Family Thang

“I don’t know his last name.”

“Tall, lanky, bushy eyebrows?”

Linda returned her thumb to her mouth, rubbed her nose with the index finger and nodded.

“Eric Barnes?” Sheriff Bledsoe said.

Walter said, “He’ll have to change his name to dead meat when I get through with him.”

“Why did you let him in?” Sheriff Bledsoe asked.

She shrugged.

“What did he do when he was here?”

Linda, one eye staring at her father and the other at Sheriff Bledsoe, garbled, “We dint doo nuffin!”

“She’s not helping you, Sheriff Bledsoe,” Colleen said. “Can she be excused?”

“I guess so,” avoiding looking at her. What the hell was Eric thinking? “I may need to talk to her again.”

“What you waiting on?” Walter shouted at his daughter. Linda ran out of the room and seconds later Sheriff Bledsoe heard a door slam. He thought to tell Walter to lighten up on the girl, but didn’t think it would help matters.

Walter said, “I’ve been trying to get his name for a while. I’m glad you told me.”

“Walter, you may already be looking at a weapon discharge violation, so hold the vigilante talk. This is what I’m paid to do, so let me handle it, okay?”

“Hell, Sheriff,” Walter said. “You saw her. You can tell she’s Super Glued on silly. Can’t even talk without sucking on her damn thumb. It ain’t right! A rusty butt man! In my house! You know it ain’t right, Sheriff. What if she were your daughter?”

“She said nothing happened.”

“Maybe nothing happened today,” Colleen said. “We know for a fact he’s been fooling around with her.”

Walter said, “Hell yes, Sheriff. It ain’t right! Ain’t none of it right! Here I am sleeping on the couch and I hear Colleen screaming, and this fool ran out and started attacking her. Scared me so bad I didn’t know what to do first, beat him with my bare hands or shoot him?”

Colleen said, “He didn’t attack me. I grabbed him.”

Walter pointed to the shotgun behind the door. “I had him—sight alignment, sight picture, right between the eyes. Damned Linda jumped on my back.” Shaking his head: “I had him!”

“Walter, you’re lucky,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “If you’d shot him, you’d be on your way to jail now.”

“Linda’s the one who’s lucky,” Walter said. “She’s damn lucky that woman didn’t hurt her.”

“What woman?”

“His wife, or girlfriend,” Colleen said. “She’s a big woman. Last year she caught Linda and that man inside her house and she walked Linda home. Told me to keep an eye on my daughter ’cause the next time, she said, Linda wouldn’t be able to crawl back. She told me this to my face, about my own daughter. Anyone else I would’ve raised hell, but she had this look in her eye—it scared me. She was serious than diabetes.”

“Shirley Harris,” Sheriff Bledsoe said, rubbing his chest. “I’m surprised you don’t know her.”

“No, I don’t know her. Is she any kin to Larry Harris?”

“Yes, he’s her father.”

“Oh,” Colleen said. “Explains why she’s keeping house with a pervert.”

“What do you mean?”

“Larry worked at Hillard Catfish Farm. We used to call him Loony Larry. He was mad all the time, always telling the supervisor what he would or wouldn’t do. I’m surprised he kept his job as long as he did. Somebody told me he ate spoiled pig feet, got sick and died.”

“You think someone at his job was angry enough to do something to him?”

“Sheriff,” Walter said, “what’s this got to do with the situation here? We want to know what you’re doing about Eric Barnes.”

Colleen said, “Everybody who worked there, including myself, wanted to do something to him one time or another. He had a bad habit of name-calling. You ask him to stop, he’d keep at it, say it more often. He really got to tripping right before he retired. For years he’d been telling everybody how much money he’d invested in the company’s stock plan. A million plus, the way he told it. Come to find out he’d never signed up for the stock plan. He thought it was automatic. All those years and he—”

“What!” Sheriff Bledsoe shouted. “You mean he never had a million dollars? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Everybody—everybody at Hillard knows about it. Ask anyone there, they’ll tell you.”

Sheriff Bledsoe stared at her.

“Sad news,” Walter said. “Sheriff, are you gonna arrest this scumbag? If you don’t do something to him, I will.” Sheriff Bledsoe kept staring at Colleen, his mind obviously elsewhere.

“Sheriff? Sheriff?”

Sheriff Bledsoe rubbed his chest and squeezed his stomach. “What?”

“Are you listening to me?” Walter said.

“I hear you. I hear you loud and clear,” and got up and walked out the door without saying another word.

Chapter 37

“Reap what you sow. Reap what you sow.”

Eric talked to himself as he walked to Count Pulaski State Park. “Reap what you sow.” His mother had told him that a thousand times. Man, was she right! He’d sowed bullshit and he’d definitely reaped bullshit. Big time!

Now a worldly lifestyle was behind him, in his past. He’d seen the light. He’d had an out-of-body experience. No, he’d experienced something grander than a floating sensation. He’d experienced a… What did the white folks call it?

He walked farther and then it struck him: an epiphany! Yes! An epiphany! He’d stared into the grim reaper’s eyes, two black holes, and—Kabooom!—an epiphany!

Now he had to find Shirley, beg her forgiveness and, if she was willing, marry her. The right thing to do, the epiphany had told him, shortly after the shotgun blast had stopped ringing in his ears. “Marry Shirley!” Loud and clear.

Of course, he realized, Shirley might still be pissed. No matter. Once he told her about his epiphany—though not the part what led up to it—she would just have to forgive him.

He loved her. She was the only woman he needed, the only person who had stuck by him in good times and bad. Why hadn’t he realized this a long time ago? Amazing how an epiphany can clear the fog shrouding true love.

The sun was a reddish-orange sliver above the horizon when he came up to Robert Earl’s Datsun and a gray Lumina. Three trails, less than a half block apart, led into the woods. Which one?

Pick the wrong one and he might be lost in the woods a long time. Was he pushing his luck? Eventually Shirley would come home. Wouldn’t it be more romantic if he begged her forgiveness and hand in marriage in a public place? Yes. A lot safer, too.

Darlene had said Shirley planned to camp in the woods a couple of days, which didn’t make sense because Shirley wasn’t the outdoor type.

He had to make a choice. Go up or go home? “I’m a man,” he said to bolster his confidence. “A man who just experienced an epiphany.” Then he started up Hot Springs Trail.

The canopy of branches above the trail extinguished the light. Total darkness. A tad cooler. He tried to remember what he’d learned in his brief stint in the Cub Scouts some twenty-three-years ago. Be ready, was it? Don’t go if you don’t have to, more than likely.

Mosquitoes attacked his hands, neck and face. One contented itself with simply buzzing around his ear.

He kept walking, hands held out in front to avoid walking into a tree. Suddenly he stopped, certain he’d heard something… something moving, something heavy.