Shunned: Outcasts in the Land

By Cynthia Hearne Darling

amos, a small town minister in new england, is horrified. his wife carrie has been jailed for vandalism against jett pharameuticals,her retailiation for their son john's death by a drug overdose.amos's own reaction to his son's death is to speak prophetically on hell and punishment, through preaching and conducting public meetings. public reaction is fierce and unforgiving against the couple.
released from jail, carrie forms a group, including skeptic allan, ceo of jett, to expose harms caused by antidepressants. she also confronts dr. monroe, john's university counselor, who engineered the boy's death. he is infuriated and threatened by carrie. monroe schemes to punish carrie by killing amos, arranging for him to come to his office to retrieve john's falsified records, that state that their son'd death was caused by the parents' fundamentalist lifestyle. carrie, devasted at her husband's death, puts roses in her dead husband's hands at the funeral, as he had done for her outside the jail upon her release.
monroe sends his grossly obese wife nellie on a cruise, but she confronts him about amos's death on her return. he decides to kill her also, planning the murder with delight and with great precision. meanwhile, carrie learns that nellie may have information to sell regarding amos's murder.
allan, now a suspect in amos's death, decides to approach nellie himself. he drives to the house, followed by the police. he hears screams within the house. nellie has monroe in a death grip. the police arrive. allan is exonerated. monroe becomes psychotic, now locked in a mental institution.
carrie and allan remain friends. old mrs. robbins, the town's eccentric, hands carrie a rose. the cycle is complete, she says. carrie understands. she tells allan he has to reread hawthorne to understand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cynthia Hearne Darling
• Release date: Jul 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476306490

Cynthia Hearne Darling

Cynthia Hearne Darling has a BA in English from the College of William and Mary and masters' degrees in social work and public administration. She recieved a poetry award in Fairfax County, Virginia, for her poem Mississippi Mother.She spent years writing family histories of patients in the mental hospital where she worked as a social worker. Give her Shakespeare, the opera and some good crossword puzzles and she'll be content. She is the author of Forty-Nine Poems, Shunned, a novel, and is finishing a story about Georgetown, D.C., in the sixties. She has worked on Indian reservations and the U.S. Department of Justice. She prefers the reservations.

Book preview

Chapter I

He never expected to visit his wife in jail. Maybe watching her give out hot soup at the Salvation Army, or maybe he’d come home to find a stray dog hit by a car, but never this. No one could know how it tore him up; he had become like a tree whose very fullest branches had been cut away, leaving him bare and exposed to the harsh wind.

That night, he cried in his bed. Tears squeezed from his eyes onto the rough linen of the K-Mart pillow case. When he felt the tears with his tongue, the drops tasted like juice from a wizened, old lemon, acrid and tart. The conflict inside him split his very soul, yet he knew she thought she was right to have done what she did. He wanted to support and defend her with his whole heart and mind, even though she had acted in a way that had set the two of them apart from society, judged by others as a menace to the community.

Suddenly, the old land line phone by his bed let out a strident ring. It was late, but this kind of call was not unknown in the life of a minister. He reached over and picked up the receiver.

Amos?

Yes? Maude?

Yes, it’s me. I know it’s late, but I had to ask. Do you need anything? You’re going to see her tomorrow?

Yes, I am.

Would you like me to come with you?

No, no, it’s all right, thanks. It’ll be better if we have some time alone. But, I’m grateful, Maude, I really am. He paused.

And, when people from church ask, just say we’re surviving, waiting for it to be over.

She had done what she had to do, thought Maude, ending the conversation and leaving him to himself and his own thoughts. He was a good man, no matter what anyone said. God bless them both, she said to herself. They’ve got a hard road in front of them.

Years ago, when Carrie and Amos first came to his post as Baptist minister in this small New England town, he remembered, one of his new parishioners had told him that people considered him ‘over soft’, saying that Carrie ran the show in the Andrews household. The church’s reaction did not surprise him. He had heard this description of their marriage before, but it had never hurt him. He had always known that he had inner strengths that were not visible on a superficial level. These remarks about Carrie and him were not indicative of their relationship at all. Instead, they were like pieces of a jig saw puzzle; they fitted together, different, but stronger when united. Of this he was sure.

He lay in bed, reminiscing, trying to hold onto the good memories. Throughout their marriage, they had talked on and on during the sleepless nights when hard times had lunged at them, finding solace with each other. The next day, he had always marveled that God had given him a mate who was like his very own heart, a rib out of his own body. No woman today wanted to be a rib out of her mate’s body, but she, independent as she was, didn’t see it that way. She was for him and he was for her; they were stronger, because they were made of the same material. He clung to this image tonight, until at last his head fell back on the pillow, and he slept.

Amos Andrews woke up while the sky was still gray and a line of rose color lay just above the horizon. What was that line about ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ he had learned somewhere back in school? He had forgotten so much he had once learned. Sometimes when he had to wake up early, he prayed just to have time to rest, to think, during the day. But this day was not to be like the others. Nothing was going to be rosy today, even on this warm, New England summer day. But getting her back home would be a step, thank God.

Tightening his shoe laces, he felt the excess flesh around his waist in between his chest and his upper legs. The sudden reality of it hit him: He was middle-aged; he had a wife in jail and a son in the graveyard. And he seemed to be making a mess of his ministerial calling. He stood up and away from his shoes. The blood in his head was going back to where it should be. He let it settle before he looked for his car keys. O.K. Better now. He could go on.

Today Amos, eyes still swollen from lack of sleep, drew his little Honda into the parking space of the county jail. It fit in neatly as if it had been there before, its dusty windshield facing the parking meter with a kind of resignation, its front bumper coming to rest against the rough curb. He locked the door out of habit, not because anyone would waste time in stealing a twenty-year-old car, rusted around its edges from the winters of New England.

There was something perpetually young looking about Amos in spite of his being middle aged. His eyes were large and brown, somewhat melancholy, but offset by a thatch of brown-gray hair that stuck up from his forehead, without the help of any gel. His eyes and hair gave him the look of an old-young man. Carrie used to say that he was the direct opposite of the slicked-down George Hamilton of their generation. Because of this look and his placid demeanor, the townspeople thought of him as another one of those non-descript Protestant ministers who lived under the radar of notoriety. He was tepid, they thought, not hot, not cold, but tepid. That is, until events of the past year had called Amos and Carrie into the spotlight.

He went through the revolving door of the jail entrance, automatically walking toward the lockers on the side of the big room. Opening one of the metal locker doors, he deposited his keys, his wallet minus his identification, and the odd bits of change which he carefully placed in the plastic cup on the bottom of the locker, so as not to make any noise. It was as if he were trying to be inconspicuous, to cause as little commotion as possible. It was true; he didn’t want anyone to know he was here, which was absurd, he said to himself. Her incarceration had been in the papers all along.

Signed in, I.D. checked, he sat down on one of the pastel plastic chairs to await his turn. A mother with a crying toddler walked past him. Other than these two and himself, there were three young black girls and a large family who looked Hispanic. It had surprised him on his first visit to see so many teens and children brought by in women --- women waiting patiently for the boy-men behind bars to grow up.

His waiting time went quickly this time. In ten minutes, his name was called.

Reverend Andrews! called out the uniformed officer in a loud voice.

He felt embarrassed when the others turned to look at him as he arose from his chair. Their looks, he thought, were subtle, not direct, the merest of upturned glances. Maybe they wondered why he, with all his advantages of skin color and religious title, was sitting on the same plastic chairs as they. Or maybe they were just accepting him into their world of tragedy.

Over there, sir, to elevator number two, pointed the officer.

He didn’t need instructions from the woman checking him in, for this was not his first visit, but he did exactly what she said anyway. Walking toward the elevator, he looked behind to see the mother with the toddler. Her name had been called after his. She looked about thirteen. In the elevator, he smiled at the girl, and she looked down and away from him. The elevator moved slowly, and then the door squeaked open, causing the elevator cage to jump. The girl and the child went right and he went to the left, he going straight to a thick window marked above with the number seven. This was the women’s side of the jail; the men were on the right, separated by a thick, concrete wall. He stood and waited.

In less than a minute Carrie appeared on the other side of the window, wearing an orange jump suit marked with a big A for her last name, followed by a series of numbers. His eyes went immediately to her eyes; he wanted to read what she could not say. Her eyes were an unusual gray, with lines around the pupils, almost like those of a Siberian husky. On happy days, he could see sparks in them, like the glint of metal. Today, there were no sparks, but lines of tension radiating from her eyes down to her cheeks and smudges of darkness where none had been before. She put her hand upon the glass as if to touch him. He did the same. The wedding ring was not on her finger. They’d give it back, he thought. They always do in TV stories.

Anxiously, he asked, Are you making it, darling? Can you take it?

She shrugged. Oh, yes. I can make it. Only four more days now. Her eyes moved to the floor, as if embarrassed. But I keep thinking that getting out will be worse than being in here. She kept her hand on the glass. In an awful way, this place is a protection."

Do you want to go straight home when you get out? Or, how about going down to the beach to get away? Lord, Carrie, I worry about you all the time. He pressed his hand where hers was, separated by the bullet-proof glass.

She pursed her lips in a lackluster kiss gesture, as if to mollify a child.

No, straight home is fine. I’ll have to come home sooner or later, and, then, there’s work to do.

This did not mollify Amos at all; instead, it made his heart jump. The catch of fear entered his voice.

Don’t get hurt, Carrie. Find another way to do it.

She looked around, as if she wanted no one else to hear her. But there was only the girl with the child further down the corridor, both crying now, she talking to the boy behind the glass. Carrie could only hear their voices from where she stood.

Carrie responded quickly to Amos, eyes pleading, looking at him. You know I never, ever, meant to hurt you, sweetheart. I’d give anything if I hadn’t been so rash. But now it’s done. There’s a lot I can do anyway, building on the publicity all this has caused. She wanted to hold his hand so badly, wanted him to understand what it had all meant to her.

Honey, she went on hurriedly as if to placate him, I promise you I can do a lot at home, in front of the computer. Please don’t worry. I won’t do anything rash anymore. Her eyes were misting over, dulling the power of her glance. Don’t worry. I love you.

Oh, Carrie, I’ve missed you so much, he said.

She clinched her jaws. The muscles on either side of her mouth were moving slightly. She changed the subject.

There are some sad looking women here, some that look like children, really.

Has anyone been threatening to you?

No, not really. Maybe they think I’m crazy, because of what I did to get in here. Amos, I’m not afraid, honestly I’m not. Don’t worry about me. She changed the subject again, directing it toward him.

Are you eating right? How’s the congregation taking it?

Everything’s so-so. I’ll give you the details later. Maude called last night, to give us some support, I guess.

She’s a good woman, one of the good ones, said Carrie.

Later, when the visiting time was up, he didn’t remember what they had talked about. He thought vaguely that they had talked as if their lives were going on as usual. Sooner than any half hour had ever passed in his life, the visiting period had come to an end. But just as fast as this time had fled for Amos during the visit, he knew that the next four days that were in front of him were going to linger upon the face of the earth in excruciating slowness. He could barely stand not being with her, not being able to help her when she needed help most. They, in their married life, had never been apart more than a few days before this.

But during the first days of her incarceration, Carrie was still trying to justify what she had done. The wall she had built around herself for months was beginning to crack. At least, she said to herself, hers was a crime of belief, not depravity. A few days later, she found herself admitting that maybe that was unfair; maybe other who had committed their crimes had reasons also, like poverty.

Anyway, we are all in the same boat, she rationalized to herself, And we all seem to need excuses.

This empathy for others that she seemed to have been born with, led her into nursing. Not only had she gone into nursing but she went into psychiatric nursing, landing her first job at a psychiatric hospital near Boston. At the age of twenty-two, she had learned things about life that she really didn’t want to know. Then she had married a minister. But, when it came to her own son and the way in which he died, she had lost her moorings and floundered until desperation caused her to take drastic action.

But now, in her prison cell, she was beginning to see that all these excuses were only a cop-out for her behavior. She began to come to this realization slowly, as she endured the long days and nights in jail. In her darkest hours she found herself saying,

Why in God’s name do I always feel I have to act to get justice for everything in this world? I’m not God – You are!

She remembered that, at first, after her son’s death, she had been satisfied with working for drug and alcohol prevention groups, going to meetings, speaking at high schools. But then, as the days wore on, it wasn’t enough. So, she began to focus more and more on the purveyors of drugs and less on the individuals who were caught in this web made by society.

Poor Amos hadn’t known what to do with her, she remembered. He tried to get her to go to a psychologist. He had lost their son John just as she had, but it had affected him differently. It made him rush to do the things he wanted to do before his own life would end. She would have none of his suggestion to get some kind of so-called therapeutic help. It hadn’t worked with John, she said to Amos. Why would it work for her?

Now, here she was, lying on the hard bed of a cell, hiding her face from her cell mate, forcing herself to go back over all the steps leading up to her incarceration. There was no way out here. She had to face it all. She cried for the first time in months, as reality overcame her. She was in jail, an orange jump suit her clothing, marked with the letter A for her last name.

She cried silently, her body shaking the bed. Her cell mate turned over, looked at Carrie, but said nothing for a few minutes. It wasn’t always safe to get in someone’s business. But after a few minutes, Juana, the cell mate, took a chance.

Hey, honey, she said in broken English, What’s matter? Crying ain’t going to help it –you look at me, I don’t cry.

Carrie turned toward her. I know, I know. It’s just that it hurts so much to relive it all.

Juana held up her head with her hand propped up by an elbow.

Listen to me. That’s over. You lucky, got a good husband, good life. Go on with it.

Suddenly Carrie was ashamed. She thanked Juana and turned over on her pillow. Her crying was over for the night.

But the next day, her thoughts ran on like a freight train. John’s overdose of pills in his dorm room at the university was a complete shock to Amos and Carrie. They didn’t realize, until after his death, how much John had covered up for their sakes his depth of despair and isolation. He had never been this way at home. They had gone on assuming he was the same boy in college that he had been at home.

Then, the call came out of the blue from the Dean at the university. His voice was precise but oh, so sympathetic. His words were like hammers beating them down to a place of darkness where she had never been before.

She vividly recalled when it was that she began to coalesce her anger onto the little pills themselves, the antidepressants and sleeping pills of all colors, shapes and sizes that had acted like bullets upon John, aimed at the target of his life. She had thought at one time, that if she had possessed the skill to paint, she would draw little bullet shapes and fill them with all kinds of colors – deep red and black, sweet pink, even a jonquil yellow. Maybe that way people would understand the harm. That was the kind of thinking she was experiencing then.

She didn’t see at the time that she was continuing to escalate out of control. It had seemed a reasonable act to her when she poured a bucket of red paint over the gigantic sign bearing the name of the town’s thriving pharmaceutical company. The townspeople’s reaction was surprisingly intense; they turned away from her immediately. This had never happened to her in her whole life. She had hit the town’s most vulnerable spot – their well-being, their jobs during a bad economy.

She was taken before the judge and charged with destruction of private property and vandalism. The judge considered that the severe sentence of thirty days would calm her down and make her see things sensibly. He believed that her fault lay in the fact that she was a member of the respectable middle class who should never commit acts disruptive to the community. It was a very stiff sentence for the crime, but the judge was right, she knew now, in that she needed the time in jail to think and repent. But what she didn’t know was that the public was not amenable to instant forgiveness. She was branded and labeled.

Chapter II

At last, the day came when Amos could pick Carrie up, when her sentence had been served. He waited for her at the big metal doors of the jail, where the inmates who were freed from confinement exited into the sunlight. His heart jumped. There she came, the last of two who were released with her, wearing blue jeans and a sweat shirt, clutching the big Velcro letter A which had been on her orange prison jump suit. It lay crumpled up in her fist. It was her last act of rebellion, taking this letter; no one had noticed its misappropriation, or maybe they hadn’t cared. Not too many wanted a souvenir from jail. Here she was again, she realized later, doing something wrong.

The old, metal doors were rusty, sitting stubbornly in an ugly edifice. Between the doors and the street lay a grass plot overgrown with weeds like straw, dead from the sun, trampled over and knee-high. But at the side of the right door as it faced outward, almost hidden from view, was a wild rose bush among the gangly weeds, its small pink blooms struggling to keep alive even on this summer day. Every year the bush strained to reach the height of a meter, struggled to grow spiny prickles for its own protection, and struggled to blossom. It had managed to survive for generations out of sheer determination. Amos had seen a Van Gogh painting of wild roses years ago. Ironic how those canvass roses must still be serene and glorious in their frame, while this little shrub had to fight for its life every day, he imagined.

As the wide old jail doors were pushed opened from the inside, they hit against the rose bush, causing it to sway backwards. It was resilient enough to pop back up again. It didn’t break, but came back to its rightful place as soon as the doors closed.

Amos had noticed the bush from the time they first moved to this town. He had heard the mythical stories of the townspeople, which fascinated him. Now, here he was, seeing the bush up close just before Carrie was due to come out of the door. He had seen it even before he noticed the small throng of people gathered nearby.

It was her egress the people were interested in, not the others who were released at the same time. The other two coming out with Carrie had both been in jail before. Stevie was the town’s most obstreperous drunk, the kind who wanted to fight everyone and often did, getting older and weaker each time he was arrested. The second one was young, caught in the process of robbing an old lady on the bus. He was the father of a baby. There was no one to meet him when he came out of jail. Stevie had no one either. That made Amos the only family member waiting outside for a loved one to come out.

He groaned inwardly as he looked at the group of waiting people who finally caught his eye. The media must have made public the date and time of her release. The local press had used up ink describing who she was, what she had done, and the perceived threat she had become. This kind of news didn’t happen often here.

Maybe he had noticed the flowers first, it occurred to him later, because he was desperately seeking some symbol of beauty or optimism that he could give her. Maybe he remembered the Van Gogh as a symbol of the unfairness of life.

Just before the big doors opened, he reached down, plucked one of the curled-up blossoms, and put it in Carrie’s empty hand the second she came out into the sunshine. She clutched it tightly, thrusting it into the hand with the Velcro letter, her backpack of belongings swinging on her back. They didn’t speak a word to each other, saving their emotions for their own private time. It was later that Amos noticed the tiny scratches on his right hand, as if the rose bush was punishing him. But it was worth it, he said to himself, to give her that scraggly sign of life. She took it, seeming to understand what this gift meant.

The tiny bit of ground in which the rose bush was anchored determinedly represented, unbeknownst to most of the onlookers, a part of history that hardly anybody in the small town thought about anymore. There was a time years ago when the shopkeepers tried to make money from the spot as a tourist attraction. No one seemed to care anymore, except maybe when they repeated the story for the benefit of newcomers.

Amos remembered reading about it in a booklet about the history of the town, given him by a parishioner. It related that some four centuries ago, all eyes had been intently fastened upon an old lady deemed witch, as she was escorted past the rose bush to be pressed to death. People over the years used to claim that the bush couldn’t die after the pressing to death of old Mrs. Bridges. Then, after the excitement faded away, the whole story was almost forgotten.

On this fine summer morning, there were some five or six women, a few men and one child who watched as Carrie and Amos walked arm-in-arm toward the car. These were some of the descendants of those who had watched as the first old witch lady had been dragged off years before. They were as strong and outspoken as their ancestors, but perhaps not as openly brave. Society had worn off some of their courage.

One of the women was staring fixedly at Carrie, and seemed to relish the attention of the others when she said, hiking up her pants as she spoke in a stage whisper to the women next to her:

She oughta have stayed in jail longer. Trying to destroy the only decent jobs in this town.

Another woman replied in a louder tone, Yeah. Who does she think she is? Thinks a minister’s wife has the right to decide what’s right and wrong. Thinks she’s better than others. She laughed. "Maybe her husband can write a sermon

Reviews for Shunned

[virginia51-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book really kept my interest throughout the whole thing. This is a book about suicide and depression. Carrie and Amos have a son who commits suicide. They learn that while he was in college he became depressed and ended up on prescription antidepressants. While trying to cope with his death they do research and find out that many of these antidepressants are possibly causing people to do things that they would never have done before. Carrie needs to research why this is happening and Amos starts to talk about whether there really is a hell. He is a preacher. This story makes you think and wonder what might happen to you or someone you love. I hope to never go through something like this. I received this book from Smith publicity for a fair and honest opinion.

[amandakerr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Suspenseful Thriller I Couldn't Put Down, February 14, 2013 Shunned: Outcasts In The Land is an intriguing new suspenseful thriller that deals with prescription drug use and abuse from both the user and doctor's standpoint. Part crime novel, part reality, part fiction, this story will not disappoint. The pharmaceutical industry is a billion-dollar business that is at the heart of this great new thriller. Who are the villains? Will justice prevail?Get a copy. You won't be disappointed. Great, Great Read!!!