Marlee

When Marlee first came, no one thought she'd be able to handle work on a farm. She was a scrawny thing, always sniffling and sickly. It was enough to make you want to shake her. Of course, no one did, fearing Big Thomas would shake *them*. He decided the first day she was a soft creature to be protected.

Big Thomas was carted off to jail for beatin' on Marlee five years ago last April. Marlee wouldn't stand for anyone messing with her man, though, so no one was very surprised when she went after the sheriff with a gun.

Marlee probably should have died before she ever got here. I said she was scrawny, but that's not the truth of it. Marlee was delicate - on the outside, that is. On the inside, that girl must have had far more toughness than any of us would have given her credit for. Marlee's ma killed herself when Marlee was about 13, her daddy - or step-daddy, I should say - wasn't all a daddy should be, to say the least. No one knew where her real daddy was - he ran off when she was an infant.

Once her ma died, her step-daddy didn't want a thing to do with those kids anymore, especially since most of them weren't his in the first place, so he parcelled 'em out to friends, relatives, and anyone else that would take the kids on. At least one sister went to live with grandparents somewhere, and a brother to neighbors, but I never did hear what happened to the baby. She might have been given up for adoption through an agency, but I can't say for sure. I'm not sure anyone ever told Marlee, and without her knowin', none of the rest of us ever would.

Marlee got sent to an old aunt, who couldn't handle her teenage ways, and that didn't last more than a year or two. The aunt threw her out for lying, and there she was, 14 years old with no place to live. The next couple of years, Marlee depended on friends of school mates, people she met at parties, and the odd network of places that city kids end up at when they don't have anywhere else to go. That's why I say she probably should have died before she ever got here, between the company she was keepin', and the sicknesses that were keepin' her.

She was about 16 when she showed up at the Zook farm aways outside of town. Scrawny, like I said, or delicate if you prefer. Marlee had lung troubles; I never can remember exactly what Doc called it, but what it meant was that she tended to catch any little thing that anyone else around her had. Colds, bronchitis, ear infections, flu - they all caught up with that poor gal. Her first month at the farm, she was in bed more than she was up, what with catchin' one thing or another, but she did get up every day, and insist on doing what she could. Nights, she slept the sleep of the dead, not even a fire in the barn raisin' her to consciousness. Not that anyone would have let her burn up, but she couldn't have gotten herself up and out of the bunkhouse if her life depended on it - well, it actually did, and the girl was mightly lucky that Big Thomas was around.

Big Thomas took to her right off. Just as big as Marlee was small, Big Thomas wasn't the most popular man around with other adults. His size was intimidating, his temper ferocious at times; some folks were just plum scared of him. I don't think he meant to scare folks, but they sure didn't know how to take him when he got all riled up over something or other. He always did replace the barn wood after smashing his fist through it, but the storm leading up to the crack of the wood was quite a sight to behold. Most folks that knew him knew that he would never hit a person, but all that angry energy had to go somewhere, and barn wood was his choice of recipients. For folks that didn't know, I imagine he must have seemed the devil himself, and they didn't really know what he was capable of.

The Zooks kept Big Thomas on, because there wasn't a better worker in all the county, and two over. He was good with their kids, too, which seemed odd, because you'd think the kids would be intimidated by him. They weren't, though, any more than the barn cats, or the hounds were. They all loved him, and were always after him for piggy-back rides, or fur strokin'. There was something about him that attracted smaller, weaker creatures, I guess. Little ones especially seemed to cuddle right up to him, both human and animal. When he wasn't working, he was bound to have one or the other hangin' on his arm. If Big Thomas got in a temper, animals and kids went scampering 'til things cooled down, but they always came right on back to him.

Marlee seemed to thrive on the farm, after she got over her initial vulnerability to everyone else's germs. She grew up and into herself, and though she went through a time of doin' odd things like dying her hair blonde, and dressing more like a hooker than a farm girl, she eventually settled down. She took over cooking for the farmhands when Mrs. Zook was pregnant with her 3rd child, and helped out with the baking and cooking for the family too, before long.

Marlee just always seemed to take on whatever life dealt her, and found a way to cope with it. Did most of it with a smile, too, though I've come to realize that you never really knew what she was thinking deep inside. Especially when she got yelled at. She got the oddest blank look on her face, and once you realized what was goin' on, you could see it was a defense mechanism. A way to shut down her emotions, to wall herself off from bein' hurt again. As soon as you heard, "yes, ma'am", or "no, sir", you'd know that the deep inside part of Marlee was gone away, hidden to where she couldn't be hurt.

It seemed natural for Big Thomas and Marlee to get together, given their two personalities. That's not to say that Big Thomas didn't go through a time while Marlee was finishin' growin' up, he did indeed. He used to storm and stomp around when she'd go into town without him, and when she dated a boy or two from The Corners, you could nearly hear his bellowing from here. Before too long though, a year or so I think it was, the two of them were going over to Maple most Friday nights, where they had a movie theater, or goin' to dinner at Chez Dumas, and Marlee and Big Thomas became an "item", as they say. (Before you start thinkin' we had somehow acquired a fancy French restaurant, remember that Minnie Dumas - pronounced *with* the 's' - was the owner and proprietor of Chez Dumas, and it used to be called "Minnie's Diner", before she saw a documentary about Paris on the TV.)

I think they always knew that they loved each other, but Big Thomas sure did have a hard time lettin' her grow up so she could finally settle on him. Marlee knew Big Thomas was the man for her from the minute he carried her away from the barn fire, and tossed her in a stack of hay before runnin' back to fetch the barn cat's kittens.

Five years ago last April, Marlee and Big Thomas got into a terrible row. Nothing so very odd about that, they got into rows about every other week. They fought, they yelled, they made up, and everybody was happy in the end. Things would have been fine, if everyone had just kept their noses out of business that didn't concern them. Unfortunately, some uptown biddy was visitin' Mrs. Zook at the time, and heard Big Thomas railin' at Marlee, and saw him hitting that old barn door for all he was worth. Predictably, the door shook, the wood splintered, and the old biddy thought Big Thomas was beatin' on Marlee, and called the sheriff. Didn't seem to matter to either the biddy or the sheriff that Marlee was back in the kitchen hummin' and cookin' when Big Thomas had his temper tantrum. The biddy swore out a complaint, and the sheriff was more than delighted to haul Big Thomas off in handcuffs. Not a one of them listened to Mrs. Zook, Mr. Zook, or Marlee, that dumb cluck was determined to save the Zook barn from Big Thomas.

Now, we've had good sheriffs and we've had bad sheriffs covering the county over the years, and I thank God for the police force we have in town now. But right then, five years ago, we had a sheriff who was dumber than that barn door wood that Big Thomas splintered with his bare fist. He'd been sheriff for about 7 years, and a stupider choice the voters never made. Thing was, the sheriff had gone to school with Big Thomas, and had hated him for years. I'm not sure if the hatred stemmed from the fact that Big Thomas had bested Hubert for high school class president 20 years before, or if it was because Hubert had his eye on Marlee when she first came to town, but one way or another, Sheriff Hubie was bound and determined to lock Big Thomas up. Personally, I think Sheriff Hubie suffered from a severe case of "small man's syndrome", as my daddy used to call it. If you all don't know what "small man's syndrome" is, you'll just have to use your imagination, because unless I open an adult folder here, I'm not sure I should say it out loud!

Now, where was I?

Ah yes, Big Thomas bein' locked up. Now, Marlee knew what kind of man Sheriff Hubie Hinkle was, 'cause he'd been makin' passes at her since she was 16, when she was goin' through her blonde party girl stage. She also knew that Sheriff Hubie had it in for Big Thomas, probably because of her, and she knew something that not everyone else in town did, but some suspected: Hubie Hinkle was a pervert, and Marlee could prove it.