M. B. Kelly Author

AGAWAM BLASPHEMY

By: Michael Baker Kelly

“The kingdom of heaven is within all of us.”

Dolly Pardon

OLNEY FRIENDS QUAKER BOARDING SCHOOL

BARNSVILL OHIO, 1978

Chapter 1

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You ever wonder about a seed? Life isn’t easy for a seed, literally. Not just any seed, but one of those fussy little suckers who demand to be placed at just the precise location, or it’ll just sit there patiently, stubbornly, waiting for God Damn centuries until it somehow it gets moved, or blown to its magic place. A magic place with just the right amount of sunlight, the right amount of rain, the right kind of soil—the right kind of everything! Isn’t that crazy?  Nevertheless, when it finds that special place, that snooty little seed becomes one of the most miraculous things you or I could ever envision. Look at the Giant Sequoias, over 300-feet tall, their fucking masterpieces of creation. They take your breath away.  But, without the morning fog rolling in off the Pacific Ocean, without the relentless days of sunny California weather, or, this is the craziest thing, without a raging forest fire to release the little persnickety seeds from the cones, it would never happen.  

In any case, I guess you’re wondering why I’m thinking about all this stupid seed junk? Well, to be honest, for a while now I’ve been thinking maybe I was a bad seed, one that would never achieve its potential. Of course, I’d already geminated, but I wasn’t turning into the human equivalent of a Giant Sequoia. I was more likely developing into garden weed or poison ivy. See me and mom weren’t doing so well. It was borderline, subsistence living, but somehow we always got by. This getting by crap wasn’t likely to get me to my special, magic place. The life I was leading was analogous to that struggling plant in the back of the office, without a window, living off weak fluorescent flickers, which was lucky when someone remembered to water it, usually just before it was going to die. Anyways, the good news is, by hook or by crook, this seed has been blown into a new set of circumstances, and I praying like all hell that I’ve finally found my own magical place.

It was only my third week in Boarding School. I’d moved into a room with two assigned schoolmates. The room had three separate bunk beds which was good since we wouldn’t have to hear or smell each other’s night business like farts, snoring and you know, the other thing.  One was tall, lanky, and had a twang that signified his Texas roots. His name was Noah Rosen. The other one was not lanky anywhere. He had a big belly, a four-dollar haircut, and thrift shop clothes.  His name was Dave McClusky and from Chicago. They were both nice, and at least so far, things seemed like they’d work out.  Oh, sorry, my name is Jan Vincent, and I am the Wisconsin addition to our little dorm room.

The school was just outside of nowhere in Barnesville, Ohio and it’s run by Quakers.  I’m still processing on all the factors that landed me here, but I’ll get into that later.  It was Saturday morning around seven a.m., and we were lacing up our soccer shoes and getting ready for the morning soccer practice, then we’d be free for the rest of the day until dinner at five. Problem is we’re at a boarding school eight miles from a town that shuts down at 4:30 on the weekends. There’s really nothing to do here. No movies, no bowling alley with pin ball machines, no liquor store where we could wait outside and ask some sap to buy us a six pack. A pack of cigarettes would be a party.

“You hear that?” said McClusky.

I pulled my jersey over my head and looked out the window.  It had been a while, since I’d heard the whining sound of a siren coming my way. Sounded more ambulance than police.  Believe me, I know difference. Police sirens always make my head snap, then send a shudder up my spine. The dorm manager, who also lived in the dorm, walked into our room as if on a mission.  He was a tall lanky, Lincolnesque, guy who sported a black, conical Wideawake hat, the kind of hat the guy wears on the Quaker Oats box.  He had long black hair he usually kept all tied up under the stupid hat, but now it was all over the place, his shirt buttons were undone, and he had an air of alarm his eyes. He was also the one who gave us all are farm assignments to do every day. The school was run like a Russian Gulag, a forced labor camp, we had to do numerous farm chores every day.  They should have been paying us to go here.

I suppose sirens probably didn’t go off in the valley much except for the occasional arm or leg lopped off by a tractor or a combine.  He told us under no uncertain terms we we’re to stay in our rooms until further notice. 

Screw that.

Using only our ears, we followed the sound of the siren, and heard it shut down towards the milking barn located on the other side of a lake about a quarter mile down. Behind the dorm was the oval shaped Lively Lake, about the size of a football field. It was dark, deep, and smelled like an armpit on hot days.  No one ever swam or fished in it.  We would need to skirt around the lake and then through a dense forest of scrub oaks, and a massive patch of blackberry canes; there was no trail. We locked are door from the inside and climbed out the window, then raced down the hill behind the dorm towards the lake slipping and sliding on the dewy grass. I looked behind and MaClusky was trailing due to the extra payload he carried.

We reached the forest on the other side of the lake and charged in.  After twenty minutes of battling through the worst Goddam briar patch I’d seen in my life, we got to the outskirts of the barnyard. We hunkered down behind a big log and started pulling inch long thorns out of our legs and arms. I bit my tongue to keep from yelping. The barnyard swarmed with all sorts of state and local police; the cows in the barn were all mooing like crazy. I could see the ambulance with its back doors open. It was army-issue green, and had a big red cross on the side; the kind you’d see in old war movies.  A few volunteer firemen were walking here and there looking confused.

“Jesus,” I said. “What the hell you think happened?”

“Shhh,” said Noah. “There’s a cop coming this way.”

A big state cops was headed our way, searching the bushes for something, about to find our dumb asses when someone called his name, and he veered towards the barn. Just then a two EMTs appeared coming out of the barn carrying a gurney with what looked like a small human figure covered by a white sheet . A sheet over the face means only one thing. As they were loading the body into the ambulance, one of the EMTs lost his footing and jostled the stretcher. A mane of red came cascading to the ground followed by a thin, pasty arm. I got a quick glimpse of a strange black mark on the small, gaunt hand before they quickly tucked the arm back under the sheet.

We all whispered, “Elly.”

We could barely speak. I had never been close to a dead body in my life and it’s hard to explain the feelings that washed over me. Fear and self-preservation came to mind. It’s never a good idea to be seen near a dead body due to the strong possibility you’re going to get blamed for it. We ran like rabbits through the woods and got back into our dorm rooms and fell into what I can only call a numb shock. 

Later on, that evening, we heard the facts from Grant Headily. He’d found her. He was some super rich kid from a super-rich suburb somewhere out east; he had a goofy cowboy shtick going on. He’d wear one of those curvy straw cowboy hats with a piece of hay dangling from the side of his mouth all the time. Clint Eastwood, for Christ sakes.  He had been assigned to the work the milk barn that morning where he would have to shovel manure out of the stalls. How do you like that, Clint? Any ways, he’d gone to the tack room in the barn to get a shovel, and that was where he found Elly. By the time we spoke with him, Grant had been given a shit load of valium by the school nurse. His bunk mate said he’d also drank a half bottle of Jack.

His eyes, blinking slowly, he slurred out the story.

     “Her neck had a leather strap around it and was tied to wooden gate post, her hands were tied behind her back.   Her jeans and underpants were pulled down around her ankles and the back of her shirt was ripped open…it was just fuuuucking horrible!”

I could see the pain in his face mounting.

He went on. “Her hair was all across her face, I couldn’t see her eyes, so I pulled it back to see if she was still alive.  She looked dead to me.  Then I saw this big black letter ‘A’ on her forehead. It was burned into her skin, just like they brand cows. It was all black with the skin scorched red around it. And the smell!  I was scared shitless! But for some reason I could not run. I froze up. Then I saw another burn mark on the back of her hand. It was this strange little picture box. I only remember glancing at it before my legs came back to life and I ran like a mother fucker.”

“What was it a picture of?”

“It looked like a big cat or a lion with  its paw on a little dog or a rat, I couldn’t tell.  I know that crazy. Maybe I didn’t see that.  But that’s all I can remember.”

It came into my head that an open casket wasn’t in the cards for Elly’s funeral.  

    “Did you see anyone else around the barn? Are you sure you saw this cat mouse thing?”

“No! No! No! I’m not sure of anything, how many times do I have to tell it?”

Obviously, he’d been grilled by the troopers, and everyone else to the point of break down. His eyes fell back into their sockets, and he fell back into his bunk. We could tell he needed to sleep, so we tucked him in under a mound of blankets, confiscated the half-filled Jack bottle before he could get caught with it, and turned off the lights.  I got in my bunk and wrestled with all the goings of this horrible day. A cat and a little mouse.? I didn’t believe it, but he had no reason to lie. Sounded kind of culty to me, with all those marks burned into her skin. I’d seen some of those culty Harry Krishna freaks with their ponytails and orange dresses jumping all over the dam place at the airport begging for money, but I hadn’t see any burns. I took a few sips off the Jack Daniels, which calmed my nerves, and knew sleep would come. The next morning I woke up, and felt like a bird that had hit a window. My brain was in a grinder. I looked over the side of the bed and saw the empty Jack bottle on the floor.

As you can imagine, over the next few weeks, the campus was a hothouse of outraged parents, and cheap-suited detectives down from Canton. I spent the whole time on edge, if they looked into my past, I’d  would’ve  been un-enrolled and shipped back to the dairy state for a few things I’d rather forget. Plus, my record might make them pin Elly’s murder on me if they couldn’t find the real killer. Luckily for me, it appeared Barnesville had nothing remotely resembling a seasoned homicide detective, and no one was grilling the kids. A weird consortium of long-bearded Quaker elders from some Grand Poohbah Quaker headquarters place back East suddenly showed up. They lumbered about the grounds mumbling amongst themselves. We were bombarded with speeches, small group meetings, large group gatherings, and individual counseling sessions. By the third day, I was so sick of it I began to get pissed at Elly for getting murdered.

Finally, the Headmaster, Growly, gave a great speech on how Quakers deal with death.

“In this world your body may die, but your works, and allegiance to God will live forever.”

This kind of hit home with me in a way…. I’m learning good stuff.  Right?  But, on further consideration, it did have a strong hint of more work to be done, even after I died!  Was my obligation to work my ass off for God never ending. That wasn’t the heaven I envisioned. Apparently Quakers never stopped working, even when they reached the pearly gates. The probably started painting the gates when they got there.

Soon things began to die down, and we’d heard the cops may be on to the killer. Luckily for the School, they didn’t lose one student, I mean, aside from Elly. Students withdrawing would have been bad for the Quaker’s coffers. There had been rumors of another murder up north a couple weeks before this happened.  Two hours south of Barnesville, in Salts Town, the police caught a filthy vagrant who’d been riding  the trains passing through the Ohio Valley. He was linked to a gruesome murder up in Cleveland, and it wouldn’t be a leap of faith to connect him with Elly’s death too.  I figured he would probably be convicted, sentenced to death, and everyone would live happily ever after.

After a time, the emotional effects of Elly’s murder were swallowed up by the everyday goings on of Olney. Cow milking, corn detasseling, feeding the hogs and chickens, and of course schoolwork, all cushioned the psychological wounds of having someone so close, and the same age, being taken from us in such a ghastly way. We were all young and death was new to us. Sorry, I did not forget, I wanted to tell you how I ended in up in this place. So go ahead and turn the page. I dare you.