Feeling Loved For The Holidays

Christmas assistance for 2 homeless children with spec

Hello, My name is Brandon Barber. My best friend, James, has had a pretty rough couple of years. His wife of 12 years had him arrested one night in front of his children for assault, which was found to be untrue in turn, James was incarcerated for 30 days and kept in a holding cell the majority of the time because he had a confrontation with a corrections officer that was being exceptionally disrespectful one morning only because James was concerned for his children and missing them pretty badly. Ultimately, he was released after 30 days and his charges were dismissed due to lack of evidence. I'll get into the whole story shortly. When he returned home, his house was almost empty; there was no food or dishes, no appliances, hardly any furniture, but most of all, his wife was gone, and so were his 2 young children, Trenton, age 8 at the time, and Hailey, age 7. His truck was also missing. Over the next couple of weeks, and when I came back into his life after about a 5-year absence due to my wife passing away and moving from place to place, a mutual friend got us back together because she knew we could use each other's help at the time. I was homeless again, staying at the local shelter, but working a full-time job, and he was alone and depressed and trying to find work before he lost his place to live and the home that he truly believed his children would come back home to one day soon. We learned that she had immediately sold off all of their possessions for hardly anything and taken their children to Kentucky where her sister lives. Somehow, she stole something from her brother-in-law and got the money to take off again, this time to Florida, where she and James are both from and where she had outstanding warrants for grand theft auto. We also found out that she had been talking to an old high school boyfriend through Facebook and had been making plans to leave with the kids and move to Florida to be with him. We were told by several of Christina, James's wife, and James's acquaintances in Florida that she was staying with the former boyfriend for several weeks until she suddenly found out that he was gay, or bisexual, one of the two.
We didn't hear anything for a while, and during all this time, James would just lay on the couch and watch TV, severely depressed and hopeless. Occasionally, he would get a call from his wife letting him talk to his children, but the phone call always became an argument, and she would hang up and block him once again for several weeks. As the days grew longer and the earth stood still for him, he eventually found a job at a factory, and once he got his foot in the door, he got me a job there as well as a machine operator, making $18 hr. I failed to mention earlier in the story that James, (PJ) is his nickname and what I've always called him, was drinking pretty heavily, probably to mask the hurt and despair he was feeling from sun up to sun down. Almost every day, I had to go to the ABC store on my lunch break and get him, on average, a 10-pack of fireball (shots) and/or a fifth of Jos€ Quervo, and he was drinking some if not half the shots during work and the majority of the time he was feeling pretty good. When we would get off work and head to the trailer, as soon as he caught sight of the place, his whole demeanor would suddenly change and he would get very belligerent and start saying things about taking his own life and how and when he would do it and how much he missed his kids, how much he wanted them back, how much he hated his wife, his life and on and on for the rest of the night, which some nights, taking care of him were better than others, for a better way of putting it. On some of those nights, he would get drunk and want to fight, kill, steal, and burn down shit, mainly the trailer he was in and him with it. A lot of the problems he was having, besides missing his children something terrible, was having to live in the house that held the memories of his estranged wife, the woman that he still loved, and the only 2 children out of 10 that he's had the opportunity to raise and love as his own.
We went several weeks without hearing anything after the last call and argument, day after day of laying on the couch, watching movie after movie, show after show with nothing but our thoughts torturing us hour after hour. The despair and depression closing in on us and constant thoughts of giving up, James got a message on Facebook from someone who wouldn't tell their identity and later would claim to be anonymous and said that you really need to tell your wife to be careful around the guy that she's with and also said she was very concerned for his (James) kids well-being. This person, after several days and quite a few texts later, would identify as a woman and a woman who had been in a relationship with the so-called dangerous boyfriend. James finally got word to Christina through messages from other people who were friends with her on Facebook, and she called and argued constantly and confidently that both of "her" kids were fine and being very well taken care of. Another argument, another hang-up. During the next few weeks we would learn even more disturbing information that would have James and me as well on edge and terrified of what this guy, who came to be known as, Rustin, was a convicted drug addict and meth head but what was so disturbing was the fact that his record included assault on a female, domestic violence, child endangerment, child abuse, taking indecent liberties with a minor, sexual exploitation and he was of all things, a sexual predator and was on the sex offender registry. The woman had also sent his arrest records in several messages, and we, in turn, had them sent via a mutual friend to Christina, who in turn called shortly thereafter and denied the whole story and then changed her story a little later, saying that he had been falsely charged. I'm going to fast-forward a bit here.
One day a week or so later after worrying ourselves sick. James received a call telling him that Rustin had been arrested for child abuse against one of his kids but we didn't know which one, but we knew that Rustin was in jail and that the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department was actively searching for Christina for a warrant of aiding and abetting child abuse and also two charges of child endangerment. They were also finally aware of her outstanding charge of grand theft auto in the neighboring county of Pasco. James and I were going nuts trying to find out information, trying to find her whereabouts, someone from his past that had maybe run into her in passing, and once the question was raised, people started coming forward. James had also kept a journal of the months without his children and any updates or just simple messages of hope on Facebook Live, but one guy that James had gone to school with spoke up and said that she had borrowed, a couple of hundred dollars from him and his wife and never received any of the money back from her as promised. Another said that he had seen her with another mutual friend, and she had acted as if she didn't recognize him, so the guy somewhat knew the facility that she and the kids were in, and James offered him, if I remember correctly, a couple of thousands of dollars to locate her and call the authorities. He said that he would, but the next night, the lady sent an arrest record in a message to James, and the caption read: They found her! We were excited but mostly scared and worried because we didn't know where the kids were and nobody would give us any answers. Over the next several days, we were both a wreck. I had packed us both some things to take on the road. I failed to mention that we're in North Carolina and the children are in Florida, Tampa, to be exact. Neither one of us had a job, so we didn't have any money for gas, James' truck, which he had gotten back from another friend that we had found out had helped Christina get her and her children out of Statesville and had given her money in exchange for the truck (He had sold James the truck and James still owed a couple of hundred on it at the time of his arrest). The truck, a red Ford FX4 F150 with vinyl stickers that the same mutual friend had gotten James and me back together had made them and printed them out for us, but some were across the whole side of the truck with his business name and phone number, Bell's affordable contracting and handyman and others were of the name of the speakers we owned (the sundown logo) and the name brand of the amps we had in the truck (taramps and AK). One of James's favorite hobbies is car audio (sound systems) he also likes to install home entertainment and surround sound equipment. I've always admired him for his ability to listen and tune a stereo. James has extensive knowledge in a lot of different areas of expertise. With his knowledge of skilled trades and the tools along with his audio/video knowledge, he is somewhat of a "street smart genius" if there was such. We both loved the sound system in the truck; that's what sparked my love for bass and subwoofers. It took both of our paychecks combined one payday while we were working for CMP (construction metal products) to buy the 2 15" sundown subwoofer speakers. Okay, back to the crisis at hand.
There was no debating the decision that we were getting ready to have to leave for Florida to go take custody of Trenton and Hailey suddenly after their mother had gotten arrested and all that had happened in our lives as well as the trauma they had to endure in theirs. Before we left on our long ride we learned that the children didn't go into DSS custody because Christina had already prearranged that upon her eventual arrest for the outstanding warrant, she called and asked her first "baby daddy's mama" if she could take custody of the children if she did get arrested some day until James could get to Florida or other arrangements could be made with other family or trusted friends. She had agreed, and the kids stayed with her for approximately 3 days because James and I tried for days to get answers to whether or not we needed a court order to take custody or if we just went in and picked them up. Mind you, we were both unemployed at the time and had no money whatsoever. So we tried getting assistance for days with no help from DSS or anyone else. We started on 3 different nights, just to turn around and come back after friends had talked us into coming back and waiting for answers. On a Monday night, I told James that when we left for Florida again, I wasn't turning around again. We're going and going all the way or we're just not going. So the next night, we borrowed another hundred from a friend (the same friend that sold, bought, and, in the end, returned the truck after a very confrontational and angry phone call with an apology at the end for any involvement he had with James wife and children leaving). We topped off the gas tank and started towards South Carolina, then through Georgia, where James was terrified to drive through because that's where he had lost his license for a long and intense account of his traffic stop and incarceration for having an incorrect pill container for the narcotic medication that was prescribed to him and while he was being held until the medicine could be verified, he missed his father's funeral that he was very close to and loved more than anything he had left in this world (James Mom had just died very suddenly after a very brief battle with cancer, his Mom and dad passed away 17 days apart, James was very distraught, and he experienced depression and hopelessness, and had thought's of harming himself for the very first time in his young life). We made it to Florida at about 3 am the following morning and parked at a Flying J truck stop on the exit that the woman who had the children lived near. We thought about sleep because we had both been awake since about 8 am the previous morning but we had the back of the cab to clean out, as I told you before, we probably had 4 or $5,000 in-car audio equipment in the back floorboard of the truck, we didn't even have seats for the children to sit on coming back home to North Carolina. We had to take both speakers out of the custom box they were in and we only had 2 screwdrivers to unscrew approximately 8 - 10 screws in each speaker because neither one of us was thinking about taking screws out when we were having to pawn our hand tools and power tools and anything else we thought we could get a few dollars from to hopefully make it to Florida and back ( we sold a JBL Bluetooth speaker, that was the most expensive and also the most favorite item I owned, I can't recall every item we pawned or sold but it was a variety of items) we sold every tool we had that was worth anything. I was up in the back of the truck squeezed in so I could get to all of the screws and get enough leverage to get them all out without stripping them. Then came the amps and the secondary battery we had installed to power the amps. We put it all in the bed of the truck and wrapped it all exceptionally well in case we hit rain before we made it back home to offload it all, and we ended up with around 2 hours left to rest before we picked up the kids at 7 am. We were exhausted from driving, and James lay down in the back where the speakers and everything had just taken residence, and he was out in a matter of minutes; I sat in the passenger seat of the truck and dozed off a couple of times but I just couldn't get my mind to rest. I wanted to find a room for the night so we could get some rest instead of driving back home immediately after picking them up. My thoughts were of the danger it entailed, but we just didn't have the money; we did, but that was the money for gas to get back to North Carolina. We found the house with no problem. The kids looked happy, and they were overjoyed to see their dad for the first time in 4 months and the first time since witnessing him getting arrested and tackled into the side of their mobile home. Trenton started crying when he saw his dad and they both got enormous hugs and a ton of kisses from their daddy. I know there were more times to try to count that the thought occurred to him that he would never see his children again and there were also some that we were friends with or so we thought that said he would never have them back in his custody but that morning proved them wrong, and as I was loading some of the bags of clothes and toys that had been donated to them because they left everything they owned where they were staying at the time of their mother's arrest, I heard Trenton say, I just knew you would come and get us, I tried telling everybody that you wouldn't ever forget about us or ever stop loving us, I just knew you would come. I just fucking lost it right then and there, please excuse my language. Everything we had gone through the last 4 months, me seeing James so depressed, so hopeless, him crying and telling me almost every day how much he missed his kids and so many times he told me that he didn't think he could go on any longer without them for another day, just watching him suffer day after day and just assuming what his children must be going through, I just let it go cried, I didn't care who saw me or how stupid or how overdramatic I appeared, I just cried.
We had no idea of the horror that those 2 children were exposed to in the 4 months they were away from their dad, their friends, their school (Scott's elementary), and their home. Some of the stories they both told on the way back home just had me wanting to turn around and go find the piece of shit, Rustin, that had been traumatized for life and just beat whatever brains he had out of his head, some of the things they told, me and James could only just look at one another and speak with our facial expressions and we both knew what each other was thinking. More to come and more to edit. Thank you for the time you took out of your busy lives to read my experience and I hope you really get to know Trenton and Hailey Bell, they are both wonderful kids who have been through so much trauma in their very short lives and I hope that by the end of this story, you'll love them just as much as I do.