Inferno

"All rise, the honorable Harold Monroe now presiding..." the bailiff called out.

Jennifer smiled as the father of Jadia and Jelissa entered the courtroom.

When Judge Monroe asked if all were present and all were ready to proceed, all parties agreed.

"Your Honor, if it pleases the court," Donald Pellichet began.

Jennifer saw no flash of recognition, even when Donald insisted on using her maiden name and the names of her three children in his motion to try her and Kenneth separately.

Harold Monroe did recognize Jennifer, even though she was no longer the nineteen year old McDonald's employee that had been so impressed with his Mercedes-Benz and his Rolex watch and his seven inch cock.

But she had been a fling from several years past; there had been at least one hundred women in between her and now and none of those women would ever get any preferential treatment either.

"In the interest of time, and the budget of the State of Louisiana, your motion is denied, please proceed, Mr. Rich," Harold interrupted Donald and motioned for the Assistant District Attorney to begin his case.

"But I didn't do it!" Jennifer screamed out as Adam gave the theory of how Jennifer and Kenneth had planned to defraud Young Insurance Corporation out of nearly three hundred thousand dollars by committing the act of arson.

"Counselor, if you cannot keep your client..." Harold warned.

"Yes your Honor, I'm sorry, your Honor," Donald said, putting a retraining hand very tightly on Jennifer's leg.

Jennifer continued with her outbursts and was finally removed from the courtroom.

"Your Honor, my client does not contest the state's case but does ask for leniency; remember, this is a man, by the District Attorney's own words, that was manipulated and coerced for years by the co-defendant into doing her will," Sophia finally addressed the court after Adam Rich concluded his arguments.

"And your Honor, I ask that my client be released; by her own words, she had nothing to do with this heinous act or subsequent attempt to defraud," Donald Pellichet said.

"The court hereby finds you guilty of aggravated arson under Article four, subsection...." Harold Monroe intoned and was a little surprised when Kenneth actually smiled at the eight to twelve year sentence.

"Keep your nose clean; you'll be out in five, six years," Sophia whispered and patted her client's hand affectionately.

"Bye Daddy," Jacy sobbed as Kenneth was allowed a brief hug.

Jadia and Jelissa did not bother to come to the trial; Grandma Moore couldn't be bothered with such foolishness.

Grandma Moore did find it close to intolerable that at her age, she would be saddled with two spoiled teenagers and deeply resented Kenneth Kay, and Kenneth Kay's mother and father for not stepping up and caring for the two brats.

But as intolerable and inconvenient as it was, Jennifer's mother could not, in good conscience, turn her own grandchildren away.

"Maybe we should have looked a little harder," Jadia whispered to Jelissa.

"You can if you want," Jelissa sneered and turned up the television.

"No, I mean, we got jobs, we'd be able to, you know, like DO stuff," Jadia said.

"Uh huh, you can if you want; fuck his mom and dad, and fuck that little bitch Jacy too," Jelissa said.

"But I'm bored, sitting around here all the time," Jadia complained.

"Then go do something," Jelissa shrugged.

Melissa Moore came barging into the small apartment and glared at her two lazy, insolent grandchildren. It had been one thing when these two were lazy and insolent to Kenneth Kay, a man she despised for the very virtue of being a man, but it was another thing entirely when they were lazy and insolent around her.

"Um, do you think, do you think just one of you could pry your useless asses off the couch and come take this trash out?" she yelled.

"Fine, fine," Jelissa complained and got to her feet.

"And you," Melissa barked at Jadia. "You think you could maybe do something with this ground beef?"

"Like what?" Jadia asked, baffled.

"Try cooking it, how about that?" Melissa asked. "I've been on my feet all God damned day, busting my ass at..."

Jadia panicked, having never cooked a meal in her life and began sobbing in earnest.

"Oh, God damn, stop!" Melissa screamed. "Fine, fine, but I better not hear one 'EW, I don't like this, what is this' out of you, you hear me?"

----

Jacy fit right in with the other eight graders at St. Thomas Aquinas; her grades were good and her attitude was good as well. And no one thought it odd that she lived with her grandparents; there were two other children in similar situations in her homeroom.

Given the chance, out from the shadow of her two older sisters, Jacy excelled in sports. Coach Dee Campion wasted no time in contacting Melvin Kay and asking if she could sign Jacy up for Junior Varsity basketball.

"Sure, but you just wait until softball season; she's got a cannon for an arm, I promise you that," Melvin told the now excited coach.

"But I'm too short," Jacy argued.

"Nonsense," Coach Dee said. "I watched you snag that rebound and that girl's at least a foot taller than you."

No matter where a person sat in the gym, they knew where Melvin Kay was sitting and knew that Jacy Kay was his granddaughter. Rebounds were cheered, fouls were either loudly argued, or loudly called, and points were cheered.

"Sit down, Melvin, people behind you can't see," Bernice would calmly say.

"But did you see that?" Melvin would yell. "That girl deliberately pushed her!"

"I think your granddad's here," Rayne Sneed teased as they trouped out of the huddle.

"Yep," Jacy smiled proudly.

After losing their last game, Jacy was very quiet on the ride home.

"What's the matter, Sweetie Pie?" Bernice finally asked.

"I miss my Daddy," Jacy admitted.

"Well, Christmas is coming up; why don't you write him a letter?" Bernice suggested.

"Yeah, we can send him that picture of you and your teammates with that City trophy," Melvin enthused.

"But I want him to come home," Jacy whined, for once acting like a girl on the threshold of teenage years.

"Well, me too," Bernice admitted. "Heaven's, he may be your Daddy, but are you forgetting? He's my little boy."

----

Jennifer was not fitting in at St. Gabriel's. Because of her beauty, she was targeting for attacks by other prisoners. And male (and a few female) guards also targeted her.

Her haughty, bitchy attitude did not gain her any friends when she first entered the system and in the prison hierarchy, first impressions are the only impressions. Also, any sign of weakness was immediately exploited.

Her protestations of innocence were jeered by the few that would actually speak to her.

"But I'm serious!" she shrilled. "My numb nuts husband did this to me!"

"Uh huh, Sugar Pie, look around; we all innocent in here," a girl laughed.

"And most of us in here 'cause some mother fucking man done fucked us over," another girl offered.

Jennifer began praying on her first night that the next ten to fifteen years pass quickly.

"Shit, I'll be forty nine when I get out of here," she cried silently.

Chapter 4

Kenneth smiled tightly, wanting to cry, as he read the latest letter from his daughter. The enclosed photograph showed a young woman just on the verge of adulthood. He wanted to cry as he looked at the photograph, but tears were a sign of weakness and weaknesses were seized upon very quickly in Angola.

Jacy stood, dressed in her Clark's Drive-In waitress uniform, long brown hair falling around her n a mass of curls, sassy smile on her face as she balanced a tray of food in one hand.

"God, Baby, you're so beautiful," Kenneth murmured as he looked again at the photograph.

The tight white tee shirt stretched almost obscenely across Jacy's thirty six Double D breasts and the tight red short shorts displayed long legs. Her feet were encased in a pair of bright red In-Line skates, triggering a memory, and Kenneth smiled again.

He remembered taking Jacy to a friend's birthday party, held at a skating rink in Flowers. Nine year old Jacy was nervous about the party.

"But suppose I fall down?" she asked.

"Then you fall down," Kenneth said. "But I know you; I know you'll fall down and say 'so what?' and get right back up and do it again."

True to his prediction, Jacy did fall down, and did get back up and try again. By the end of the party, she was begging Kenneth to take her back the next Saturday.

By the end of that school year, she was begging for a pair of In-Line skates for her birthday.

----

"Can you skate?" John Clark asked the pretty sixteen year old girl.

"Yes sir, my daddy taught me," Jacy smiled proudly. "Got my own, see?"

She pulled the pair of skates from her backpack. He nodded in agreement then looked at the application form she'd filled out.

"Says here you go to St. Thomas Aquinas, that right?" John asked, trying hard not to stare at the girl's impressive chest.

"Yes sir, got a three point eight grade point average," Jacy said, again flashing her beautiful smile.

"Good, good, now, let me tell you how this place runs," John said, putting her application aside.

"You mean, I got the job?" Jacy asked, breathless with excitement.

"Well, we're going to try you out, see how you do," John agreed.

She almost didn't make it through her first night; John watched out the window as his newest employee spun and caromed and pirouetted around the concrete pad.

"God damn kid's out there playing around!" he thundered to Nancy, the head cook.

"No, she's not," Nancy said. "She's having fun, but you watch, I bet you a hundred bucks she comes in with the most tips tonight."

"Holy shit!" John yelled as Jacy leapt over a wooden bench, racing back into the diner's Kitchen.

"Two cheeseburgers, one with no pickles, the other with no onions, large fries," Jacy called out in her little girl squeak as she skidded to a stop in front of the soda fountain and began preparing the sodas.

"See?" Nancy said. "She's having fun, but she's not playing around."

"Uh huh," John said, not thoroughly convinced.

The two other waitresses got out of her way as she shot past, tray laden down with her order.

"If she spills that," John warned as Jacy skated backward toward her customers' truck.

"She spills any of it, I'LL eat it," Nancy smiled as Jacy whirled around at the last second and placed the tray on the window of the truck.

John watched as Jacy prepared to make change, and then smiled brightly as the truck driver held up a hand, stopping her.

Watch, bet she has the most tips," Nancy said and slid another order out for one of the other waitresses.

Nancy got her hundred dollar bill from John. Within a month, Jacy was teaching the other girls how to skate more efficiently, more safely, and with more showmanship.

Kenneth looked again and frowned; he didn't like the bit of tummy that the uniform showed was the tee shirt didn't quite reach the waistband of the shorts. He also didn't like his little girl skating around with rear end hanging out of the short shorts that were part of the uniform.

"Ain't a fucking thing you can do about it," he sighed bitterly and put the photograph into his Bible.

The noise level in Angola was close to deafening but in time, Kenneth had learned to tune it out.

He looked around the dimly lighted area and sighed. Angola was the last place he would have imagined himself being when this saga started out more than four years earlier, but here he was, slowly waiting for either death, or freedom.

Jamal Westinghouse had friends. One of the men that had been in the cell the day he killed Jamal had run into one of Jamal's friends and told the friend what had happened.

So, when Kenneth Kay arrived at DeQuincy, Lamont Harrison was waiting for him.

Kenneth didn't know why the almost freakishly muscular black man had targeted him, but knew he wasn't going to tolerate it.

Kenneth sat down and dug his fork into the unappetizing slop.

"This is shit," he declared loudly to everyone sitting at the table.

He took a bite and grimaced.

"I ain't eating this shit," he declared, stood up, and hurled the tray into Lamont's unsuspecting face.

Before Lamont could even get to his feet, Kenneth had grasped the man's head in his hands and gave a vicious twist.

"Mr. Kay," the warden intoned. "Quite remarkable to me, really. Ninety four prisoners and not a single person saw what happened."

"Like I said, I was just getting to my feet and..." Kenneth said.

"Yes, yes, I know, Mr. Kay; you simply couldn't eat the stuff we call food, got it, Mr. Kay. Let's see if you like the fare at Angola any better, Mr. Kay," the warden sighed.

Kenneth looked at the photograph of his youngest daughter again and smiled sadly.

He picked up the photograph of his oldest daughter, Jadia, and her two children, both boys and both biracial.

After her third pregnancy, Jadia seemed to remember that she had a father and called Jacy to get the mailing address for Kenneth.

"God damn; she's a high school graduate?" Kenneth thought as he read or tried to read through one of her letters. The penmanship was deplorable, the grammar intolerable, and most words that were longer than two syllables were misspelled.

But she was sending him letters; she was writing to him. And she signed each and every letter 'Love you and miss you, Jadia.'

He looked at the latest photograph and grimaced; Jadia stood, posing in an obscene bikini while Robert and Samuel played in the sand.

He grimaced; the erection the photograph gave him was unnerving, and he also grimaced at the numerous tattoos the girl sported. Several roses were visible on her breasts and pelvic region and vines adorned both of her upper arms and upper thighs.

His mother had said when Jadia gave birth to Robert; she started sending Jadia a hundred dollars a month, but quit sending it when she found out that Jadia was using the money on tattoos, not food.

"Robert and Samuel, Huh?" Kenneth chuckled, knowing that Jennifer had to hate it.

Jennifer had to hate the fact that she was a grandmother, and had to hate that her daughter would give her own children relatively normal names.

Kenneth sat up and started to write a reply to Jacy's letter. Jadia's letter was already on its way; he wrote her very short letters; if Jadia's letters were any indication, long letters would just confuse her.

He debated with himself, yet again, whether or not it was time to write to Sophia Coutre, his lawyer.

"My Dearest Jacy," he scribbled. "I suppose now is as good a time as any to be completely and totally honest with you, and with Jadia, and with Mrs. Sophia Coutre about what really happened that night."

"Better that she have at least one parent present at her high school graduation," he thought to himself.

----

Jennifer Kay barely looked up as she was herded into the courtroom, barely acknowledged Donald Pellichet's greeting, or Sophia Coutre's greeting.

"I'm be back in time for dinner?" she asked finally.

"That's what we're trying to do here, Mrs. Kay," Donald smiled tightly. "We're trying to get you to your own home in time for dinner."

She looked up then, and then looked at the other lawyer. Five years of prison life had created a mental fog; one day blended into the next, one noise blended into the next, one smell blended into the next; there were no harsh lines indicating any type of separation.

"What?" she asked.

"Kenneth Kay confessed; he started the fire on his own volition; he's cleared you of any involvement," Donald said.

"That's what I tried to tell y'all five fucking years ago," Jennifer hissed, five years of bitterness and anger welling up. "Five years. Five fucking long years and NOW y'all are willing to believe me?"

"Payback's a bitch, ain't it?" Kenneth laughed as he was led past her, heavily shackled, two armed guards guiding him.

"You mother fucker," Jennifer hissed, venom spraying from her lips.

"Mrs. Kay, please calm down," Donald counseled. "You want to look as prim and proper as possible in front of Judge Hill."

"Fuck that, and fuck you too," Jennifer spat.

"All rise," the bailiff intoned.

Jennifer glared raw hatred at Kenneth as he very calmly, very clearly outlined the details of that night, including Jennifer's impromptu confession of numerous infidelities and the behavior of their three children.

"So, Mr. Kay, what you are saying is that Mrs. Kay had no knowledge and did not participate in any way, shape or form in the aggravated arson or in the subsequent attempt to defraud Young Insurance?" Donald asked.

"No, she did not," Kenneth smiled. "And, in fact, Mr. Pellichet, there was no attempt to defraud Young Insurance. You can check with them; there never was any claim submitted. Hell, I knew there was no way in hell they'd pay up anyway."

"If I may, Counselors?" Judge Steven Hill asked. "Mr. Kay, why now? Why are you disclosing all of this now?"

"Honestly?" Kenneth answered. "I really thought about carrying it to my grave; fuck the bitch. For nineteen years I busted my ass for her and her God damned brats; fuck, she knew they wasn't mine, laughed in my face about it, but our youngest daughter is graduating High School in a few months and I'd love to be there for that, but I know there's no way in hell that's ever going to happen but at least her mom could be there."

"How very noble of you, Mr. Kay," Judge Hill said dryly.

"Now what?" Jennifer asked as Judge Steven Hill left the courtroom.

"Now we wait for his decision," Donald said.

"What? What decision? Mother fucker told him I ain't had shit to do with..." Jennifer sputtered.

"Uh huh, now we just have to wait and see if he believes him or not," Sophia said.

"Remember, he is a convicted felon," Donald said dramatically.

"All rise," the bailiff called out and Judge Steven Hill returned.

----

Kenneth Kay shivered; the van was unheated.

"Mother Fuckers have a bad habit of dying you be around them," Frederick Parr smiled, showing a gold tooth.

Kenneth didn't say anything; Frederick Parr had a double barreled twelve-gauge shotgun leveled at his chest.

"Yeah, all kinds of mother fuckers all of a sudden all up and dying and shit," Frederick went on, smiling broadly.

"This little white pussy?" Malcolm Jennings asked, looking at Kenneth.

"Shit yeah, don't let that little white boy act fool you," the other guard snickered. "That is one bad ass mother fucker; fuck, even them Muslim boys leave him the fuck alone."

"Ain't that right?" Frederick asked.

Malcolm looked from one guard to the other, then at Kenneth.

"So, what'd you do anyway?" he finally asked.

Kenneth looked at Malcolm blankly, then shrugged his shoulders, turned his head and continued to stare straight ahead.

"Naw, naw, mother fucker, you know what you done; talk to me," Malcolm demanded, sure that the guards were lying, just seeing if he was gullible enough to believe their line of bullshit.

"You'll learn," Kenneth finally said voice barely above a whisper. "People run their mouths don't live all that long in Angola. Mother Fuckers know when to keep their mouths shut have a much easier time of it."

----

Bitterness was Jennifer's main companion and she dutifully took her companion with her everywhere. Martyrdom also came along quite often.

Jadia welcomed her mother with excited squeals and genuine happiness, but did not have any room for her mother; she lived in an efficiency apartment.

Jelissa and her girlfriend were in the process of being evicted from yet another roach infested apartment when Jennifer located them, so there was no room for Jennifer in Jelissa's home either.

Not that Jennifer wanted to live with Jelissa and Rudy anyway. Rudy was a loud, arrogant, obnoxious Puerto Rican girl that had several needle marks up and down both arms.