1.) Name four of our nation's founding fathers.
Benjamin Franklyn, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson
2.) Excluding Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, name the two founding fathers who helped write the Declaration of Independence.
Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman
3.) How many American Colonies were there that went to war with Great Britain in the American War of Independence?
Ninteen (A red check mark marks this answer as wrong)
4.) What year was the Constitution of the United States formulated?
1999 (another check marks this answer as wrong.)
5.) "What philosopher stated that all individuals possessed certain ""natural rights""-such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of property?"
Maturin the Turtle (This answer is checked and circled with a question mark)
6.) Who urged the House of Burgesses to condemn the Stamp Act?
The Gunslinger (Checked again with a question mark)
7.) Who forcibly prevented the distribution of stamps and forced the resignation of the stamp collectors?
Randall Flag (a check now, no question mark)
8.) Who came up the the Townshend Acts?
Shardik (Another check, depressed angrily into the paper this time)
9.) What were the Townshend Acts?
Ka-tet (Another check)
10.) "Who said that the British government should: ""Repeal the laws, renounce the right, recall the troops, refund the money, and return to the old method of requisition.""
?" Eddie (check)
"You see what I mean?" Mrs. Dobson told Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell. "Her last three tests are just like this. The Gunslinger, The Red King, all sorts of nonsense. At first I thought it was simply distraction, possibly brought about by a story she'd been reading... I understand we're approaching the anniversary of her father's death?"
"Yes actually." Mrs. Mitchell replied. "Next week... We lost her mother when she was four... I'm sure she'll snap out of it soon."
"We can only hope." Mrs. Dobson replied. "But I would like to give you the name of a child psychiatrist. He's very good."
"No thank you." Mr. Mitchell replied tersely. "She doesn't need a shrink." She needs a good smack, but he decided not to say that bit in front of her teacher.
"I understand your reluctance Mr. Mitchell." Mrs. Dobson replied. "Speaking to a psychiatrist doesn't mean Jaquelin is crazy, it just gives her an outlet to speak about her feelings."
"She can speak about her feelings at home." Mr. Mitchell replied.
"Maybe we should at least meet with him?" Mrs. Mitchell asked, but even as the words left her mouth she knew she would pay for this dissension later. "Or at least ask Jaqi..."
"I'm not paying some head shrink to sit and listen to her cross her arms and not talk for an hour." Mr. Mitchell said a little hotly. "Thank you Mrs. Dobson, we'll take care of it." He stood sharply, shook the teacher's hand and gave his wife that hard look that said, 'We're going'.
Jaquelin Roke, orphaned at 14, currently 15, residing with her aunt and uncle, sat outside Mrs. Dobson's office with her arms folded, and her head resting on the short back of the chair. She was basically laying down with her feet spread as far apart as the arms of the chair would allow her. Sitting like this was moderately uncomfortable, but she did it just to show the defiance of sitting upright like the proper little girls in their proper little uniforms who walked around the school like proper little cookie cutter models of one another.
She could hear her aunt and uncle speaking with her teacher. Another one of her tests had come up crazy again... she didn't know why. She read the questions and the answers came to her like they were right. She had no idea who the hell The Gunslinger was, only that when her hand placed the pencil against the page and she wrote the words, they felt right... like they belonged there. Just like the words she wrote in the notebook hidden in her pillow case. It was filled with the same driveling nonsense as her last three tests had been.
The Gunslinger, John Farson, Martin... She didn't know what any of it meant only that if she didn't write, if she didn't let the words and names spill out onto the page, she thought her mind might explode. She felt that strange little tickle at the back of her mind even now. She felt it more and more each day and she knew she had to get home soon, or at least find a quiet private place to write...
She didn't realized she'd already placed her hand in her backpack to find her notebook when the door to Mrs. Dobson's office opened and her uncle stared daggers down at her. She felt very small and insignificance beneath his eyes, but she matched his angry stair as best she could and set her jaw. He broke his gaze first as he walked away and it made her feel like she'd won. Her Aunt's worried expression fell on her next and her anger softened. She couldn't be mad at Aunt Shirley, not like she could at Rick. Her aunt's nod to follow her uncle came at the sound of Mrs. Dobson saying "I'll see you Monday Jaqi, have a good weekend."
"Not likely..." Jaqi answered, though she wasn't referencing the possibility of a good weekend. For some reason she simply felt as if Monday wouldn't exist for her. Not here any way.
She watched as New York swept past the window of her uncle's 1977 bmw 320I. It was a small car, cramped, but luxury and he had refused to downgrade to a family vehicle when Jaqi came to live with them nearly a year sago. At nearly sixteen, when a girl should be learning the finer points of driving, she wasn't allowed to touched it unless to get in the back seat. She didn't care. She wouldn't be caught dead behind the wheel of his beloved mid-life-crisis-mobile.
She droned out his barking as best she could as he shouted from the driver's seat. "Boarding school, I swear to God." He often swore God when he was angry, but Jaqi continued to do her best not to listen. It wasn't anything she had ever heard before.
As they sat at the light, waiting for traffic to resume it's pace, something in the distance caught her eye. It was a sign that read "Coming Soon: Turtle Bay Condominiums" She suddenly wanted to go there and her breath fogged up the glass of the beemer's rear passenger window as she peered out and down second avenue. The urge to write began to diminish and she swore that something was glowing amidst the weeds and debris of the currently vacant lot.
She didn't hear her uncle shouting at her until his hand struck the back of her head and her forehead and nose smashed into the glass, leaving behind an imprint of her face made with a little makeup and a lot of teenage grease. "-ukin listening to me?" His voice seemed to come from a stereo that had been turned on with the volume far too loud. It hurt her ears more than the impact of the glass and his hand. It wasn't the first time he had touched her.
Jaquelin Roke, orphaned at 14, currently 15, victim of her impotent, pedophile uncle, came undone.
The front seat was no hindrance as she launched her torso over it at her uncle. Her aunt screamed, he cursed and she gouged her fingers into flesh and scratched and beat him about the head and shoulders. "YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" She screamed, sounding insane as she enacted her revenge. "YOU THINK YOU CAN HIT ME? TOUCH ME? YOU SICK FUCK!" The coppery scent of blood erupted about her as cars behind and around them honked. She broke his nose on the steering wheel and blood gushed from both nostrils, more as she struck him again and his teeth pierced his tongue. With each strike she felt his hands. The way he groped her. The way he slapped her for letting his dick go soft. The way he humped at her endlessly and achieved nothing but sweaty frustration. Then the way he punched her where no one would see the bruises and the way he made her suck him hard again only to cause her jaw and his balls ache. The impotent fuck...
He fought at first, cursing, shouting. An elbow smashed her bottom lip against her teeth and she began to bled as the flesh split. Still, as a clump of thinning hair came loose in her fist and her aunt shrank into the floor board, crying, he began to fight back less and less. She wasn't sure at what point he became unconscious, but her fury seemed unexhaustible. Not until arms grabbed her around the middle from behind, did she stop fighting him.
She thought at first it was a police officer. She could hear a siren, a whistle, someone shouting. Her vision was clouded by black curls, but as she thrashed her head struck something that crunched and she broke her second nose of the day. That caused the arms around her to release and she struck the asphalt. Her backpack thudded against her back and she caught herself on her hands. Running seemed like the obvious course of action and one place in particular was the only one that seemed safe, the lot.
Voices behind her, her aunt crying, footsteps in pursuit. She struck the fence and the Turtle Bay sign shook and bounded against the chain link with a clang. Hands groping, clawing she made it to the top, yards before her pursuers, two somewhat over weight gunsli-... police officers. Her skirt caught and tore, but she managed to get over without ripping her leggings. She struck the ground on the other side of the fence just as the officers reached the sign. She ran deeper into the lot, finding the grass long, littered with glass and long forgotten trash. As the larger of the two officers boosted his partner over the fence, she slipped on something soggy and disappeared in the long grass as her body went down. She sliced her palm on something and figured it was glass.
She stayed down, but when she realized the grass stain on her palm was purple rather than green, she heard the officer and looked up, "He deserved-" She began to say in her defense, but he didn't appear to see her. He saw instead, a perfect wild rose, splattered with purple paint, beautiful and captivating amidst the trash.
"Well?" his partner shouted from the other side of the fence. He was sweating, breathing heavily, his partner did not answer. "DAVE!" He shouted.
"Whu?" Officer Dave asked, coming out of his momentary stupor. "Oh. No, she's gone... musta ran through the other side."
What? Ran through? She was right here, laying in the grass in front of him. She could smell the stench of his aftershave. She was close enough to feel the heat of his run wafting off of him... and he didn't see her? She thought about saying something, but decided not to. Obviously the other cop couldn't see her and this one was letting her go. That was it... he was pretending not to see her, letting her go because there had to be some good reason for a girl to attack a man like she had. As she watched him look around the lot, missing the rose this time, she stayed still, keeping her thanks to herself. As he left she made sure to stay down, letting the two cops leave, listening to the one huff and puff as he climbed over the fence. Once she was sure they had gone, she turned and as she prepared to get up, she froze, her nose inches away from a rose amidst a little patch of purple grass, one drop of red clinging to a perfect little thorn.
She had no knowledge of how long she laid there, but the rose bade her stay. It sang to her, soothing away the stress of her recent ordeal, easing the pain that had begun to well up in her hand and lip. It eased the madness that had overtaken her and she laid still, on her side, curled around the perfect glowing beauty of that one flawless rose.
She thought perhaps she slept, but she wasn't sure. When the image of her father's duty pistol flickered into her mind, she realized that her time basking in the serene peace of the rose was over. When she stood, her body feeling both light and heavy at the same time, the sun had set and a light dusting of snow had gathered on her side. She had somehow remained warm and understood that it was the rose that had done it.
As she looked to the sky, wondering what time it was, she felt so far away from the girl who had attacked her uncle a few hours ago. All she knew was that she needed to go home and she needed to leave... and she needed to have her father's pistol with her when she did.
Manhattan was cold, but the rose had warmed her and she was single minded as she walked quickly home. Maybe Rick had been taken to the hospital... surely. Maybe she could get in and get out before anyone knew she'd taken her father's gun.
The house was quiet and she didn't recognize any signs of life from inside. She chose to go through the garden though, just in case. Slipping though the back door she hurried to her room and dumped the contents of her book bag out on her bed. She looked at the bag, canvas, school issue. She dropped it in the floor and went to her closet. Her old backpack was there, leather, faded, worn. It reminded her of home. Taking it up she kept whatever she had left inside, figuring if it was there it was supposed to be. From the things on her bed she kept pencils, her notebook, took the notebook from her pillow case and three more filled with the noncommittal writings of a teenage girl. She needed paper... she wasn't sure why she knew, but paper would be scarce where she was going.
Aside from the note books, pencil sharpener and as many pencils as she could find, she stuffed in jeans, socks, underwear and shirts. It wouldn't be cold, but opportunities for washing would be rare. To make space she put the paper and pencils in an olive drab messenger bag she took from her closet. Military issue, old, from Vietnam she thought, but it had been her father's game bag when he went hunting. Washed now, it made a perfect home for the notebooks and left much needed space in her backpack. The school backpack lay ignored on the floor.
Done packing, she headed to her aunt and uncle's room, she didn't understand why she needed the things she had taken. Why she needed to pack for summer and not winter, but she knew she couldn't stay here any more. When Rick came back he would do more than just hump at her. He might have enough actual rage to rape her outright and she did not want to know what she would do to him once he was done beating her. She knew she wouldn't take it again. She knew she'd kill him if he tried. He seemed to only keep it stiff if he was hurting her and if she stayed, she'd leave him with nothing to stiffen.
Pulling out the back panel of her aunt's jewelry box she found about six hundred dollars and an envelope of her mother's jewelry. Aunt Shirley was her sister, she deserved to keep something, so Jaquelin took her mother's only real set of pearls and left the remaining costume jewelry. Unlike her aunt and uncle, her parents hadn't had much, but she remembered sitting on her father's hip as he held her up to a glass top counter, asking her, "You think Mommy will like those Jaqi?" She'd been six then and it had cost her father two ice cream cones, a bag of toffee candies and a pony ride to buy her confidence. So the pearls she kept, as well as the money.
Finding her father's pistol might prove more difficult, but something in her told her to stay confident, she could get to it.
She remembered how heavy the 357 Ruger had been. She'd fired it once when she was twelve but her father had said it it was a bit much for her. "You're better with a rifle any way." He told her, handing the .22 he had bought her when she was nine. Not many girls in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania had a hand with firearms, but when you're father is the chief deputy and part time conservation officer for all of Columbia county, you learn.
Rick had been under the impression she'd not been paying attention when he opened his office safe in front of her. 4, 19, 99. The date and year a street corner palm reader had once told him he would die.
She turned the dial on the safe and was glad to see that he had not changed the combination. In a metal box under a stack of files, a stack of cash and a box of 357 hollow points, she found her father's pistol. It was just as heavy as she had remembered, but that might be the added weight of her father's leather. She took the box, the ammunition and apparently thinking that six hundred dollars wasn't enough, she took the cash as well. She left her uncle's office and didn't turn back as she headed down the stairs.
In the kitchen she filled the remainder of her bag with the fruit from the basket on the counter. Apples, oranges, bananas, even lemons though she hated the vile things. Citrus was good for treating scurvy, though she didn't know why she would need to worry about that. She grabbed the box of salt, a box of sugar cubes, a loaf of bread, all the cheese (even the fancy stuff) and sliced meant the fridge had to offer. Coffee, though she hated the stuff, she took coffee. Her uncle kept several packs of Winston cigarets in the freezer and even though she didn't smoke, she took them, as well as the kitchen matches with blue heads. The kind that could be struck anywhere. She even grabbed a hand full of zipper baggies for keeping things dry and paper lunch sacks.
Again, she had no idea why she took all these things, but when she snatched a few spools of thread and needles from her aunt's sewing kit in the living room and stuffed them and the matches in the bag with the paper, she felt like she had what she needed. She headed for the front door, intending to leave this place behind for good. However, as she reached for the knob, she heard the familiar jingle of keys.
For a moment instinct told her to go for the gun, but common sense told her that it was buried under a week's worth of food. The money was in the bag with the paper. She thought to hide, then the image of her father standing out in her mind said Don't forget my face, girl... stand your ground. She did so and held onto her bags, prepared to use one as a weapon or fixing her grip in case he tried to pull her back or her bag away. She could leave the money, so long as she didn't leave the gun. When the door opened she stood her ground and felt a different sort of anger when she saw the face of her aunt.
There was fear in the tired woman's eyes for a moment, but as she saw the bags on Jaquelin's shoulders. "Jaqi..." She said, coming forward, hands outstretched.
Jaqi stepped back. "Don't touch me." She said sereiously and her aunt's hands froze mid air.
"Jaqi... why?" Aunt Shirley asked. "Why did you-"
"You know damn well why!" Jaqi shouted. "You know damn well why."
"I-"
"Don't Aunt Shirley..." She said, anger causing her heart rate to pick up. "Don't... you knew... I saw you... you let him... You looked through the crack in the door and heard me ask for help... Don't you dare lie to me."
"Jaquelin Elizabe-" There was a strong tone to her voice, stronger than she would have used to speak with Rick, but a strong swift hand across the woman's face snapped her mouth shut and a swipe of blood from the cut on Jaquelin's hand smeared across her face as she slapped her.
"Don't!" She screamed at her aunt. "DON'T YOU DARE! Don't stand there and tell me you didn't know! You watched him fuck me!" She pushed her now and her aunt slammed into the door frame, dropping her keys. "YOU LET HIM FUCK ME!" She screamed again and that was all she could take. She shot through the door and down the steps.
A mid winter rain had begun to mist and Jaquelin Roke, orphaned at 14, currently 15, victim of her impotent, pedophile uncle and too frightened to do anything aunt, left the place she was supposed to call home and embarked for a place she vaguely understood as some kind of middle place... a middle world... Midworld...
"Daddy! Dad! It's not funny, let me out!" She pulled on the back door handle of the gold brown 1970 Crown Victoria squad car. A wire cage kept her from crawling over the front seat to escape through the open front doors. The car smelled of pine air-freshener, turtle wax and window cleaner. When she'd climbed into the back to wash the windows, her father had closed the back door, trapping her inside the squad car.
"What?" He asked, cupping his ear and leaning towards the window. "Can't hear you... You gotta speak up!"
"Daddy!"
They would laugh about it later. She'd tell her friends at school and they'd make fun of her for it. Now... she used the memory to drown out Rick's voice... "Bite the pillow and quit squirming..."
Think about Daddy... she told herself as she walked, a thick snow matting her hair down, making her wish she'd brought a hat. She shook her hair out of her face and walked, not knowing where she was going. Ever so often she would look up at the street signs as if they would lead her in the right direction. Think about Daddy...
"Take a deep breath, then let half of it out." He told her, speaking softly to her right as he watched her line up the sights of the old twenty two rifle that had once been his as a boy. "Line up the bead and just squeeze..."
"What if it kicks?" She asked, one eye closed, looking down the length of the weapon. She was seven, almost eight and she was nervous about seeing the gun kick like they did on shows like Paladin and The Rifelmen... She liked Maverick... they didn't have many shoot outs on Maverick...
"A .22 ain't got no more kick than your Red Rider..." That was a bit of a lie, but she'd never learn to shoot a gun if she didn't realize how little they bit back. "Just calm down and take the shot. Just like shooting a bb..."
She closed her eyes, feeling on the verge of tears as she moved her face back against the stock, her jaw resting against the smooth wood grain... The corner of the paper target fluttered in the breeze. She closed both eyes, remembering something she had no right to remember... To herself, she spoke her lesson...
"“I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father... I aim with my eye."
The .22 made a tight little clapping sound that echoed back at the trees as the bullet tore through the center of the target, the little piece of led making it's home in the bark of the box elder they used as their shooting range. She'd not so much as felt the recoil of the rifle.
"Hooowee..." Her father said, standing. He found her little... poem odd, but if it made her shoot like that. "Do that again." He told her. Clap. Clap. Clap. .22 slugs sank into the page, making a tight little circle in the center of the paper. She emptied the weapon and sat back, looking up at her father "I ain't ever seen a seven year old shoot like that..." He said, covering his eyes from the sun. "Bout time they let girls compete don't you think?" She smiled up at him, never having felt his pride in her so perfectly than in this moment right now.
It made Jaqi smile to think of her father like that. To remember the first time she had truly felt his pride settle on her shoulders. He'd been so sad after her mother died and for so long. It hadn't been the first time he had smiled and told her he was proud, but it had been the first time they really connected. The first time they had gone from just being father and daughter to being something a little more.
It was so much better than remembering him at the end. How he had looked with that green hospital cloth draped over his face, bloody bandages wrapped about his head beneath it. He had lasted for hours, sometimes telling old friends goodbye, sometimes speaking gibberish. They had brought her in at the last. When his clarity seemed most strong, most clear. He had held her hand tightly, but there had been gibberish. He told her how he loved her, but to beware the Crimson King... He apologized for leaving her behind, but Roland and Eddie would take care of her. He loved her so dearly and he hated to leave, but this was his Ka, his fate and he knew the boys would take care of her. They would become her family and they would keep her safe from the other one till she became whole again.
Jaqi wept as he spoke these strange things to her. She didn't know what they meant, but she had hugged him, feeling the richness of his love, feeling the course stubble of a three day beard against her cheek. He only shaved on Sundays and she so missed the feeling of his hugs on her cheek that sometimes she placed the bristles of her hairbrush there and still imagined him hugging her.
She didn't want to think about her father this way. A gunsl- a deputy cut down by a drunk with a pistol in the cab of his truck. Though she had not been there she could see it as plane as day. Her father's long lean form emerging from the 1970 brown gold crown vic... the sound of his boots on the pavement as he walked up behind the man's truck. His friendly voice as he began to say, "Drinking again Mr. -" Then the crack of the twenty two pistol as the small piece of led tore through his forehead and out the back, leaving a hole no larger than an eraser in the front and one the size of a silver dollar in the back. She saw him standing for a moment, looking shocked, awed almost. As if he didn't fully grasp the enormity of the situation. She could see him falling now. Not straight back like they did in the westerns on tv, but down, straight down as if the communication to stand had been completely severed in his mind. Straight down like a sack of potatoes, legs outstretch under the man's truck, palms upward, dropped by his sides. His legs had been broken when the man drove away and she heard the sickening crunch of those bones as the tires crushed them with their weight. He fell back then, his skull striking the pavement as the night sky came into view over him. There had been stars that night, millions of them. There was a crisp chill in the air that promised snow on the very peeks of the mountains, but not down here in the valleys... no... down here it would rain... it would rain like the tears of a little girl who didn't know which way to go. A girl who was lost amidst a forest of buildings and streets. A girl lost in one of the most dangerous cities in the world...
There were tears on her cheeks when she stopped. She didn't know where she was. She had thought she was going back to the lot and to the rose... but she'd never been here before. The tall buildings were deserted right now. These were places of business... places of the professional people. People like Unc- like Rick. People who she hated and refused to turn into. She sat on the steps of a large white building and proceeded to dig out her father's pistol. Her gunna (wherever that word had come from) needed to be sorted and packed again, but she felt as if she did so, she would be caught by some... thing. Not someone but something. Instead she moved the food out of the way for now and opened the metal box with her father's leather and pistol inside. The familiar weight of the 357 felt good in her hands and she pulled six of the heavy shells from the box of bullets. She loaded the weapon and after looking at it for a moment, dropped it gently into the right pocket of her coat. Quickly she repacked the bag, but took twelve more shells and put them in her left pocket, feeling as if they might be needed.
She sat there for a while, recovering from her cry and what must have been an incredibly long walk. She wasn't at all sure where she was other than it was a branch of the business district. Then she realized what the building in front of her was. It was tall... the windows were tinted to make them look like glass. She'd been here once before with Aunt Shirley to pick up Rick. It was his building, his office. The building stretched high into the sky, disappearing in the dark overhead. The slick glassy windows made the whole building resemble a mirror. Maybe she could break some of those windows... just as a little revenge for what Rick had done to her.
The weight of the pistol in her pocket felt reassuring as she stood up, hoisting her gunna onto her shoulder and crossing the strangely deserted street. No where in New York was perfectly dead at night, but right now there wasn't even a pigeon fluttering overhead. She approached the building, her reflection becoming distorted at first, then righting the closer she came. There was fresh blood on her chin from her split lip and she took the fingers of her wounded right hand and wiped it away. That had been the only shot Rick had managed to get in before the man had pulled her off of him. The split must had reopened when she was crying.
The girl in the reflection looked so strange to her. She looked lost. On the run... So very out of place in this forest of professional people's buildings. She reached for the glass with blood stained fingers and touched her own reflection. The glass felt warm under her fingers and she swore she felt a sensation like a cat's tongue. She pulled her hand away from the glass and looked at her fingers. The pads were free of blood, but as she looked back to the mirror-like window, there were no fingerprints. Curiosity over reason caused her to place her wounded palm flat against the surface of the window. Nothing happened, but it felt warm. Slowly the deep gash the thorn had made in her palm began to itch and tickle. She pulled her hand away, or at least her arm made the motion to do it, but nothing happened. Her hand seemed very stuck. She pulled on her wrist with the left hand, cursing under her breath. Her foot braced against the cement foundation and she pushed, but to her horror she saw ripples issuing out from the meeting place of her hand and the glass. Deep ripples that grew and grew the more she fought to get away. She felt a strange sucking sensation against her hand and attributed it to the sensation of Rick's face buried between her thighs. Something bit at the wounded flesh of her hand and she felt it deep in her groin, like Rick biting her there, thinking the squeal that came meant she liked it. She couldn't stop the scream that came from her as she watched her hand become sucked into the glass. In some strange way she understood that it had tasted her blood and it wanted more.
Stumble!