By Eliot Gregory

Jewel pulled her cloth coat closer around her and braced herself for the north Texas midnight wind. She carried her purse beneath her coat in case anybody got any ideas about trying to take it.

She had to walk two unlighted blocks to get to the Harbrick Company, a cotton gin that had hired her reluctantly, and only after her father had talked to the owner. It was a dull job but that might be for the best. She had not finished high school and she knew a lot of girls dropped out of school if the right man came along.

Under her breath, she said a quick prayer for Louise, “Lord, please watch over Louise while I am at work. Keep her safe and let her sleep.”

Louise was her 8-year-old daughter. Jewel had had to leave her that night in her apartment by herself. She had explained to Louise that she had to take whatever job was offered, even though it might not be ideal.

As always, she went over the rules with Louise before she left the house. “Keep the lights off, don’t answer the door no matter who it is. This door is opened only for me when I get back from work in the morning.”

As she rounded the corner of the Harbrick Company, she came upon two teenaged boys leaning against the brick wall.

“Hey baby, where you goin’ on such a cold dark night?”

Jewel’s pulse raced but she kept a steady pace and walked past them. In less than a minute, she was at her work station inside the company. She smiled at Gertrude who stood across from her. The bell whistled and the cotton bolls came down the conveyor belts. She and Gertrude were the first ones in  line to grab  cotton bolls and separate the cotton from the seeds.

She was glad she wasn’t the last worker on the line. The last workers were often yelled at by Mr. Fisk, the manager. She had never seen Mr. Fisk actually do anything. It was his job to stand at the end of the conveyer belt and see that no seeds were mixed in with the cotton that fell on to the next conveyer belt. It was a job he was born for. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest and a disappointed look on his face.

Even though it was cold outside, it got hot in the building. Workers were never allowed to turn on the air conditioner in the summer or the heater in the winter. Those decisions were made by the men who sat at big desks with their cowboy booted feet crossed on top of the desks leaning back in their easy chairs while smoking a cigar.

Jewel and Gertrude didn’t get to talk much because it was too loud. It wasn’t worth the effort. They each got a ten minute break every three hours. It was only long enough to go to the one restroom in the building, and there was always a line. Jewel often looked at her watch and weighed the time it would take her to get back to her work station. Mr. Fisk made checkmarks by the names of workers who were even a few seconds late getting back to their stations. She certainly did not want any checkmarks by her name.

She thought how, under different circumstances, she and Gertrude might be housewives visiting back and forth between houses, their children playing together, family barbecues on Sundays. It was best not to think of “what-ifs.”  She was living in the real world where she had to leave her child alone at night to make a meager living for them.

She had been the envy of all the girls when she announced her engagement to Homer Martin. She was 16 when he pledged his undying love for her in the Baptist Church where she had grown up. Now she felt like crying when she thought of him. For her husband, there was always another party, always another woman. He heard distant music and couldn’t be tied down with a wife and daughter. Jewel never saw him as an enemy, but she did feel betrayed by him. He had loved her and made her feel happy, as if all her dreams were coming true.

She wondered if he ever thought about her or about Louise. He never sent his daughter any birthday cards or Christmas presents. She probably couldn’t even find him if she needed him. But then, she couldn’t imagine why she would ever need him. She didn’t know where he lived or if he was happy. She wanted to think that maybe he sometimes had a sad pensive moment when he thought about his own past, the family he made.

She felt sad when she thought of how quickly her charmed life had gone away when she married Homer. She felt so many possibilities in life, and then, like a dream it had all gone away. Being married  wasn’t as much fun as she had thought it might be. Her father had worked as an accountant at the Bells Cotton Gin. He was a deacon in the Baptist Church there. He brought his paycheck home every Friday night and handed it to Momma. How was Jewel to know this was not the way of all men?

She couldn’t let her mind go off on these tangents. She had to just accept her life and focus on her work at the cotton gin. This was her life. She wouldn’t get another chance. Her efforts had to be for Louise. She was 25 years old and, as she tried to push away the past, her future telescoped before her and made her tired.

Sometimes when she was daydreaming as she picked at the cotton bolls, she would think that someday Homer would realize what he had given up. She liked to think that he would come crawling back to her and Louise and beg her forgiveness. But she wouldn’t take him back, not after all of this. She wasn’t seeking retribution and she didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, but she could never feel anything but sadness and betrayal when she thought of him.

Louise looked a lot like her dad, but Jewel didn’t hold it against her. That little girl was the reason Jewel got up in the morning, the reason she worked at this awful job, the reason she lived in the best apartment she could afford. When she had a day off from the cotton gin, she would usually sew a new outfit for Louise.  She didn’t want her daughter to suffer or go without just because her father was a lout.

All of Jewel’s sisters had married much nicer men. It made her wonder how she could be so fooled? Poppa had not liked Homer, but her father wasn’t the kind to interfere if they loved each other. Momma had gone to bed for several days when Jewel quit school to marry Homer. Her mother didn’t handle things well. She could afford to not handle things well because her dad was there to pick up the slack. Jewel realized with stark clarity that she could not afford this luxury.

As she rifled through all her old memories and daydreams, one particular scenario played out in her mind and brought a smile to her face. In it, Homer was old and lying in a hospital bed. Jewel, being the kind good Christian woman that she was, would go to visit him and, from his bed he would cry and say, “Oh, Jewel, I’ve been such a fool! How could I have lived like this?”  He would beg Jewel for one more chance, but without much emotion, Jewel would say, “I don’t think so, Homer.”

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Eliot Gregory is a new contributor to Jet Planes and Coffee. We look forward to hearing more from him in the coming weeks and months.

By Eliot Gregory

It was December 3, 1918. William stood in the snow with stinging pellets of sleet slashing his face. Although he wore a wool coat, gloves, and a warm scarf around his neck, nothing could stop his shaking.

He took a moment to lean on the shovel. The sky seemed to be glowering at him in anger. There was no sense in what had happened. He wanted to shake his fist at God. He had always served God and he was a good man. He knew he was. Shouldn’t these things happen to scoundrels and wicked people? Not him.

Now he wasn’t even sure there was a God. Why would God let this happen?

His thoughts turned to the day he and Annabelle had gotten married. It was the happiest day of his life. She was beautiful and she was his. That had been less than a year ago. Things had seemed so happy and bright. He had looked at her with awe that such a beautiful woman would even look twice at him. It was still hard for him to believe that she loved him.

He pushed on the shovel and tried to push those thoughts from his mind. He couldn’t think about it right now. He pushed again and again but the ground was too hard to break up. It was frozen. He stood on the shovel but made only small indentions in the ground. He reached up and wiped sweat off his forehead. He knew he would probably be sick, too. He couldn’t help wishing that he, too, could be carried away by the Spanish flu. Maybe it could still happen. He didn’t want to go on living without them.

He had contacted several grave diggers, but none of them were available. They were either trying to nurse someone in their own family or they had this awful flu themselves. Who knew that something like this would come and take everything away from him?

He should not have been so happy, he told himself. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to be so taken by the baby. Maybe God was mad at him for loving Annabelle and the baby too much.

When little Henry had been born, no one was ever as happy as he and Annabelle had been. They took him everywhere with them. Henry was such a good baby. He didn’t cry and take on like some babies at church.  Annabelle was very discreet and kept a blanket over her chest when she nursed him. Everything about Annabelle was first rate. He sometimes worried that he wasn’t good enough for Annabelle.

Fresh tears ran down his face as he pictured his baby son. The tears froze into icicles against his face. Little Henry had begun smiling at William when he was a little over a month old. At first he and Annabelle had thought the baby had gas, but no, he was overjoyed at the sight of his father when he came home at the end of the day. William would sit in the chair by the fireplace in the small kitchen and hold the baby while Annabelle finished cooking supper.

He and Annabelle had named the baby Henry after his grandfather. It made him so happy that Annabelle wanted to name the baby for the grandfather he had loved so much. Having that sweet baby named after him was almost too much happiness for one man. He had been 21 when he and Annabelle married. By 22, he had everything he had ever dreamed of having, and then so quickly he lost it all. The rest of his life looked bleak and hopeless.

When he had been a child, he often spent time with his grandfather. He loved listening to the old man’s stories about the good ole days. Sometimes his grandfather would tell him something sad about his own life. It was hard for William to imagine his grandfather ever playing any role in life except being his grandparent. He tried to think of what his grandfather might have been like as a child.

If only he could go and talk to his Granddad Henry about all this. It wouldn’t make it go away, but he would feel a little less burdened. He knew he couldn’t talk to him ever again. It was too sad to think about. Wherever Granddad was his heart must be breaking, too, because they had loved each other so dearly. William would’ve given up everything he owned to bring any of them back. Even as he thought it, though, he realized he was asking for the impossible.

It seemed  an intolerable cruelty that he had to dig the grave that would hold the two people he loved most in the world. He wondered what he had done to deserve it.

People all over the village were screaming and crying in anguish at the death of another beloved relative. He didn’t want to hear them. He had heard enough screaming and crying to last the rest of his life.

He and Annabelle had held little Henry over a steaming pot of water on the stove. Henry coughed so deeply and even in the beginning, it made William  shake when he felt the cough that rattled his son so deeply. Then one night William went to check on Henry in his  sleep and, well, he couldn’t dwell on that. No amount of grieving would bring him back.

Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, Annabelle came down with the same thing. She had cried and wailed when the baby died, but William couldn’t comfort her because he was wailing on the inside. Annabelle lived 36 hours after Henry died.

William thought about the Black Plague that had decimated entire families all those years ago in Europe. In the night, wagons would go up and down the streets and carters yelled for people to throw out their dead. Bodies of the dead  were taken to a common grave outside of town and dumped in with all the other bodies. He felt sick when he pictured people being dumped in with other dead bodies just because no one had the time to grieve or to move on. He could do precious little for Annabelle and the baby now, but he would see that they had a proper grave, and a headstone.

He had sent his brother a telegram to tell him what had happened.  It said:  “Wife and baby both dead STOP.  Come if you can. STOP.

Some people in the community didn’t bother with funerals. William wanted Annabelle and Henry to have a nice service. He was burying them together.

He looked again at the sky that that was still spitting snow at him. Slowly the hole in the ground that would receive the bodies of his beloved Annabelle and his two-month-old son began to take shape. The afternoon was colder and darker as he chipped away at the graves, but he knew he could not stop because if he did, he might never be able to start again.

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Eliot Gregory is a new contributor to Jet Planes and Coffee. We look forward to hearing more from him in the coming weeks and months.

By Eliot Gregory

I listened to the puddles of rain splashing up underneath the car as we drove down the highway.  The sky was pewter and looked as if it might rain some more. It was a fitting day to be going where I was going.

George drove. Our friend, Doris, sat in the passenger seat of the car. My car. It seemed appropriate for me to sit in the backseat of my own car, representative of my life. I was no longer in the driver’s seat. Frankly, it was a relief to let them make decisions for me.

“It’s so nice to be insane, no one asks you to explain.” This line kept going through my head in a loop, over and over. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it–perhaps it was part of a song, or maybe just something I had read–but all I could remember was that one line.

I wasn’t insane, though. I was a drug addict. And no one was more surprised than me.

In high school, drug addicts were brought in to speak about the horrors of addiction. I usually read a book during these testimonials. None of it applied to me. I was smarter than that. Now, though, every time I heard the word addiction I cringed.

It was April 20, 2011. Doris knew a psychologist in the next town and after months of pleading, she and George had finally talked me into going for an appointment. Just one visit, they said. Doris set everything up and scheduled it.

When I heard her say the date, it the first thing that came to mind was that it was Hitler’s birthday. I knew I shouldn’t think about that, but it had to be a bad omen. I was certain that a normal  person would think of something happier and lighter. Instead, I thought about how Hitler and all of his SS officers carried cyanide capsules in their socks and were expected to use them in emergencies. I wondered how I could get cyanide. I’d have to find it in another form instead of a capsule because I can’t swallow capsules.

The idea was intriguing, though. I doubted I could order it on the internet. I’d heard it was a very quick death, though I couldn’t remember whether the word painless was used when describing such deaths. I just didn’t know. Was it painful? I wasn’t that much into pain.

The idea blossomed in my head, gaining steam with each mile passed on the road to the psychologist’s office. I knew I couldn’t look it up on my home computer. It would be recorded that I had searched for the information. I could go to the library if I could get myself together. I wondered if that kind of death would look like a heart attack. Heart attacks were prominent in my family. I had to make sure there was no curiosity by investigators as to the cause of my death.

My twin brother Bradley recently recovered from a very deadly form of leukemia. We have always been close and his potential death was too much for me to handle. I was still surprised that he was alive, quite frankly. I remember walking the halls of the hospital wringing my hands when I thought he was dying. It was such a painful thing to watch. Too painful. More than once I stared out from the fifth floor railing that opened onto the atrium below. It would be quick, I thought. But what if five floors up wasn’t quite enough?

It was the worst time of my life watching my twin suffer and nearly die. For 25 years I had worked as a teaching assistant in the same school. I thought I was surrounded by loving people who cared for my family and me. Of all people, I thought they would understand. They didn’t. Instead, they fired me.

I often told myself as I opened the tranquilizer bottle that anyone in my circumstances would do what I was doing. There was no other way to get through it.

George turned into the parking lot of the psychologist’s office. My stomach turned to ice. It was the last place I wanted to go.

I thought fondly of Dr. Lemon, my former psychologist. I  hadn’t seen her in almost 15  years, but we had stayed close through letters and email. All the time that Bradley was in the hospital fighting for his life, I felt her near me, but the idea of seeing her during that time was too much. I just couldn’t get myself together enough to call her. I smiled as I thought of her and how I almost hadn’t gone to that first appointment just because of the psychologist’s name!

Then it was too late. She was gone. She was 88 when she passed away. I was lost without her in the world.

“It’s time to go in!” Doris said as she got out of the car a little too loudly. Her voice could really be obnoxious sometimes. I sat in the backseat clutching the armrest and seat padding. It was drizzling, but my resistance had nothing to do with the rain. I just didn’t want to go in. George opened the back door and urged me to get out with the look that always won any argument. I did.

We walked through the light spring rain and I noticed that on the window of the psychologist’s office were the letters spelling his name, Robert McGill, followed by a series of letters indicating his education and licensing.

It’s supposed to assure people that he was licensed, I thought. I wouldn’t have known the difference. I didn’t care how many licenses he had. I just wanted to go home!

The waiting room was not what I expected. It had three hard wooden chairs  that looked as if they were carved out of a tree. I thought there was probably a good reason not to have comfortable chairs in the waiting room. People wouldn’t loiter then. There were magazine racks filled with Cowboys and Indians magazines. I had never heard of a magazine devoted to Cowboys and Indians, at least not since I was a boy, but Doris picked one up and started reading it as if my world wasn’t falling apart.

Dr. Lemon  would be so sorry for me if she could see me now, sitting in some strange psychologist’s waiting room in a total panic.

Then the door to the inner sanctum opened, and Dr. Robert McGill asked us all in. I  kept reminding myself that it was just this one time, just to make Doris and George happy. Doris had told me that the good doctor had gone to the same grade school I had. She probably thought I would be more eager to go to the appointment knowing this, but I wasn’t.

I had a vague memory of Dr. Robert McGill. He was a jock and jocks like him made fun of me. In fact, somewhere in the back of my memories, I was pretty sure we had a schoolyard altercation. It was almost a daily event in my life back then. As I sat in the chair he offered, I hoped he wouldn’t remember me.

Even without that horrible nightmare of a memory, I could tell immediately that he was someone who could never understand me. Few people did. Doris is case in point. She had obviously made a mistake. I couldn’t tell this man anything at all about my life. I had asked to see a lady psychologist and here I got Dr. Cowboys and Indians. It was clear that he was light years apart in thought patterns and lifestyle from me. I sighed loudly to let Doris know my first impression. It was turning into more of a disaster with each minute that ticked by.

Doris handed him my bag of pills. He made a big effort to pick it up, acting as if it was the heaviest bag he had ever lifted. I watched him warily as he picked up each bottle and commented on its use. I felt attacked.   Finally, he put the bag down and looked over at me, tired.

“I see that you are going to Dr. Marvin?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, my voice shaking more than I wanted it to.

“Do you need all these pills?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. I shifted in my seat and felt lightheaded.

From the look in his eyes, I could tell he was angry. Maybe I should have said no? Instinctively I leaned more toward George as the doctor continued.

“I have seen so many people whose lives have been ruined by this man,” said the doctor, clearly furious.

I was flabbergasted. Couldn’t he see that I would not still be alive if I hadn’t had those pills to blot out some of the pain? Suddenly, I was the one that was angry. I didn’t like this man putting down my medical doctor. Dr. Marvin understood how horrible life can be. He helped people get through the unbearable times. I felt the need to defend him right then and there.

“Dr. Marvin didn’t put those pills in my mouth! I did that myself!” That told him!

“He sure set the table though, didn’t he?” shot back Dr. McGill with lightning speed. He burned red and nearly rose from his chair in anger.

I had no answer.

He sat in the center of the room in a chair with a word processor from the 80s balanced on his thighs. His thoughts seemed suddenly far away. The timbre of his voice softened as he asked other questions, but I could tell there was another not so comforting voice just underneath.

It didn’t matter, I thought, because I had just made up my mind. I was never going back there. I was there in the first place because of Doris and George, but it was the last time I would ever be in that office.

In my mind, I  could hear Dr. Lemon’s voice saying, “Run! Run as fast as you can!”

As I stood up to go, Dr. McGill asked if  I could come back the following week.

I said, “Sure.” There was no conviction in my voice, no real commitment. I said it knowing I would cancel the appointment later.

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Eliot Gregory is a new contributor to Jet Planes and Coffee. We look forward to hearing more from him in the coming weeks and months.