Belle Glade, Florida 1:32 a.m.
Forty-seven miles to the north, seventeen-year-old Madelina Aurelia thrashes naked beneath a sweat-soaked bedsheet as she cries out to her foster father. ‘Get this goddam baby outta me!’
Quenton Morehead, Baptist Minister, squeezes the girl’s hand, his dark eyes lingering on the girl’s exposed pelvis. ‘Don’t blaspheme, child, the midwife’s on her way.’
‘Fuck you!’ Madelina claws his arms, drawing streaks of blood. ‘Where’s Virgil?’
‘I don’t know-’
‘Find him!’
The minister cringes as the girl’s high-pitched screech penetrates his brain like a tuning fork. He hears the front door open and sighs a quick Amen.
‘Virge?’ Madelina stops thrashing. ‘Virgil, honey? That you-you cheatin’, whorin’ sonuva bitch!’
A heavyset black woman enters. ‘Calm down, baby, everthin’ gonna be just fine.’
Madelina tears at the mattress as another contraction grips her torso. ‘Vir… gil!’
The midwife turns to the minister. ‘Go on and find him. I can handle things here.’
Quenton backs out of the bedroom, then hurries out the front door of the sweltering stucco home and into the night.
Madelina Aurelia, only child of Miguel and Cecilia Aurelia, was born in the small Mexican town of Morelos. Cecilia’s marriage to Miguel had been arranged by his uncle, Don Rafelo, a man feared by all as an Ojo mak (evil man), who had learned the girl’s maternal lineage was full-blooded Aztec, her ancestors dating back to the reign of Montezuma.
Bad luck seemed to follow the young couple since Madelina’s birth. Cecilia had nearly died in labor, and Miguel suffered a debilitating stroke a month after his daughter was born. Relatives whispered that Don Rafelo had cast his evil eye on the Aurelias in hopes of obtaining their daughter. Secretly, they advised the young couple to move away from Morelos and the Ojo mak as soon as possible.
The Aurelias held out until Madelina turned four, then joined a group of crop pickers bound for the United States. For the next two years, the illegal aliens would migrate from Florida to Texas, following the growing seasons.
For the Aurelias, life in the States seemed just as bewitched as it had been in Morelos. Cecilia lost sight in her right eye because of a bee sting, and Miguel suffered a second stroke. When the Aurelias’ shanty burned to the ground, the superstitious couple departed Belle Glade, abandoning their daughter on the doorstep of the town’s Family Services office.
A month later, six-year-old Madelina was placed in the foster home of the Reverend Quenton Morehead and his wife, Rachel.
It soon became apparent that something was seriously wrong with the young Mexican immigrant. Bizarre infantile behavior, including public masturbation and finger painting with her feces led the God-fearing Quenton to declare the girl possessed. His wife, being more grounded, suspected a chemical imbalance and made an appointment with a child psychiatrist.
After two visits and a battery of tests, doctors diagnosed Madelina’s problem as a form of disorganized schizophrenia, probably inherited from one of the girl’s biological parents. Drugs were prescribed, therapy recommended.
Two weeks later, Rachel Morehead found a lump on her left breast. She would not last the year.
Deeply depressed over his wife’s death, Quenton was forced to endure the additional burden of Madelina’s illness alone. Unable to accept the doctor’s psychiatric ‘mumbo jumbo,’ the minister decided the best course of action was simply to exorcise the girl’s demons himself.
Prayer, empowered by Quenton’s fire-and-brimstone delivery, would cleanse Madelina’s soul. Daily Bible readings and nightly services would fill her idle time after school, preventing her mind from wandering back toward Satan. Jesus would shine His guiding light into the girl’s valley of darkness.
It was a long, exhausting ‘road to salvation,’ complicated by Quenton’s own disease: alcoholism.
After staggering home drunk, the ordained minister would often strip naked and crawl into bed with his frightened nine-year-old foster child. On good nights, Quenton simply passed out.
On a few terrible nights… he stayed awake.
Weeks after the first episode, the girl began carrying on conversations with imaginary friends. The voices ‘stopped’ with Quenton’s beatings.
By the time she turned sixteen, Madelina had been molested by her foster parent dozens of times. Meanwhile, the adolescent’s girl’s schizophrenia had grown worse, and the minister feared he might be stuck caring for his foster daughter the rest of his days.
What he needed was a son-in-law to relieve him of his burden.
Prior to the introduction of Lake Ockeechobee’s legalized ‘river boat gambling’ in 2009, Belle Glade had predominantly been a seasonal farming town, most of its worker force minorities, primarily African-American and Hispanic. The big sugar companies recruited strong backs, having little use for brains, a fact that reflected poorly upon the school district, which boasted the worst standardized test scores in the county. For most high-school males growing up in the area, college was not an option. In Belle Glade, you either labored in the fields, sold drugs, or played sports.
Seventeen-year-old Virgil Robinson could play sports, especially football. After three years of high-school ball, he had earned the coveted title, ‘Nastiest Linebacker in the State.’ While Glades Central High might have had a bad reputation for standardized test scores, they were tops in the nation when it came to sports, producing more professional athletes than any other school in the country. Virgil was the cream of the football class of 2011, a 257-pound man-child standing an imposing six-foot-five, who could cover forty yards in just under 4.4 seconds and had a fifty-two-inch vertical leap. What’s more, the speedy junior middle linebacker loved delivering bone-jarring hits, the more savage, the better. ‘Don’t wanna just hit the dude, I wanna bleed him from the inside out.’
Running backs trembled. College recruiters salivated.
Young Virgil’s parents had died when he was six, leaving him to toil in his uncle’s fields ever since. He could barely read and write, and admittedly didn’t know ‘much about nothing,’ but what he did know was that football was his ticket out of Belle Glade. Now in his senior year, he was finally enjoying the first whiffs of success. The recruiting ritual had begun, the Division I-A college assistants luring him with promises of wealth, fancy cars, and beautiful undergrads. Virgil Robinson was the type of athlete who could turn around a losing program and bring home a national championship. Every coach knew about his inflated 2.13 grade point average and his third-grade reading level, but none seemed to care. Tutors were easier to find than All-Americans, and grades could be spoon-fed. At the very worst, the kid from Belle Glade would redshirt his freshman year.
Of course, Virgil had no more interest in earning a degree than he did cracking open a book. A year or two of exposure in a top-ranked football program and he’d turn pro. A year or two and the money would be there. Shoe deals, sports drink endorsements, it was all part of the game. Millionaires didn’t need an education. As long as he maintained his appetite for violence, success both on and off the gridiron would follow.
Unfortunately, Virgil also had an appetite for women and drugs, the latter amplifying his propensity for violence. On the eve of signing a letter of intent with the University of Florida, the high-school star decided to spend the night on the town partying with a few friends and teammates. After getting high, the boys headed to nearby Clewiston, intent on crashing their rival’s homecoming dance. One of the Clewiston cheerleaders had caught Virgil’s eye during their last game, and the star linebacker’s loins ached at the thought of seeing her again.
The girl was there, dancing with her boyfriend, the team’s starting tailback. Virgil approached the couple, grinning his gold-capped smile. ‘Yo, hoochie, why don’tch ya’ll shake dat thing over here-I’ll show you how a real man handles it.’