The Hibiscus Killer

THE HIBISCUS KILLER

Buddy awoke from his dream in a cold sweat. Once again, he had suffered the pain from the dream. The dream was actually more akin to a relived memory. Or perhaps a nightmare. He had once again been transported back through time to the hot, sweaty VFW hut that housed the dancehall.

Transported once again back to that hot September night in 1954 where, at the age of eight, he had witnessed the thing he had tried so hard to forget. He could almost feel the still night air and see the image that haunted him. It kept creeping around the edges of his memories. He remembered the long poodle skirts, the white socks and the penny loafers. He remembered the cuffed blue jeans on the boys and young men.

And he remembered the white dress with the bold red printed image emblazoned periodically across the fabric. It was a flower. A tropical flower. Hawaiian music was still popular and this dress with this print was a part of that popularity.

He remembered his father on stage playing in the band for the square dances that took place in the hut every Friday and Saturday night. It paid well enough to enhance their family life with a big twenty-four inch black and white console television.

His father loved playing his hillbilly music. He would have done it for free. The small textile town needed the diversion of the dances. After a hard week working the steamy cotton mills, turning fiber into cloth, a chance for the workers to kick up their heels was well deserved.

Between sets, as the actual square dances themselves were called, the people would either go get something cold to drink or go outside and grab a smoke. Some just stood around outside and talked. His Uncle Jed was inclined to go “get myself a big orange drink” which he said doing his best to imitate Andy Griffith telling his “What it was, was Football” routine.

Once he had gotten the drink, he went out to his old Plymouth convertible and popped the trunk. He would reach inside and get a pint Mason Jar of the clear liquid they called “White Lightning” and fill his big orange drink with the liquid dynamite.

Buddy would follow Uncle Jed around and see all this but was never permitted to do anything more than drink about a third of the original orange soda. His uncle would need the rest. On this occasion though, a third wasn’t enough to quench Buddy’s thirst. His uncle gave him a quarter to go get himself a drink.

Buddy was dodging the collective bodies standing around trying to get cooled off before the “Last Set” of the night. Buddy’s four-foot height made it easy for people to ignore him as he weaved his path towards the door and the concession stand within. But he stopped dead in his tracks when something caught his attention.

Buddy’s mother, wearing that flowered white dress with the bold print on it, was leaning with her back against the wall of the VFW Hut. She was smoking a cigarette. A man was leaning against the wall facing her, supporting himself with his arm just above her left shoulder.

He was dressed in clean work clothes, a khaki shirt and pants like the floor supervisors wore when on duty at the cotton mill where the fibers were spun into threads before moving on to the weaving rooms. Buddy recognized this man. He was a member of their church. He taught Sunday School to the older teens. He was a deacon.

His mother was chatting to him when he slowly leaned in to either whisper something in her ear, or … Buddy didn’t want to think about that. He refused to believe that the man would kiss his mother. The man was going to whisper something in his mother’s ear. That was all Buddy was prepared to believe.

But then, what was he whispering in her ear? His mother smiled and closed her eyes. She took a big drink from the man’s cup. She looked into his eyes as she passed it back to the man.

Buddy went inside to find his father. He was going to tell him that some man was bothering his mother, but his father was already on stage and looping the guitar strap around his neck. The last set was about ready to commence. Buddy went on over to the concession counter and got himself a grape soda before they began closing up. They always closed when the last set began. They were done with the cleanup before the set ended.

Buddy went outside to tell his mother that the last set was starting, but he couldn’t find her. He looked back inside the hall to see if she was dancing, but he didn’t see her. He became worried. He went back outside and looked in the parking lot for any signs of her. He wandered aimlessly and silently down each row of cars. And then he saw.

The white dress with the bold print was laying across the front seat back in a grey sedan. He didn’t know what the print on the dress was, but he knew his mother wasn’t wearing it. He became very afraid that something terrible had happened to her.

He crept forward like he’d seen his heroes do in the Saturday matinees. He became more afraid when he began hearing moans that sounded as if someone was inflicting pain on his mother. He got closer to the car. The sounds increased, and she was gasping and crying out to God, probably to deliver her from harm. But what could Buddy do to save her? He was only a small boy.

Maybe he could go get the off-duty policeman who was always at the dances to keep the peace. Maybe he’d be able to save her. He ran as fast as his short legs would carry him. He found deputy Dude Hawley and told him someone was beating his mother in the parking lot. Dude was skeptical, but he accompanied Buddy back to where the boy had said it was happening.

As they neared the last row of cars, Dude saw the boy’s mother and Ed Sipes come walking towards the dancehall. The boy’s mother was smiling. But that smile went from real to fake as soon as she saw the boy and the off-duty cop. “What’s the matter Buddy? Are you hurt?”

Buddy was not hurt. Not physically. But he was suffering the pain of realization that his mother, his sainted mother, had been in a car with a man without her dress on. And now, she was smiling about it. He now knew something about his mother. A secret something. Something he wished with all his heart that he did not know.

What was he to do? Although he had seen the look in her eyes while Dude Hawley spoke to the two adults, Buddy never told his father, nor mentioned it to his mother. She certainly never spoke of it again. Neither did Buddy. But whatever Buddy wanted from that time forward, Buddy got.

In the summer of 1960, Buddy went to art classes at the community center in the small textile town. It was one of the few paternalistic benefits of living in a town ruled by a textile baron whose wife was an art lover. She had made the art classes possible. It was almost as if Mrs. Reese believed that anything cultural could ever grow in a town filled with high school drop outs.

The mill would hire them as soon as they turned sixteen. Go to school, turn sixteen, get a driver’s license, buy a car, take a girl to the drive-in movies, knock her up and be married by eighteen. And in debt for the rest of their lives. That was the echoing story of the village. In all textile towns, the local economy of was built around this economic principle.

Let them get enough education to read and write their names so they could pay their bills. Learn enough math to add and subtract from their bank account. That was all they needed. There was no way out it seemed. Even the star athletes, who got a chance at a professional sports career, never got past the minor leagues before returning to take their turn spinning fiber into thread.

You had the Reese family on top, and the working peons on the bottom. The only other class distinction were the merchants. They got their financing from the Reese owned bank and sold their goods to the workers. On credit if needed. If a worker had debts, he would be loyal, obedient and protect his job at all costs.

Of course, there was a Fire Department. All volunteer. And a police department. It had one chief, Big Bob McKinley, one full time deputy, Dude Hawley ... and one part time deputy, Tom “Taxi” Rainer. He got the name because he also ran the one taxi in town.

The town understood that he needed the money to survive and workers needed the occasional taxi ride. Even if it was in one of the town’s two police cars, which Taxi used for his fares. Most of those who needed the taxi on occasion, usually found a way to earn a free ride in the same squad car for different reasons. At one time or another.

Buddy’s art teacher, Miss Rose Withers, also taught school at the public school. She taught biology there. Her artistic skills came to the forefront as she diagramed the flora and fauna of the local area. She was a realist painter. And a realist in life.

Nowhere else had a school system accepted her. She came from a town very much like this a few counties away. She knew the way life whirl-pooled down a spiraling eddy to the bottom of the muddy rivers in such towns. She knew that she also would never escape the wage slave mentality that permeated this community and dozens just like it.

Some did escape. The one’s who didn’t drop out. Merchant children mostly. The ones with straight A’s on their report cards. The smart ones. The ones who could learn and leave, would never work in the mills. The town wanted them gone.

The quicker they left town, the quicker the chance of putting false ideas into the heads of the others would be gone with them. The economy of the town, the economic well-being of the Reese family, depended on it. The Reese family controlled everything because of that principle.

If a worker caused trouble at the mill, he and his family were gone. If a teacher got out of line, they were also gone. Reese owned the houses. Reese controlled the merchants. If somebody failed to pay their bills, they were gone. The Reese family owned and controlled the police department and the town, because, as the biggest property owner, Mister Reese also paid the vast majority of the property taxes. And those taxes paid every bill the town incurred.

Everyone in town knew this, although it was never expressed aloud. Buddy’s art teacher, Miss Withers, knew how it worked. She’d been caught at her previous school in her previous town. She was with a student after school in her biology lab. They were doing extracurricular experimental activities in human reproduction.

The police chief of that town had met her on the front porch of the teacherage, where all the single teachers lived, the following evening. He waited while she packed her bags. Only Mrs. Reese kept Rose Withers from having to leave the state. Mrs. Reese had seen her paintings of birds at an art show and was very impressed.

“I see you like Hibiscus plants. You have an almost Georgia O’Keefe quality to your work,” Miss Withers said, paying Buddy a compliment. Or trying to.

“No Ma’am. I’m from North Carolina. I was born right here in the village.” At first Miss Withers didn’t understand the lad’s response. Then it occurred to her that the boy had never heard of Georgia O’Keefe. She let it pass.

“Tell me, why do you always paint the Hibiscus bloom?”

“Is that what that is? I didn’t know. I remember it … from somewhere.” Buddy knew where he had remembered it from. He’d gone into his mother’s closet and found the dress she had worn that night. He stared for a long time at the bold red print with the yellow thing sticking out of the middle.

Buddy pointed to the yellow thing in his painting and asked, “What’s that thing there? I never knew.”

“That’s the stamen. Next year, when you take biology, we’ll cover that in the plant section of the course. I always start with the flowers. You need to know that some beautiful things grow in the earth, and not just cotton.”

“What’s it for?”

“It is the pollinator for the flower. Bees find the flower and suck out the sweet stickiness. The pollen gets on the bee. Then they pollinate other flowers as they buzz around sucking the sweet nectar from other plants.” Miss Withers’ face seemed flushed. She felt herself becoming aroused in a way that had caused her serious problems before.

“Are you okay ma’am?”

“Yes, Buddy, I’m just fine. But I need some cool water. I’m very thirsty. If you’d like, I could show some of these paintings of yours to an art dealer friend. Maybe we could work on them some more together, privately. You might be able to sell a few? Would you like that?”

Buddy looked at the painting. He remembered the pain associated with the image he painted over and over again. No. He knew what it was now. He wanted nothing more to do with it. “I appreciate it ma’am. But I don’t think so. I’ve never really liked that picture very much.”

Buddy knew in his heart what the yellow thing was and what he saw it to represent. And where it had been planted in his mother. He’d learned a lot in the last six years. He’d heard the boys talking. He’d even seen Diane Wilkes get in the middle of a group of eighth grade boys, sucking the dicks of every one of them in turn. A couple of them actually produced seed. She smiled her snaggle toothed smile with the rotten teeth she still had left. Buddy had left before it was his turn.

Buddy left school when he turned sixteen also. But he didn’t leave for a job in the cotton mill. He left for the United Sates Army. His father had been hesitant to sign the form to agree to his enlistment, but his mother had convinced him. She was tired of the silent accusatory looks he always gave her.

He’d gone through basic at Fort Benning, Georgia. He’d been assigned to a rifle platoon on the west coast. Fort Ord had been a brief stay because he’d heard about the Special Forces training units and he’d applied.

He’d gone to Special Forces training and learned to kill silently and with ease. He’d grown into a very large and very powerful man. He was doing jungle training in Hawaii in 1968 when his C.O. notified him that he was to have a family emergency leave.

His father had been killed in a shooting at a tavern where his band was playing. Buddy put on his dress uniform and boarded a plane in Honolulu to begin the long journey back home. He hadn’t wanted to go. His mother was the last person he wanted to see.

His father was the only reason he was on the plane. He’d pay his respects, attend the ceremony and get out of there quick. He could spend some time somewhere else. Anywhere else. He’d rather sit in a bus station than spend time with his mother.

He descended the plane by the rolling stairs. He had landed in the biggest airport near the town in which he had been born. He never referred to it as his home town anymore. He caught a ride with Taxi Rainer, who was waiting at the gate, to the funeral home.

His father was laid out nice and proper in a dark blue suit and a striped tie. Buddy had been afraid of this, he reached into his OD bag and got a big gaudy paisley tie that his father had loved and asked the funeral director to please change it to this. The man reluctantly agreed.

The service was not until the next afternoon. Buddy found a cheap motel in which to stay. Taxi was surprised that he didn’t go home, but the look on Buddy’s face told him not to ask questions. They rode past the mills. They were all closed now. The Reese family had sold off all the equipment. When old man Reese died, so did the town.

An hour or so later, his mother was at his door, pounding on it. Begging to be allowed in. Wanting to talk. Buddy didn’t move. His anger was intense. Being back in the town where he’d spent his formative years, it was all coming back to him, echoing down the caverns of his memories. Nightmarish memories that were driving him crazy. He didn’t even flinch outwardly. His torture was all contained. If he had let his mother into that room, she’d have never left it alive.

At the service the next day, he drew away when anyone tried to touch him. His mother tried. He glared at her in a way that frightened her so badly, she tried no further. He sat quietly, alone and apart, throughout the service. He helped carry his father’s coffin. He sat quietly throughout the service by the grave. And then he left.

At the airport the following day, he was waiting at the ramp when his attention was caught by the arrival of his mother. She was not alone. Edward Sipes was with her. Buddy wondered if he was there to protect her. If so, he’d made a damn poor choice.

Buddy stood and looked directly at the two with fire in his eyes. From behind them, Miss Withers emerged and walked to Buddy. “Buddy, may I please speak to you alone for a moment?” Buddy’s eyes shifted to her for just a second before snapping back onto the treacherous pair at the gate. He said nothing but turned partially to face her obliquely.

“Buddy, honey, I have a note here from your mother. If you won’t speak to her, then please, at least read the note. She’s very contrite over whatever it is that went wrong between you. She said this note will explain everything. Will you speak to her? Please? She says she’d rather tell you in person. But regardless, you needed to know this.”

Buddy took the note. He saw the pleading in Miss Withers eyes. He remembered her kindly. She had been nice to him. She had revealed to him what the obsessive image was that he kept painting. He looked down at the note and back at her.

He opened the envelope. He read the note. He returned it to the envelope. He handed it back to Miss Withers. He walked towards his mother. He stood a foot away from her. He glared into her eyes. He turned as the man Sipes tried to put out a hand.

He took the hand and wrenched it behind the man’s back. He hit him in the back of the neck with such force you could hear the bones react. The man went down on the concrete in a heap. He wasn’t dead, but he was moaning. A cop ran over and drew his pistol. But the man on the ground groaned out, “Don’t officer. It’s over. I’m not about to press charges. But please, call me a doctor if you will.”

The officer holstered his weapon. He sent someone to get the on-duty medic from the airport emergency clinic. Buddy turned back to his mother. She stood tall. Waiting for whatever punishment her son doled out.

He stared at her for a long minute. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Then he turned in an about face practiced manner and waked away. He looked over at Miss Withers as he passed and walked out the exit towards his plane. He crossed the tarmac, climbed the stairs and never looked back.

Miss Withers opened the note and read what she had already suspected. Edward Sipes was Buddy’s real father. He’d been the foreman at the mill where his mother had worked during the war. His mother and he had ‘gotten on’ while his father had been stationed overseas. His father had been a victim of mumps as a boy. He was sterile. His mother wanted a baby. It was not a unique story during World War Two.

Buddy arrived back in Honolulu. He didn’t reenlist when his time came. He worked as a bartender before moving over to the position of bouncer. He found the physical aspects of bouncing more to his taste. Tossing out drunks and trouble makers came easily and gave him an outlet for his bottled-up rage. He gained a reputation in the Honolulu area.

That reputation eventually led to a job in security for some powerful men in the import business. The nature of what they imported was unknown to Buddy, but he got the feeling it wasn’t exactly legal. Buddy had never taken drugs. He couldn’t trust not being in control of his violent tendencies. The job paid well. Very well indeed.

On his nights off, when his need for release from the nightmares became overwhelming, he’d wander the streets and bars of Honolulu and watch the people. Usually he would find what he was searching for.

It seemed there was always a woman in a white dress or white peasant’s blouse. And she’d be alone. Then she’d find a man at a bar and drink. Then they’d go away from the bar and find some secluded spot. Frequently beside a hibiscus hedge. They would lay together in the darkness. Then the man would leave. The woman would lay there in the darkness, catching her breath and, in many instances, tucking some folded money away in her stockings or bra strap.

And then there would just be Buddy watching the woman from afar, the woman tending to her needs and the icepick. The icepick with the yellow handle. The icepick that Buddy would plunge into the heart of the woman in the white garment. He would watch, as the red blood blossomed like a Hibiscus flower, the yellow stamen being his icepick in the center. Only then, did the dying woman become the image of his mother. Buddy’s expression never changed as he would watch her die.

For years, the Honolulu police failed to solve the crimes. Either they never mentioned the icepicks to the press or else the press failed to print it. Mustn’t disrupt tourism after all. The economy of the town, the tourists from around the globe, depended on Hawaii being a safe destination.

Four years after the murders began, they ended. Nobody at the Honolulu Police Department connected the end of the Hibiscus murders with the shoot-out between rival gangs on the Honolulu docks near the warehouse where the big drug shipment was found. The five dead bodies of the gunmen were identified and shipped home for burial. Nevertheless, the police were relieved when the murders ended.

The Army took care of Buddy’s remains. Nobody else claimed the body nor was there anyone listed as next of kin. He still wore his dog tags. He was cremated. His ashes were spread along the Beach at Waikiki. Just like the old Hawaiian song his dad had loved to play.