Bee and Jacky Hardback - 1994

It's been over three years since Bee and Jacky, her older brother, lived at their grandparents' house in Decatur -- over three years since their dad came home wounded from Vietnam, over three years since his long rehabilitation in the Decatur VA hospital. And it's been three years since Bee, now 13, and Jacky, now 17, played their "game" in the woods, trying to reenact the ambush that shattered their father, reenacting it again and again so that maybe they could change the ending.

Now, Bee's mom and dad are going back to Decatur to visit her grandparents, and Jacky is refusing to go. Their parents give in, and the night before the trip, a fainting spell makes Bee realize that there's no way she can go to Decatur either, not without Jacky. That night, asleep in her bed, Jacky comes into the room. At first, Bee thinks he's playing the rescuer again from their "game" of so long ago, when she was the fallen soldier and Jacky was the medic coming to save her. But Jacky isn't saying his lines, and as he lies in bed with her in the darkened room, Bee remembers something she'd forgotten about their old ambush game, something terribly wrong.

The following day, Bee and Jacky's parents depart, unwittingly leaving their shell-shocked children to struggle with an incestuous relationship -- a frightening fall from innocence that began three years earlier in the woods. Told from Bee's point of view, the two siblings experience a harrowing weekend of intensity and emotion, and ultimately, a tentative recovery. Bee and Jacky is the story of a family suffering from profound wounds, spiritual and physical. It is also a story of grace and hope and recovery, however partial or incomplete.