Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury a Mother's Sacrifice Read online

  Originally published in hardcover in 1997 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

  A Pocket Star Book published by

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

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  Copyright © 1997 by Ann Rule

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Simon & Schuster Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN 13: 978-0-7432-0278-7

  ISBN 10: 0-7432-0278-3

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  to Bonnie Allen of Roslyn, Washington

  Teacher, artist, and my friend for three decadesyou have overcome tragedy and adversity andremained the embodiment of whata mother and a grandmother can and should be

  God Bless

  BITTER HARVEST

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Part 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part 2

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Part 3

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT

  PROLOGUE

  Sometimes the places where searing tragedies have happened are marked with visible scars. More often, when normalcy returns, only the most discerning eye or the most sensitive mind will know. This is the way the world is and must be; we cannot forever grieve over old wounds and ancient sorrows. New grass covers bare ground, and flowers come back in the springtime, no matter what has happened on the earth that nurtures them.

  Prairie Village, Kansas, became one of those places where an unbearable, irredeemable tragedy occurred. Something terrible happened there on a windy October night in 1995, a catastrophe of such magnitude that it seemed that the street where it happened—Canterbury Court—could never recover, that no one living there could ever laugh again. And yet, when I walked along Canterbury Court long after the wildfire that had erupted there, I saw no sign that anything unusual had taken place on that quiet suburban street.

  People who live in other parts of America often don’t realize that there are two Kansas Citys, one on the easternmost border of Kansas and the other on the western edge of Missouri. If they were sisters and not cities, the former would be an independent cowgirl, and the latter a graceful patron of the arts. Natives of each state seem to differentiate between the two with no difficulty whatsoever; they call one KCK and one KCMO. However, two cities with the same name create much confusion for visitors. Kansas City, Missouri, with a population of 450,000, is three times as big as its Kansas counterpart. Ward Parkway, in Kansas City, Missouri, is lined with beautifully landscaped homes and estates and has a proliferation of statues and fountains. Kansas City, Missouri, has opera and ballet companies, and quaintly restored shopping areas whose original glory days were sixty or seventy years ago. At Thanksgiving, thousands flock to the Country Club Plaza to see the tiny lights that outline the old stucco buildings turned on. Instantly, the picturesque plaza becomes a holiday wonderland. Residents in “KCMO” live “north of the river” or “south of the river”—meaning the mighty Missouri.

  The Missouri-Kansas border—State Line Road—runs south from the confluence of the Kansas and the Missouri rivers where they become one: the Missouri. Indeed, in some areas the state line is the center of the Missouri River. Thousands of families live in the Johnson County, Kansas, suburbs of the metropolitan Kansas City area and commute to Missouri. Visitors to both cities fly into KCI, a shared airport on the Missouri side. The gift shops sell souvenirs of Kansas’s most famous—if fictional—characters: Dorothy, Toto, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, all the beloved players in The Wizard of Oz.

  Johnson County is in Kansas; Jackson County is in Missouri. Johnson County has 430,000 residents and is one of the most sought-after areas for upwardly mobile families. The Shawnee Mission Parkway rolls west from Kansas City, Missouri, and intersects with I-35, which turns south—a feeder freeway to myriad communities with tree-lined streets and homes built for pocketbooks ranging from modest to sumptuous: Roeland Park, Leawood, Mission, Fairway, Mission Hills, Merriam, Shawnee, Prairie Village, Overland Park, and, some thirty miles down the line, Olathe, the Johnson County seat. Many of these towns actually straddle the state line; homes just across the street from each other are in different states. Police jurisdictions intermingle, as do fire departments’ perimeters. More than in most areas, cooperation between agencies is essential.

  Of all these suburbs, Prairie Village is probably one of the most desirable (second only to posh Mission Hills), although its name scarcely describes its appearance. There is no prairie, and this is not a village but an upscale haven for professionals, with more doctors, lawyers, CEOs, and others with incomes well over $100,000 a year than almost any town in Kansas. Many of the houses in Prairie Village are “old money” classics of brick, built in the thirties or earlier. One small development, Canterbury, with its Canterbury Court and Canterbury Cul de Sac et al., is clearly “new money,” its mansions expensive imitations of English Norman, baronial Georgian, and Frank Lloyd Wright modern. Canterbury Court opens, somewhat incongruously, onto busy West Seventy-fifth, with its smaller homes and apartment houses.

  It is an orchid dropped among dandelions and daisies—exquisite but out of place. Few of Canterbury’s privileged children go to public school; rather, they are driven to private schools like Pembroke Hill, whose tuition is prohibitive for the average working family. Schoolchildren who live one block on either side of Canterbury sometimes tease the “rich kids.”

  In the mid-nineties, every other house in the first block of Canterbury Court seemed to house a doctor—or two. Mom-and-pop docs, as it were. And for someone who had grown up in a working-class family in a rural town, one mansion on Canterbury Court marked the pinnacle of achievement. A three-floor, 5,000-square-foot house with a swimming pool, it was meant to be a house to mend a marriage, a perfect home to solidify a family torn apart—a place to begin anew. But as a dread scenario unfolded, it became a house of horror.

  When I first stood in front of what once had been 7517 Canterbury Court (the numerals still visible on an elm tree), it was January and desperately cold. I found it almost impossible to imagine that sheets of fire had consumed the house, flames fanned by autumn winds until they were higher than the treetops. In deepest winter, the ground was frozen solid; the huge maples and elms were bare. Even the blue spruce trees drew into themselves against the cold. Only a copse of seven or eight fragile white birches seemed alive. Incredibly, they had survived despite the heat that caught them in a deadly embrace, searin
g their bark and curling their leaves. The spring rains might revive them.

  Blizzards had come and gone, leaving a light dusting of snow over the brown grass and ice-hardened ridges made by some heavy vehicle driving through mud. I had to look closely to see that the small rocks at my feet were not rocks at all, but cinders, charred fragments plowed into the earth. That was all. There was no “For Sale” sign on the vacant lot, no yawning burned-out foundation, no blackened boards, no reminder of what had once been there. It was all gone—along with the hopes and dreams of the five human beings who had lived in the house that stood on this lonely place.

  The neighbors’ leaded windows and heavy doors were shut tightly against anyone with questions. They were as impenetrable as the houses’ stone and brick façades. No one wanted to remember that windswept October night when there were screams and sirens and, finally, only the muted voices of firefighters moving with a kind of organized desperation.

  By that time, there was no longer any need for haste.

  When I revisited Prairie Village and Canterbury Court six months later—in July—the vacant spot between the two closest houses looked like a park. The grass was bright green and the trees made a canopy of leaves that cast long shadows on the lawn. There was nothing alive there, and that haunted me because, in the interval between visits, I had learned the details of what had happened nine months before. The adjacent houses seemed to have edged stealthily together as if to pretend that no structure ever stood between them—certainly nothing as massive as a stucco and fieldstone mansion with a four-car garage.

  The children who lived in the neighboring houses woke less frequently from their fiery, wild-eyed nightmares now that summer had come. Their parents turned away from reporters and gawkers; they had told what they had to tell in a court of law. They wanted only to regain the safe feeling Canterbury Court once offered. They wanted to forget.

  But, of course, none of them can really forget. Not ever.

  Part 1

  Degenerate Sons and Daughters,

  Life is too strong for you—

  It takes life to love life.

  —EDGAR LEE MASTERS

  Spoon River Anthology

  1

  The wind had blown constantly that fall, but that wasn’t unusual for Kansas. Most Kansans scarcely acknowledge the wind; however, on October 23, 1995, gusts were strong enough to scatter carefully piled mounds of leaves and make lights flicker on and off. Housewives set out candles and flashlights—just in case.

  In Prairie Village, Dr. Debora Green went about all her usual errands. With three children to take care of, she practically needed a timetable to coordinate their activities. She would have welcomed a power outage so they could stay home, light faintly scented candles, and just talk to each other. Later that day, they were all back together in their beautiful new house on Canterbury Court: Debora; her son, Tim; and her daughters, Lissa* and Kelly. After supper they all went to bed in their separate rooms. Debora thought she had turned on the burglar alarm, and the smoke alarm was always set on “Ready.”

  Fire can erupt with a raucous explosion or be as furtive as a mouse skittering silently along a wall. It was after midnight when the wind coaxed out the first tongues of fire and blew them into billows of orange before all the sleeping neighbors on Canterbury Court even knew they were in danger. The magnificent homes were so close together that squirrels could leap from one yard’s trees to those next door.

  And the roofs were made of picturesque wooden shakes, dry as bone from the long midwestern summer.

  Debora Green was barely able to escape the flames that engulfed her house. She rushed to her neighbors’ house and pounded on the door, pleading for someone to help her save her children. Then she looked back at the fire and her heart convulsed at what she saw. Silhouetted against the glow in the sky, the small figure of a child scampered ahead of flames that were already eating away at the beams of the garage. As the child moved north, the roof just behind her began to give way and cave in. The child—it was Lissa—miraculously made her way up over the peak of the garage roof and down the other side, where she perched precariously on the edge of the disintegrating roof. In moments, she would surely fall into the fire below and perish.

  “Help me!” Lissa screamed. Even through the thick black smoke, she had seen her mother standing by their neighbors’ house. The little girl called again and again, her small voice lost in the roar of the flames. Finally—as if Debora was moving through quicksand—Lissa saw her mother head toward her. She saw her! She was coming!

  Lissa knew she would be all right now; her mother would save her. Debora stood beneath the edge of the roof, her legs spread wide and her feet planted firmly so that she would not slip. She held her arms open and beckoned to Lissa to jump down to her. But it was such a long way to the ground. For a moment, Lissa hesitated—and then she looked over her shoulder and saw that the garage roof was almost gone.

  “Jump!” Debora ordered. “Jump! I’ll catch you.”

  “I’m afraid….”

  “Jump! Now!” There was urgency in her mother’s voice, and something else, something that frightened Lissa more than the fire.

  Lissa obeyed. With her arms above her head and the heat licking at her back, she leaped from the garage roof. But Debora didn’t catch her; her arms were not spread wide enough, or maybe she was standing too far back from the garage. Lissa crumpled to the ground at Debora’s feet. But the lawn was carpeted with a cushion of leaves and she was not hurt.

  Lissa felt safe now. She was with her mother. She didn’t know how many houses were on fire, or if it was only their house. It seemed to her that the fire was everywhere, and the smell of smoke was also a taste of smoke in her mouth. Her mother led her toward their neighbors’ house, and Lissa looked around for her brother and sister. Lights began to appear in windows up and down the block. She heard sirens far away, then coming closer and closer until they died out, whining, in front of the burning house. And in her head, she kept hearing a voice crying, “Help me! Help me!” She tried to tell her mother about that, but Debora seemed to be in shock. She said nothing. She did nothing. She was just standing there, looking at the fire.

  Lissa didn’t see her brother and sister and she began to scream for someone to save Tim and Kelly, someone to save Boomer and Russell, their dogs. Still her mother said nothing.

  When Lissa saw a police car screech to a stop in front of the burning house and a policeman running toward them, she begged him to save her brother and sister. He listened to her screams and then ran by without even stopping. Lissa clung to her mother and looked up into her face for reassurance, but she saw no expression at all. Debora was transfixed by the fire. The two of them just stood there, braced against the wind that was turning their house into a raging inferno.

  Debora had saved one of her children. Was it possible that the other two were trapped in the fire, unable to escape? It was every mother’s nightmare. And it was happening to her.

  * The names of some individuals have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the book.

  2

  Havana, Illinois, is a small town like thousands of other farming communities in the Midwest. For most drivers traveling from Keokuk, Iowa, to Bloomington or Champaign, Illinois, Havana is only a blur along State Highway 136 east of Adair, Table Grove, Ipava, and Duncan Mills, west of San Jose and Heyworth. Over the years, Havana’s population has remained at just over 4,000 citizens. It sits in historic country, close to the birthplaces of both Carl Sandburg and Wyatt Earp, and near a number of lakes and the Illinois River. The Spoon River, immortalized by Edgar Lee Masters, flows into the Illinois a few miles west of Havana. And, like the characters in Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, it has had its share of grotesques, tragedies, triumphs, and human frailties that spawn gossip, the vast majority of it of import only to people living in Havana.

  Joan (which she has always pronounced “Joanne”) Purdy and Robe
rt Jones settled as newlyweds in Havana. They were married very young; Joan was barely eighteen, and Bob was a year younger. Their second daughter, Debora, would recall that both her parents came from large families and that each had been raised “in poverty.”

  Pretty and blond, Joan was a brilliant student and had won a partial scholarship to Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. She did enter there as a freshman, even though Bob Jones hadn’t wanted her to go. Stephens is a prestigious women’s college; many of Joan’s fellow students were wealthy, while she had to work to make up the difference between her scholarship and the cost of tuition and room and board. College girls in the late forties wore cashmere sweaters with pearls and long skirts—sometimes so tight they could hardly walk. The “New Look” was in, and girls who wanted to be well-dressed had to toss out their entire wardrobes and start over.

  Joan Purdy couldn’t afford to do that. She was an unsophisticated girl, she was homesick, she missed Bob, who was still in high school, and she felt out of place with the far more worldly coeds—“snooty girls”—at Stephens. It was, perhaps, inevitable that she would soon drop out of college and say yes to Bob’s marriage proposal.