1988

It was 1988.

Ruby Sue Dade - Ruby to anyone that didn't want a black eye - was sitting in the Dallas airport, ready to start the next chapter of her life. Although she was only 18, she felt like she'd already gone through more than what most would in a lifetime.

She had grown up poor, and not regular old poor, either. Her entire family lived in abject poverty. Her parents had her when they were just shy of graduating High School, and her father left when she was barely two. She didn't see him again until a few months before she found herself sitting in the airport.

Her father was replaced by a series of step-fathers; each crueler and more violent than the last. The first, Thomas, had given her a baby brother named Jason. Thomas wasn't the worst, or at least she didn't remember him being all that bad. She would get smacked around with a switch when she was misbehaving, but there was never any vitriol behind the hits.

His tour of duty didn't last long. He was a career criminal, and was arrested on robbery and attempted murder charges when she was five. He was sentenced to 25 years. and ended up dying of stomach cancer in '82. None of them ever saw him again.

After he was gone, the terror began. Her mother, in her infinite wisdom, had seen fit to marry her first cousin, Elvis, not a year after Thomas went away. Yes, Elvis was his real name, and his big sister was named Dorris Day Marshall . Their mother must have really had a thing for 50s Hollywood.

For the near decade that Elvis was in Ruby's life, he only gave her three things of value: Diane, Samantha and little David. Those were also the only times her mother was anywhere near a happy or sane individual. Once the post-baby love-fest between them had worn off each time, the beatings would begin again.

He would beat her mother and all of the kids over nearly nothing.She had been hit with boards, fists, TV remotes, plates and even a briefcase by the time she was ten. Then there was the time she and Jason dared to interrupt his TV time by asking what they were going to have for dinner that night. She got a cigarette put out on her shoulder, and Jason ended up with scalding hot coffee poured down his back.

Every time Elvis would beat them, they would run to their mother, who had two ready-made answers for them. It was either 'He's just trying to discipline you', or 'What do you want me to do about it? He does it to me, too.' Then she would usually smack them around a bit too, for the fuck of it. Why not? She was getting bullied by her husband on a daily basis over her kids, she needed somewhere to vent her rage.

When they weren't being smacked around, they spent their time moving from city to city, all over the South and Midwest. She had lived in hotels in Albuquerque, a trailer in Houston, and even a car in Denver for four months. Elvis had big problems working with others, after awhile, he refused to take any job that wasn't a management position, despite having no real skills with people, numbers or really anything that required higher than a ninth-grade reading level.

The straw that finally broke the camel's back didn't come from any physical abuse, no, it was much more sinister than that. Ruby's mother wasn't giving Elvis what he wanted, sexually. Ruby didn't want to ask her mother when she heard the story later what exactly that meant. Elvis told her mother that, if he wasn't getting what he wanted from her, he would get it from Ruby. For all of her faults, Ruby's mother at least wouldn't let that happen to her.

There was a big, bad fight that lasted until Elvis pulled a handgun and starting shooting through the roof of the trailer. Her mother pushed Elvis outside, and he responded to that by shooting their car. Police were called, arrests were made, and Ruby never saw Elvis again.

After that, Ruby thought the world would finally be put right, but she was terribly wrong. Someone had to provide for the five of them, and her mother's salary as a factory worker wasn't cutting it. She was put to work at the age of 13 at the local Hardee's, flipping burgers and taking orders from ingrates. She never kept a single dime of her paychecks, even when she wanted to. Her mother may not have been a genius, but she could teach a masterclass on The Art of the Guilt Trip.

Ruby just had to give her mother all her money, for the good of the family. What kind of daughter or big sister would she be if she didn't give every cent that she made directly to her mother? She would be the worst, another selfish pig like her father had been when he took off. By the time Ruby was six months into her first job, she knew the whole speech by heart.

She thought that money would appease her mother, but, again, she was wrong. No, as Ruby grew older, her mother began to resent her deeply. For what, she didn't know, but her mother constantly let her know how terrible of a daughter she was. She was called a bitch, retard, useless piece of trash and the town whore by her own mother on an increasingly regular basis from the time she started working. It was the largest reason that Ruby decided to get as far away from the sinkhole that was Paris, Texas as she could.

She had a few options. There weren't any better jobs that could take her somewhere else. She was lucky to finish school, and had no experience or job training outside of flipping burgers or gassing-up cars. What about college? Not in a million years, pal. She hated school and couldn't imagine paying someone to do it all again with more homework. With those out, there was only one option that poor, uneducated, small-town kids had. It was the instant get-out-of-town-free card. She decided to join the military.

There were few times in Ruby's life, up until that point, where she truly felt happy. When Elvis left the building, she was relieved, but not happy. When she was out drinking with her friends on weekends, she felt content, but not happy. No, the only thing that made Ruby feel unbridled joy, was speed.

The only other good thing that Elvis ever did for her was teaching her how to ride a motorcycle when she was 10. It started because he was too drunk to drive into town for a pack of cigarettes when her mom was at work. He was out of work that summer, and she wound up taking him back and forth to town almost every day.

Sometimes, when she was a teenager and he would get blackout drunk, she would take the bike out to through the long, winding, back-roads of Hillyard. A few times, really late at night, she would hit max speeds, narrowly swaying along the twisting curves of the two-lane roads.

Out in that darkness she could be alone. The hurricane of madness that always swept up everything good in her life blew away once she hit about 60. She finally knew peace. She couldn't stay in that space for long, and she knew it. She managed to reach the eye of the hurricane, and still faced terror ahead of her. Those little moments gave her the strength to see the journey through to the next eye.

When she got her license, she started stashing away little bits of her paycheck. After the better part of a year, she had enough for a beat-up '72 Monte Carlo. She told her mom that her boyfriend bought it for her, and still ended up getting into a fight with her about it. She didn't care, though; she took that thing out as much as she could and rode it so hard that she almost blew out the engine twice. When she made her decision to join the military, she knew that there was only one thing she wanted to do.

Driving fast was nice, but there wasn't much use for it in the service. What they needed were pilots, and she was all-in. She talked to some recruiters about it at an assembly and was ready to sign up that day. They told her that she was too young, but since she was seventeen and about to graduate, they told her that she could enlist with her mother's consent and take the ASVAB. Once she had her diploma, she could ship out to Basic.

She didn't want to give her mother the chance to fight about it, so she forged her signature and took the test the next day. Unfortunately, she found out that being a fighter pilot didn't only require hair-trigger instincts. She bombed the math and science sections of the test, and was told that the Army was a better fit. If she worked hard, she could apply for the Warrant Officer Program after a couple years and make her way to pilot from there. It wasn't at all what she wanted, but she knew it was her only chance.

Now, sitting in Dallas and waiting for the plane that would change her life forever, she felt guilty. She was leaving her siblings behind, in the grip of their mother. Hell, little David might as well have been her baby. She damned sure raised the six-year-old more than either of his parents did.

She wouldn't leave them completely alone, at least not for long. She would write them letters and call them as much as she was allowed, and as soon as she had her first leave, she would be back to visit, and she would be sure to bring all the gifts that she could afford. It would be the best way to help the kids without giving her mother money directly.

The thing that she felt most guilty about was that she was actually relieved to be out. She was in the eye of the hurricane again; terrified of what was ahead, but she knew that whatever the Army served up had nothing on what she'd already been through. She had learned to weather the storm.

*****

It was November 10th, 2004.

Ruby had just dropped the boys off at school and was making her way back to her house. She spent the entire morning trying to collect her thoughts after everything that Paul had dumped on her the afternoon before. He had done some really, really shady things in the fourteen years that she'd known him, but she never believed that he could have been this deep into something so horrible.

She thought she left the hurricane behind all those years ago, but she was still just passing through the eye. There was a time when things were wonderful. They were happy, they had their boys, and they were making more money than either of them had ever dreamed they would. It should have been perfect, but it was just another facade.

That was four years ago, when that fucking kid entered the picture. That was when things started going from bad to worse. But still, she weathered the storm. She stuck around long after any sane person would, but she would see it to the end. Now, though, she wasn't sure if she could hold on any longer.

The boys were getting older. How would she explain this to them? What would they think about their father? About her? She could worry about that later. She had to make a plan with Paul and get things going. She was going to spend the rest of the day packing bags for them and the kids, and when Paul got home, they were going to work this out.

She was so fucking mad at him, but not for what he did. She was mad because he lied to her again. Every time something huge came out, he would say that it would be the last time. He would beg and plead and tell her to think about the kids. He would make her feel bad for making him feel bad; saying that he only kept it from her to protect her. She knew it was bullshit with every fiber of her being, but she took him back every time. Every time the lies got bigger, and now they were dealing with massive consequences.

Why couldn't he just tell her? Was he ashamed? Did he not trust her? She didn't understand why the person who was supposed to be the love of her life wouldn't have told her about something this big. The conclusion that she came to was that it had nothing to do with shame or trust, it was arrogance. He didn't want to give her a chance to object. He knew that she would never have gone for it, but he was so convinced that it was the right thing to do, he wouldn't even consider her opinion, and that's what made her furious.

It wasn't just his life he was putting at risk when he did stupid bullshit like this. She didn't know why he couldn't figure things out and be happy. They had everything. Why did he have to be like this? Why couldn't she fix him? Too many questions, nowhere near enough answers. All she could do was hold on and hope for the best.