Chapter 8
Jeannie Haden wasn't my girlfriend. She was a girl who was my friend. We spent a lot of time together. Things were bad at home for her. Her mother and father were getting divorced, and they fought all the time. Jeannie was scared of her father. She only went home when she had to.
'He's so mean,' she used to say. 'So mean.'
She told me once her father had a bunch of places, 'hideouts,' she called them, scattered along the river, on islands. He didn't own the land. He just patched together some shacks here and there that he could go to and drink or whatever.
'He'd go there and get drunk and sometimes bring women there,' Jeannie said. 'I heard my mother and him fighting about it. So I snuck out and looked once. I was scared all the time. If he caught me, I don't know what he woulda done. But I had to see.'
'Mighta depended on how drunk he was,' I said.
'He's pretty drunk a lot,' Jeannie said.
'I know,' I said.
'Everybody in town knows,' she said.
'I guess they do,' I said.
'But they don't know about the hideouts,' she said. 'The one I saw was a filthy, stinky place. I don't know what kind of woman would go there.'
'The kind that would go out with your pop, I guess.'
'Ick,' she said.
'Your mother liked him,' I said. 'She married him.'
'She was pregnant with me,' Jeannie said. 'I think he was kind of handsome then.'
'She must have liked him some, you know, to get pregnant,' I said.
'Well, sure,' Jeannie said.
'She his girlfriend at the time?' I said.
'Well, she wasn't a one-night stand, if that's what you're thinking,' Jeannie said.
'I'm not thinking anything.'
'My mother tries very hard,' Jeannie said.
'I know she does,' I said. 'I didn't mean to say anything bad.'
Jeannie nodded.
'I know,' she said. 'Poor Momma.'
'She ever talk to you about it?'
'No.'
'Then how do you know?' I said.
'I know when they were married,' Jeannie said. 'And I know when I was born.'
I nodded.
'And it was him?'
