in the first place ‘cuz she was wanted to feel safe again and what does she do? She goes out and…”

I put my hand on his arm. “She did what she thought was best.”

“I know. Gert told me that she’d get on her back as many times as she needed to if it meant that another kid in our gang didn’t have to die because they didn’t have their medicine. From that time on, if there was something we needed that no one could steal, she’d get dressed up in her best clothes and go out at night. We tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listen. She’d come home and there would be money to buy some food. Sometimes the guys she’d slept with roughed her up. We found out who they were and me and a few of the bigger boys would find ‘em and beat them up for what they did to her.”

“Did you go to school?”

“Nah. We taught each other. The kids who were good at math taught the others and so on. We all learned to read and write, though. I was the biggest of the bunch and I was always good with my hands so I taught the smaller ones how to defend themselves.”

Ben had a wistful look on his face. “Our gang fought together, lived together. And loved together. Damn, sometimes I really miss those days.” He took another hard swallow of liquor.

I knew he wasn’t talking about being hungry or homeless; he was talking about the love and sense of belonging he’d had during the hard years of his early life.

“What happened to them?”

“I see some of ‘em from time to time. Remember Hardigan? He was a member of our gang. When he was old enough, he joined the Army and afterwards, he became a cop.”

“What about the girls?”

Ben grinned. “Interested in my other girlfriends, huh? Well, some got married and some I just lost contact with. Gert was the nurse who took care of you at the hospital. You’re my girl now, kid. You nodded yes and I’m holding to you to that, you know.”

“I know,” I whispered, snuggling closer against my future husband and vowed that he would never feel cold or hungry or unloved again. We lay together on the sofa, not saying a word, just happy to be in each other’s arms. I was free and I was going to become a wife--Ben’s wife! But, however much I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

Ben interrupted my thoughts. “So, when would you like to tie the knot?”

“Ask me that tomorrow, I’m too busy now.” If I was going to be a wife and take care of my man, this was as good a time as any to start. I told him not to move, then I got up and went to the bathroom and retrieved the first-aid kit.

I dabbed alcohol then iodine on his knuckles, brushing aside Ben’s protests that I was killing him. As I tended to him, I noticed he had more injuries than just cuts and bruises. There were deep, long scratches on his arms, from the elbows down to the wrists and the marks on his hands that puzzled me earlier were bites. From a human mouth.

“He couldn’t even die like a man,” Ben said scornfully as I swabbed the marks Tom’s teeth had made on his knuckles. “I could have shot him but I didn’t. I had both our guns and he was yelling that I wasn’t playing fair. Ouch, woman! Go easy with the alcohol, will you? Anyway, I threw the guns away and we went after each other with our fists.

“I got too cocky and he was faster and smarter than me. It wasn’t long before I was on the ground and he stood over me. Instead of finishing me off while he had the advantage, he opened his big mouth and started bragging. He said that every time I fucked you, I was only having his sloppy seconds. He said he’d let me live long enough to watch as he raped you over and over. The thought of him touching you again gave me the strength I needed to beat him.

“Soon he was the one on the ground. He was yelling that he didn’t come to Sin City alone and that if some guy didn’t hear from him, he would call the cops. The last thing he said to me was that he would have the last laugh, even if he had to crawl from the pits of Hell to do it. I dragged his ass to the car and handcuffed him to the steering wheel—that’s when he bit me. I put the car in neutral and pushed it into the lake.”

In spite of myself, I shivered as I imagined what Uncle Tom’s last moments had been like: Watching as the cold black water filled the car, knowing there was no escape, knowing you were going to die…

“What if Tom was not lying? What if there was someone out there waiting for him to call back? Dear God, what if that man knew you were the last person to see Tom alive?” Suddenly I felt very, very afraid.

“He didn’t come here with someone. I’ll bet my life on it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“No one followed me from the carnival; I kept checking the rear-view mirror just to be sure but I never saw nobody behind us. Not once.”

Just as I began to feel hope that the nightmare was behind me once and for all, it hit me. “But Tom had a key to the cuffs! He could’ve gotten free!”

Ben shushed me by putting his finger over my lips. “I watched the car sink and I waited for at least ten minutes but he never came out. He’s gone, Sherry. The bastard’s gone for good.”

lll

Little did I know that from the depths of his watery grave, my stepfather would have the last laugh and in the end, Ben would pay for his crime with his life.