Patience, My Dears

It will be about a week before I get around to posting again. My grandsons are coming to visit, and it's been a very long time since this old body had to keep up with a two-year-old.

This is going to be great. I'll tell you all about it after they leave.

Be Careful What You Wish For

You just might get it.

Which brings me to my story for today. 

The life of an oilfield wife back in the 80's was pretty boring. Not much to do in a small town in Texas. Heck, the whole county only had 5000 people. I hit the garage sales on Saturdays, taught myself to sew, and ran up huge long distance bills talking to my mother every day. 

The summer of 1984 was dragging on and on. My son was about to turn 4 and my husband was on 24/7 call. When he went to work, we never knew if he'd be gone 5 hours or 5 days. Joe and I had read every Dr. Seuss book in the library and he was more interested in playing in the dirt with his friend next door than playing with Mom. 

It wasn't long before I was bemoaning the fact that I was BORED!!...There just HAD to be something come along....if we didn't get a little excitement in this town, I was going to DIE!!!

Enter the Vaught family, new neighbors moving in across the street. (Remember the big yellow house from "Pain pills, Numb toes, and Mexicans?"....That's the house.)

Mark came first and got settled in to the house and to his job. A few weeks later, he went down to Houston and got his wife, Kelly, and their two children. I don't recall their names but the girl was about 3 and the boy was less than a year.

Kelly was a brash bleached blonde with no manners and a mouth like a sailor. On one of her first nights in the neighborhood, she caught me outside on my front porch and crossed the street, plopped down, bummed a smoke and proceeded to talk my ear off until way after Joe's bedtime. 

She seemed to be proud of telling me stories of the fights she and her husband had had, and how she had provoked them and left him dazed and bloodied a time or two. She told me in graphic details of one fight where she jumped out of the car, causing herself some injury. She said this one was on the news in Houston and she had photos to prove it (remember that, it'll come up later)

After that initial meeting, she would come over several times a week, pick up  my phone and make some calls, and take my smokes without asking. I had decided that I did NOT like this girl. Yes, I know, you can't be a doormat unless you lie down. I put up with a lot, cause I didn't want to be a bitch about it.

One day in July, her husband came to my door and asked if he could use my phone. After he made his call he asked if I would drive him downtown. I really didn't want to, but I didn't want to be thought of as being unhelpful either, so I agreed. He went back to his house and got his kids, and I got Joe and we loaded into my car. I asked him where we were going and he told me the name of the motel on the hill downtown. WHOA....wait a minute....what's going on?....He said he just wanted to find his wife.

Well, this was WAY more than I wanted to be involved in, and I told him I didn't appreciate him taking advantage of me this way. I said I would drive past the hotel, but I would NOT pull in, and I would NOT slow down, so if he wanted to see something, he'd better look fast. 

He must have seen what he thought he saw, because he asked me to drop him at a friend's house on the way home. I did, and Joe and I headed the 3 blocks home. I found my next door neighbor outside, and I started telling her what had happened. 

After a while, Mark arrived back home. A few minutes later Kelly arrived home, on the back of a motorcycle driven by another man. My neighbor and I figured this was the beginning of fireworks, that excitement I had been wishing for, so we pulled up lawn chairs and waited for the show. Imagine our disappointment when everything was quiet. No yelling, no fighting, nothing. Mark came outside, sat on the porch and had a smoke, then went inside, turned off the porch light and that was it. So my neighbor went in, I went in, kids went to bed....show's over....or so I thought.

I was on the phone a few minutes later, recounting the story to another friend, when there was a knock on my door. There stood Kelly. She looked normal except for a very slight bloody nose. She said she needed to use my phone to call someone, because she had shot Mark.....WHAT!?!?!?!.....You SHOT him!?!?!?.....Is he ok?!?!?!?......I'll never forget her icy response....
"Naw, I think he's dead." No tears, no panic in her voice....just that.

Well, the call she made was to her father in Houston, but police did arrive, she was taken to jail, Mark's family came for the children and finally this night was over. The next morning I spent 3 hours giving a statement to the DA. It seems she had gone to 3 other houses asking for a phone before she came to mine, which I thought was odd, since the other neighbors were elderly and she knew me better than any of them. 


I gave my statement and went home and she went to the county jail to await trial. She had been charged with manslaughter.  The trial didn't start until 6 months later. By this time, I was pregnant with Gary and sitting around in the courthouse wasn't very comfortable. As much as I wanted to watch the whole thing, I wasn't allowed to, because I had to testify for the prosecution. I spent an hour and a half on the witness stand, telling them about the phone calls, and the stories, and the fact that I saw no injuries to her face or neck that night. That turned out to be a big deal, because she was using the 'battered woman' defense, complete with news stories and 8x10 color glossy pictures of her bruised and bloodied face. The only thing was, the pictures were from the fight she had told me about that they had before ever moving to our town. I thought this was very unfair to the women who ARE  battered.


As the trial wore down to the final hours, I received some calls from her friends threatening my life, so I stayed home and sent my ex to the courthouse to listen to the final arguments and the decision.


It seems that when I dropped Mark off at his friends house, he went back to the motel, where his wife and her 'friend' beat him unconscious and left him on the floor. They took off on the friend's motorcycle. Mark came home, and she arrived shortly after. They argued. He then came out and had his smoke, which I witnessed. After he went back into the house, he went into the bathroom, which was at the back off the house, behind the kitchen. Remember, we used to live there, so I knew the layout of the rooms. As he came around the corner, through the kitchen and into the dining room, she was standing there with a .22 rifle which she had taken down from a rack that hung on the dining room wall. She fired one shot, striking him in the chest and blowing his aorta to smithereens. He was probably dead before he hit the floor.


At the end of the trial, according to my ex, she was offered a plea bargain of 5 years for manslaughter. She refused and was heard bragging that she was going to "get off Scott free".


When it came her time to testify, I understand it went something like this:


DA: Were you in the motel room with this man?
KV: Why, yes, I was.
DA: And were you in  bed with this man?
KV: Why, yes, I was.
DA: And were you naked in bed with this man?
KV: Why, yes, I was.
DA: And were you having sex with this man?
KV: Oh, NO!...I was too busy thinking about my children. 


Yeah, right.


Long story short (too late for that, Cyndilu)...she was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years in a lovely women's prison in East Texas. I often wondered what happened to her after she served her time. 


After that, I was more than happy with my quiet little country life in my quiet little country town. And I never again wished for something exciting to happen.