Page 19 of Kinsey (Pennington Family #1)

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’t anything 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.

Martha still worked for the city cleaning jail cells.

About the only time he got to see her was when she was cleaning the cells he was in.

But that didn’t stop her from popping out one boy after another.

He had him a good half dozen of them, and he thought that his momma would be so proud of him.

All she did was scream at him for losing more farm land to cards.

“She hit me a bunch, too.” She didn’t, but he liked to tell people that was why he sold off the farm.

He was forever looking for the next big win at cards, and it never came.

But he lost a lot of land that way, and it pissed his momma off so much that she went and took his name off the land and put it in her own.

“Damned women ain’t got no sense at all if you asked me.

How was I supposed to get more money if it ain’t coming to me?

I suppose she gave it over to the boys, too. Like that’s the right thing to do.”

His momma had come to see him one time. Right after the youngest, he thought his name was Eric or something like that.

He never knew any of their names after he was told what it was.

Just numbered them one through six. That worked until it didn’t no more, and they all looked to be about the same height.

But she’d had plenty to say to him then.

“Them boys are going to do all right by me.” He asked her then why they didn’t do right by him, sending him a little money now and again.

“Because they aren’t as stupid as you are, thank the good lord.

You listen to me now. They went and joined up as soon as they was out of school so they could get them a free education. ”

“Joined up to what? I’m not going to like it if you tell me that they joined some gang or something. That’s no way to make any money, don’t you know.” She just stared at him, and he told her he would shut up now. “They is my boys, you understand?”

“Thankfully, they’re nothing like you. But they joined the Army, all six of them did.

The last one is going to come out in three years.

Anyway, they got all but a hundred acres back of the family land.

I hope they sell it all and spend the money on something sustainable.

Like a house and a new car. Kinsey is still driving that truck of your father’s.

” He had to ask her who that was. “Your oldest son, you idiot. I swear to Christ, you get stupider every time I try to have a conversation with you. Do you understand what it is I’m telling you?

I’m not leaving the farm to you, but that oldest of yours. So he’ll take care of his brothers.”

“Again, why ain’t they taking care of me?” She did that eye thing where he would swear that she was looking right into his brain and knowing his every thought. “I was just asking. A man has a right to expect his kids to take care of him in his golden years.”

“You ain’t never going to have a golden time until you’re dead. And they ain’t gonna take care of you if I have anything to say about it. You’re useless and they know it. Killed their momma like she was nothing at all. Why’d you have to go and do something like that? They loved her.”