The old man's request

Please read

2005-08-14T08:47:00.000-05:00

Well, it's over. I decided to give this a try early in June after reading about people who had used blogs to write books.

Some people did it within a month. It took me a little over two months. This was an experience I enjoyed immensely. On every Monday through Friday all summer, I sat down in front of my computer and cranked out a chapter of the adventures of Mikey, Sandy, Squiggy and Mule.

I hope you liked reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

For all of you who have been along for the whole ride, I thank you. I'd rather not mention names because I'll forget one and feel bad, but you know who you are.

I do have to thank RJP for all his help. He cleaned up a lot of stuff, kept me in line (something that isn't always easy to do) and added a lot of cool stuff. So thank you, RalphManDue.

I know that there have been some boo boos in this book and that made it harder to read than the normal book, but I thank you for overlooking it.

We're at over 3,000 hits for The Old Man's Request. If you have enjoyed it and know somebody else who might like it, please send it to them.

Coming soon will be the second book from Langford, entitled Upon Further Review. But first, I need a little break and will post a book that I have already written called One For The Ages.

It is completely different than The Old Man's Request, but I hope you enjoy it. One For The Ages is a sports book, the first in a planned series of eight. It follows the Lester family through the ups and downs of high-school athletics and life.

Please visit this site. It will have links to the new book and links to my photo site and a personal blog that will probably be good to read right before you go to sleep. I am going to edit The Old Man's Request and see if anybody thinks it is worthy of being published. If not and if there is any interest, I will self publish it and make it available as an e-book and a traditional book.

We are also working on an online news/information site for Heavener, called Heavener Online.

Again, thank you and hope you enjoy the next one.

Chapter 56

2005-08-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

Yes, I felt the same way about Trevor coming into the branch after us that Sandy did, but in a different way.

As soon as I saw him prancing down the sidewalk with his sleeveless shirt, showing arms that were bigger than my legs, I felt anger rise up in me like I had seldom felt before.

I jumped up out of the chair and started walking to meet him.

“Mikey!” Sandy said. “What are you doing?”

“Heck if I know,” I answered.

While leaving Swifty’s office, I saw there were some yardsticks the bank was giving away on the table in the lobby. I grabbed one and headed out the door. There was a little vestibule in the branch. There were two doors with a small area in between.

Trevor had his hand on the outside door as I burst through the first set of doors. His face changed expressions. Previously, he was furious. Now, Trevor almost had a scared look on his face. I barged through the outside door and he started backing up.

The yardstick was pulled back like I was going yard in baseball.

“Hey, dude, what’s your problem?” he asked, while backing down the sidewalk, his hands thrown out in front of his face.

The people in the branch were running outside to watch.

“You’re one of my many problems,” I said and swung the yardstick. It swished while soaring through the air but caught nothing but air. Trevor had to jump to the right to avoid the blow.

“I’m fixing to get mad!”

“Good, I’m already there!”

I swung again. This one was low, almost like I was swinging a bat. It caught him in his left elbow.

“Ouch!” he yelped. “Quit it!”

“I’m not going to quit. You shoved Sandy and threw her into the wall!”

I continued to walk toward him as Trevor backed up, looking for some help. No help was coming. I knew he could practically tear me apart with his bare hands, but didn’t care. I juked with one move then came back with an overhand slice that caught him on his right shoulder.

“Ow!” he hollered. “I didn’t come here to fight!”

I nailed him square on his right knee.

“Why’d you come here, then?”

“I went by your office. The lady with the big hair told me that you and Sandy were together. I wanted to thank you for what you wrote in the paper and to tell her that I was sorry.”

I stopped. He was thanking me? And apologizing to Sandy? Trevor looked like he wanted to fight the world.

“Why’d you look so mad then?” I asked.

“That’s just my look.”

I nodded. Now, I was almost sorry that I left several whelps on him. “There she is, tell her you’re sorry.”

He nodded. “Sandy, I’m sorry about what happened.”

She added a nod. There were a lot of nods going around. “Don’t call or come by to see me.”

“I won’t,” Trevor said. “I think I’m going to ask out the girl with the big hair.”

“It won’t do you any good,” said a voice behind him. I looked around Trevor and saw Nancy standing in the parking lot with Squiggy and Mule. They were next to Squiggy’s truck. He had tried out another paint scheme on the truck with spray paint. This time, it was a bad shade of red. At least it fit in good with the rust.

“It won’t?”

“No, I’m going out with Mule.”

Everybody raised their eyebrows at this shocking development, even Mule. We all knew Nancy would never be the same.

“You are?” Mule asked.

“Yes, I am. Tonight!”

Mule nodded. “You’ll have to drive.”

“That’s okay. Just take a bath first, okay?”

“It ain’t Sunday!”

“Just take the dang bath,” Squiggy joined in. He was smiling, even though the anticipated violence had broken up. “And use soap this time.”

Mule nodded and smiled at Nancy. “I’ll wear my camo shirt!”

She nodded. I didn’t think Nancy was too concerned with what Mule chose to wear.

Everybody started breaking apart. Sandy took my hand and we walked back toward the building. Swifty was holding the door for everybody, probably calculating how much he could get if everybody here bought credit life insurance from him.

“Nice swing,” he said. Swifty should know, at one time he was quite the baseball player for Langford High School. One of his first coaches as a child in t-ball was Slick, the branch manager.

We walked back into the office. Sandy dug out the two envelopes and placed them in front of Swifty. They were two certificates of deposit in the amount of $175,000. She was pledging them as collateral to get a loan to cover the check at the other bank, to pay off the loan on Mom’s house and the loan I had borrowed earlier in the week. This would free up my mother’s house and the paper, along with getting me an interest rate that was lower than any business loan.

I didn’t want her to endanger her savings, but Sandy said it was no big deal. She had a lot more where this came from. This is just what she had in CD’s. Sandy said there was twice this amount invested in stocks and bonds.

I never knew she had this kind of money, but it made sense. Sandy had lived with her parents all her life. She was a successful real estate agent with no bills. There were months where she made more than I did in half a year.

She was all for doing this and it was her idea. I resisted at first, the old male pride getting in the way. Sandy knew that she could lose this, but didn’t seem too concerned.

Swifty did the paper work. I was the borrower. Sandy would pledge the collateral and sign as a guarantor. The CD’s matured in a little over three months. There was no way to pay the note off with the income from the newspaper, but if we did sell the newspaper, the income would pay this off. If the newspaper wasn’t sold, we would go to plan B, which currently did not exist.

“Would you like some credit life on this?” he asked. From what I heard, Swifty was the champion credit life salesman for his bank.

“No thanks,” Sandy said.

We signed the papers. Sandy got off easy. She only had to sign the financial statement, the guarantee and a form where she agreed to pledge the CDs as collateral. I did the application and several others. We killed several trees in the process of doing this loan.

Swifty left to get the check. “Thank you,” I told Sandy.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Sandy said. She was smiling and seemed happier than I had seen her since we were kids.

Swifty returned with the check. He handed it to me. We took it to the teller station and handed it over to one of the tellers. Her eyes got a little big over the size of the check, but she didn’t say anything.

The little man and the big woman were arguing over something else as we left.

“We won’t be like that after we’ve been married twenty years, will we?” I asked.

Sandy stopped and looked at me. “Better be careful what you say, some people might take that as a proposal.”

I stopped at the outside door and held it open. My feelings about marriage were not good, but mainly because Sandy had never been involved.

“Well?” she added. I was a little tongue tied.

“I guess you can take that any way you want,” I was such a romantic.

She walked outside and I fell in line next to her. “You’ll have to say the words, though.”

“The words.”

“Don’t get cute, Mikey. You know what I mean.”

We were next to the passenger side of the Ranger. In my life, I had proposed three times and was batting a hundred percent. All the other times were easy. This time, it wasn’t. For a person who makes a living putting words on paper, I found it very difficult to figure out what to have come out of my mouth.

“Uh, you and me, we, uh, should, you know, uh…”

“Do you want to marry me, Michael Hunt?” she asked.

I nodded. That really sounded like a good idea to me. So that is how we got engaged, in the romantic setting of the parking lot of the branch bank. We kissed and held each other for several seconds. Somebody in a truck drove by and shouted, “Get a room!”

Sandy broke away for a second. “Get a job!”

“Good one,” I said.

She had her arms wrapped around my neck. Her fingers were playing with my hair. I could stay here forever, other than the lack of food and the need to occasionally remove the body’s toxics.

“We need to get going,” she said. “I have an appointment in fifteen minutes.”

I nodded and kissed her again. We drove down to the Review and talked about some serious stuff. She gave her opinion, one that I agreed upon. I hated to see her go, but she headed off to her appointment.

I decided to go for a little walk down the block. My route just happened to take me in front of the Bank of Langford. Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to drop by.

Allen was in his office, reading a magazine and eating a pastry, like he needed it. That would just make his outty bellybutton stick out farther. I breezed past his secretary, who never saw me until it was too late.

“Mister Hunt!” she said. “You can’t go in there!”

“Wanna bet?” I asked, and never slowed down.

I walked into Allen Woodard’s office and sat down in a chair. He looked up and was not all that pleased. His secretary followed me in and was standing in the doorway. Woodard flashed her a dirty look.

“It’s not her fault,” I said. “She tried to stop me.”

He waved her away and lowered the magazine. “What can I do for you, Mister Hunt?”

“You could find out how much to the penny is owed on my father’s loan,” I said. I actually knew this information, but it was better this way.

He typed in something on his keyboard and wrote down the figure on a sticky tab. Woodard handed it to me.

“Okay, if I make a deposit, can you cover the check to the funeral home?”

“I’m sure we can.”

I pulled out my checkbook from the other bank. They still were temporary checks, but it didn’t bother me. I wrote out two checks. The first one was to pay off the loan. The second was enough to cover the checks my mother wrote to the funeral home and the hospital.

Woodard looked stunned as he stared at the checks.

“How’d you do this?” he asked.

“I have resources.”

“Mister Hunt, if you have these financial resources, we don’t really want to lose you as a customer.”

“You aren’t losing me,” I said. Woodard smiled, revealing teeth that were badly stained. “You never had me.”

I got up and started walking away. At the doorway, I stopped and turned around.

“Have a good day,” I said.

Woodard looked like he had some serious heartburn going on. I walked out of the Bank of Langford for what I hoped to be the last time. If I ever darkened these doors again, it would be to get money out of them, not to give any to them.

After getting back to the office, I found Nancy at her desk, her cheeks flushed.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She could only nod and smile. Her eyes had a dreamy look to them.

Theresa walked in through the back door. She was wearing a saggy shirt, but it failed to hide that her chest looked like a unicorn.

Nancy saw her coming. She took off like a streak and met Theresa, just out of my hearing range. Nancy started telling Theresa something that seemed to interest her. Nancy kept gesturing and holding her hands out like she was telling how big the bass was she caught.

Theresa’s eyes almost got as big as saucers. She patted Nancy on the back, in what seemed to be congratulations, and they walked toward me.

“What were you talking about?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Theresa said.

“Yeah, that’s why I asked.”

They were not going to divulge their secret. I really didn’t care. There was too much to do and not enough time to get it done.

“What did you find out at the doctor’s?” Nancy asked.

“That the doctor was a quack!” she answered. “I should have known that any good doctor would charge more than a thousand bucks per boob.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna go to a real doctor and sue that quack for pain, suffering and mental anguish.”

I had no idea how a jury of our peers could put a price tag on the mental anguish a person suffers when their breast implant goes bad. Then again, I didn’t really care. We got to work and busted our rears, calling people and begging them to advertise with the good old Langford Review. Some did, others didn’t.

I started writing and remembered how much I loved this act of putting words together on paper. There were several stories to write about. The follow up on the Beef Critter slaying, my getting shot at, Orville’s dead body in the parking lot and everything else a small-town newspaper deals with.

Promptly at five, my phone rang. I knew who it was.

“Michael Hunt, how the heck are you doing?” Elliott Lancaster practically shouted. I probably would be shouting also if I expected to get six percent of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

“Okay, how are you?”

“Hey, I’m better than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest!”

I didn’t really grasp the meaning behind that. He acted like we were best friends, but I knew it just because Elliott expected to make a lot of money off me.

“So, which offer did you decide to take?” he asked. “Let’s have some fun with this, shall we?”

“Let’s,” I said.

“The first offer is ‘A’, just like they do on that House Hunters show on HGTV, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Then the second offer is ‘B’, cool?”

“Sounds great!”

“If you recall, the first offer was for twenty five thousand less than you were asking for, but you get to keep your job!”

“At what we expect to be a crappy salary,” I added.

Elliott had to absorb that for a second. “Uh, yeah, I guess so. The second offer, ‘B’, is the full price offer with you leaving. So tell me, Michael, which one did you choose?”

I could hear the tick tock, just like it is on one of those silly game shows they used to have on television.

“Well, Elliott, I’ve decided to go with ‘C’,” I said.

There was another pause from the other end. I could just feel that brain of Elliott’s gearing up.

“What’s ‘C’?” he asked.

“Elliott, ‘C’ is the choice where I decide not to sell the newspaper,” I said. “I try to get it back in shape and give Langford another try.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Things change.”

“So you’re not wanting to sell the newspaper?”

“No, I’m going to hang on to it for a while.”

Elliott hung up on me. I didn’t care. On this high note, I decided to call it a day.

When I got home, Mom and M.J. were in the front yard, playing with Psycho.

“What’s she doing here?” I asked.

“Squiggy wanted us to dogsit her,” Mom said. “He was going to work.”

“Squiggy went to work?” I asked and Mom nodded. Would wonders never cease?

M.J. got up and walked toward me. He stopped just a foot away and stared up at me.

“How bout a hug, bit guy?” he asked.

“Knock yourself out,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Go ahead.”

M.J. threw his little arms around my legs and squeezed with all his might.

“Hold on,” I said, and picked him up. I held him in front of me, looking at the little eyes, the small nose and big smile.

He surprised me with a kiss then started squirming. It was time to go back and play with the dog. We had not heard from April. Apparently the boy was now part of our family.

“Manny called,” Mom said. I had a bad feeling about this. “He said they were getting back together.”

“They?”

“Manny and Molly.”

“I thought she was married.”

“She had already filed for divorce.”

“That’s good, I guess.” I had missed him after my father’s funeral since they found the body of the Beef Critter. Hopefully, this would help him stay on the right track.

“They’re coming to visit this weekend.”

“Good,” I said. “Mom, I’ve gotta get some sleep.”

“That’s fine.”

I went inside and back to my old bedroom. I hit the bed, fully dressed, and slept like a baby. The only time I stirred was when Sandy called. We talked for a while and then I went back to sleep. We had our whole life to look forward to living.

The next morning, I woke to my mother shaking me.

“Get up, lazy,” M.J. said. I looked over at the clock and saw it was ten.

“Crap!” I said, this was way too late.

“That’s a dirty word!” M.J. informed me. He was standing next to my mother.

“Yes, it is,” Mom agreed. “Please refrain from saying that.”

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I was still tired, but ready to face the day.

“Could you take me to the bank?” she asked.

“I guess,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“The check came in.”

“What check?”

“The life insurance check.”

“Are you talking about the funeral insurance?”

She looked at me like so many others had in my life, like I had pawned out my intelligence.

“No, Michael, the life insurance check for your father.”

“I didn’t think he had life insurance.”

“He didn’t. We got a policy on him some thirty years ago. I guess he just forgot about it.”

“Good.” I figured it was some small amount, but Mom could use whatever money she got.

“I guess we need to pay off that note on the house and the newspaper,” she said. “How much was it?”

“It was around a hundred and ffifty-five thousand.”

I expected her to drop one of her “Oh my!” comments, but it didn’t seem to face her.

“Okay, I’ll use part of this to pay that off. I want you to run the paper, Michael. I’ll have the papers drawn up giving it to you. Just pay me a few hundred dollars each month to help pay for the medicine.”

“What?”

“I want to pay off the newspaper and give it to you,” Mom repeated.

“How big was that check?”

She pulled it out of her purse and showed it to me.

I was astonished. In front of me was a check payable to my mother for five hundred thousand dollars.

“Mom, that’s half a million dollars!” I said.

“It’s just money, Michael. I’ll tithe ten percent of it and pay off the debt. What should I do with the rest?”

“Invest it in a CD.”

“One of those music things?”

“No, Mom,” I said and explained it to her.

“That sounds like a good idea,” she said.

“And I know just where you should put it.”

Mom smiled and I felt the huge weight that I had been carrying on my shoulders sliding away. I got dressed and threw down a quick breakfast. We drove to the branch bank and paid off my notes. Mom opened an account and got a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars to give to her church. Dena opened up two CD’s of equal amounts, one payable on death to me. The other was for Manny.

I didn’t care. As Mom said, it was just money. I called Sandy and told her what happened. If she was excited, Sandy held it in well. We made plans for a big deal tonight to celebrate our engagement and the new life we would share together.

I hung up and realized that I had forgotten something. We were in my truck. M.J. was in the middle, Mom was taking care of shotgun.

“We’re getting married,” I said.

“We can’t get married, Michael,” Mom said. “You’re my son!”

“Not us, Mom. Me and Sandy.”

Mom was so excited that she started to grab me. It forced me to veer into the coming traffic and in the way of a truck heading right toward me. It was the truck that had been parked in front of our house all night and followed us to the branch.

The bad guys could follow me all they wanted. Their time was coming. Soon.

THE END

Please Read

Chapter 55

2005-08-12T07:01:00.000-05:00

Finding out there were two separate people wanting to buy The Langford Review and get me out of this mess did make me happy. I might not show it, but for a second, I saw some light at the end of the tunnel that I had been stuck in for almost a week.

If we could sell the newspaper, Mom’s house would be free. So would I. There would be no job waiting for me back in Tulsa, but a person with my experience can always find something, or at least that’s what I tried to convince myself.

One of the stipulations from the first buyer was that I must stay on and manage the newspaper. Elliott Lancaster, the man trying to sell the newspaper, was already back with a second offer. I expected this stipulation to be along the same lines as the first.

“It’s strange, but they'll only buy the newspaper if you have nothing to do with it,” Elliott told me over the phone.

That was fine with me. But the timing and the way this was worded, struck me as a little suspicious.

“Who made this offer?” I asked.

“Oh, you know I can’t tell you that,” he giggled. Elliott was starting to irritate me.

“Did they give you a name?”

“You know, now that you mention it, I don’t think they did.”

“How are you going to give them an answer?”

“He’s calling back this afternoon. By the way, the man said he had to have an answer today.”

I ended the call. This thing was getting really stinky. It was almost like whoever was threatening me and wanted my behind out of Langford was doing this. I made my way back to the office and had just walked in when the phone rang. Nancy was with a customer and Theresa was probably in the back admiring her new statutes so I answered it.

“Hello, is Mister Hunt there?” the caller asked.

“No, Mister Hunt is dead,” I answered. “This is Michael, may I help you?”

“Yes, this is Gale Renker from the bank.”

“Which bank?”

“The Bank of Langford, you know, your hometown bank!”

That about made me yack. “What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Woodard just wanted to know if you planned to cover the check that came in today or if we needed to return it as insufficient?”

“What check? I haven’t written a check.”

“The check was, I believe, to the funeral home in the amount of almost nine thousand dollars.”

“Was this written on the newspaper account?”

“Mister Hunt, I wouldn’t be calling you otherwise.”

“I’ll call you back.”

I hung up the phone. Mom had found a check somehow and used it to pay for the funeral. The biggest problem was there wasn’t enough money in the account to pay for the funeral. That account had a balance of $1.41. The account at the branch bank only had a little over eighteen hundred dollars in it.

Mom answered the phone on the first ring. She was like Nancy and didn’t like the phone to ring a second time, afraid the caller might actually hang up.

“Hello,” she said, real cheerful.

“Mom, did you write a…”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Michael.”

“Oh, I thought it was you. It would be better if you introduced yourself at the start of a phone conversation.”

Silly me. I thought my mother might recognize my voice after talking to me almost every day for the last forty-two years.

“Sorry. Did you write a check to the funeral home?”

“Yes, I had to pay for your father's burial, Michael.”

“Why did you use the newspaper account at the Langford bank?”

“Because that’s the one I always use when we need to pay for something big.”

“Mom, there wasn’t enough money in there to cover the check.”

There was a silence on the other end. Finally, she replied. “There must be some mistake, Michael. Your father ran a good business. He always told me we had plenty of money.”

How do you tell your mother that her husband, my father, lied to her? I don’t know. I let it slide. She had enough to worry about without adding this to it.

“Mom, please don’t write any more checks on this account,” I said.

“Can’t you just transfer money from the savings account?”

Sure, you could, if there was any money in there. I checked the other day, there was less than a hundred dollars in their savings. Mom’s personal checking account had a little over three hundred dollars in it.

“We can’t do that.”

“Why? It’s our money!”

“There isn’t enough in the account.”

“There isn’t?”

“No, Mom, there isn’t any money in the account.”

“Oh, dear! Well, Michael, what’s going to happen when the check to the hospital hits?”

“What check to the hospital?”

“I had to write them one for five thousand dollars the other day.”

I wanted to bang my head on the desk. We were out of money and then some. Luckily, that check had not hit.

“Which account did you use?” I asked, knowing the answer even before she told me.

“The newspaper account, Michael. I’m sorry!”

She almost sounded like hysterics were on the verge of overcoming her. I rubbed my forehead, back where hairs once laid before they went the way of my youth.

“Are you still there, Michael?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom.”

“What are you going to do?”

I like the way she said that. What am I going to do, not her.

“I’ll take care of it somehow.”

“Good.”

She had a burial policy that would take care of the funeral expenses, but that check probably wouldn’t be here for several weeks. My personal funds were depleted and we didn’t have enough in the other account to even put a dent in the checks she had written.

I didn’t have any choice. First, I called the bank and told them to return any checks that came in. Good old Gale Renker almost seemed giddy. She got to bounce a check! Next, I called the funeral home and talked to the owner.

He really wasn’t happy, but seemed to understand.

I needed a standing TKO. I was beaten to a pulp. Somebody needed to throw in the towel, but my corner guys were nowhere to be found. The guys from the tire shop had fixed my truck with some not-so-used used tires, so I did have transportation without having to borrow somebody’s car.

It was time for a little break. I told Nancy that I would be back later. She could tell I was upset and nodded. As I walked past the bathroom, Theresa came running out.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think I deflated my breast!”

“You did what?”

She was hysterical. I looked and it did look like one boob was shriveling before our very own eyes.

“My bosom is leaking!”

“What happened?”

“I was trying to straighten my breasts when my new acrylic fingernail on my pinky finger, I'm not used to how long they are, well, it scratched my breast. It’s leaking Michael!”

She was looking to me for help. I had no idea what to do when a breast implant was deflating, or whatever the heck it was doing.

“Want me to call an ambulance?” I asked. Nancy had heard the commotion and came back to see what was happening. She almost seemed happy in the way women do when bad things happen to other women.

It wasn’t an obvious smile, but I could detect the glee.

“No, don’t you dare call the ambulance! Then everybody will know!”

I wanted to tell her that everybody in town would know by the time school was out, but I didn’t. She stood still for a second, staring at her chest, then ran toward the door, screaming and waving her arms.

“Don’t see that every day,” Nancy commented.

I nodded. That was about the highlight for the day. I doubted Theresa would put this in her story about the breast reconstruction.

As I started walking toward the door, Nancy followed me outside.

“If things don’t work out with what’s her name, don’t forget about me,” she said.

“I’ll keep you posted,” I said.

“Okay, but I need more than to be posted.”

I acted as if I didn't hear that remark. She walked back inside. Nancy was an attractive woman and down to earth, aside from that hair. That was a good twenty years out of date. At another time and another place, I might be interested in her. But not here and now.

I drove off toward the mountain that overlooks the town of Langford. There is a narrow winding road that goes to the top. A couple of cabins are being built near the top, causing a little controversy when the state discovered they didn’t own the land. The cabins looked nice. I stopped and looked out the window of my truck. The view from here was one to die for.

At the top of the mountain, there is an office for the state park. I had been in there many times before and decided to pass it by. I drove past the playground equipment and a large building that people use for reunions and meetings. The overlook was just past that.

This was a place I used to come a lot as a kid. When a day is clear, it’s almost like you can see forever. There are mountain ranges surrounding Langford in every direction. I parked and walked down a steep incline. There are rocks jutting out from the cliff. You really aren’t supposed to go out on the rocks, but I do so anyway.

I look over the town that I always wanted to escape from. It’s changed a lot over the years, not necessarily for the better. The school is off to the left. I can see the football field and the gym tucked in behind it. Most of the downtown buildings are visible. Especially the Bank of Langford’s building that I wished would collapse with Woodard inside.

Past the railroad tracks and the highway, I see the steeple for the First Baptist Church of Langford rising above the trees and buildings. I sit down on a rock wall that is supposed to keep people off the rocks, but doesn’t. The rock hurts my back, but I ignore it as much as possible.

There’s only one person I can talk to, but I don’t want to disturb her. Sandy’s probably busy with a client and has better things to do than hear my problems. I try to convince myself of that, but another part argues back that she wouldn’t get mad about me calling. Sandy would only get mad if she knew what I was going through and didn’t call her.

After debating this for several minutes, I decide to give her a call. If she is busy, I can just give her the old "just wanted to call and see how you were doing" routine.

She picks up after two rings.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” I ask. I don’t need to identify myself to her and don’t get in trouble for it, either.

“I just got through showing a house. Where are you? I just called the office to talk to you.”

That makes me feel good. “I’m up on the mountain.”

“What are you doing up there?”

“I needed some peace and quiet for a while.”

“Want some company?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay, I saw Squiggy a few minutes ago. I’ll send him and Mule up to keep you company.”

I let that sink in. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“No, I did see them.”

“Okay, you aren’t going to tell them where I am, are you?”

“Is there somebody else you’d prefer talking to?”

“Yeah, there is.”

“And who might that be?”

“Look in the mirror,” I said.

“Just a second. Okay, I’m looking in the mirror.”

“Who do you see?”

“Me, of course.”

“Good, that’s who I want to see.”

“That can be arranged,” she said. We threw out the goodbye and hung up.

I walked over to the nearest picnic table and sat down. She arrived about fifteen minutes later. It was good to see her, even better after seeing Sandy carried some sacks with what I presumed to be food.

She smiled and everything didn’t seem so bad. Sandy set the sacks on the table, leaned over and kissed me. It caught me off guard, but I decided not to complain. She sat down next to me and opened the sacks. Sandy brought fried chicken, chicken strips, potato spuds and drinks.

“I remembered that you liked the legs,” she said and handed me two of them.

“Thank you, I’ve always gone for legs and breasts,” I said. That reminded of the breast experience I had encountered while leaving the paper. I told Sandy the whole story. She almost got a spud caught in her throat after hearing about the deflating bosom.

“You didn’t laugh, did you?” she asked.

“Not on the outside. I wasn’t in a laughing mood at the moment.”

“Why?”

This time, I told her everything, leaving nothing out.

She didn’t touch her food during the entire story. There was a chicken strip in her hand, but it was ignored.

“Mikey, you should have told me,” she said. I could tell that Sandy was a little disappointed, but I didn’t want to worry her. But if she was really serious about me, she needed to know all the good things and the bad.

I nodded and attacked a leg. They didn’t cheat on the batter for this bad boy. This would also attack my cholesterol, but tasted too good to worry about.

“So, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it,” I said. “Any suggestions?”

“Yeah, a few, but you probably won’t like it.”

“Why don’t you try it out on me?”

She told me and was right. I wasn’t all that crazy about her idea.

“We can’t do that,” I said.

“Why?”

“I can’t do it.”

“Suck up your pride there, Mikey. You don’t have any choice.”

I nodded. We continued eating and making small talk. I always knew Sandy was special, but never knew how special until today.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t even mention it,” she replied. “I’m serious.”

We actually threw our trash away, something that all visitors to the Runestone State Park did not do, then drove back to town. She followed me down the road. We went to the Bank of Langford first and got the information I needed.

After we exited the mausoleum, Sandy took my hand in her hand.

“It’ll be fine,” she said. “Can I ride with you?”

I nodded and we got in the mighty Ranger. Our next stop was at the branch bank.

As we approached the stoplight, traffic was bunched up and inching along. "Must have been an accident", I mumbled in Sandy's direction.

Sandy rolls down the window and sticks her head out. "There's an old lady with a cane in the middle of the road. She's trying to pick up a lame chicken with her cane."

Her car was parked on the line marking the center of the two north-bound lanes. Traffic from the south was swinging out into the inside lane of oncoming traffic from the north causing a bottleneck.

As we inched up to the commotion, I could see a young hippie-type with long hair, multiple tattoos and no shirt trying to help the old lady back to her car, with the chicken under one arm and his hand on her shoulder. He seemed in a hurry and no doubt was the driver of the car with the door open, just behind her Lincoln Continental. She seemed to take a lifetime to make her way into the driver's seat while trying to stuff the chicken into the floor on the passenger side.

It was obvious that the chicken had "escaped" from one of the hauling trucks on its way to the processing plant on the outskirts of Langford. She meant to have him for dinner, since he was only wounded and couldn't cross the road. It didn't matter to her that it backed up traffic for half a mile in both directions. She eventually gassed her car and slowly eased down the highway, pulling the plug on the congestion.

The traffic jam slowly broke up and we drove north. Sandy left her window down and the wind was playing with her hair, blowing strands across her face. She would move the hair away and have to do it again. As we reached the branch bank, I saw the parking lot was full of cars again. Inside, there were several people at the teller stations and a couple of customers sitting in the waiting area in the middle of the lobby.

We sat down opposite the waiting customers. It was a man and woman, about our age. He was skinny, she was rather full-figured. The man wore jeans and a tee-shirt advertising some bailbond service out of Poteau with the slogan "Get Loose!". His hat was from a finance company. He had not shaved in several days.

She had on a pair of what appeared to be pink stretch pants. Her flowered shirt was a button-up and gapped in between the buttons revealing a small embroidered rose on the center line of a dingy bra.

One of them, or maybe even both of them, was throwing out some serious body odor. I picked up a magazine and started thumbing through it, trying to not look at them. I smelled something like wintergreen and saw the man putting a huge dip of original Skoal in between his cheek and gum, just like old Walt Ferguson used to say in his ads.

The woman didn't seem to mind. She had grabbed a People magazine with Jennifer Aniston on the cover. The man gave the woman a nudge with his elbow.

"Go get me a spitter," he said.

She shook her head. "Go get your own."

"They got some coffee cups right over there," he added, pointing at the coffee machine.

"I ain't the one a needing to spit."

"C'mon, woman!"

"Get your own. I'm a reading."

"You're just hacked cause I made you mow the yard this morning."

"No, it's cause you wouldn't get out of bed and get me some toilet paper outta the spare bathroom. I had to waddle into the kitchen with my drawers round my ankles and get a paper towel."

"Crapfire, woman!" he added and walked over to the counter. The man got a styrofoam cup and walked back. This time, he sat away from her. He would teach her, by gosh! He put the cup to his mouth and spilled his spit in the cup, just letting it ooze out of his stained lips.

Sandy's face looked like she just stepped in a fresh cowpie, barefooted.

Swifty, the loan officer, and the branch manager both had customers. We were waiting for the first one available. It turned out to be Swifty. He came out in the lobby and asked the other customers who they needed to see. The man had to spit several times before answering.

"We're waiting for the bald-headed fellow," he said. The woman nodded in agreement. Swifty looked a little relieved, not that I can blame him.

"Come sit by me, honey," she said to the old man, while patting the chair next to her.

"Okay," he said and slid back in the chair next to his woman.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I shoulda got your spit cup."

"Yep, and next time I'll stop watching the TV long enough to get you some toilet paper."

"You was watching TV?" the woman asked. I could tell she didn't know that. The man nodded and started whistling. "I thought you was asleep, you lazy little..."

“Are you guys here to see me?” Swifty asked us, interrupting the woman.

“Yes, we are,” Sandy said. We got up and followed him into his office.

We exchanged the usual small talk before getting down to business.

Sandy told him what we needed. Swifty might have gulped a time or two, but never blinked.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

Sandy nodded, then looked at me and smiled.

“I’m positive,” she said. I had never cared so much for anybody. Sandy took my hand. “It’ll be fine.”

I nodded again. Yes, I was actually starting to believe that we would be fine. At least until I saw Trevor walking into the building.

“Uh oh,” Sandy said, a feeling that I shared with her.

Chapter 56

Chapter 54

2005-08-11T06:50:00.000-05:00

It’s amazing how a person’s emotions can change in the matter of a few seconds. For the most part, I try to stay sort of even, not too high or too low. I like the highs a lot better than the lows, of course, but do not like the rollercoaster ride of ups and downs.

Just a few seconds earlier, I was almost ecstatic. My broker, Elliott Lancaster, just informed me that we had an offer to purchase The Langford Review. The price was $25,000 less than I was asking for, but it still wasn’t bad.

At least it wasn’t bad until Elliott dropped a little bombshell.

“They want you to run the paper,” he said.

I really didn’t want to hear those words. Running the Review for somebody else was not a good idea, as far as I was concerned. The salary these chains pay the editor of small locals is an insult for the most part.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.

There was a silence from the other end for a few seconds. “Is it the money part?”

“That’s part of it,” I lied. I would take that money in a heartbeat. “I’m not real crazy about running the Review for them.”

“Hey now, this is a really good organization to work for! They have a 409K and a…”

“Don’t you mean a 401K?”

“Whatever, I get a little confused at times. Plus, they even offer medical insurance.”

“What about the salary?”

There was a much longer silence, this time. “Uh, probably somewhere around twenty thousand a year.”

He said that last sentence real quick, almost like the faster it was said, the more apt I was to let it slide by.

“Ugh,” I said. That would put me back about ten years as far as the old salary goes.

“That’s negotiable!”

Everything is, I guess. “I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll need to know something pretty quick! There are several other newspapers they are looking at.”

“I’ll let you know by this afternoon.”

I hung up the phone and walked up on the porch. I sat down in the swing and started going back and forth, sticking my legs out to hit the wall and send me back. This was how I used to do it as a kid. In the front yard, M.J. and Psycho were still playing. Mule and my mother seemed to enjoy it. Squiggy seemed a little concerned.

“Hey boy, take it easy on my dog,” he said.

“Your dog is fine,” Mom said.

Squiggy took a quick glance at my mother, then back at his dog. He wanted to say something else, but didn’t dare argue with her. She might not feed him again. For a single male, any home cooked meal is one to savor, especially if that male is somebody with the manners of Squiggy.

Mule came up and sat down in the swing next to me.

“You look upset,” he said. “I’m sorry I lost my job after one hour.”

I looked at him. Surely he didn’t think that was bothering me. I was surprised he even took a job.

“That’s okay, Mule,” I said. “That’s not what’s wrong.”

“You can tell me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You wanna tell Squiggy?” he asked.

“No, it’s just I got an offer to sell the newspaper.”

“How come you’d wanna do that?”

“I planned on going back to Tulsa. It would pay off the debt and help out.”

Mule had to think about this for a few seconds. “I thought we was friends?”

I patted him on the back. “We are friends, Mule.”

“Then how come you’d leave us?”

“I have friends in Tulsa, too.”

He nodded. It almost looked like he was about to cry. “But do they ride around and drink with you?”

No, but that is not a negative for them. “Not like you guys.”

“I hope you stay. You’re the smartest fellow I know, other than the Squigster.”

That was supposed to be a compliment, I guess. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”

“Then you best stop. I can’t think of more than one thing at a time or I gets confused. Plus I gotta hangover that feels like somebody’s ringin a bell upside my head.”

“C’mon Mule, we’s leavin!” Squiggy hollered. He was obviously upset. Psycho had a new friend. “Let’s go Psycho!”

The dog ignored Squiggy, something all of us wished we could do.

“It’s okay, the puppy can stay with us,” M.J. offered. I couldn’t tell who was more upset, my mother or Squiggy.

“Psycho can’t stay with you! She’s my dog!”

“Psycho needs to go with Mister Squiggy,” Mom said.

Mister Squiggy? He smiled after hearing that. M.J. nodded his head.

“Can she come back and see me?” he asked.

“Uh, maybe,” Squiggy said.

Mule got up from the swing and started walking away. He stopped and looked at me. “I hope you stay.”

I nodded. Squiggy had to grab Psycho by the collar and haul him to the truck. M.J. stood next to my mother and waved.

Mule hustled out to the truck and got in. Psycho was watching M.J. the whole time and was crying. She turned around and looked out the rear window as they drove off, slinging slobber all over the glass.

I needed to sleep but couldn’t. I decided to go down to the paper for a while and try to get some work done, hoping that would help clear my head.

I took a shower and got dressed. Mom drove me down to the office. M.J. sang some kid song all the way. They let me out at the front door. I walked in and saw Nancy at her desk, working as I expected. There was a woman standing at her desk with her back to me.

“Good morning,” I said. Nancy smiled at me, but not the same way she did yesterday. Apparently, seeing me with Sandy had dimmed her affections for me. But that was fine. The other woman turned around. It was Theresa, but not the one that was here just a few days earlier.

Her hair was all done up. She had roughly twenty dollars of makeup caked on her face. The tan skirt was way too short, barely covering up her rear. Her blouse was tight and a little short also, revealing a small layer of skin that hung over the skirt. I saw her bellybutton and some stretchmarks that I could have done without seeing this early in the morning.

She had a low-cut shirt on, revealing the beginnings of what appeared to be two thermonuclear missiles. Those weren’t breasts anymore, they almost looked like those orange cones that highway workers set up on the road. Theresa stood sideways so we could observe her new weapons.

I saw there were rings on every finger except the wedding finger. She had several bracelets on each arm. There were fake fingernails on each finger, the longest ones I had ever seen. At least she shouldn’t have any problem picking her nose. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I realized she was a walking example for white trash.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think it’s time to get to work,” I said.

She looked a little disturbed. “No, silly, about my new look?”

“It’s definitely different.”

“Good, I’m glad you like it!”

I didn’t actually say that, but I let it go. I walked over to my father’s desk and sat down. There were a couple of messages, asking me to return calls. The one that caught my eye was from Allen Woodard, old helmet head, complete with a return number. Nancy used to always leave a smiley face on all her messages. It was missing on this one, along with the others.

“I need to tell you guys something,” Theresa said. She moved over so she would be standing approximately halfway between us. “I've filed for divorce!”

I nodded and went back to looking at my desk. That wasn’t a surprise. She had a new look and had already found a new guy or was in the hunt for one.

“Please, don’t be upset,” she said and looked at each of us to gauge our reaction. I was looking at the front page of the Poteau paper. Nancy was filing away at her nails. “This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

But she waited for her husband to pay for her new breasts first, of course.

“I’ll be okay,” she added. “I’m going to start a new…Don’t you guys want to hear this?”

I looked at Nancy, who was looking back at me. She shook her head, so did I.

“Maybe later,” I said. “There are a lot of things that need to be done.”

Theresa looked crushed, almost the same way I was after finding out the prospective owners of the Review wanted me to stay on and manage the paper.

I grabbed the phone and dialed the bank’s number. Mr. Woodard would be with me in just a second, the secretary promised. That second stretched into several minutes. I got to hear several ads touting the bank and how concerned they were about meeting the community’s banking needs. Finally, Woodard picked up the phone.

“Mister Woodard here,” he said. I cringed. Anytime somebody calls themself “Mister”, there was something wrong.

“Yes Allen,” I said, putting a little emphasis on the “Allen” part. “This is Michael Hunt.”

He was quiet for a second.

“You there?” I asked.

“Why yes, of course. What can I do for you?”

Leave me alone, I wanted to say. “I’m returning your call.”

“Oh yes! I was just wanting to let you know how concerned everybody at the bank is with what happened last night.”

That almost sounded sincere. I had almost forgotten all the things that had happened in the last day.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said. Maybe he wasn’t a totally terrible guy after all.

“Also, the board met yesterday and decided to call the loan on the newspaper and your mother’s house.”

Delete that last thought. “Do what?”

“The bank’s board met yesterday and decided to call the note. You have thirty days to pay this off or we will begin foreclosure procedures.”

“I got the note current,” I said. I was talking too loudly and could see Nancy and Theresa staring at me.

“Yes, I know that and appreciate it. But this loan has been classified by our loan review and frankly, I don’t think you can save it. This is a sinking ship you have jumped on.”

“You told me that if I got this caught up, you would give me time.”

“I am giving you time.”

“Thirty days isn’t enough time to do this.”

“Well, that’s what we decided.”

“You are a…Hello?”

He hung up on me before I could toss out an insult. The pig. I disconnected the call and tossed the phone on the desk. I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. The phone rang and Nancy jumped all over it. I had never seen anybody who answered a phone so quick. It was almost a sin if the phone rang twice.

“Phone’s for you,” she said and put the caller on hold. I grabbed the phone and answered it.

“Hello, this is Michael,” I said. All I could hear was the caller breathing for several seconds. Was somebody giving me an obscene call?

Finally, the silence was broken. “Mister Hunt, your time is up.”

I sat up straight in the chair. The man’s voice was almost chilling. “What do you mean?”

“Your days here need to come to an end.”

“Who is this?”

“Last night, you talked with a man named Orville Lane. Mr. Lane wound up dead in your parking lot. After that, you went for a ride with a woman named Sandy. You shared a sunrise at Cedar Lake this morning. Quite touching, I must say. Her boyfriend, Trevor, is not pleased with you. He knows all about it thanks to a phone call this morning. Also this morning, you had breakfast with your mother and the little boy. Your friends Squiggy and Mule dropped by. Now, you are at your desk and wondering how I know this. Am I correct?”

This was bad. Whoever the caller was, he knew everything about me. Where I went and who I was with.

“Yes, what do you want?” I asked.

“Sell the newspaper and leave town. You have no choice. The bank is breathing down your neck and all you want to do is save your mother’s house, right?”

How the heck did he know all this? He knew stuff I had not told anybody.

“I can’t do all that,” I said. “The offer we have to sell the newspaper stipulates that I stay here and run the paper.”

He actually didn’t seem to know that. The man was quiet for a few seconds. “I’ll be in touch.”

The man hung up. I hit the talk button and stared at the phone. This was not good.

I tried to turn my attention to work, but my brain was overloaded. There was the absence of sleep, along with the two conversations this morning. One was telling me I had thirty days or we would lose most of my mother’s assets. The second caller seemed to indicate we would lose more than financial goodies if we didn’t do as he requested.

I got up from the chair and left. I walked around the decaying downtown and tried to come up with some kind of a game plan. Everywhere I turned, there seemed to be a wall blocking my way. I was convinced now that if necessary, I could make this newspaper work, as long as I wasn’t dead, that is.

But now, I wouldn’t have enough time to do it. My cell phone rang. I was tired of bad calls this morning and slowly opened the flipper to see who the caller was. It was my mother, so I felt a little better.

“Michael, can you go by the post office and get the mail,” she requested. I was walking in that direction so it was fine with me. “I’m expecting your father’s death certificate.”

“Okay, I’ll go by and see.”

“If it’s there, please take one by the insurance office.”

“Will do.”

I hung up and continued my walk. I crossed the street and passed in front of The Bank of Langford. It still seemed fairly deserted. There was a rock on the sidewalk that I thought about picking up and throwing through the window. Yes, that would be childish, but satisfying.

I walked the final two blocks and made my way to the post office, an older facility at the edge of downtown. I got my mother’s mail and sat it down on a table to go through it. There was a lot of junk mail, three credit card applications, the envelope with the death certificates along with a letter from the bank dated two days ago.

It had my mother’s name on it, but I opened it anyway.

The letter was from Woodard. The basic gist was the same message he gave me this morning. But it was dated two days ago. Woodard told me they talked about it yesterday and decided to call the note. He sent this letter before the board met, the same day that I got everything current.

This just made me angrier, something I did not need at the moment. There were also at least eight bills in the mail and I wondered how Mom was going to pay them. I left the post office and walked over to the only insurance agent downtown. He was on the phone so I placed the death certificate on his desk.

He cupped the phone and said, “Thanks, we’ll get this taken care of.”

I had no idea what he planned to take care of. There were too many other things to worry about. As I left the office, I started to cross the street and noticed two trucks at the opposite end of the block. There was a person sitting in both of them. Since this street was pretty much vacant, that struck me as odd.

The phone rang again and I opened it up. There was a number on the Caller ID that I didn’t recognize.

“Yeah,” I said. Pretty poor etiquette but I was past the point of caring.

“Mister Hunt!” the caller said. “This is Elliott.”

He didn’t waste any time. I told him that I would let him know later, but I meant in the afternoon.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“The strangest thing just happened,” he said. I doubted it was stranger than some of the things I had been through.

“What’s that?”

“I just got off the phone with a gentleman who wants to buy the Review.’

“Good, did he make an offer?”

“Yes, but again, this was a little different. He asked how much we were wanting. I told him the price and he said that was fine.”

Full price? That wasn’t fine, it was great.

“Good,” I said.

“He wanted to give me a check and get it done.”

“That isn’t how it's done, is it?”

“Not normally,” he said.

“No stipulations or due diligence?”

“No due diligence, only one stipulation.”

I expected nothing but bad news here. “What is it?”

He told me and the bad feeling I had just got worse.

Chapter 55

Chapter 53

2005-08-10T07:02:00.000-05:00

There are moments in every person’s life when everything seems right. It might be fate or just the balls bouncing the right way. For some, it might be a hole-in-one on the golf course.

Others might consider it as when they bought their first home or their dream home. I know that for some people, that moment was when they graduated from high school or college and received their diploma.

For me, it was hearing what Sandy had to say to me on the dock in the early morning. The fatigue was starting to hit in a bad way, but being with her made me feel alive.

“I want to be with you,” she said. These were words I had wanted to hear since I was old enough to know what love meant. I had been through three bad marriages and didn’t consider myself the marrying type anymore. Since the last one went south, I had accepted being single. In fact, I liked the freedom. But I knew life had more to offer than what I was experiencing.

For me to ascend to the highest peak, I needed somebody else. That somebody was Sandy. She could brighten the darkest days and cure any hurt that exists in my heart. If she said “jump”, I would ask “how high?”

That’s why it was so difficult to say what I had to say.

“We can’t do that,” I answered, speaking softly. I looked out over this lake I loved.

There was a silence for a long period. Yes, it was awkward and I knew this hurt her. The one person in my life I never wanted to hurt, had just been hurt.

“I don’t understand,” she said. Neither did I, it was just something that couldn’t happen right now.

I explained everything that was going on, leaving nothing out.

“I can’t risk them hurting you,” I said. “If that happened, I’d never get over it.”

“I’m willing to take my chances,” she said, and I knew that was true. Sandy wasn’t afraid of them. She wouldn’t let them rule her life. I liked her attitude. But she also had not seen two dead bodies over the last few days.

“I can’t,” I said. “I want you more than anything on this planet. You are it for me. But there’s no way I could ever let anything happen to you that was my fault.”

“I never knew you to be scared of anybody, Michael Hunt!”

She was wrong. I was scared of a lot of things. Maybe I just hid it better. If it was just me, then I could handle taking on these bad guys. But I had to worry that every word I wrote or question that I asked somebody might get my mother, M.J. or Sandy hurt or worse.

“You don’t want to mess with these guys,” I said.

“Fine, don’t mess with them!”

“If something isn’t done, they’ll hurt a lot of other people.”

“Mikey, you are running a small-town newspaper. Nobody expects you to be super reporter and cure all the ills of this town. We expect you to write about the football game and a little story about the student of the month. Let the cops worry about stopping whoever is doing all this.”

This was an argument I had used on myself. She had a good point. I should just clean up this mess I was in, sell the newspaper and save my mother’s house, then take Sandy off to wherever life took us.

“You know they could be watching us right now?”

“I don’t care! Wave at them! Offer to take them out for a latte, or whatever. You can’t let them rule your life.”

I didn’t want them to rule my life, either. But I also didn’t want anything bad to happen to her even worse.

“Sandy, I don’t know where I’ll be in two weeks. You’ve always known exactly where you’re going to be and what you’ll be doing.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m tired of living like that. I want to just wing it for a while. I know that if I’m ever going to be really happy, it’ll be with you. Don’t you feel the same way?”

“There’s nothing more that I want.”

“Then don’t let them rule our life. If you want to go after them, do it. I don’t want them to come after me, but if they do, then we’ll fight that battle when it comes. It will be worth it.”

“What if…”

She did not let me finish my question. Sandy put her hand over my mouth.

“Don’t worry about the ‘what if’s’, okay?”

I nodded. She moved closer and leaned her head on my shoulder. I was happy in a way that I haven’t been in many a moon.

We stayed out at the lake a little longer before heading back to town. We both had to go to work and check on our family. When I got home, Mom was a little antsy, worried about her car. She made some breakfast and M.J. appeared in the kitchen, wearing those silly looking pajamas.

He was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His short hair was a mess. M.J. walked over next to my mother and grabbed hold of her leg.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Mom said.

M.J. turned to look at me. I stuck my tongue out at him and smiled. He frowned and edged away. The little guy was hard to figure out. Mom made some eggs, sausage and biscuits. That would be good to hike the old cholesterol up. But I was too hungry to worry about that.

M.J. sat down in Manny’s old seat. Mom was between us. I started to dig in, but she made me wait until after the food was blessed. She prayed, then added some more. Anybody that she knew who had so much as an ingrown toenail was prayed for and mentioned. I was about to point out the food was going to get cold when Mom finally actually blessed the food to our body and said “amen”.

“Amen!” I said and got a bite that would put Squiggy to shame.

Mom had her fork loaded and was about to take her first bite. “Michael Hunt, you shouldn’t take such big bites!”

“I’m making up for lost time!” I replied.

She shook her head and started eating, taking small bites that would keep her at the table much longer than it took me to digest the food. M.J. was playing with his food.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing at the sausage.

“Sausage,” Mom said.

“Where’s it come from?”

“The store,” I said.

M.J. looked at me like I was dumber than Squiggy. I wasn’t aware that five-year old boys could make looks like that.

“I know that! Where does the store get it?”

“A supplier.”

“What’s a supplier? Are they big and mean?”

“I’m sure some of them are.”

“Do they eat people?”

“Only if they’re really hungry.”

“Michael! Don’t do that.”

Yeah, way to go, Mom, I thought. Just when I was having some fun and sharing a chat with the little guy, you step in and end it.

“Sausage comes from pigs,” Mom said. Now I even knew that was a mistake.

“I’m eating Porky the Pig?” M.J. asked. He had a look of horror on his face.

“No, it’s his cousin on the mother’s side,” I said. That just confused the boy even worse.

“Michael, it’s probably good that you don’t have children,” Mom said. I almost dropped my food. That was the meanest thing I’d ever heard my mother say to me. I saw her smiling and realized Mom had thrown out an insult! She was dogging me!

I was about to toss one back her way when the doorbell rang.

“Would you get the door please?” Mom asked, looking at me.

“I’m eating!” I protested.

But I got up and trounced to the door, just like we both knew I would. I had not been this tired in ages. I was running on over a day without sleep. My body was not made for this. I could get by on six or seven hours of sleep in a night, but not go without it.

I looked through the peephole and saw Squiggy and Mule at the front door. They were wearing the same clothes as when they ditched the twins a few hours ago.

“Nobody’s home!” I shouted. Squiggy and Mule looked at each other. I could imagine such high intelligence sorting that information out. If nobody is home, how is somebody talking to us?

Mule actually started walking back toward the truck. Squiggy stood his ground.

“Get back up here!” he hollered. “We’ll wait for em here!”

I opened the door. Squiggy had Psycho on a leash. Mule was standing on the steps with a puzzled look.

“I didn’t think nobody was here,” he said. Mule had obviously not taken advantage of the educational opportunities the Langford Public Schools offered him.

I walked out on the porch. Squiggy perked up and started sniffing the air.

“Is that sausage?” he asked, while continuing to smell.

“Naw, I cut the cheese,” I said.

Squiggy leaned closer, continuing to sniff. “That ain’t no poot!”

“You got anymore of that there cheese?” Mule asked. “I’m kindly hungry!”

Psycho was obviously hot. Her tongue was hanging out and drool was dropping to the ground.

“Is she thirsty?” I asked.

Squiggy leaned down and petted his dog. “Naw, I just gave her a beer. She’s just hot.”

“What are you guys doing here?”

“We came by to check on you,” Mule said.

“Yeah, you weren’t at work!” Squiggy said. It was almost like he was shaming me. This from a person who shunned work like it was the plague.

“I’m going in later.”

“Little late, don’t you think?” Squiggy offered.

“Yeah,” Mule added. That was one of the most intelligent things I had ever heard Mule say.

“I was up all night.”

“So was we,” Squiggy added. “We’s kinda getting goofy.”

I wasn’t aware that it took sleep deprivation to put them in that condition.

Mule looked like he was falling asleep while standing up.

“I thought you were supposed to go to work today?” I asked.

Mule ducked his head. “I did.”

“Short day? Not many septic tanks to empty?”

“He got fired,” Squiggy said.

“Already?” I asked. That had to be some kind of a record.

“You didn’t have to tell him that!” Mule hollered.

“What happened?”

“She kept coming on to me,” he said.

“And that bothered you?”

“I’d sobered up and saw how ugly she was.”

“He didn’t want to be viewed as a sexual object,” Squiggy added.

“You didn’t?”

“Not by her,” Mule said.

I nodded. I wanted to ask Squiggy why he wasn’t working. He had some kind of flexibly work schedule that seemed to be that Squiggy only worked when he wanted to work.

The door opened and shut behind me. I turned around and saw M.J. standing in the door, staring at Psycho, who was staring back, still drooling.

“Puppy!” M.J. said and walked toward the dog with his arms outstretched.

“I don’t know if I’d do that,” Squiggy said.

“M.J.!” I said. He didn’t listen, of course.

The little boy walked up to the crazy dog and put his arms around her. She sat there for a minute, glaring at him. Psycho was not used to anybody but Squiggy loving on her. That is scary, by the way.

“I hope she don’t bite him,” Mule mentioned. Man, he was at the top of his game today.

“I don’t think she will,” Squiggy said. He almost looked hurt. “I think she likes it!”

With that, Psycho pulled her head up and licked M.J. in his face. Her tongue was big enough that one swipe left drool over ninety percent of his face. The second lick and the boy had dog slobber all over his head.

“Ugh,” Mule said.

“That oughta clean him up,” Squiggy said.

“Michael!” came a voice from behind me. I figured out Mom had just watched this and was not pleased to see Psycho licking on poor little M.J. Not that the boy cared. He was smiling like I had never seen him.

“What’s the puppy’s name?” M.J. asked.

“It’s Psycho,” Squiggy said. “Ain’t no puppy!”

M.J. ran off the porch, patting his leg. “Come here, boy!”

“She ain’t no boy!”

“Psycho’s a girl?” Mule asked. He leaned down and started looking at her. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, stupid, she ain’t got no…”

“Squiggy!” Mom put an end to that explanation.

Psycho looked up at Squiggy for a second, then pulled the leash out of his hand.

“Hey!” he hollered, not that it did any good.

Psycho was off into the front yard in pursuit of M.J. We watched them run and chase each other for a few minutes.

“The boy’s head could just about fit in her mouth,” Mule observed.

We all turned and stared at him. That wasn’t something we wanted to hear.

“So could your…” Squiggy tried to say.

“Don’t even think about going there,” Mom said.

The phone rang. Mom looked at me and I looked back. She took off like it was a race. I didn’t care if she wanted to answer the phone. I’d just as soon not talk on the phone.

We watched the boy and M.J. play. It almost looked natural, other than the fact the dog was a pit bull. M.J. tried to tackle the dog, but Psycho did not budge. Finally, she must have decided it would be fun and let the boy take her down.

Mom emerged from the house carrying the cordless phone. “Here, it’s for you.” She almost looked disappointed.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Elliot Lancaster,” she said.

That name was familiar, but it took a few seconds to recall it. He was the broker trying to sell the paper.

We exchanged greetings and pleasantries, before getting down to business.

“I’ve got some great news!” he said. I wondered if his clothes were already wrinkled.

“I could use some good news,” I replied. “What’s up?”

“I do believe we might’ve hooked a big one.”

“What do you mean?” I didn’t know we were going fishing.

“I, uh, think we might have a buyer.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I don’t joke when it comes to selling newspapers!” he said, then laughed. I failed to see any humor in it.

“Have you got an offer?”

“Yes, I do!”

"Isn't that pretty quick?"

"Hey, are you complaining?"

"No, I'm just surprised," I said.

"Right now, it's a buyer's market."

There remained one major question that needed to be asked. "How much?”

He told me a price that was twenty-five thousand less than I asked for, and twenty-five thousand more than I expected.

“That’s not bad,” I said.

He chuckled. Apparently Elliot thought he had just performed the sale of the century.

“Who’s the buyer?”

“Oh, I can’t disclose that!”

How silly of me to ask that question! I didn’t see anything wrong. It wasn’t like I was going to cut out the middleman.

“Is it a chain or an individual?” I asked. I hoped it was an individual. My father hated the newspaper chains and if we sold out to one of them, he would be rolling over in his grave. I felt about the same way. A chain would come in, hire the cheapest help they could and take the money and run.

“The prospective buyer is a corporation with a chain of newspapers throughout the state!”

“Oh.”

“Is that a problem?”

“I don’t guess so.”

He was quiet for a second before continuing. “There are a couple of stipulations, of course.”

Of course! It couldn’t just go through easy, that would be asking too much. “What are they?”

“Oh, it’s nothing unrealistic,” he said. “First off, they want to send a representative to see the building and the town. Then, they will do the due diligence to make sure the income and expense report is accurate.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, there is one other thing.”

“What is that one other thing?” I asked.

He told me and I felt my shoulders sag.

Chapter 54

Chapter 52

2005-08-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

The old man was organized in a way I could never touch. He always kept everything right where it should be. His bills would be in one area, the newspaper files in another and never should two things meet that shouldn’t.

You could ask him about something that happened five years ago. He would retreat back to his files and return within minutes with the requested information. I don’t know how my father was so organized. He did so well on everything that required organization other than his finances.

After everybody finally left, it was time to search my father’s files. There were at least five filing cabinets filled to capacity. There was no rhyme or reason to his filing. It was a design of his own that worked well for him. It would take hours to search through it. Much of the stuff should have been purged long ago, but that wasn’t how my father was.

I got something to drink and retreated back to the file room. It was in the building next to the Review, a small room where my father kept the files and back copies of the newspaper, along with a little bit of everything else. There was a room in the back where he kept a bunch of stuff that needed to be thrown away, but my father could never part with.

The air conditioning did not work well in this building, so I needed to get the files and take them into the Review. I grabbed a file and looked around, just seeing if anything caught my eye. I went through the other office and into the large storage room.

It was hard to navigate through all the junk, but I managed to scope everything out. Nothing seemed out of place until I got to the far corner. There was a filing cabinet I had never seen before. It was old and looked like it had been in this location for some time, but it was something I missed in my few visits to the Review over the years.

I opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet. It was filled with folders also. I set down the folder from the other files and started to open this one.

The phone rang. I had to put down both files and run off in search of the phone. I was out of breath and barely got out a greeting.

“Michael, are you at the bar?” she asked.

“No, Mom,” I said. “I’m at the office.”

“When are you going to sleep?”

“I don’t know. Right now, I couldn’t sleep if I had to.”

“I have some pills for that,” she offered. What a sweet woman, offering prescription medicine to her son.

“No thanks, Mom. I’m checking out a few things.”

“Well, okay. Are you hungry?”

Not after seeing a dead person in our parking lot. That kind of killed any urge to eat for a while.

“No, Mom, I’m fine.”

“Okay, but if you get hungry, call me and I’ll make you something…Oh yeah, please don’t scratch my car.”

“I’ll try not to.”

We said our farewells and I went back to get the files. On the way back, I stopped and grabbed a copy of each paper over the last two months. There might be a clue tucked away in there.

Over the next hour or so, I read all the papers, but really didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. There were plenty of stories about Cousin It visiting relatives or the Addams family welcoming long-lost cousins for a weekend of merriment, but nothing that seemed to shout out my father’s suspicions.

Dad was a decent writer. Grammar was perfect and everything was spelled right. He did do some things right. But he also had a few failures. After deer or turkey season, he always used the headline “Deer kills 100 in county”. It was a standing joke. Maybe that was why he kept doing it. The deer and turkey had murdered a fair number of our citizens over the year.

His writing was not all that exciting. His stories were usually bland and would lose interest after the first couple of paragraphs.

Finding nothing in the papers, I grabbed the first file. It was filled with information on city government. Topics ranged from city managers to woes in the water department. This file did not help at all.

I turned my attention to the file from the back. I opened it. There were copies of a bunch of stories that were familiar. They should be, I guess, since they were ones that I wrote. Dad apparently cut out all my stories, made copies and kept them in a folder. But before he put them up, he would pull out the red marker I used to hate and make little comments on the stories.

There were comments over sentence structure, word usage and other items. Near the headline, my father would write his thoughts. The first story said “Interesting story!” It shouldn’t do it, but it made me feel better.

The second story’s comment was “Really good stuff!” It was followed by “Great writing!” All the stories in the file had comments like this. He pointed out a few errors, but it was mostly compliments.

I always thought he did not appreciate my writing. My father had never said one word in praise, only complaints. If there was a word misspelled in a story, he caught it and pounded me with it. But he never relayed any of these compliments to me.

It tore me up. I would have liked to hear him actually say some of this to me, but it made me feel good to find out after all of these years that something I did actually pleased the old man.

I should have been looking for clues, but I had to see what my father wrote on the stories. They went back to when I first joined the newspaper, so many years ago. The filing cabinet was filled with them. I couldn’t remember any stories that he did not have a copy of, complete with his comments. He filled one file and started another. They were in perfect order, from the first to the last.

Some of the comments were not as flattering in the old stuff, but I wasn’t as good of a writer back then. I was big on adjectives back then. Since then, I have toned it down a bit and realized the writing was much better.

I was so into reading this that I never heard the backdoor open or the footsteps from behind me. The first indication that somebody was there was when I felt the hand on my shoulder. I set the folder down and jerked around, expecting the worse.

Instead, it was Sandy standing behind me with her hand on my shoulder. Her hair was messed up and she had obviously been crying. From the bags under her eyes, I realized she had not gotten much sleep either.

She had on a green Old Navy tee-shirt and grey shorts. I had never seen her so torn up.

I got up and offered her the chair. She shook her head. Sandy was always good at hiding her emotions, until now. She sat down on the edge of the desk and I got back in the chair.

“Are you okay?” I asked. She nodded in the affirmative, but the tears and her condition told a different story.

I put my hand on her hand and lightly squeezed it. There had to be something I could do to take her pain away. I wished there was some way you could transfer her pain to me, like you could money in a wire transfer from one person to another.

She was sniffling and crying. I grabbed some tissues and handed them to her. Sandy packed them together and blew her nose. It sounded like elephants had invaded the Review office.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. She shook her head back and forth. This wasn’t going to work in here. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Sandy nodded and got off the desk. I got up and put my arm around her and pulled her close as we walked toward the back door. Just as we arrived at the exit, the door opened and Nancy came bounding in, smiling and humming a tune.

She saw us and skidded to a stop. Her humming died and the smile disappeared. I couldn’t be positive, but could almost swear that her hair almost settled.

I thought Nancy was going to start crying. This could not look good. She would think that I did something to hurt Sandy and make her cry.

“What happened?” Nancy said. She was looking at me in a different way. Gone was the admiration, replaced by a fear. “Why did you hurt her?”

“I didn’t hurt her,” I fired back. “She came in like this.”

Nancy looked at Sandy for confirmation. “Mikey didn’t do anything.”

I could see Nancy’s relief. That just wouldn’t work if the guy she had a crush on was hurting women. Some women seemed to go for guys like that, which never made any sense to me, but I didn’t think that was something Nancy would like.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” I said.

Nancy stepped aside. As we walked by, she rubbed Sandy’s shoulder.

“Take as much time as you need,” she said. I would usually make some comment about thanking her for that, but didn’t feel up to it right now.

We walked out in the parking lot. There were four vehicles. My truck with the flat tires, my mother’s car, Nancy’s ride and Sandy’s car were parked side by side.

I knew my mother would have a cow if I took her car out riding around. My truck was out of commission so we needed to go in her car.

“Can we take your car?” I asked. She nodded and handed me the keys that were in her hand.

We got in and I started up the car. “Aren’t you going to buckle up?” she asked.

“No, I always figured that if I’m dumb enough to not buckle up, it’s my choice. When God decides to punch your ticket, it won't matter if you have your seatbelt on or not.”

“Please buckle your seatbelt.”

I did, of course and we took off. I drove to the convenience store. My stomach was protesting now and needed nourishment.

“Do you want something?” I asked.

“Coffee,” she answered.

I hit the store and got some food and a drink for me. She got the biggest coffee cup in the place. I paid and walked outside. We are fortunate in Langford to actually be able to understand what the clerks say, unlike Tulsa. It was still dark, but the first hint of sunlight was showing in the distance, from behind Poteau Mountain. On the highway, there were only a few vehicles coming and going.

We drove south. As we got out of town, I saw the sign warning everybody to look out for falling rock in the gap the highway department made through a hill. It was kind of interesting to drive through this in the winter as there were usually some huge ice cycles hanging down from the rocks.

I rolled my window down and hung my head out the window.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Looking out for falling rocks.”

She smiled and it made my heart beat faster. I drove by where the woman hit the deer last night and the truck almost ran me over. The skid marks were still there. I remember the exact spot where Orville and I talked. There is some kind of swamp off to the side of the road, an area nobody with any sense would ever enter.

We drove slowly through Hodgen. It was barely big enough to have a store and a post office. The school is off to the left, a few small buildings that host children from kindergarten through the eighth grade. I sped up and took the big curve going a little fast. Sandy grabs hold of the door.

It’s an old habit of mine, seeing how fast I can take this curve. We survive and roll on down the highway. We haven’t discussed it, but both of us know where we are going. It is Cedar Lake, the same place where we had that one night of glory so long ago.

Holsun Valley Road is empty. Just a few years ago, the road was in terrible shape thanks to all the logging trucks. But it has been restored and the drive is smooth. Behind us, the sun is starting to light our world. It is overcast and the skies look threatening. We could use the rain after a dry summer, but I hope it waits until later.

I turn right at the entrance to Cedar Lake. We maneuver through the winding roads, past the closed store and the land that people are paying too much money to buy. I drive past the first entrance and stay the course. I pass the pay area and continue to the stop sign. There is a right turn that goes to the boat ramp where Beef Critter’s body washed up. I drive straight and park next to the big building that hosts the restrooms. There is a big pavilion to the left.

We get out of her car. She has stopped crying, but is still upset. Sandy carries her coffee. I wait for her on the rock sidewalk. I put my hand on her back as we slowly descend the path. The lake is beautiful this morning. Pines hide the sun, except on the far side of the lake. The water is still. I hear the call of some birds, mixed in with the grasshoppers, crickets and frogs.

A heron soars over our head. It looks like something prehistoric. Sandy puts her hand on my arm for support while she takes off her shoes. She walks over to the edge of the dock and sits down. Slowly, she slides her feet into the water, testing the temperature. I sit down next to her and take my shoes and socks off.

“Your feet smell,” she says. I had already realized this, thank you very much. It was a smell that should come from somebody like Squiggy, not me. I do shower daily. I set my shoes and socks downwind and roll my pants legs up. "I'd hate to put clean feet in this old lake." I murmer.

I test the water first with my big toe on the right foot. It is cool, but not cold. Slowly, the foot descends in the water. I add the second foot and wiggle my toes. It feels good on the old dogs. Sandy is swinging her feet back and forth in the water and I join in.

A fish hits the surface, breaking the stillness of the water. Two ducks emerge on the left, swimming to wherever ducks go. I look up and see a hole in the clouds that show a few stars still shining. It’s been a long time since I took the time to admire a star. I lie down on the dock and look into the sky. Sandy follows my lead. We lay next to each other, admiring the view.

I wait for her to talk. She will when the time is right. I’m in no rush to go anywhere. My world is falling apart, but everything seems okay right now.

“I caught Trevor with Brooke Cartman,” she said. I don’t know this Brooke Cartman, but do not care for her since she played a part in hurting Sandy. “I had suspected something was going on, but never knew for sure. I set the alarm for early this morning and went to Trevor’s trailer.”

“Trevor lives in a trailer?” I asked. That seemed somewhat appropriate. He was trailer trash, as far as I was concerned.

“Yeah, in that park on the west side of town. The one with the sign tilted over and falling down. It's owned by the guy they call Slick at the branch bank. You know, you'd think a banker could afford to pay some handyman to fix and re-paint that sign.”

I had no clue where she was talking about. My visits to trailer parks are few and far between. I guessed Slick had better things to do with his money than spend it on a sign.

“They were trying to be sneaky,” she continued. “Her car was parked up the road. I found it and knew for sure what was going on. He didn’t bother to lock the door so I walked in and found them in bed together, her on top. They didn't even know I was there.”

“I’m sorry, Sandy,” I said.

“You don’t have anything to feel sorry about. I go into the bathroom. He has a big bucket that he throws his dirty clothes in. I empty the clothes on the floor and fill the bucket with water. I carry it back in the bedroom and throw it on them.”

That was something I would like to see. “What happened?”

“Brooke started screaming,” she said. “Trevor started hollering at her, telling her to get out of his bed. Trevor acted like he didn’t know she was in bed with him. Since neither one of them had any clothes on, I was pretty sure they were aware of each other’s presence. I start toward Brooke and she bails. She jumps out of the bed and runs down the hall and out the door.”

“Naked?”

“As the day she was born. But it gets better. There are about ten Mexicans standing around outside next door. They were drinking beer and playing their music. She runs right into them. I looked out the window and saw her pale rear running down the road and all the Mexican guys whooping and hollering.”

“What did Trevor do?”

“He tried to convince me that she snuck in or something like that. I didn’t buy it and told him so. I told him that I never wanted to see him again. He said that I couldn’t break up with him, that women didn’t break up with him. Trevor had a different look on his face when he got out of the bed. He walked over to me and glared at me. I guess he was trying to intimidate me or something."

“I stared right back at him until he blinked and lowered his head. That was when he grabbed me and threw me against the wall.”

I jerked upright. Trevor had crossed the line right there. He could strut around town and pull his little act on everybody and get by with it. But when he gets physical with Sandy, I would make him pay.

She was still lying down and looking at me. “He raised his hand like he was going to hit me. I told him to go ahead, that I would tear him and his little thing apart.”

“Little thing?” Aha, just as I expected!

“Never mind.”

“What did he do then?”

“He lowered his hand and started apologizing. I told him it was too late to apologize. He kept asking for a second chance and I told him we were over.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

She smiled and put her hand on mine. “Seeing him like that wasn’t what had me so upset. I was mad, but it was more at myself, than him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realized that he wasn’t to blame. It was my fault that I hooked up with somebody like that. Trevor isn’t what I want. I guess he was just there and something I settled on.”

Instinctivly, my gut started knotting up.

A breeze was starting to blow, breaking up the stillness of the lake. Tiny waves were forming and crashing into the dock and rocks. I loved this sound.

I turned to look at Sandy and summed up my courage. “What do you want?”

She looked me in the eyes and smiled. Then, she told me.

Chapter 53

Chapter 51

2005-08-08T06:40:00.000-05:00

This was enough. I had filled my quota of crap for one day and could not take any more. If it wasn’t for my mother, I’d be packing my things in the old Ranger and heading back to Tulsa.

I actually didn’t have a job and the Review was draining my funds faster than a divorce judge, but this was more than I bargained for.

It was bad enough getting shot at, having M.J. kidnapped and them threatening to slice my mother, but after seeing this, I knew there were two choices: either throw in the towel or come out swinging.

The man’s white truck was parked close to my Ranger. It shouldn’t be here. I remembered thinking that the man must have some more information to pass on. But when I saw the door cracked open, it hit me that something was wrong.

I didn’t want to open the door. It was almost like watching a horror movie and wanting to hide your eyes, but keeping them open anyway. As I opened the door, the man was staring toward me. Those eyes that were so intimidating earlier no longer had the same effect.

The man’s mouth was open, but would never pass along any more information. His white shirt was now a deep crimson color in the front. I could handle all this. But when I saw the knife sticking out of his neck, well, that was too much.

I started backing up, tripped and fell. As soon as I hit, I continued scooting back, screaming loud enough to wake the whole town. I didn’t stop until my back hit the side of my truck. The man’s lifeless eyes never left me. The bad guys obviously didn’t want him telling me anything else, that’s for sure.

My cell phone was missing in action so I got up and ran into the Review building to call the authorities. I turned on every light in the place and locked the door. The front door was now a piece of plywood. It made me feel like a hurricane was coming. Actually, I decided a hurricane had already hit my once peaceful life.

I called 911, the local police and Nancy. The sirens started coming my way again. This time, there was no joy. Yes, this would all sell newspapers, but it wasn’t worth it if people were dying.

People did not die like this in Langford. They might have wrecks and illnesses, but seldom do people find their life ended with a bullet to the head or a knife to the throat.

Chief Arnold was the first to arrive. He looked terrible. Our chief had obviously been in bed when the call came, but you had to give him credit, he beat all the officers on duty. He was wearing a white tee-shirt that looked like moths had attacked. His right nipple peeked through one of the holes.

His jeans were too small, barely reaching his hips. The chief’s belly prevented the pants from coming any closer to his head. The aforementioned belly was testing the strength of the fabrics in the tee-shirt. He had grabbed his gun and was waving it around while approaching me. Chief Arnold had failed to put on a hat and was suffering a serious case of bed head.

He had parked his car next to my mother’s. I walked out to meet him in the parking lot. Chief Arnold was staring at my mother’s car.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing, I just like that car!” he said. “Is that your mother’s car?”

I nodded and started walking toward the truck. He failed to follow.

“I’ve always wanted a car like that. How’s the ride?”

“Fairly smooth, I guess. Shouldn’t you be checking out the guy in the truck?”

“Why? He ain’t goin nowhere!” The chief laughed after saying that. It was true, the man wasn’t going anywhere. But I failed to find any humor in the situation.

I had watched enough television to know you didn’t do anything around a crime scene that could damage any evidence, so I stood way away. Plus, if I stood over here, the man’s eyes weren’t on me.

Nancy was the next person to arrive. She parked down the alley and emerged, looking none the worse for wear. Even in the middle of the night, her hair stood high and proud. You could tell she was tired, but not her hair! She was wearing some frilly white shirt, jeans that were a little on the tight side and tennis shoes. I watched her start running toward me with a little unease. About halfway to me, she spread out her arms, like she was coming to hold me.

“Ugh,” I said, right before she tripped over a rock. Her landing zone was a mud puddle approximately the size of my truck. Nancy fell in slow motion, her arms waving like she was trying to take flight. A person cannot take flight without the aid of a pilot, however, and she fell right in the puddle.

“Tee hee!” Chief Arnold laughed. He cut it short after I gave him a dirty look.

Nancy had dressed like she was going on a date. I had no idea how she could get ready so quick. I figured her hair took at least an hour.

The other police officer on duty arrived and had to slam on his brakes to avoid running over Nancy in the mud puddle. I walked to the edge of the puddle and held out my hand to help her. She either looked like a crying fit was in order or a breakdown.

She was on her knees, looking up at me like a young child does to their parent after falling and skinning their knee.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I fell in the mud puddle!” she told me. Oh really? Is that why you’re on your knees in the middle of a mud puddle, covered with mud and water?

“Here, let me help.”

Instead of taking my hand, she reached up to feel her head.

“How’s my hair?” she asked.

“It’s fine. Not one out of place.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. Everything could be in total chaos, but as long as Nancy felt good about her hair, life was okay.

Chief Arnold and his officer were both admiring my mother’s car. The dead body was garnering less attention than the boat of a car that my mother drives. I helped Nancy out of the puddle and we walked over next to where our authorities were visiting.

“I bet you could stash about ten Hispanics in there,” the officer mentioned.

“Yep, and never even use the trunk,” Chief Arnold added.

“Aren’t you guys going to check on the dead guy?” I asked.

“We’ll get to it. No rush, right?”

“What are you waiting on?”

“I just ate,” Chief Arnold added. “I don’t wanna lose it.”

Some cars were starting to drive by again. But it failed to excite me. The sheriff showed up, looking the same as he had earlier in the evening. He pulled in behind the dead guy’s truck and got out of his car.

I walked over to meet him. Surely, he had more interest in a dead person than the chief did.

“Who’s car?” he asked.

“It’s my mother’s.”

“Nice!” The sheriff was walking toward the truck, at least. I didn’t mind the compliments, just as long as they did their duty.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I added. “Chief Arnold wasn’t very interested in inspecting the crime scene.”

“He doesn’t like to see dead bodies.”

Neither did I. The sheriff snapped on some gloves as he arrived at the truck. He opened the door and started looking around. The sheriff was smart enough not to touch anything. I told him everything that had happened since we last met, including the part about the people killing my father and almost running me over.

The sheriff wouldn’t comment. It was like we were talking about the weather instead of dead bodies and threats.

“Did he give you any names?” the sheriff asked.

“No, he wouldn’t even tell me his name.”

“His name is Orville Lane.”

The name meant nothing to me. The sheriff told me what he knew about the dead guy. Orville owned a large spread out near the Big Creek community. He was retired military and now spent his time buying and selling cattle, along with snooping in other people’s business.

“He called me all the time to tell me about some conspiracy theory,” the sheriff said. “Orville’s elevator couldn’t quite make it all the way to the top floor.”

That would explain a lot of things, if Orville was relaying his thoughts and suspicions instead of the facts. But the man I talked with earlier did not seem like the same one the sheriff described.

Nancy was following me around like a lost puppy. Everywhere I went, she was there. It was almost like I had told her to heel and she obeyed. The evening was a little cool and the water from the mud puddle only made it worse. It was fairly obvious that Nancy either failed to wear a bra or had a thin one on.

“Please go inside and make some coffee,” I said. She was distracting all the law enforcement of LeFlore County.

After she went inside, Chief Arnold came over.

“Didja see them bullets!” he stated. “Looked like .38’s!”

I ignored him, as much as possible.

“Say, you hitting that?” Chief Arnold asked. “From what I understand, that’s some Grade A material!”

“No, I’m not,” I fired back. This was the guy who was supposed to protect us?

“Man, if I were you, I’d be crawling all over that!”

“Yeah, and if I were you, I’d be over at the crime scene.”

He grumbled something and walked away. It was obvious the police chief would rather talk about Nancy instead of the dead guy.

After a few minutes, Nancy returned, carrying a cup of coffee. She had put on a jacket before coming back outside. You could see the disappointment from all the guys. Chief Arnold actually shook his head.

“How come they look disappointed?” Nancy asked.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?”

“Okay!” She started to walk away.

“I was kidding.”

“Oh really? I must have missed the humor?”

Yeah, so did I. She stood beside me the whole time, offering to get this or do this every couple of minutes. Nancy had obviously never been married.

She kept edging closer every time I looked away. I would wait a minute and slide over. She about had me cornered against the building when Chili Dog’s truck came barreling down the alley, scattering all the cops.

This was not a good time for Squiggy and Mule. There were cops everywhere and I had a pretty good idea they were probably on the verge of passing out. They climbed out of the truck and started staggering toward me. Trailing behind them were two of the ugliest creatures I have ever seen. They were bad enough that you could have a horror movie and just show them and it would have people screaming.

They were both smoking cigarettes. I wasn’t positive, but it looked like personal hygiene was not something they spent a lot of time worrying about.

“Y’all havin a party and not invite the Squigster?” Squiggy hollered. A television crew out of Fort Smith had arrived and was filming Squiggy. The law enforcement guys were not happy like they were prior to Nancy putting on a jacket.

Mule walked over and leaned against the wall. He had some serious drool problems. Mule saw Nancy and moved closer to her.

“Yer purdy!” he said.

Nancy was embarrassed. She ducked her head, but I could see the smile. “Thank you.”

Mule held out his huge hand to shake. “I’m Mule!”

“I know who you are.”

Squiggy and Mule’s dates arrived.

“Is that a stiffy?” the brunette asked. I realized they were twins with some disgust.

“Who has a stiffy?” the blonde asked. She almost acted frantic. They had different hair colors and clothing, but otherwise, they were identically ugly.

The brunette shoved her sister. “Not that kind. There’s a dead guy!”

“Oh,” the other one said, looking almost as disappointed as the cops were after Nancy covered herself up. She saw me and brightened up. “What’s your name?”

“J. Edgar Hoover,” I said. The two girls nodded. Squiggy and Mule were a little confused.

“I thought it was Mike Hunt?” Mule asked. Squiggy nodded in agreement.

“You have a what?” the blonde asked.

Nancy got closer. It was almost like she was afraid the ugly chicks were going to make a move on me. The twins realized that I wasn’t interested. If they were offended, they didn’t show it. I figured they were used to it by now.

“Ain’t yer name Nancy?” Mule asked.

Nancy nodded and was almost climbing on my back.

“Ya know why dey call me de ‘Mule’?”

“I’ve heard,” Nancy said.

“Why?” the blonde asked. She perked up right quickly.

“Yeah, why?” the other asked.

Mule ignored them, which I was thankful to see. Squiggy whispered something in the brunette’s ear.

“Wow!” she said. “This must be our lucky night. I guess both of you are that way!”

“Naw, Squiggy’s wearin a sock,” Mule said, before he could catch himself. He realized what had just left his lips and slowly turned to see Squiggy’s reaction.

Squiggy was furious. How dare his friend reveal that information!

“That just ain’t right!” the blonde stated. Both the girls moved closer to Mule.

“You need help!” the brunette added.

Squiggy actually looked a little hurt.

“Yeah, and youse chicks are uglier’n my dog’s rear,” he said.

Chief Arnold walked over to say hello. As he approached, I saw Squiggy start to smile.

“Hey, Chief,” Squiggy said. “You know what’s worse’n a hurrycane?”

Chief Arnold pondered the question for a few seconds. “A typhoon?”

“Naw, it’s a titty twister!” he grabbed the police chief’s exposed nipple and gave it a good yank. Chief Arnold yelped like a dog.

“Quit it, Squiggy!” he hollered. “I have sensitive nipples!”

I started sneaking away, as did Nancy. She was so close I couldn’t move without bumping into her. Squiggy finally let go of Chief Arnold, who was now doubled over in pain. The two chicks were rolling them a smoke out of a can of Bugler. I started walking around, trying to get some room between myself and Nancy.

“You’re kinda hyper!” Nancy said. “I like that in a man!”

If she heard my groan, Nancy did not reveal it. The crime scene started to disperse. They hauled the body and the truck off. The police and county guys filtered out, leaving just the six of us.

“Bout time!” Squiggy said. He was standing off by himself. The twins were trying to interest Mule in them. He appeared to be sobering up. “Anybody got beer?”

Nobody had beer! Squiggy looked devastated.

I walked over to Squiggy and gave him some money. He brightened up for a minute.

“Why are you with them, Squiggy?” I asked.

“Dey kept buyin us beer!”

“Hey, you got a toilet?” the blonde asked.

“Yes, I do.”

They staggered them for a second.

“Can we use it?”

Nancy looked as horrified as I felt. Who knows what they were carrying?

“It’s inside,” I said. After they walked off, I turned to Nancy. “Remind me to disinfect the bathroom in the morning.”

She smiled and nodded. “Look!”

I turned and saw Mule and Squiggy climbing in the truck and watched them drive off. Somehow, I didn’t expect them to be back. The twins came back outside a few minutes later. It looked like they had worked on their hair, not that it helped their appearance.

“Where’d they go?” the blonde asked.

“I think they left,” I said.

“Dem pigs!” her sister said.

They started walking away. The blonde stopped and turned around.

“You need to call a plumber,” she said. “I couldn’t get it to flush down the stool.”

Nancy was yawning every few seconds. She seemed to realize this was not a good time. I looked at my watch and saw it was almost four in the morning.

“You better get home and get some sleep,” I said.

“I can stay with you,” she offered.

“Naw, go home and get some sleep.”

She nodded and smiled. Nancy leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“You’re a nice guy, Michael Hunt,” she said and started walking toward her car.

“Thank you.”

She nodded and drove off, leaving me alone. I had not slept in almost twenty four hours, but did not care. It was time to break out the old shovel and do a little digging. My father had found something out about these guys and I was determined to find it.

The bad guys seemed to have plenty of weapons. Now, it was time to find something I could use to fight back with, knowing that might be the only thing that would get me out of here alive.

Chapter 52

Chapter 50

2005-08-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

As the clouds dissolved, the full moon that had been hiding all night broke through and shined brightly. Thanks to the moon and the interior lights, I could make out the man’s face, but did not recognize him.

As Squiggy and Mule argued about the best way to gut a deer, I walked toward the truck. It was a truck I could never afford or want. This bad boy cost more than I made in a year. The walk across the two-lane road never seemed to take too long.

I was scared of this man. I’m not afraid to admit it. Something told me that the next few minutes would play a large part in the future of one Michael Hunt.

The little boy was still screaming and hollering. He was convinced the two mean men were going to eat Bambi. The mother tried to tell him otherwise. That was a lie, of course. Everybody knew it, even the little boy. At least it would keep them from poaching a deer tonight.

Perhaps the little boy would rather the deer stay in the ditch and be food for the coyotes and crow. I know how much I enjoy driving down the road and seeing a crow pull a chunk of meat off something dead.

The man was looking at me. I could see his eyes glaring at me through little slits. He was wearing a cowboy hat that looked like it had never been sweated in. This was also not a cheap one, like the one Chili Dog wore. I saw that he had a thin beard, also grey, the kind that always struck me as more trouble than it was worth.

His nose jutted out and had a bump on the top, almost between his eyes. The man’s mouth was smaller than it should be. As I approached the truck, his eyes glared a hole through my presence. Through the years, I have met people who had done some bad things, but they didn’t scare me like this man did.

I finally arrived at his truck and placed my hands on the door. His shirt was white, pressed so hard that no wrinkles would dare show up. He had on a pair of jeans that were professionally pressed, also. The interior of the truck had all the bells and whistles. I saw a CB radio, cell phone that was hooked up to a holder and a little box up near the roof that showed the temperature and direction the vehicle was headed.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“A lot better than it is for you,” he answered. His voice had a hard edge to it. It looked like he had never smiled.

“What do you want?”

“Get in.”

I didn’t think that was a very good idea. I turned around to see if Squiggy and Mule were paying attention, but they were focused in on the little deer.

“Go ahead,” he added.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.

“I think it would be the best move you’ve made in a long time, a lot smarter than coming back here.”

“Before I get in, what’s your name?”

“My name’s not important.”

“Then getting in your truck isn’t all that important.”

The man glared at me. I averted his eyes. He could really intimidate a person staring at them.

“Do you think staying alive is important?” he asked. I nodded. That was a stupid question. It sure beat the alternative. “Then get in.”

“How do I know you aren’t going to hurt me?” Okay, that made me sound like a wuss. I know it and was positive he knew that. But I didn’t care. I needed some kind of assurance before I got in his truck.

“If I wanted you hurt, you’d already be hurt.”

That sounded like a true statement to me. I walked around his truck and paused before opening the door, wondering if this might be one of those things that you did and later regretted. That’s assuming, of course, that I had the chance to regret it later.

I looked over at Squiggy and Mule. They both had their pocketknives out and were comparing them to each other. I actually missed them. Yes, that’s sad. I know it. He leaned over and opened the door.

“Get in!” he commanded. “We don’t have all day.”

I climbed into the truck. The truck had the new smell to it they always have for the first few months. It was practically freezing inside and I shuddered. He had a country station playing lightly on his radio. He rolled his window up and turned the air conditioning down.

“Little nippy, eh?” he asked.

I nodded, wondering where this was going. The man was average sized. But just the way he looked at a person told them that he was not a person to be messed with. In the wildlife, a rattlesnake wiggles its tail to try and scare off enemies. This man could use his eyes.

“Why are you shooting at me?” I asked.

The man turned to look down the road. Only a few cars were coming and going. He seemed to consider the question way too long.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said.

I wasn’t aware I had barked. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t shoot at you, cut your tires or take the boy,” he said.

“Who did?”

He held up his hand. I could see the hardness of the hand along with the calluses. The man might drive a fancy truck now, but he was a hard man.

“A bunch of guys you need to watch out for. They don’t mess around.”

“What did I do to make them mad?”

He considered the question again for several seconds before responding. “You didn’t start it, your father did.”

“Start what?”

“They don’t like publicity. Your dad started checking out some things. They sent little messages to him to look the other way, but he wouldn’t.”

“What was he checking into?”

“These people are doing some bad things. There’s some stuff you can find if you dig deep enough. A lot of the stuff is buried and hidden so deep that you don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I do want to know.”

“Take my word for it, you need to let sleeping dogs lay. You need to just do what you came down here to take care of. Be a good little reporter and write about the boring stuff, the football games and the social crap. Sell the paper, save your mother’s house, then go back to Tulsa.”

“You know a lot.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“So, you aren’t with them?”

“I wouldn’t be here with you if I was.”

This was getting too crazy. I had my own deepthroat! Not in a sexual way, but in a Watergate kind of way.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Like I already told you, they’re people you don’t want to know.”

“I’d kind of like to know who I’m dealing with.”

“Do you want to end up like your father?”

I paused for a second. Something wasn’t right with the way he said that. “What do you mean?”

“Your father didn’t die from natural causes.”

I gripped the door handle, squeezing with all my might. There was no way that could be true. The doctors and nurses were with him. If something like that had happened, they would have figured it out.

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. I have nothing to gain from it.”

“You’re telling me these guys helped kill my father?”

“They didn’t help. They did it.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re just as crazy as all the other people around here!”

“Believe what you want to believe.”

I had angered him. That was fine, he did the same to me. There was no way somebody killed my father. He was old and sick. But he did get me thinking. My father did seem fine when we were talking, then just a little later, was gone. Those things happen. People died like that all the time and weren’t killed.

“How did they kill him then?” I asked.

“The how isn’t important.”

“Okay, then why did they kill him?”

“He was getting close to figuring out what was going on.”

“My father?” He wasn’t exactly an investigative reporter.

“Yeah, and now they’re afraid you’ll figure it out.”

I nodded. This was getting too strange for me. I knew there were bad guys out there, but had no clue they were this bad. That’s assuming this man was telling the truth. I couldn’t tell.

“You need to go,” he said.

“I have more questions.”

“You’ll have to ask them later.”

I noticed that he kept looking in the rear view mirror. Something was bothering him.

“How can I get in touch with you?”

“You don’t. I’ll call you.”

“But I need to know…” I stopped, seeing the look on the man’s face. He was looking in the mirror again, but his complexion was fading away. The man was horrified. I could tell it wasn’t a feeling that he was used to experiencing.

“Go!”

I got out of the truck, just in time before he sped off back toward town. I was standing on the side of the road and looked back toward Hodgen. Two trucks were coming fast. I planned for them to pass before crossing the road. The first one suddenly changed directions and angled in my direction. I realized the truck was coming directly at me and jumped back, just in time. I felt the power of the truck as it blew past, only inches away. The force knocked me even farther back. I landed on my rear and I looked for the second truck, expecting it to try and finish the job, but it was already gone. Whoever was driving that truck meant it. He had not lost control of anything.

Mule came running across the road. He leaned over and pulled me up.

“How com youse sittin down?” he asked. “You otay?”

I nodded. I was shaking again.

“I’s sorry all de blood and deer innerds made youse sick.”

I shook my head. He held my arm and walked me across the road. No other traffic was coming. Squiggy was already in the truck. We climbed in. I had never been so scared in all my life. As time passed by, I realized how close that was. It might not be shock that I was going in, but it was too close.

“What’s wrong wif you?” Squiggy asked. “Ya look like you’d seen one of dem Casper ghosts.”

“I found him like dis,” Mule added. “Figger we need to take him home?”

Squiggy grunted. “We gotta git some beer first.”

“Yeah, since we ain’t got no money and Mikey is gonna buy it.”

“After we drop him off, we can go to de bar.”

“Good. Ya want it?”

That knocked me out of the daze. What was Mule asking Squiggy about.

“Yeah, better git it.”

I watched as Mule opened the glove container and pulled out a rolled up pair of socks. He handed it over to Squiggy.

He saw me eyeing him. “What, did you want it?”

“Why would I want your socks?” I asked.

He smiled and stepped out of the truck. Squiggy dropped his pants, even though the woman who had earlier hit the deer was less than twenty feet away. He took the socks and stuck them down his boxers, then pulled his pants back up.

“What are you doing?” I asked, sickened about everything that happened and then catching Squiggy stuffing his underwear.

“Just enhancin de package,” he said. "Not that I need anything."

“Ain’t nothin wrong wif it,” Mule chimed in. “Chicks wear dem padded bras.”

Squiggy had to straighten things up before he climbed back in the truck.

“Does that actually help you pick up women?” I asked.

“Sure don’t hurt. You oughta try it!”

“I’ll pass.”

“I got another pair behind the seat. Sometimes I’ll put two in to mess wif de chicks. There’ll be one goin down bof legs.”

That could create some confusion. I started to ask Mule if he had ever used this technique, but realized he didn’t need any help. I was starting to calm down now.

I was at a loss as to what to do. I needed to get to my mother’s house, but also had to make sure the door to the office was covered. Chief Arnold promised to send somebody over to take care of it, but I didn’t have a lot of confidence in him.

We waited until help arrived and drove toward Hodgen. We stopped at the store and I gave Mule enough money to get some beer. He seemed happy and almost glided while going into the store.

“Scoot over!” Squiggy commanded. I was still in the middle and apparently I had not moved over fast enough.

I moved over against the window and looked outside. I could still see the stain where Chili Dog had spit on the window earlier this evening. This truck had a bad smell to it, like there had been too much beer spilled and rotten egg poots squeezed out.

A truck pulled up beside us. It was an older model with several dings and dents on the side. Each section of the truck was a different color. The door was red, the front fender was blue and the back section was a rusty white color. A man climbed out and looked around. He had a shaved head and wore a tank top and what looked like old gym shorts. His shirt and pants were a matching blue color.

He was a little chubby. His arms looked like they had been large at one time, but had shrunk over time. There was a tattoo on both arms. He started walking toward the store and I saw him leap over a greasy stain on the concrete.

“I’ll be darned, there’s old Flash!” Squiggy said. Mule met him coming out while Flash was walking in. Mule edged way to the side and stayed as far away as possible.

“Is he fast?” I asked. That seemed almost impossible. The guy had a belly that made me look skinny.

“Not that I know of.”

I knew this was a question that I would probably regret. “Why do you call him ‘Flash’? Is that his name?”

“His real name's Mo, I calls him 'Flash' cause that’s a what he likes to do.”

“What?”

“Man, yo brains don’t work all de time. Ast Mule when he gits in.”

I waited for Mule to climb in the truck. He already had one beer opened and was guzzling it.

“How come they call that guy ‘Flash’?” I asked.

Mule leaned forward and glared at Squiggy.

“It’s his cousin,” Squiggy added.

“I cain’t help it!” Mule countered.

“Okay, why do they call him that?” I asked.

“Aw, people says he goes up to women and girls and shows dem his tool.”

“His tool? Is he a mechanic?”

“Naw, he’s a carpenter. Not that kinda tool. Ya know, he shows dem his talleywhacker.”

“That’s sick.”

“Yep, we kinda avoid him, afeared he might be wantin to show us his thingey, but so far he sticks wif de women.”

“He must be proud.”

Squiggy laughed. “Of what?”

“His thing, to show it off like that.”

“Ain’t no reason fer him to be proud. Flash might be his cousin, but I think Mule got all de bonus material.”

“Surely he doesn’t do that,” I said.

They both nodded.

“He showed my sister once,” Squiggy said. “Messed her up bad.”

“Yeah,” Mule agreed. “Now she dresses like a ho.”

I looked at Squiggy, expecting him to hit Mule over the head with something. But he was just nodding.

“Yeah, she wears dees tight little skirts and shirts that show too much of her bosoms.”

“And high heels!” Mule added.

“Yep, high heels,” Squiggy said

“I like de high heels!”

“And she only wants to date de Mexicans,” Squiggy added. “No white fellers will have anything to do wif her. Mexicans seem to like chubby white women wif big melons, ya know?”

This was a truly fascinating conversation, but one that I did not particularly care to hear.

“Take me by my mother’s house,” I said.

“We gonna take her wif us to de bar?” Mule asked.

“And de shakey kid?” Squiggy asked, showing a little hesitation.

“No, we’re not going to take my mother and M.J. to the bar.”

That would damage them worse than seeing Flash do his thing.

“No, I’m going to pick them up and keep them with me.”

“Y’all wannna play Name That Carcass?” Squiggy asked.

Yeah!” Mule was up for it.

“What’s that?”

“We’re drivin down the road and whoever sees road kill tries to identify it. Let’s say it was Mule. If he sees something and says it’s a diller, we’ll stop and see what it is. If it is a diller, then Mule gits to hit us. But if’n he’s wrong, we gits to knock de crap outta him.”

“I’ll pass. We really need to get back to town.”

“Okay,” Squiggy agreed, acting disappointed. “You ain’t too much fun.”

“We can play later, Squigs,” Mule said. “Then we can hit the bypass, there’s always a lotta dead critters there.”

Squiggy nodded. Then he and Mule had a rather interesting conversation about which movie star they would like to make love with. I had no idea how this started, just that I wished they would shut up.

“Julie Rodgers,” Squiggy offered, badly messing up her name. “She’s got a big mouth.”

“I kinda like that talking show woman,” Mule offered.

“It’s gotta be a movie star.”

“She’s been in movies.”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked.

“That woman wif the talk show.”

“Opera?” Squiggy offered.

“Oprah,” I corrected him.

“Yeah, she’s de one!”

“But she’s black!” Squiggy protested.

“She is?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh…but I still likes her,” Mule added. “You’d never know which one would show up. The skinny Opera or de fat one.”

I tuned them out until we got to my mother’s house. Now, they were talking about what they would do if Pamela Anderson flashed them.

“I’d probably die right der,” Squiggy suggested.

“I’d show her mine,” Mule offered.

“Then she’d die!”

I thanked them and got out of the truck. Most of the lights were out in the neighborhood. When I got inside, I saw Mom sitting on the couch, talking on the phone. Like that was a surprise. M.J. was asleep next to her.

She put her hand over the phone and turned to me. “Hello, Michael. Just a second. I’m talking on the phone.”

I was so glad she clarified that. For a minute, I was wondering if she just had the phone cradled next to her head for comfort.

“Can I borrow your car?” I asked. Since M.J. was out for the night, I was just going to drive to the Review and make sure the door was covered up.

“Just a second…no, I’m no taking another call,” Mom said, then shook her head. These people are such a pain, her look seemed to indicate. I’d like to show her the hang up so you don’t have to talk to them look.

“I just need to go down and make sure everything is okay at the Review,” I offered.

“Don’t take my car to the bar!” she said, a poet and didn’t even know it.

“I won’t.”

I found her keys and drove back across the highway and the bumpy railroad tracks. Her big car had a much smoother ride. I just hoped nobody saw me driving it. Downtown was deserted. Most people had called it a night, other than the barhoppers and the convenience store clerks. When I pulled around to the alley behind the office, I saw a white truck parked behind the Review.

Slowly, I eased up behind it. This was the guy’s truck that I had talked with earlier. As I got out of Mom’s car, I wondered why he was parked behind the Review. His door was open just wide enough to see the light shining from inside the truck.

I waited for a second, expecting the man to come out and explain why he was here. I grabbed the door handle and started to open it. Even before I did so, I had a bad feeling that something was wrong.

After opening the door, the feeling was confirmed. I started backing up, tripped over something and fell to the ground. I continued to crawl away from the truck. I realized I was screaming like I had never done so before, but couldn't stop.

My eyes were locked into the gaze of the man's eyes staring back at me. They would never intimidate anybody again.

Chapter 51

Chapter 49

2005-08-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

I find it hard to believe how mean some people are on this round orb that we call the planet Earth.

There are murderers, rapists, child molesters and even redneck cowboys who punch innocent guys in the bar and give him a black eye that everybody has stared at all week.

Then, there’s this guy or guys who is obviously upset with something that was in the newspaper. He has shot at me, cut my tires and took M.J. We were fortunate that he only took M.J. for a little while and returned the boy safely, sending him back with a chilling message.

M.J. had already told us that the guy would not miss next time or return the little guy. Those were bad enough. But the final message convinced me that we were dealing with somebody who was really unhinged in the thinking department.

“He told M.J. that if there’s another word in the paper that next time he’ll cut me a lot worse than he did your tires,” Mom said.

She was scared, not that I could blame her. Heck, I was scared, although I must admit getting shot seems to be a better way to go than getting your throat cut.

I looked for our tireless civil servants to see their reaction. They were too busy shoving food in their mouths to show much outrage.

“What are you going to do about this?” I asked.

“We’re gonna go arrest him,” Chief Arnold said.

Those words made me feel a lot better.

“Yep, right after we figger out which nut’s doing it.”

That probably would help. “Can you watch my mother or anything?”

“When she’s a dressin?” Squiggy asked. He had snuck up behind me. That was really gross. “No, Squiggy! Watch and make sure nobody comes around who isn’t supposed to be here.”

“Our boys will come around,” Chief Arnold said.

“We could always move Mule in,” Squiggy offered. We weren’t that desperate yet.

“Yeah, I’ll watch em!”

I could just picture Mule sitting on the front porch, right after he moved my father’s recliner out there. He would have a shotgun in his lap, a beer in his hand. I doubted my mother would allow him to move the refrigerator out on the porch, though. There would be beer cans scattered amongst the shrubs and flowers.

The grass would have brown spots from where he urinated instead of actually using indoor toilets. I know the neighbors would enjoy that about as much as my mother.

“That man’s taking another leak in the yard!” one of the male neighbors would say.

The wife would show outrage, while secretly enjoying it.

“Oh my!” she would add, echoing the words of my mother after seeing Mule peeing in the hospital parking lot.

No, that would not be a good idea. Mom did have to live with these people. Plus, if M.J. ever caught Mule taking a leak, the poor child would never recover.

“Aw, you cain’t live here,” Squiggy said, saving me the trouble of saying it. “Ya got a job!”

Mule brightened up for a second. “I do!”

Everybody looked a little surprised. Apparently, miracles did happen.

“Where are you going to work?” I asked.

“For dat Jay’s Septic Service. I know it’s a crappy job but somebody’s gotta do it.”

I started laughing, alone I might add. Nobody else seemed to get what Mule just said about septic and crappy. Oh well, life goes on.

“You laughin cuz I got a job?” Mule asked. He looked hurt, much like he was earlier while pouting that he had not engaged in premarital sex in a few days.

“Of course not!” I feigned outrage. “I liked the way you said that about working for a septic service and how it’s a crappy job.”

“Oh yeah!” Mule said, then faked a giggled. He turned to Squiggy. “What’d he mean by dat?”

Squiggy shrugged. “I’m just glad you ain’t no drain in society anymores.”

“He’s a workin man!” the sheriff pitched in.

Mule’s smile was slowly fading away. “I’ll miss riding around wif Squiggy drinkin beer.”

“Maybe this Jay guy will let you,” I suggested. Everybody within thirty feet glared at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Jay’s a chick,” Chief Arnold said.

“You’re kidding!” I practically shouted. Some woman goes around driving one of those trucks and sucks all the fecal material out of a septic tank? Ugh.

“What’s wrong wif dat?” Squiggy asked. “She ain’t bad lookin. Right Mule?”

Mule smiled. Apparently he had done more than empty septic tanks with this Jay woman.

“Aw, I’ve been wif uglier uns,” he admitted. Mom looked like she was going to yack. “Once ya git past the smell and turn the lights out, she ain’t bad.”

Okay, that was not information that needed to be discussed, especially in the presence of my mother.

“Squiggy, I need to get back down to the office,” I said. “How about a ride?”

“You betcha!” Squiggy looked happy. While we were here, he was having to sneak off and drink, something Squiggy just didn’t like. “Let’s roll!”

We started to walk away. Mule stopped and turned around.

“Y’all got some paper towels or sumthin?” he asked.

“I have a towel,” Mom answered. “What do you need it for?”

“I’d kinda like to ride in de front but there’s all this puke everwhere and I was gonna clean it up.”

“Let me find you some paper towels.”

Mom rushed off into the house, trailed by her little shadow named M.J. She returned with the quicker picker upper and handed it to Mule.

“Thank you,” he said. “Ya know, fer an older woman, you ain’t all that bad to look at. Maybe sometime…”

“Let’s go, Mule!” I shouted, interrupting his pick-up line for my mother.

He fell in line and trailed us back to the truck. Mule got the door open, crawled in and started picking up vomit chunks and throwing them in the ditch. I hoped Sandy would not drive by. She would never dump Trevor and come rushing back into my arms if she knew I was waiting for Mule to get vomit out of a truck so we could sit in the front.

“Der, I’m frew,” Mule announced.

Squiggy climbed up on his side and looked in. “Naw, ya missed a chunk right der!”

“Oh yeah, sorry.” Mule started to grab it.

“I’ll gives youse a dollar if ya eat it.”

“You want me to eat dat vomit for a dollar?”

Squiggy nodded. He had a mischievous look on his face.

“Lemme see the dollar first,” Mule requested.

“Eat the yack and you’ll see it.”

“I don’t trust you. Remember when you told me you’d give me a buck if I ate a cockroach? Ya never did pay me.”

“I will, dis time.”

“Show me the dollar!”

“I ain’t actually got one. He’ll give me one.”

Squiggy was pointing at me. Normally, I wouldn’t hesitate at all to loan a friend a dollar bill. But when it was to bet somebody they wouldn’t eat a vomit chunk, well, that was where I drew the line.

“No way,” I said.

Squiggy looked hurt. “Yer just chicken.”

“I ain’t chicken!” Mule argued. “I just don’t wanna eat part of Chili Dog’s vomit. You eat it!”

“Heck no. Then we’d have to clean up the Squigster’s vomit.”

I didn’t want to do it, but also didn’t want to stand next to this truck all night listening to them talk about eating somebody else’s throw up. I grabbed a paper towel, climbed up into the cab and grabbed the last of the hurl. I tossed it outside.

“Now we can go,” I said.

“How come ya did that?” Mule asked. “I was gonna earn a dollar.”

“I’ll give both of you a dollar if we can go and not talk about eating vomit again.”

“Make it a six pack and ya got a deal,” Squiggy countered, that heartless negotiator.

“Okay, let’s go.”

We finally got to leave. I was surprised the neighbors didn’t start clapping. As we got to the highway, Squiggy turned right, instead of left. We just passed Langford’s newest convenience store.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To git sum beer,” Squiggy shook his head. I was just full of stupid questions.

“We just passed the store.”

“We’s goin to Hodgen.”

“Why aren’t we buying it here?”

Squiggy grimaced, but wouldn’t answer. I looked to Mule.

“He’s banned from all de stores in Langford,” he said.

I wanted to ask why, but then decided that was not something I cared to talk about for the next fifteen minutes. So we started out of town. We cruised down the four-lane highway that runs to the edge of town. The stoplight was red and Squiggy was in the right lane. As we waited for our turn to proceed, some guy pulled up next to us in a truck that actually looked like it was in worse condition than Chili Dog’s.

Squiggy revved his engine. The guy in the other truck slowly turned his head in our direction. He nodded his head and revved his truck up. It was like some mating ritual for animals in the wild. This went on for several seconds. It was our turn to go, but they were too busy revving up their motors to care.

There was a line of traffic behind both trucks, ready to move. They started honking and hollering, not that Squiggy or the other driver cared. Finally, Squiggy stuck his head out of the window started the countdown.

“Five , fer, tree, uh…”

“Two’s next,” Mule suggested.

“I knew dat,” Squiggy said, but didn’t act all that convincing.

“Two, un, go!”

The other truck revved its engine to a new height. It squealed its tires and flew away from the stop light, leaving behind a cloud of smoke. Squiggy eased ahead slowly, getting a lot of enjoyment out of that.

“Psych!” he hollered out the window, not that the other driver could hear him since the other truck was a good quarter mile down the road.

“Ya got im, Squiggy!” Mule professed with much admiration.

We watched as a highway patrol car flew up from behind and passed with its lights on. The trooper had apparently seen the truck speed off. Squiggy scooted the truck over to the road’s shoulder and drove slowly. It was almost like he was a normal law-abiding citizen.

“Tee hee!” he laughed. It was that irritating giggle of his that made the hairs on my arms stand up.

Right before we got to the baseball fields south of town, Squiggy turned left and got on the old highway.

“I thought you were going to Hodgen?” I asked.

“Shortcut,” he answered.

“This isn’t a shortcut.”

Squiggy slowed down to almost a turtle’s pace in front of an old run-down house. There were catfish heads on the fence post, not that it surprised me. In the yard there was pipe welded together to form a stand to hoist engines or deer.

Squiggy was looking into the house and licking his lips. I looked inside and didn’t see anything.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Watch!’ Mule said.

Squiggy had stopped on the road. Fortunately, this was a road that few people take, just the people that live out this way.

“Der she is!” he shouted. I turned to look and see what had him so excited. Inside the house, I saw a rather large woman walking around in what appeared to be a bedroom. She was without clothing. The word “large” was not a good description. If she was lying on the beach of an ocean, concerned citizens would start trying to roll her back into the water.

The woman appeared to be one big fold, lard everywhere.

Mule and Squiggy were getting to much enjoyment out of this.

“She does dis ever night bout dis time,” Mule informed me.

The woman looked in the mirror and raised her arms over her head and tried several poses that super models used. It didn’t help. I was afraid my stomach was going to revolt if we didn’t get going.

“Call her!” Mule shouted. He was excited and jumping up and down. Mule was hitting his head on the roof, not that it seemed to bother him

“Okay!” Squiggy said. He elbowed me in the arm. “Gimme yer phone!”

“No, use yours.”

“I cain’t. Sumthins wrong wif it. I cain’t git no reception.”

“I thought ya told me dat the phone company cut her off cus you ain’t paid yer bill?” Mule mentioned.

“Shut up, Mule!”

Mule would have started pouting again, if he wasn’t enjoying this.

“C’mon, lemme use yer phone!” Squiggy almost sounded desperate. I did not want my number showing up on her caller ID, but knew that the only way we were going to get out of here was to let him use my phone.

I reluctantly handed over my phone. The inventers of cell phones obviously never planned on them being used this way or they never would have made them.

Squiggy called the number and waited. Inside, the woman stopped her posing for a second, turned her head and walked off.

“Is she through?” Mule asked, acting too disappointed.

“Naw, ya idiot, she went to git the phone.”

“Okay!” Mule said, then remembered what Squiggy just said. “Squiggy, if you’n calls me anymore bad names tonight I’m gonna throw down.”

Squiggy waved his arms, wanting Mule to be quiet.

“Hey yeah, dis is Squiggy!” he practically hollered. “What? Naw, I’m usin a friend’s phone…Huh? Hang on, I’ll ast im. Did ya like de show?”

Squiggy covered up the mouth piece and waited for my reaction.

“Not really, I’m going to get sick,” I said.

He shook his head and put the phone back to his mouth. “He said you was a purdy filly!”

“I did not!”

“Can we’s come in?”

Mule was nodding his head and appeared to be drooling.

I started hitting Squiggy on the arm. “No! No! No!”

He turned to me and once again put his hand over the phone. “Dat hurt. Quit.”

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Mule was practically floating in the air.

“What?” Squiggy said. “Tell im to come later! I don’t care if he is yer boyfriend…Naw, dis is yer only chance.”

He hung up the phone and sagged his shoulders.

“She’s got some guy comin over,” he announced.

“Good,” I said. They ignored me.

Mule looked heartbroken.

“Cain’t he come later?” he asked.

“It’ll be okay, Mule. I’m going to buy you some beer!”

He brightened up for a minute, but the need for some loving was more important than more beer.

We slowly drove around the big bend of the road and made it back on the highway. The highway patrolman had that other truck stopped, but there was no glee from Squiggy and Mule.

Squggy got back on the highway and drove off into the night. Right before we got into Hodgen, there was a car stopped in the middle of the road with its hazard lights on.

“Somethings wrong!” Mule said.

“You think?” Squiggy asked, rather sarcastic like.

He stopped behind the small white import. We climbed down from the truck and walked toward the car. The front end was badly damaged. Inside the car were a woman and a small boy. She was in her mid-30s. Her brown hair was all messed up and her glasses were tilted. The boy appeared to be about five, or so. He had long blonde hair, was skinny and also upset, almost frantic. The woman rolled down the window.

“You ran over Bambi!” he shouted.

“I didn’t mean to, Honey!” she shouted back.

Squiggy stuck his head in the window. “Did I hear sumthin bout youse hittin a deer?”

“Yeah, it was a small one.”

“Good, them’s better eatin!”

“What?” the boy asked. “You aren’t going to eat Bambi, are you?”

“No, we won’t eat Bambi,” I said, and turned around to make sure that message got through to Squiggy and Mule.

They were almost frantic now, like the boy, looking for the deer.

“Where is dat sucker?” Mule shouted.

“Lookie there!” Squiggy hollered. He started jumping up and down. “Git it, Mule!”

Mule walked over into the ditch and picked up the deer’s carcass. It was a mess, bloody and broken, not that it seemed to bother Mule.

The boy was having a fit. “I thought you said you weren’t gonna eat Bambi!”

“We’re not,” I tried to assure him. “Are we, Mule?”

“You might not but I plan on smokin and eatin im tomorrow night!”

“Deer meat’s better when theys young,” Squiggy added.

“They’re just kidding,” I said. “We’re going to go bury the deer at the cemetery.”

“Okay,” the little boy said. This seemed to calm him down.

I saw Mule load the deer into the back of the truck. He was not sad about missing out on visiting the large woman now, not when there was a deer to be gutted and cooked.

“Have you called the police?” I asked the woman.

“Yeah, they’re on the way.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, we were both wearing our seatbelts. The deer came out of nowhere! I tried to stop and…do you know that guy?”

“What guy?” I asked.

“The guy in that white truck?”

I turned and saw a truck approaching from the south, driving rather slowly.

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“Cause this is the third time he’s drove by since you guys arrived.”

The hairs on the back of my neck were rather alert. This wasn’t right. I could tell it was a newer truck, a fancy one bought by somebody who wanted to look the part but would never use this for work. The truck came toward us and stopped. The window was tinted so black that it was impossible to see inside.

Slowly the window started down. I could not see the face, just heard the voice.

“Get in, Hunt, we need to have a little talk.”

Chapter 50

Chapter 48

2005-08-04T07:19:00.000-05:00

When somebody entrusts their child with another person, they naturally expect the child to stay safe and sound under the watchful eyes of the guardian.

What we had was a five-year-old boy who clung so close to my mother that if either one of them passed gas, they would both get a good whiff. Now, I don’t know if mothers actually pass gas. I can’t recall hearing one. I have suspected a few of trying to sneak by with one, but not my mother. As far as I know, Mom has never cut the cheese in her life.

But M.J. had gone AWOL. Whether it was by his own doing or if somebody helped, we did not know. M.J. is not the type to wander off. He won’t even hang out with me. I can understand him coming up missing if I was watching him, but not my mother. She knows where everything is in our house at all moments of every day.

Something was not right here. We had some lunatic trying to shoot me, which I realized would help sell lots of newspapers, but still had me a little nervous. If they try once, what’s to keep them from trying to put a bullet in me again? Personally, I like my body as it is. Yeah, I could stand to lose some weight, but I’m not real big on having a bullet enter my body, especially around major organs or arteries.

After the idiot shot at me, he or somebody else, called and told me to “leave it alone”. Then, the little fellow winds up missing.

Naturally, I was worried that whoever was angry enough at me to try and shoot me, might have decided to take the boy to drive in the whole “leave it alone” point. The only thing I could think of that they might be mad about was our coverage of the whole “Beef Critter” incident. Somebody was willing to put a bullet in the large woman’s head, they probably wouldn’t hesitate to kidnap some kid or try to shoot me again.

Something else struck me as worrisome. If the bad guys were after me and my family, what would keep them from going after Mule? He might be in deep fecal material, also.

The law enforcement contingent knew something was wrong. Chief Arnold walked away from the group right in the middle of discussing the attributes of the Sonic carhops. He had to stop a couple of times and pull up his belt. Sadly, it appeared like our police chief had been enjoying too many double cheeseburgers from the Sonic.

“What’s going on?” he asked. The police chief crossed his arms for the first part of the story, then pulled a pocketknife out of his pocket and started using it to knock the food chunks out of his teeth. I kept expecting him to take a chunk out of his gums, but he seemed very talented at this. It would save a lot of wear and tear on toothpicks.

The sheriff also listened to my story. I have to admit that I like Chief Arnold and the sheriff. They generally seem to care.

“How’s your mother doing?” Chief Arnold asked, even before I could finish my story! “She’s such a dear lady.”

He looked at the sheriff for confirmation or comment. The sheriff just shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know the widow Hunt,” he declared.

“Nice woman,” Chief Arnold said, nodding his head for extra emphasis. “Really good cook.”

“You can’t beat that,” the sheriff added. “They just don’t hardly make them like that anymore.”

“Uh, excuse me,” I said. “Don’t you want to hear what I was saying about the missing boy?”

They both nodded. I realized that I was telling them the whole story and had lost their attention. Much like a teacher loses a class while talking about some boring subject the kids will never hear again.

I shortened the story and kept their attention this time. Probably cut out several minutes also.

“Bummer,” Chief Arnold said.

“Man, that stinks,” the sheriff agreed. They both looked at each other, wondering what they should do.

“Don’t you think we should go over there?” I suggested.

They both nodded their heads and smiled. That was a really good idea.

“I’ll meet you there,” I said and started walking toward the back door. One of Langford’s finest was blocking the door.

He was a shorter version of the chief. A rather large guy with a belly that looked like somebody had inserted a beach ball. The officer was wearing a black tee-shirt with the word POLISE on the front in white. I wondered if he even knew it was misspelled. His pants were also black, tucked in the bottom to what looked like army jump boots. He was wearing cheap sunglasses and had his hand poised too close to his weapon.

“Just where do you think yer goin?” he asked, then pulled his shades down to get a better look at me.

“To my mother’s house,” I said.

“Not so fast there, hot rod! I got my orders!”

He reminded me of the late actor Chris Farley, except the cop was serious.

“What are your orders?”

“To secure this door!”

“The door looks secured. Let me by.”

“I’ll have to clear it with the big guy!”

“That’s fine. I’m meeting him.”

The cop raised his walkey talkey and started fiddling with it.

“Aren’t you supposed to keep people out, not in?”

He frowned. That actually seemed to make sense to him. There was hope for us all.

“You know, I think yer right!” he said and let me by.

I walked outside shaking my head and realized that one Michael Hunt would not be going anywhere. All four tires on the Ranger were flat. I came closer and saw where somebody had stuck a knife in each tire. Okay, this was going too far. You could shoot at me, just as long as you miss, and even kidnap some kid in our possession, but by gosh, you don’t mess with a man’s ride!

After realizing that sounded like something Squiggy would say, I tried to calm down. As I started walking toward the office, I heard a truck coming down the alley that runs behind the buildings. The City of Langford has not taken great care of this alley and there are potholes big enough to lose a grandmother in. The lights from the truck were going up and down and sideways. The truck was going way too fast.

Whoever was driving the truck drove straight up to me and skidded to a stop inches away. I was blinded by the lights and covered my face while walking around the truck. This couldn’t be the bad guy, I was positive because this vehicle would cause people to notice. You didn’t sneak around in this baby.

The truck was a monster truck wanna be. It had big tires and wheels, set up on shocks or whatever that made it look silly. I noticed the truck was painted in camouflage, not that it surprised me. None of the big automakers ever came out with a truck in this paint design, which surprised me. It would be a big seller around these parts.

No body shop had done this work. It was pure spray paint. While it was designed to fit in out in the woods, I thought the shiny wheels and chrome would probably alert whatever wildlife the owner was trying to kill out of season.

Squiggy stuck his head out the window, not that it surprised me. There was a step at the bottom of the door. It was not there for looks. No normal person could get in this thing without some help.

“Hey, you ain’t shot!” Squiggy shouted.

“No, they missed.”

“Dang, we heard you was plugged.”

Squiggy almost seemed disappointed that I wasn’t shot. I noticed three huge rifles on the rack in the rear window.

I got on the step and raised myself up. Squiggy had some guy in the truck with him that I didn’t know. Hopefully, Mule would not get jealous. The man was older, probably in his fifties. He was wearing a white under shirt, the sleeveless kind many people wore under dress shirts. There were food stains smeared all over the front of the shirt that looked like it had been worn for several days.

His face was wrinkled, the mark of somebody who had spent too many years working out in the sun. The hat was a cheap cowboy hat that had been stepped on and sat on too many times. On the back of the hat, I noticed what looked like a crow’s feather sticking out of the band.

The man appeared to be skinny other than a large beer belly that covered his lap. He had a whiskey bottle in his hands and was drinking it straight. His face was rather stoic until he got a drink, then the man would smile for a couple of seconds.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Ya don’t know old Chili Dog?”

Obviously I didn’t, otherwise I would not have enquired. That seemed to slip by the Squigster.

“Chili Dog’s his name?”

“Naw, it’s more like one of dem nicknames.”

I nodded. Man, I was glad nobody had ever given me a nickname after a junk food. With my luck, I’m afraid my name would have been Ding Dong or Twinky.

“How’s it going…Chili Dog?”

He grunted. Ah, a man of few words. Rather rare in these parts. Chili Dog leaned over and tried to spit out the window. Sadly, somebody forgot to tell him the window was up. I noticed it was tobacco spit, splattered all over the window. Chili Dog didn’t seem to mind.

Squiggy laughed. “He’s drunk!”

“Really? I would have never figured that out.”

“Yep, that’s why I’m a drivin his truck.”

“Aren’t you drunk?”

“Well yeah, what’s that gotta do wif anything?”

“Nothing.” It pained me to say it, but I had no choice. “I need a ride.”

“You think I’m yer dadgummed choie, er choker…uh…”

“Are you trying to say chaueffer?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

“Not really, I just need a ride. Where’s Mule?”

“We’s gotta go by and git im. He got his fridge back outta the pawn shop today, ya know, the one he keeps on his porch?”

“He pawned a refrigerator?”

Squiggy nodded. “Yep, got twenty five bucks for it.”

One question begged to be asked, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know. Finally, I had to do it.

“Why does he keep a fridge on his porch?”

Squiggy shook his head. I had clearly disappointed him.

“So’s he don’t gotta go inside to git a beer, dummy!”

“Is it one of those small ones?”

“Heck no, this is a big un. Mule told me he can get six cases in there at a time.”

“How about that ride?”

“Yep, but ya probably need to git in the back. Chili Dog yacked up one while ago.”

“One of what?”

“A chili dog, man, gittin shot at robbed you of yer brains or somethin. There’s like chewed up weenie and beans scattered everwhere. I think it was dat der last bump that got im. Didn’t seem to phase im, though. He got a dip and went right back to a drinkin. You gotta admire that in a person.”

I know I do. Chili Dog vomited up a chili dog. Somehow, that was rather appropriate.

This was a little embarrassing, but I hoped nobody would see me. I climbed in the back of the truck with all the food sacks and beer cans. There were also a few tools and a spare tire right in the middle. It stunk, like really bad. A smell I didn’t want to find out where it was coming from.

Squiggy had a little problem shifting on the way out. He grinded the gears something bad while going in reverse and driving down the alley. Naturally, since I didn’t want to be seen in the back of Chili Dog’s truck, Squiggy saw a carful of girls and stopped them.

There were four girls in some little foreign car. They were blonde and young.

“Y’all girls wanna go ride around?” he asked.

There was a look of horror on the faces of the girls like I had seldom seen before. The one in the back poked her head out the driver’s window.

“Yeah, but not with you!” she shouted, then started laughing along with the other girls.

The driver got up her courage. “We prefer dating guys who don’t gotta take pills!”

I buried my head. I had this bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

“Y’all are just a bunch of lezbos!” Squiggy shouted and peeled out. Chili Dog’s head was thrown back into the window. It almost flattened his feather.

Squiggy drove way too fast through town en route to Mule’s. After arriving in Little Tijuana, we found Mule sitting on the porch, right next to his fridge. He was sitting in a recliner, close enough to open the door and get a beer without even having to get up. Talk about your modern conveniences!

Since my last visit, they had added a mattress to the front yard. A lady who I figured his mother was sleeping on it. I heard her snore and Squiggy laugh. Chili Dog staggered out of the truck and walked toward the mattress and Mule’s mother.

The back window was sliding glass and opened. I leaned forward to get Squiggy’s take on this.

“You don’t think he’ll try to take advantage of her, do you?” I asked.

“Naw, dat’s his sister.”

“Would that matter to him?”

“Probably, she’s too ugly,” Squiggy said.

“Who’s too ugly?” Mule asked.

We let that one slide as Mule climbed into the back with me, without being asked. He was rather drunk and somber.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as we left. Chili Dog had laid down next to his sister on the mattress. Squiggy was grinding the gears again as we drove down the road.

“I need some lovin,” he said. “Old Beef Critter was always good when I’s desperate.”

“Yeah, but she’s dead now.”

“Ya figger she’s still down at the funeral home?”

“No, Mule. That’s beyond even you.”

“Naw, I was just gonna git you to sign the book for me.”

That was a relief. I filled him in on all the details as we sped toward my mother’s house. Squiggy swerved once and about threw us out of the truck. I poked my head in the window.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“There’s a cat in the road,” he answered.

“Did you miss it?”

“Yeah, darned thing was too quick.”

We drove by Sandy’s house. Her car was there. The light in her bedroom upstairs was turned on.

“She’s nice,” Mule mentioned. “I think she oughta be yer woman.”

I nodded and wondered what she was doing.

Squiggy got us to my mother’s house. There were several official cars parked nearby. The neighbors had gathered together in the lawn again. They weren’t all that happy.

Mule dropped the tailgate and sat on it. Squiggy came back to join him and gave him a beer.

“It’ll be okay,” Squiggy said and patted Mule on the back.

I was walking toward the house and almost found this touching, until Squiggy had to open his mouth again.

“I’m sure we can find some skanky chick at the bar fer you.”

Mom was standing on the porch, talking to Chief Arnold and the sheriff, who were in the swing, slowly swinging back and forth. I didn’t find that very touching.

Behind her, in the shadow, I could see M.J. I breathed a sigh of relief. I barely knew the little guy, but didn’t want anything to happen to him.

Several of Mom’s friends were gathered together in the front yard. Many of them had a paper plate with food on it. I saw that all the cops were also eating. This was a good way to get rid of all the leftovers.

They almost seemed to be having a party. One the neighbors weren’t all that crazy about. It was always okay if they had company, but if any of the other neighbors did, it was time to gather and complain.

M.J. saw me coming and for once, did not hide behind my mother. He actually almost smiled. My charm can do that to a person.

“What happened?” I asked. Mom was talking to Greta Yale, an old woman with thick glasses and thinning grey hair. You could actually see her scalp in many places, not that Greta seemed to care. She was adorned in her nightgown, one that was cut a little low in front for me. I could see several wrinkles running down her chest.

“Where are your manners, Michael?” Mom said. “Can’t you see that I’m talking with Greta?”

Well, excuse me! I just wanted to find out what happened to M.J. Mom and Greta were in the midst of an important conference concerning the right time to plant pansies. Greta would say her piece, shove a handful of food in her mouth, then repeat the process.

I actually liked Greta, one of the only friends of my mother I could say that about. She was natural, not all fake like so many others.

Mom finally finished up her important conversation with Greta.

“Would you like something to eat, dear?” she asked me. I was starving, but wanted to find out what happened first.

“Later.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to get weak.”

“I’m fine, Mom, just tell me what happened.”

Mom relayed the story. She also felt the need to say everything that went on, just like I did earlier. Basically, what it boiled down to was that she was watching television with M.J., some Bob the Builder show. Mom had to take a leak (my words, not Mom’s), and when she came back into the family room, M.J. was gone. The front door was left open.

She thought he might have just gone out to play and went out to look for him. M.J. wasn’t anywhere in the yard. She went back through the house and couldn’t find him. That was when she called me. While Squiggy was wasting time trying to pick up young chicks and get Mule, Greta found the little boy wandering around on the next block and brought him home.

“Did he go on his own?” I asked. That seemed a little much for M.J. The boy was scared of his own shadow.

“We don’t know,” Mom said. “He won’t talk about it.”

I kneeled down beside M.J. He did step back just a little this time.

“Did somebody come get you?” I asked.

He buried his head in Mom’s dress. M.J. didn’t want to talk to me.

“We have to know, M.J.”

He stepped back and looked at Mom. M.J. cupped his hand to tell her a secret. Mom leaned down and listened. Whatever he told her, it frightened my mother.

“The man told M.J. to tell you that this was a warning,” she said. “Next time, he won’t miss and we won’t see M.J. again.”

The blow from R.D. the other night didn’t have the impact as my mother’s words. M.J. tugged on Mom’s skirt again. She leaned down and listened. This time, it was worse. Whatever M.J. said was scaring her even worse.

“What is it?” I asked.

She relayed the information, words I never expected to hear out of my mother’s mouth.

Chapter 49

Chapter 47

2005-08-03T06:50:00.000-05:00

Okay, I’ll admit it. My life isn’t where I expected it to be. First off, I left Langford, never wanting to return, except for the occasional holiday visit. But now, I was back and trapped.

Then, I most certainly did not expect to be running The Langford Review while trying to save my mother’s house from foreclosure. Plus, I had gotten fired from a job that I liked, but did not love.

Finally, and this is a little more personal, I was not happy with my personal life.

I was getting old, alone and instead of embracing life, I was pushing it away. Everybody always says to live every day like it is your last one. That’s not been my philosophy. I’ve just been living everyday, trying to get through to get to the next one, hoping somehow it will be better.

These were some of the thoughts running through my head as I cowered underneath my desk in what would be considered by some a fetal position. No, I wasn’t sucking my thumb. But if I thought it would help me get out of this by sucking it, I would have.

The sound of the intruder walking into the building and crunching the broken glass was one I would always remember, especially if my life only lasted the next minute or two, which I feared was going to happen.

I looked around for a weapon. Sadly, a newspaper office isn’t a great place to find something to defend yourself with. There are Xacto knives, but darned if I know where one is. Plus, you would have to get close to the assailant to use it. I didn’t want to get anywhere close to whoever was stalking me.

I had a phone in my hand. Yeah, it was a cell phone, so it wasn’t what I would consider a good weapon, other than when some women use it. I could throw it at him, but knowing my aim, I would probably miss and break something else.

He probably was a little more accurate with that gun. The footsteps were getting closer. They were slow and deliberate, the kind only a trained killer can make, my mind was thinking. What kind of brutal monster was here, looking to end my life? I pictured him as somebody off a gangster movie, one of those big lurking thugs who looked like NFL linemen used to look when it was okay to be big and fat. A white Nate Newton look-a-like, I guessed.

I had goosebumps in places that I didn’t know you could have them. I was trying to hold my breath, but that isn’t easy to do when your heart is racing faster than a crotch rocket driven on an empty highway by some teenaged idiot on speed.

The killer’s shadow emerged around the corner of my desk. He was getting closer. Now, he was walking on the concrete my father was always too cheap to cover with carpet. The glass was left behind, now it was the sound of feet shuffling on concrete.

He stopped beside my desk. I’m sure he knew exactly where I was hiding in the way only assassins know. Would he shoot me? Or use his bare hands to rip my still pumping heart out of my chest cavity? I decided a bullet would be much better.

But I didn’t want to die cowering under my father’s desk. If I was going to go, by gosh, I would go out fighting. Enough of this cowardly lion stuff, I tried to use to motivate myself. Myself decided it would be better to stay hidden, but I overruled it.

I edged out from under the desk, crouched down and suddenly propelled myself up. The assassin would get more than he bargained for with one Michael Hunt!

My jump took me right in front of the killer. I raised my right arm to hit him with my flip phone. I had imagined how evil the killer must look, but I wasn’t prepared for this. It was much less. It was…Nancy?

I don’t know who was more scared, me or her. We both let out a little scream, but mine was a manly one, of course. Her disco doo even wiggled.

“Don’t hit me with your flip phone!” she pleaded and threw her arms up in front of her face.

I looked up at my arm and saw the deadly flip phone poised to deliver a serious pounding. I lowered my arm and realized that must have looked rather idiotic. But why would Nancy shoot at me? Was she that angry I rejected her? She must be like that chick from Fatal Attraction, you know, the one who killed the kid’s rabbit after her lover quit pouncing on her.

“I won’t!” I hollered back. We were both hollering despite the fact we were roughly two feet from each other. “I’m sorry that I don’t feel the same physical attraction for you that you feel for me!”

“Huh?”

“Isn’t that why you shot at me?” I couldn’t figure out where the phone call telling me to leave it alone figured in.

“I didn’t shoot at you. I was driving by on the way home from church and saw the truck stop outside and shoot the door. After he hauled butt away, I came in to make sure everything was all right.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Have you called the police?” she asked, staring at where the bullet landed in the wall.

“No, I thought you were coming to kill me.”

She started crying. Nancy leaped forward for some reason and threw her arms around me. She nestled her head in my chest, resulting in her hair sticking me in the face. It was what I imagine it would be liked to get stuck by a porcupine.

I raised one hand and patted her on the back.

“I’d never kill you…Mike!”

Oh gosh, she had moved from Mr. Hunt, to Michael and now it was Mike. She looked up at me with her eyes and I realized she expected to be kissed. That is how it always happens in the movies, at least the ones made-for-TV that she is so fond of watching. Her eyes closed and she puckered up her lips.

I noticed she had too much lipstick on. She stayed in that position for several seconds, expecting my lips to meet hers, I guess.

Finally, she peeked out one eye. “Well?”

“Well what?” I asked, still patting her on the back.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

“Not now, I’m thinking.”

I could feel her shoulders droop. Her whole body started to shake. I realized with some remorse, she was going to start crying. I would rather face a bloody assassin over a crying woman any day. Why couldn’t I just kiss her? Yeah, Nancy would probably expect more, but at least then she wouldn’t be boo-hooing like a little baby.

She dropped her head and I saw the tears falling down her rosy red cheeks, the result of way too much makeup.

I rolled my eyes and put my hand on her chin and raised it. I gave her a quick peck on the smacker and she stopped crying. She also tried to get close but I jerked away.

It was not the best kiss in the grand history of kissing, but she was satisfied and had stopped crying. Now, she was almost bubbly. Later on, I would have to fight off her advances again, but I did not plan on getting poked by her head hairs in the face again.

“Call the police!” I commanded.

I didn’t like being shot at, but I started thinking about what this could mean. Here, I had just survived the death of my father and now people were shooting at me!

Yep, I could really work the sympathy angle now. How could somebody not buy an ad now? I could just imagine the conversation.

AD BUYER: We’re really not looking into advertising right now.

ME: I understand. Yeah, the times are tough but we really need your help after losing my father and the nut case shooting at me.

AD BUYER: How about if we buy two full-page ads this week?

ME: That would help soothe the pain!

No, I did not like doing this. But I also did not like seeing my mother lose her house. I was desperate, okay? Yeah, maybe I did enjoy it just a little bit, but not too much.

I had to think like a public relations flack. This udder needed to be milked dry. I wanted every person in Oklahoma to know that one Michael Hunt, professional journalist, had survived an attack on his person. Brewster, my former boss who fired me by telling my mother, would be envious!

“Then call 911, the sheriff and any authority figure you can think of,” I said.

“Won’t they come with just one call?” she foolishly asked. Now wasn’t the time to be sensible, woman!

I was like the Nike ad. “Just do it.”

“Okay!” she smiled, and actually winked at me while walking to her desk. I wasn’t positive, but felt like there was a little more jiggle in her posterior region as she strolled away.

Now, I had to act distressed, yet brave, for the authorities! I sat down in the chair, leaned on the desk and buried my head in my hands.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and started to walk back over to comfort me or something.

Dang the luck! I had fooled her.

“Yeah, just a little upset,” I lied and shooed her back to her desk with the wave of my hand. “Go ahead and call people.”

“Who else do you want me to call?”

“Anybody you know. We need to spread the word that somebody’s been shooting at their newspaper!”

She called the local police first, followed by 911. Nancy then advised the county sheriff’s office, the highway patrol and for some reason I could not fathom, OG&E, our electric company.

“Why’d you call them?” I asked. “We don’t have a power outage?”

“You said to call every authority figure.”

“That’s our electric company.”

She looked hurt. I was too harsh on her. Nancy was just doing what I asked. There, in the distance, I could hear it! A siren! Coming in our direction! I could imagine all heads turning as they watched Langford’s finest go zipping by, lights a flashing and sirens wailing in the night.

Hopefully, that would attract the curious. In small towns, fire trucks and speeding police cars were almost like an invitation to the people to follow and get in the way so the cops and firemn could not do their work. People should be calling each other by now, trying to figure out what was going on. The scanner started to pick up traffic.

The first police car skidded to a stop out front. I raised my head and peeked out what used to be our door. Yes! They left their lights on! The police were here, attracting more attention. This was too good. If only we had a web site, so I could assure our worried readers out there in cyber land that yes, I was shaken, but had survived.

Cars were starting to pass by in front. They would slow and I could see the heads of people looking inside, wondering what all the fuss was about. Many of them were talking on their cell phones while slowly driving past, no doubt telling others that something exciting was happening at the newspaper. I wanted to hang a banner out front telling them somebody was shooting at their acting newspaper publisher. But in reality, it was an attack on all of us, not just me.

Okay, most people could care less. But I wanted outrage! Where were the armed citizens defending our pride and honor? Then I realized most of them were probably drunk at The Last Call, and I certainly didn’t want them walking around with loaded weapons. That would not be good.

I watched as Langford’s pride and joy, our very own police chief, the honorable Chief Arnold came rushing in. I probably would have felt a little better if he had not been shoving what appeared to be a double meat cheeseburger from the Sonic in his mouth as he came in. Chief Arnold should come rushing in, packing heat, with that gun up and ready to go.

After some consideration, I decided he was probably a lot less dangerous with a double-meat cheeseburger dangling from his mouth than a gun pointed any where in my vicinity. He was walking like there was a corncob stuck up his rear.

I noticed he was carrying a Route 44 drink in one hand. This is the motherlode at the Sonic, the biggest drink you can hoist. It helped wash down his cheeseburger. He took another bite and walked inside. Outside, other cars were arriving with flashing lights. A fire truck arrived outside. This would also attract attention and spread the word, but I didn’t know why.

Nancy looked over at me and shrugged her shoulders. Apparently, the fire crew decided to come without anybody calling them. Maybe it was procedure. Anytime some nut fires a loaded weapon into the newspaper office, round up the men and make sure nobody needs a Heimlich procedure or something.

She was still working the phone hard. I had never been so proud of her. I gave her the thumbs up signal. She licked her lips, a slow movement that I guess was supposed to be sensual.

I had never seen such a long tongue. Gene Simmons from Kiss had nothing on her. That was almost repulsive, like that of a lizard.

Chief Arnold was standing beside me, also watching Nancy. I think he appreciated it more than I did.

He swallowed a bite that would choke the ordinary human being. Chief Arnold started to say something, but had to take a gulp first. I hoped he wouldn’t choke on the cheeseburger like he had the tobacco that one night. He took a long pull off of the Route 44 before beginning to speak.

“What’s up?” he asked, looking around the office, but paying most of his attention to Nancy. She had stopped licking her lips after seeing him watching her, but I think he wished Nancy would resume.

I told him the whole story, only leaving out how I was almost scared enough to wet my britches. That fell into the whole “need to know” category, one that he was not included in.

He walked over to examine the wall, still walking like something was wrong.

“Why are you walking like that?” I asked. We had a teacher who walked like that. The students always used to say she walked like a corncob was stuck up her rectum

“Aw, I got this big old rash right on my..." he paused after noticing that Nancy was listening, "... well, on my nevermind.”

I noticed how close the bullet came to hitting my father’s picture of Bill Clinton that I had forgotten to take down. Jimmy Carter and his big teeth almost got winged also.

“Boy, that feller’s got some big teeth!” Chief Arnold commented, staring at former president Carter.

“I was sitting right here,” I stressed, wanting him to realize how close the bullet came to hitting me.

“Never did see what the chicks saw in him,” our police chief had moved on to Clinton’s picture. “Course, you never know what’s under the hood till you pop the top, eh?”

I refused to be drawn into a conversation about Bill Clinton’s equipment. This wasn’t about him. This was about me and how somebody was shooting at me. Chief Arnold didn’t seem all that concerned. Of course, his rather ample rear was at the Sonic shoving food down his face and eyeing the young carhops and not getting shot at, either.

I looked up at the wall and saw there were also some pictures of former governors that needed to go. There were no republican politicians on my father’s wall. Soon, there would not be any democrats either.

“Say, didn’t you tell me that you got a call right after the shooting?” he asked.

“You mean the attempted murder?”

“Whatever. Didn’t you get a call?”

I stopped to gaze outside. There were two officers standing at the door, making sure all the gawkers kept their distance. A large crowd was gathering now. My stomach was tingling. I had to appear brave, yet somewhat on the edge. I started making large motions with my arms. Chief Arnold looked at me like I had gone insane.

“Yes, he did!” I said. “The caller told me to ‘leave it alone’! I’ll never forget the caller’s voice! It was so…ominous!”

Actually, the dude could call and place a classified ad for a yard sale and I wouldn’t recognize him, but Chief Arnold didn’t need to know that.

The first of the sheriff’s deputies had arrived! I tried to look distressed, but continued gazing outside.

“You expecting somebody?” Chief Arnold asked.

“No, why do you ask?”

“You keep lookin outside?”

“Oh, no, I’m just amazed at all the people. Just think, the killer could be out there!”

“He ain’t no killer till he actually murders somebody.”

Well, that let all the air out of the balloon. The sheriff came walking in, followed by the OSBI guys! Man, this was too great!

They gathered around and listened to my story again. Nancy was still working the phones. I had no idea who she was calling now. I noticed she had the phone book open and must be randomly calling people to tell them what happened.

I noticed one of the OSBI guys looking at Nancy’s hair. He viewed it from several angles and shook his head. It did defy the laws of gravity.

“Do you have caller ID?” the sheriff asked.

“No, we’re lucky the phone isn’t a rotary dial.”

“I guess we can track it through the phone company, but that will take time.”

The OSBI guys were examining the hole in the wall. I planned to never cover that spot, at least as long as I had the paper, which I hoped would not be too long.

“Check out that dude’s teeth!” the younger agent commented, pointing at Carter’s pearly whites.

Various community leaders had answered the call. When their community was hurting, they were here. Plus, that way they could tell everybody what they saw and gave their interpretation of the event. You got bonus points for the closer you were to the event when the network of gossipers and commentators were in action.

Somebody got a call in between Nancy’s outgoing calls. She answered the phone and looked at me.

“It’s somebody from the Fort Smith paper,” she said.

Give me the dang phone, I wanted to scream. I motioned for her to bring me the phone, just before hearing the unbelievable response.

“Mister Hunt is too busy to be talking to you right now.”

What? I wanted to scream. Woman! I waved my arms and the various leaders were looking at me like I had stroked out.

“Hang on,” I heard her say. My prayers were answered.

I took the call from some young writer. She didn’t seem to know you-know-what from Shinola, all I cared about was that she got my name right, along with the name of the paper.

“Are you traumatized?” the reporter asked.

I let in sink in and paused, to heighten the effect.

“Why yes, it was a very, uh…” I couldn’t think of the proper word! Finally, I settled for one. “…traumatic.”

“Gosh!” she actually said.

I broke off the call by telling her the authorities needed to consult with me. Actually, they were sitting around talking to each other and appeared to be telling jokes, not that the media needed to know that.

When I got back to the desk, I heard a commotion from outside. An ambulance crew was attempting to come in, carrying a stretcher! I glared at Nancy, but she shrugged. This also wasn't her doing.

The two EMT's finally got past the deputies guarding the front door. They were two men who were dressed alike. The first man appeared to be in charge.

"Where is he?" the man hollered.

"Who?" I asked.

The EMT looked at me like I was dumber than a box of rocks.

"The guy who got shot!"

"Nobody got shot."

"Somebody called us and told us the writer..."

"Acting publisher, actually."

"...was shot."

"No, they missed," I informed him.

"Are you the man who they shot at?" the second EMT asked.

I stuck my chest out bravely. "Why yes, I am."

They rushed to my aide, not that I actually needed any.

"Please sit down, sir!" the first one requested.

I did as they asked. The second EMT got out a little flashlight and pointed them in my eyes.

"How do you feel, sir?" he asked.

"Does my HMO cover this?"

"Don't worry about that. This one's on us, sir!"

Man, I feel honored. They prodded and probed for a few minutes and pronounced me rather fit for a 42-year old chunky white guy with receding hair who had been shot at less than an hour earlier.

"Thanks," I said.

"No, thank you, sir!" the second EMT said, like I was some kind of hero. They headed back toward the door and all the nosey people who I hoped would want to read about my exploits. I happened to notice a look of disgust from Chief Arnold.

My cell phone was ringing. That meant one person and a call I did not want to answer. Somebody from another newspaper might call!

But you can't disregard calls from your mother, no matter how much you would like to. I opened the phone and stepped away from the authorities, who had moved on to discuss the physical attributes of the carhop who delivered Chief Arnold’s dinner.

“She was swinging some big sticks,” he offered.

I didn’t quite get the point of that and didn’t waste any time trying to figure it out. I moved aside, opened my phone and hit the button.

“It’s okay, Mom!” I said. “I’m fine. The bullet missed.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

What? My mother didn’t know that somebody was shooting at her son. There had been a breakdown in the network. All the old women did not know yet. I glared at Nancy, blaming her without actually saying something. She had pulled out a pocket mirror and was inspecting her hair.

“Mom, somebody shot at me tonight!”

“Oh, okay, but that wasn’t why I called.”

It wasn’t? What could be more important than her son getting shot at?

“What did you need?” I asked, the disappointment weighing heavily on my tired shoulders. I might even give in and let Nancy give me a back rub.

“I can’t find M.J.,” she said, and I realized there was something more important than getting shot at.

Chapter 48

Chapter 46

2005-08-02T06:57:00.000-05:00

My father would be appalled. Many people in Langford would be upset. I didn’t really even like it, but knew it was something that had to be done.

It needed to be shocking, get people to buy the next edition of the Langford Review. But at the same time, I didn’t want to upset the family members of the woman Mule monikered “The Beef Critter”.

So after thinking about it for a long time, I decided what needed to be done. On the cover of the new and improved Langford Review, there would be a huge picture of the body covered with a sheet and several people standing around her. In large type above it, would be the paper’s banner The Langford Review, with a new type size and font, with the word WHY? right below it.

That way, it would be a tad sensational, but also show that the Review cares, down deep, where it matters. At the bottom of the page, I would have the story of my father complete with a picture of him that he always hated it. That should teach him to die on me and leave me with this mess to clean up.

I had worked most of the night on Tuesday trying to get everything wrapped up. The OSBI guys along with the sheriff had a news conference yesterday evening, just in time so the television reporters from Fort Smith could attend and still make it back in time to have a story on at ten, complete with audio and video!

One of the OSBI guys acted like a complete jerk. I caught him picking his nose and took a picture. That would run along with several other pictures and stories inside. The OSBI guys took great pride in answering all the questions from the TV people, but blew off the little guys from the print world.

I informed the sheriff about what Mule said about the woman leaving The Last Call with some guy the night before her body was found. He thought that was pretty important. So did I. Hopefully, none of the other media guys would find this out until we scooped them when the paper came out Wednesday evening.

We learned the woman’s name Wednesday morning. After making sure the family had been informed, I included it in the story.

Her name was Wanda Livingstone. Wanda was thirty-five years old, had been divorced twice and was the mother of two teenagers. It appeared like Wanda’s fondness of looking for love in all the wrong places had gone terribly wrong. She came from a family that was fairly well off for Langford, and owned almost 100 acres just over Walker Mountain in the Haw Creek community.

She apparently didn’t have any enemies, other than her ex-husbands, who had both moved as far away from her as possible. Wanda worked at Wal-Mart in Poteau, not because she necessarily needed the money, but for the benefits.

I called her father, Larry, trying to get some comments about his daughter. He was a nice man and told the shortened version of her life story. She loved her family, the children, her house and land, along with gardening. He left out her love for bar hopping, not that I blamed him. Larry was upset and I treated him with kid gloves.

Teresa called early Wednesday morning to tell us she survived her new breasts. I almost forgot that she was gone. Nancy talked with her for several minutes, tying up our one line. I was busy finishing up the layout of the paper when Nancy brought the phone to me.

“She wants to talk to you,” Nancy said.

“Tell her I’m not here.”

“She knows you’re here,” Nancy added and handed me the phone.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Fine, just really sore,” she answered, then giggled like there was a lot of pain medicine floating around her system.

“How do they look?”

She giggled again.

“Not too good…yet. The doctor said it would be a little while before I’ll be ready to show them off.”

“Great! I have to go back to work.”

“I was just thinking this morning, it would be interesting to have a story on my breast enhancement.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.

“No, a first person account. Complete with all the details.”

“You think our readers want to know about your boob job?”

“It’s breast enhancement, silly!”

I couldn’t believe she was wasting my time with this idea. I had plenty of other things to do to waste my time.

“Nancy wants to see them,” I said, causing Nancy to jerk her head in my direction and start shaking her head.

“She does?” Teresa asked. “Tell her that as soon as the swelling and bruises go away that she can see them.”

Nancy was looking for something to throw at me. She didn’t think that was very funny.

“You know, I feel much more attractive now!” Teresa added.

“That’s good. But you’re married, what difference does that make?”

“I still like to turn a guy’s eyes every now and then.”

“That’s great! I’ve gotta be going.”

She wanted to talk to Nancy again, but I told her that we were too busy. Teresa promised to work on her story about her new breasts. I could hardly wait.

Nancy quickly overcame her anger with me. It’s amazing how women can do that so quickly prior to getting married. After they get a ring on their finger, the anger seems to linger much longer.

“Do you like my breasts?” Nancy asked. She had stood up and was pushing them out by arching her back.

“Uh, they’re fine,” I said, and tried to figure out some way to change this conversation quickly. This needed to be nipped, "nipped in the bud", as Barney Fife would say.

“You’re just saying that!”

I ignored her and acted like she wasn’t there.

“I’ve always liked them,” she added while walking over to the mirror. Nancy looked at herself from several views, not the least bit shy. “They just bounce too much when I’m Dancing With the Oldies.”

Nancy walked over to me. I pretended not to notice.

“Is that why you aren’t attracted to me?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Are my breasts why you aren’t attracted to me?”

“We work together, Nancy.”

“Yeah, I think that’s kind of neat. So you don’t have anything against my breasts?”

“No, I think your breasts are more than adequate.”

“Good, I didn’t have the money for a breast job thingey and they’re already pretty big.”

“Yeah, they are.”

That caused her to smile. I had the layout of the paper’s front page on my screen.

“Is that what our front page is going to look like?” she asked.

“Yeah, how do you like it?”

“It looks like a tabloid.”

“Thank you. That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

“Really?”

“No, not really.”

Actually, it did look like a tabloid. Other than I didn’t have anything about how Elvis is now a piano player in some rundown bar or that a lady in New Mexico had a baby that turned out to be an alien. I wanted to get people’s attention and this was a great way to do it. I had already talked to the printer and told him to print five hundred extra copies for this week.

Finally, the paper was finished for this week. I made a copy of a disc and sent Nancy on her way to get it printed. This was a new way to get the paper printed, but much easier and cheaper, two things I was fond of.

Over the last two days, we had brought in almost two thousand dollars thanks to ad sales and Nancy shaming the past-due accounts into paying. We were still a little short for the payment, but I was going to make up the difference with a check from my account in Tulsa.

There was still one check out on the other bank, but I had deposited enough to cover it. I was going to make the payment right before the bank’s closing time at two, just to keep Allen worried. We were going to be a little short on the payment to the printer on our new account, but it was just a hundred dollars and hopefully we would sell enough newspapers to cover that. If we didn’t, I could further deplete my personal cash.

The broker who was supposed to try and help to sell the paper showed up just after lunch. He was short and frumpy, for lack of a better description. The man smiled constantly, which bothered me. He asked what we needed and I told him $250,000.

He almost quit smiling, so I worried about quoting too high of a price. We signed all the documents and The Langford Review was officially for sale.

I walked down to the Bank of Langford and made the payment with a few minutes to spare. The teller gave me back a receipt showing that I had just made the bank a lot of money thanks to interest. The teller was a young girl, too pretty and perky to stay in this job for long.

“Can you make a copy of this for me?” I asked.

“Sure, but I think it costs a dollar,” she said, smiling and staring at my balding head.

“You’re going to charge a dollar for making a copy?”

“Actually, I don’t get the money. The bank does.”

Like that made it okay.

“That figures,” I said and turned to start walking toward the president’s office. He was busy reading some magazine with a tennis player on the cover. Somebody had told me that Allen really loved tennis. That seemed appropriate.

I stood at the door, waiting for him to look up. That magazine must really be interesting, I thought, while waiting. Finally, I knocked on the door and he looked up.

“You can call off your dogs,” I said. “I made the payment.”

He nodded and went back to reading without bothering to thank me or tell me to go jump in the lake. I wanted to strike at him some way, but knew I needed to keep getting advertising moolah from him and his bank.

The lobby was pretty much empty, other than workers. I walked outside and wanted to jump up and down. We had survived for at least a little longer. My steps back to the Review were a little brisker. My cell phone rang. I saw it was Squiggy calling and ignored it. He called back before I reached the end of the block.

I knew he would keep calling until I answered.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Whadda yer doin?” he asked, sounding very drunk.

“Working. What are you doing?”

“We’s at de bar.”

“That’s great. Call in sick again?”

He giggled. I saw nothing funny in it.

“You betcha, pardner! Come drink wif me!”

“I’m working.”

“Call in sick!”

I got rid of him and made it back to the office. Nancy left a message and said she would be back shortly. She had to drop some papers off at stores in Poteau and then would start spreading them around Langford.

For one of the few times since returning back to Langford, I was actually feeling good. I was unemployed and watching my money fly out the window, but had accomplished something. It was a long time since I had this feeling.

The phone started ringing off the hooks. Mainly, it was people wondering when the paper was going to be out. It was part of their ritual, I knew that. Even though our paper "officially" was dated on the Thursday of each week, we put them out in the local stores on Wednesdays. On Wednesday afternoon, they would get a paper and spend however long it took them to read it from cover to cover.

Nancy got back around four or so. I had been on the phone constantly, but did work up enough time to call a couple of businesses in Poteau and convince them to advertise in the Review.

She placed the paper on my desk and it felt good to know that we did all this. Teresa contributed a couple of terrible stories, but the rest of it was because of us. I wanted to celebrate, but the only person to celebrate with was Nancy. She was nice enough and even attractive, but I didn’t want to give her any ideas.

We worked until six. Nancy asked if she could leave. Her Wednesday church services started at seven and she was singing. I never even knew she sang. Nancy asked if I would like to come, but I turned her down. There was too much to do and not enough time to do it, I said.

She smiled and left, leaving me all alone. I turned off most of the lights and sat in front of the computer, watching the screen saver where the pipes attach and grow to cover the surface of the monitor.

I was about to call it a day when I heard the blast from outside and the glass in the front door explode. There was a thud behind me. I turned around, saw the hole in the wall and realized somebody had just tried to put a bullet into my body.

I dove on the ground and crawled under the desk. My cell phone was still on the desk. I reached up and finally found it. Before I could call the police, the office phone rang. Something told me to take this call, and I reached up and grabbed the phone.

“Leave it alone,” the caller said. It was a man with an accent from even deeper in the south.

“Leave what alone?” I asked, still huddled under the desk. The caller disconnected the call and I heard the sound of somebody stepping on broken glass and knew somebody else was here, coming toward me.

I had never been so scared in my life.

Chapter 47

Chapter 45

2005-08-01T06:14:00.000-05:00

As a journalist, I had seen a few dead people in my life. At first, it bothered me. Actually, it still bothers me. It’s bad enough when a person dies of natural causes, but when you see a person with a gunshot wound to their head, it’s not a pretty sight.

It didn’t seem to bother Squiggy or Mule that much, which wasn’t surprising. If it was something normal, it might bother them. Things like this just seemed par for the course.

The sheriff looked around one more time before pulling the sheet back. The woman’s death was not peaceful. She had a look of horror on her face and somebody needed to close her eyes. Her skin was still pale but was starting to darken.

Mule and Squiggy moved closer and examined the body.

“I’ll be darned,” Squiggy said. “Tee hee, ain’t this that chick you picked up last week at the bar?”

“You don’t gotta say it that loud!” Mule protested. “I was drunk!”

That was their universal excuse for anything they did that was wrong.

“She’s bigger than Big Uns. What was it you called her?”

Mule giggled. I thought there was something inappropriate going on here, but let it pass.

“Beef Critter!” Mule managed to say. He thought this was bang your knee funny. So did Squiggy and the sheriff.

“Why’d you call her that?” I asked. They all looked at me like I was stupid.

“Ya know, looked like a cow?” Squiggy said. “You ain’t never watched no Gary Cooper movies.”

“Man, you guys kill me!” the sheriff said, then realized what he had just said and laughed harder.

“Just cause she’s fat don’t make her bad,” Mule argued.

“Sometimes, I like em big,” Squiggy commented.

Mule leaned down so he was almost lying on the ground.

“Dang, you can almost see straight through her head!”

“Really?” Squiggy asked. “Lemme see! I watch all dem CSI shows.”

“I watched one the other night.”

“Which one?”

“Cain’t member, I was too drunk.”

I would hate to be their liver.

Squiggy got up on his knees and crawled around to the other side. He looked into the exit hole while Mule was looking into the entry hole.

“Can you see me?” Squiggy asked.

“Naw, there’s too much stuff in de way.”

“This is kinda strange, if you ast me.”

Nobody asked him, but I didn’t think that was going to keep him from commenting.

“This is a strange angle for de bullet to take, if’n a person was gonna shoot demself.”

“What do you mean?” the sheriff asked.

“The bullet is angled back toward the front of her gourd. I’d say if a person was gonna put a bullet in der own head, it’d go back de udder way.”

Good point, Squiggy. All those hours of watching CSI were really paying off.

“I think she got shot by a .22,” added Mule. “Hole ain’t big enuff for nothin else.”

I could tell that Squiggy agreed, but he wouldn’t admit it since Mule said it first.

Nobody heard the footsteps from behind us.

“What is going on here?” a man asked.

We turned around to see a couple of suits. Actually, angry people wearing suits, to be truthful.

“We’s lookin at her head,” Mule answered.

“What’s it to you, ya weenie?” added Squiggy, without bothering to look up.

These were not the types of people who took kindly to being called weenies. They were too serious and I figured the “big boys” the sheriff had described earlier had arrived. There were two of them, both a little younger than me. Their hair was combed perfectly and they were dressed like big-city bankers.

“You boys need to get outta the way,” the sheriff warned.

“We’ll be through here inna minute,” Squiggy said. “Mule, git a stick and try and put it through the hole.”

Mule got up and started looking around for a stick.

“Don’t even think about it!” one of the suits said. Mule looked a little disappointed. Squiggy was just hacked.

“Who died and put your scrawny butt in charge?”

“Squiggy, they’re from the OSBI,” the sheriff said.

“I don’t care if they’re Andy and Barney. What’s the OSBI?”

“That’s kind of like a state FBI.”

“Oh,” Squiggy said. “Y’all don’t want us to poke a stick through the hole?”

“Not in this lifetime,” the other agent said. “Sheriff, you and your boys here need to get out of here. In fact, take these idiots out of the park.”

“Ain’t no reason to git all huffy,” Squiggy said. “We was just tryin to help.”

“Yeah!” Mule fired back.

The sheriff escorted us out of the area.

“Sorry, boys,” he said.

I got the sheriff’s phone number and permission to call later to find out what was going on. I had taken some pictures when we first arrived of the body covered in the sheet with some people standing around. I thought that would look really good, blown up on the front page of this week’s edition.

We drove away from the lake on those windy roads. Mule was a little disappointed that the Cedar Lake Store was shut down as he was out of beer.

“We’ll git ya some at Hodgen,” Squiggy promised.

“Yeah, but I could drink three of em between here and there!”

Man, what a shame. Mule was missing out on beer time. As we got out on Holsun Valley Road, a short stretch of road that is seldom traveled, my phone rang. It was my mother. I was surprised there was cell service this far in the sticks.

“Where are you?” she asked. I told her about the dead woman and that we were heading back to town.

Squiggy and Mule were singing along with some sappy country song. Neither of them were a threat to the next American Idol contestants, or William Hung for that matter. Mule started singing with his eyes closed. I elbowed him and told him to quit.

“Can you get my medicine?” she asked.

“Sure, Mom, where is it?” I asked.

“At Wal-Mart!”

That would waste a good hour of time, but I couldn’t turn the mother figure down.

“Yeah, I’ll get it,” I said, then bid my farewell. “Drop me off at the paper. I have to go to the Wal-Mart in Poteau.”

“We can take you,” Squiggy offered.

“I like Wal-Mart!” Mule said. I wasn’t surprised. Wal-Mart for a country boy was like taking a kid to a candy store.

We had to make two stops before we got to the store. The first one was at a convenience store in Hodgen to get beer. They were both out of money and since the store wouldn’t take an IOU, Squiggy borrowed some money from an old guy hanging out at the table for coffee drinkers.

Mule made it all the way to the Monroe cutoff before he asked Squiggy to pull over.

“Ya gonna yack?” Squiggy asked.

“Naw, I gotta pee.”

This was not good.

“Why didn’t you stop at the store to do this?” I asked.

“It’s funner to go outside,” he said, which did not surprise me. Mule stepped outside the truck and pointed away from traffic.

“Lookee there!” Squiggy said, giggling and elbowed me.

I looked outside to see Mule trying to see how high he could go. I saw this giant arc or urine streaming through the air, even above his head. He was going back and forth, almost making it look like one of those revolving sprinklers.

Two people driving by honked. Mule just waved and continued on with his business.

Eventually, he got back in the truck and we headed off on our journey. I hoped nobody saw me.

Eventually, we made it to Wal-Mart. Squiggy tried to find a handicapped spot, but they were all taken.

“Dang,” he said. “I bet deys not all crippled!”

He finally found a spot and parked. Squiggy and Mule also climbed out of the truck and headed toward the store, each of them carrying a beer.

“Uh, where are you going?” I asked.

“To the Wal-Mart!” Squiggy said, then shook his head. What a stupid question!

I had a bad feeling about this. All I wanted to do was run in and get my mother’s medicine. People like Squiggy and Mule should not be allowed in public places like this.

Squiggy stopped and pointed at the roof.

“Look, ain’t dat a camera?” he said.

“Cool!” Mule added. “Let’s moon it!”

I protested, of course, not that it did any good. They dropped their pants and turned around, showing their buttocks to the camera and everybody coming into and out of the store. There were shoppers coming and going, of course, not that it bothered them. One older woman walked by with her cart full.

“I wish I had a belt so I could spank you!” she said.

“Yeah, I wish you could, too!” Squiggy said.

I acted like they were complete strangers. During the mooning process, I had walked by and was refusing to acknowledge their presence. They caught up with me, just as we walked inside the first set of doors.

Squiggy grabbed Mule and pointed. I couldn’t see what it was that excited him, until it was too late. They practically sprinted over to the soda pop machines and each of them climbed in a motorized cart, the kind usually reserved for the old and feeble.

“We can race!” Squiggy said and took off. Mule was in reverse and almost backed over a little boy trying to get a Sam’s Choice out of the vending machine.

“Don’t do this!” I hollered, not that it mattered.

Mule had his machine going in the right direction. Squiggy was waiting for the mechanical door to open. Some old man made the mistake of walking in front of him.

“Get yer wrinkly rear outta the way!” Squiggy hollered. “We’s a racin!”

Mule banged into Squiggy from the rear, almost knocking him into the old man. Those little carts actually went fairly fast. Once we got inside the store, I quickly veered off to the left. There was a loud commotion behind me. I refused to look, but could hear several people hollering. As I continued down the line of cashiers, I met two men wearing ties and sporting Wal-Mart badges sprinting in the opposite direction, each of them talking into some walkie talkies.

I doubted they were going for a price check on aisle four.

I got my mother’s medicine and walked back toward the same entrance. There were about twenty people gathered together, including several police officers. Squiggy and Mule were in the center, enjoying all this attention.

“Those carts are reserved for the handicapped!” one of the officers said, a huge hulk of a man. “Not for racing!”

“I’m handicapped, sort of,” Mule offered.

“How’s that?”

“I gotta boil on my butt.”

I stood off to the side, wondering if my driver and his buddy were going to get busted. The phone rang again. I opened it and saw it was my mother calling.

“Hello, Mom, I’ll be home in a little bit,” I said.

“Michael, where are you?” she asked.

Uh oh, I’d been busted.

“At Wal-Mart.”

“You aren’t with those two idiots, are you?”

“Which two idiots?”

“That Squiggy and Mule!”

“Uh, yeah, I am.”

There was a silence for several seconds.

“I was afraid of that,” she said and hung up.

They had a big powwow for several minutes before deciding on the proper punishment.

“You are not allowed back in Wal-Mart,” they advised him.

“Ask me if I care?” Squiggy hollered.

“What about when I needs fishin lures?” Mule asked. He was hurt. They were taking away a vital part of his life.

“You can come then, just don’t come together.”

They accepted their punishment and met me outside.

“Man, that was cool!” Squiggy said.

“Yep, I hope dat old woman’s okay,” Mule added.

“What old woman?” I asked.

“De one Squiggy bumped into the bananas. She was a hollerin that Squiggy broke her good hip.”

“They’s a watchin us,” Squiggy mentioned. “You gotta drive.”

That sounded like a good idea to me. It was also probably a lot safer than with him at the wheel. We pulled out and were followed all the way out of town by two police cars. I kept expecting Squiggy to do something to get us arrested, but he had mellowed out a little bit. I guess going without beer for fifteen minutes can do that to a person.

“What day is this?” he asked.

“Heck if I know,” Mule said. They both looked to me.

“Tuesday.”

“Crappola!” Squiggy shouted. “We’s havin a surprise birthday party for my mom! What time is it?”

Apparently he had lost the ability to look at the watch on his arm.

“Ten after five,” I finally said.

“Turn around, we’s gotta git to the Sizzlin!” he said, referring to the Western Sizzlin’.

“I have to get back to work,” I said.

We argued all the way back to Langford. Squiggy wanted me to drive him while I countered with needing to get to work.

When we pulled up in front of the Review’s office, he was still sulking and wouldn’t say anything.

“See you guys later,” I said. Squiggy ignored me. Mule waved and smiled. He had beer foam all around his mouth.

There were about twenty messages waiting for me on the desk. I was going through the list when I heard the front door ring. There’s a cattle bell attached to alert everybody when a customer entered.

I looked up and saw Mule walking in. He looked a little sad.

“Squiggy made me git out!” he said. “He told me I had to stay with the other jerk.”

Mule sat down at my desk. I continued to check my messages as Mule sat in the chair opposite of me, whistling away.

He stopped whistling and I looked up. Mule had a strange look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

“Naw, I dids that out front,” he said. Great, I’m sure that was a great attraction. All businesses need some guy taking a leak out front. “I was just a wonderin.”

“What were you wondering?” I asked, while wishing he would go away. I thought about asking Nancy to take him home, but was afraid she would never be the same.

“I member de Beef Critter was at the bar last night,” he said. Mule had my attention. “She was a dirty dancing wif some fake cowboy.”

“Did you know him?”

“Naw, but he must’ve liked it cuz I saw dem leave. Ya reckon that guy that picked her up might’ve had anything to do wif her a gittin shot?”

Chapter 46

Chapter 44

2005-07-31T08:28:00.000-05:00

A body! Even better, a floater who the authorities are saying might have died from unnatural causes! This was great news! Not for the family of the dead person, of course, but nothing sold papers better than a mysterious dead body.

I was almost tingling.

“Mike, you need to calm down!” Nancy said, leaning close. “You’re smiling at your father’s funeral.”

“It’s okay,” I replied. “Dad doesn’t care.”

She nodded, accepting my reasoning which I found just the slight bit strange.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Go back to the newspaper and sell a lot of ads.”

Nancy smiled at me. I noticed her hair, her pride and joy was really messed up. She would have to waste a whole can of hair spray to get her doo poofed back up.

“Okay!” she said, and took off at a quick pace back toward her car. I was looking around for my mother before realizing that I didn’t have a ride. The funeral home guys probably wouldn’t like me borrowing their car to get down to the newspaper.

Bummer, I couldn’t wait. Finally, a solution struck. It, or they, were hiding behind a tree passing a flask back and forth. I whistled and they came running, just like a good pair of bird dogs.

Squiggy actually looked fairly normal aside from the extremely greased hair. His shirt actually was clean, along with his pants. Mule was another story. I hadn’t noticed it at the church, but he was nattily attired in a matching set of camouflage shirt and pants, complete with a black clip-on tie.

Never know when a hunting opportunity might come about at a funeral, I guess. He did blend in fairly well behind the tree, except for the headstones, of course.

“You wore that to my father’s funeral?” I asked. Stupid question, I knew he wore that to the funeral. It was more of a statement of disbelief.

Mule looked down to help him remember what he was wearing.

“Yeah, what’s wrong wif dis?” he asked.

“You usually wear your best clothes to a funeral.”

“These are my bestest clothes.”

I nodded, realizing he was probably right. Plus he probably needed to break them in. Deer season was barely two months away, not that Mule would wait until then if he happened to be carrying a rifle and a deer crossed his path.

It pained me to say it.

“I need a favor from you?” I said.

They looked at each other, then back at me.

“Ya need us to git ya some beer fer the party at de church?” Squiggy asked.

“No, I need a ride.”

“Where to?” Mule asked. He must have an insect bite on his rear. Mule was scratching so hard he was standing up on his tiptoes and grunting. Several people couldn’t help but notice.

“You got a bite, Mule?” I asked.

“Naw, there’s one of dem boilers on my butt and I’s tryin to drain it again.”

“Please stop,” Squiggy requested. I was about to compliment him on his good taste then saw him hit the flask.

“I just need a ride,” I said.

“Where ya goin?” Mule asked.

“It doesn’t matter where he’s a goin!” Squiggy fired back, loud enough that the people on the other side of the cemetery probably heard him. “He’s our friend! We don’t gotta know where he’s goin before deciding on whether we’ll take him. Dadgum, ya idiot! Sure, we’ll take ya!”

“Naw, I was just wonderin where we was a goin, Squiggy. I don’t figger there ain’t no reason fer you to be callin me names. Member what Momma told youse dis morning after she heard you call me a ‘dipstick’?”

“Oh yeah, sorry.”

In a strange way, I wanted to know what she said, but then again, decided it wasn’t that important.

“I need to get my truck,” I said.

“What’s the dang rush?” Squiggy said. “They ain’t gonna start eatin till yo mom gits there.”

“No, I’m not going back to the church for the meal.”

“Well, that’s about stupid,” he added. “Man, there’s a gonna be all kinds of food and maybe even some chicks!”

“You guys can go,” I said, then regretted that. “I have to go out to the lake.”

“Fer a kegger?” Mule asked.

“No, they found a floater out there.”

“What’s the big deal bout that?” Squiggy asked. “I saw a floater last time we was at the Poteau pool. Looked like one of dem kingsized Babe Ruth candy bar.”

“I didn’t do it,” Mule said.

“You lie, boy! Nobody else at that pool could launch a log dat big!”

Squiggy scooted close to me.

“We was the only adults there,” he added.

“Naw, I meant they found a dead body.”

“Really? Man, that’s too cool!”

“Yep.”

“I don’t think youse guys should be so excited bout a croaker,” Mule admonished us.

“Shut up, Mule,” Squiggy said. “If wes wants yer opinion, we’ll ast.”

“Okay,” Mule agreed. I expected him to thunk Squiggy for a while.

“I’ll meet you at your truck,” I said, not believing those words actually came out of my mouth. They nodded and took off sprinting toward the truck. Mule had a slight lead until Squiggy threw on the brakes to talk with a large lady standing under the tree. He offered her the flask, she turned it down and he moved on.

I found my mother and whispered to her that I had to go. She wasn’t all that thrilled with it, but could only nod. I was sure my cell phone would be ringing as soon as she could sneak off into the bathroom after getting to the church.

Squiggy was revving his monster truck, loud enough that it was chasing off all the birds. I walked over to the truck and opened the door.

“Scoot over,” I said to Mule. He shook his head.

“I’s got shotgun.”

“We’re just going downtown.”

“Don’t matter, Mule don’t sit in de middle. People’d think I was queer.”

We sure couldn’t allow that to happen. He climbed out and I got in the middle. Mule looked at me and smiled as Squiggy took off, way too fast.

“Now they’ll think yer a homo!”

I put my hand on his leg and started rubbing.

“I am gay!”

Mule practically climbed out the window, only his lower torso was still inside. Squiggy didn’t bother to stop. Actually, I think he was looking for bumps to make Mule bounce.

“He’s kiddin, ya idiot!” Squiggy hollered over the music. Mule slowly climbed back in.

“Ya ain’t gay?” he asked.

“No, Mule, I’m not.”

“Good, I was afraid I might catch it.”

Squiggy had to take a shortcut across part of the grass to get around all the cars. His tires spun on one patch of grass and he peeled out. I looked back and realized somebody’s grave now had tire tracks on it.

“Drop me off at the paper,” I requested.

“How come?” Squiggy asked, frowning.

“I need to get my truck and camera.”

“Bullcrud! Youse goin wif us!”

“No, I need to go by and get my truck. I can drive.”

“Youse can git yer camera, but yer ridin wif us.”

“Why?”

“We wanna see the body!” Squiggy said and looked at Mule, who didn’t seem that excited.

“Croakers gives me the creeps,” Mule said.

“Then you can sit in the truck and drink beer!”

“I figure there’s gonna be cops all over,” I warned them.

“Don’t matter, I’ll just use one of dem koozies.” Mule then proceeded to reach under the seat and pull out a koozie that wrapped around a can of beer and made it look just like a Pepsi. I was, for once, impressed with Mule's ingenuity.

Squiggy ran the stoplight at the four-way and almost caused three wrecks. Some lady pushing a stroller, complete with baby, made the mistake of trying to cross the road. Squiggy missed her by an inch, almost causing the stroller to tip over. It was a hispanic woman. She hollered something at Squiggy that didn’t sound all that nice.

“Go back to Mexico!” he hollered, then laughed way too hard. Mule and I failed to see the humor.

Squiggy pulled in front of the Review office, parked the wrong way.

“Git yer stuff!” he said. “We’ll be a waitin!”

I ran through the office, grabbed my camera and notebook and headed straight through the office. My truck was parked out back. I was giving them the slip and was pleased with myself. I wondered how long they would stay out front, waiting on me, before finally giving up. I opened the back door and saw that stupid truck blocking mine. Squiggy and Mule were laughing and pointing at me.

Perhaps I wasn’t that clever.

“Don’t try to fool de Squigster!” Squiggy yelled.

“Yeah, he ain’t as dumb as he looks!” Mule added.

Squiggy stopped smiling and turned to Mule.

“Whadda ya mean by dat?” he asked.

Mule shrugged. I knew it was hopeless so I got back in the truck.

“Ya sure ya ain’t homo?” Mule asked.

“Positive,” I said.

Squiggy put on his hazard blinkers and threw gravel all over downtown as he left the parking lot. The goth girl from Flora’s Flowers was out back, smoking something. She hooked us the bird. Squiggy didn’t notice, which I was glad to see.

We got out on the highway and started heading south.

“Okay, now where’s we goin?” he asked.

“To the lake!” I said.

“Which one?”

Oops, I forgot to find out. I called Nancy and she solved the problem. It was Cedar Lake, about twelve miles south of Langford. The ride was rather bumpy, even more so than it should be. I figured out why when I looked at the dashboard. We were going 120 miles an hour!

Squiggy looked like a crazed person. His eyes were all bugged out, sweat beads were forming under his eyes and he was smiling like somebody just gave him free beer.

I had never before got out to the lake so quick. Cedar Lake has two sides for camping and swimming. The west side is called the sandy side, because there is a sandy beach there. The other side is called the dock side, because, there’s a dock for people to dive off of. It is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. We used to come to the lake to swim and fish when I was younger.

Squiggy drove over to the beach side first, but didn’t see anything exciting other than this guy riding a horse.

“I wonder if dat thing ever drags the ground?” Mule asked.

Squiggy opened his mouth several times to say something, but let the opportunity pass.

I couldn't, sadly enough.

"What about your's?" I asked.

"Only when I sit nekkid on a milk crate," he answered, then saw the disbelief on my face. "It was kind of a bet."

We let that go and got back on the main road and turned back to the north. We saw our first cop at the pay station. It was a county sheriff’s deputy named Jack. His white car had the road blocked.

The deputy came strolling over, wearing sunglasses that were too big for his face. He had on some strange cowboy hat that made him look silly. He walked over to the truck and poked his head in.

“Where you boys going?” he asked. I looked over and saw Mule had a beer can between his legs.
“To the lake,” Squiggy said. “We’s goin fishin!”

The deputy raised his sunglasses to look between Mule’s legs.

“Lake’s closed, boys. Say, you ain’t been drinking, have you?”

“Yeah, want one?”

The deputy stepped back and looked undecided. He looked around and moved closer.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind!”

Squiggy pulled a couple of beers out from behind the seat and handed them over.

“They’re hot?” the deputy protested.

“Yeah, but they’re free. Move yer car, we gotta git in!”

“Can’t do it. The Sheriff would eat me alive!”

“Aw, he ain’t nothing. We gotta git in. This here’s a r'porter!”

“I’m with the Langford Review,” I said.

The deputy looked at me and between my legs, to make sure I wasn’t packing a beer. I held up my camera bag and press pass. That seemed to satisfy him.

“Y’all go on it!”

We waited for the deputy to move his car then drove down to the lake. All the cop cars were parked down by the boat ramp. I counted at least eight cruisers along with the forest service vehicles and an ambulance. Squiggy stopped back a ways and we took off toward the lake.

“I lost my dadgum virginality right der,” Mule said. He was pointing at a camping table. Somehow, that wasn’t surprising.

“Wif yer sister?” Squiggy asked, then snorted like a pig.

“She was my stepsister!”

I veered away from them. Mule looked like he wanted to punch Squiggy.

“Der’s the cop that arrested me last night,” he said instead.

“Dat one over der busted me last month,” Squiggy added.

“Ain’t dat de one who got you fer that DUI on Christmas?”

“Yeah, but I got off!”

I found another deputy and asked him where the sheriff was. He pointed to an older man standing near the lake. The guy was tall and way too skinny. He must be at least six-foot-eight and probably weighed less than I do.

The sheriff was looking around for something as I approached.

“Sheriff?” I said, approaching him with my hand out. He sneered at my hand and me. The sheriff had on thick glasses. His nose was twisted to the side like it had been broken at one time and never fixed. His face bore the scars of a serious acne problem when he was younger.

I noticed his lower lip twitched constantly.

“Who are you and what do you want?” he asked, still twitching. I tried not to stare at his lip but found it difficult.

“My name’s Michael Hunt,” I said. “I’m with the Langford Review.”

He sneered. The right side of his mouth actually turned up. But his lip never quit twitching.

“You ain’t supposed to be here. This is a crime scene.”

“I won’t disturb anything. What can you tell me?”

“That it’s Tuesday afternoon and if you don’t get outta here, I’m gonna get some of my boys to haul you off.”

Hmm, a threat! I wasn’t all that worried.

“Whadda ya say, Shakey?” I heard the voice from behind me. Now, I knew we were in deep doodoo.

The sheriff looked over my shoulder. It was amazing to watch the lower lip jitter up and down.

“ Squig?” the sheriff asked.

“Shore nuff is!”

“I’ll be darned!” The sheriff actually smiled and walked over to greet Squiggy warmly. “How ya been?’

“Dern good. And you?”

“Great until this mess happened. Now I gotta deal with a dead person and some newspaper weenie.”

“Ya talkin bout him?” Squiggy asked, pointing at me. The sheriff nodded. “Naw, he’s cool. He’s wif me.”

“Oh, okay.”

I wondered what Squiggy had on the sheriff. Either that or they had just gotten to be good friends after all the times Squiggy had gotten busted.

They walked back over to where I was standing. This time, the sheriff held out his hand.

“I’m the sheriff,” he said, like I had not figured that out. I took his hand.

“What happened?” I asked. Now, he was professional and seemed to know what he was doing.

“We’re not sure yet. Somebody called it in two hours ago. They found a female's body floating near the other side of the lake.”

“Any idea who she is?”

“Not yet.”

“Did she drown?”

The sheriff took my arm and we started walking toward the body, covered by a sheet. It was underneath a large pine tree. Mule was standing nearby, talking to another officer.

We stopped and the sheriff looked around. He leaned down and pulled the sheet back.

“This is what got her,” he said. There was a small hole in her head, just above her ear. The other side of her head was missing a quarter-sized chunk of skull where the bullet exited. I attributed the lack of a lot of blood to floating in the water.

The woman appeared to be in her thirties. She was rather large with dark hair and blue eyes that were wide open. She had not been in the water long enough to mess up her skin. He grabbed the sheet and covered her up.

“Suicide?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said. “We’ll let the big boys decide that.”

Mule walked closer to the body. He had a strange look on his face.

“Lemme see her again,” he requested.

“Dude, yer weird!” Squiggy said. Mule shook his head hard.

“Naw, I think I know her.”

Chapter 45

Chapter 43

2005-07-29T06:54:00.000-05:00

My age is advanced enough now that my eyes will occasionally play tricks on me. I’ll see things that aren’t really what they are and not see things for what they are. I have no choice over this, unlike my hearing. My ears are still good, I just suffer from selective hearing and only listen and interpret things that I choose.

This time, my eyes weren’t playing any tricks on me.

“Michael, what is wrong with you?” my mother asked, much louder than her usual decibel level. “We’ll be late for your father’s funeral!”

“Uh, Mister Hunt, we need to be going,” said the funeral director. He was looking at me with concern, figuring I was about to flip out or something.

Even little M.J. was concerned. He started shaking a little but Mom hugged the fit away.

“He strange,” M.J. added.

I didn’t care what they said. We could be late for the funeral. I doubted they would start without us. This was much more important. There was a car that had just pulled up in our driveway. Three people had gotten out and were walking up the sidewalk to the house.

The dang car door wouldn’t open. I fumbled with it for several seconds.

“You gotta unlock it,” M.J. advised. What a wise chap! I knew that, just hadn’t thought of it.

I unlocked the door and presto, I escaped. We were roughly half way down the block. My exercise lately had been raising food from the plate to the mouth with my hand, so I wasn’t in the best shape.

But it didn’t deter me, at first. I took off sprinting toward my mother’s house. There is a slight incline and it slowly started taking its toll, forcing me to slow to a jog and finally to speed walk, cranking my arms and shuffling my feet like the old walkers at the mall. All I needed were hand weights to complete the picture.

They were standing at the porch when I got back to the house. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but knew this was no illusion. Manny had returned home, this time with visitors. I had not seen Molly in some twenty years, but knew exactly who she was.

I had never seen Emanuel, Manny’s daughter, but there was no doubt about her either. Manny looked better than he had in years. He was cleaned up and actually wore nice clothes. My brother was still too skinny and had a rough look to him, but it was no comparison to the last time I saw him.

Molly had put on a little weight over the years and appeared to have gotten a little sophisticated, but the face was the same. Emanuel was tall and skinny, not yet out of the gawky stage. Her hair was as blonde as M.J.’s.

Both women wore black dresses. I found this so hard to believe, that until a couple of days ago, I didn’t even know I had a niece, but here she was standing in front of me. Emanuel looked like there were probably other places she would rather be, but I couldn’t blame her. There were other places I would rather be.

“Manny!” I hollered. I only hollered his name, but all three of them turned. He smiled and waved back. Molly whispered something to her daughter. She nodded. While walking up to the porch, I heard the car coming back for me.

My brother hugged me before I got the chance to grab him. After letting go, I shook Molly’s hand.

“Bubs, this is your niece, Emanuel,” he said. I knew that, but it was nice to hear.

She smiled and looked at the ground. Apparently, Emanuel was a little on the shy side.

“Nice to meet you,” she whispered. I wanted to give her a hug and I’m not the touchy feely type.

Instead, I patted her on the back, much like a person would their favorite dog. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Glad to meet you!” I fired back. This was too cool. I looked back toward the road and saw Mom and M.J. emerging from the car. She looked like a fainting spell was coming on.

“Manny?” she said.

“Yeah, Mom,” he answered and walked out to meet her. M.J. didn’t even try to run away, just stared at my brother. Manny escorted her back to the porch.

“Who are these people?” she asked.

Now this was going to get interesting. Mom would either flip out or be so happy that she could probably jump up and dunk a basketball.

“Mom, you remember Molly don’t you?” she nodded, no smile. “This is my daughter, Emanuel.”

Mom looked at Emanuel, back at Manny, then repeated the process several times.

“You have a daughter?” she asked.

“Right there.”

I thought she was going to start beating him.

“How come you never told me?” Mom was still in between emotions.

“I didn’t know until recently.”

She nodded, but wore a look of uncertainty on her face.

“That…that means I’m a grandmother!”

“Yeah, it does.”

She started smiling. A day that was going to be so sad for her had brightened considerably.

“I can’t wait to tell everybody!”

We cringed. The phone lines in Langford would be fired up this afternoon and evening. Most of her friends would find out after the service, when everybody came over to bum food.

Mom was so excited she even let go of M.J. He stood there for a second, all by himself and didn’t like it. She was walking toward the porch, without him. He was left all alone.

“Hey, excuse me!” M.J. shouted. Mom turned around, wondering what all the excitement was about. She waved him forward and he took off in a hurry. M.J. grabbed her hand and walked up to the porch.

Mom showed no signs of being old at that moment. I had not seen her so alive in years. She hugged Molly, something she wouldn’t have done during the bad times, and squeezed Emanuel so hard I was surprised the girl’s insides didn’t come out.

“I’m so glad to see you!” she said. “My word, I have a granddaughter!”

Emanuel was smiling and looking around, obviously wondering when this old woman was going to release her. She was patting my mother on the back and looked like her eyes were going to pop out.

Mom finally stepped back, but kept her hands on Emanuel’s arms. She looked at her granddaughter from the top of her head to her feet, then back again. Emanuel was glimpsing out of the corner of her eye at her mother.

She got another hug and was finally released. Mom even gave Molly a hug, I guess for giving her a granddaughter.

“I’m so happy!” Mom said. Actually, we had figured that out. The funeral director was a tall man with silver hair and a fake smile. He was walking toward us, looking at his watch every few steps, like the time would change in between.

“We need to be going!” he said.

“Hold your horses!” Mom replied. “Look, I've got a granddaughter!”

The funeral director gave some kind of strange look with his mouth open, like he was trying to act surprised.

“Wow!” he said and took another glance at his watch. The man had probably never been late to a funeral in his life. I looked at my watch and saw that it was time to get to the church.

“We do need to get going,” I said. Mom glared at me, much like a child usually does at their mother after getting told it was time to go to bed.

“Okay,” she relented. “Can you come back after the funeral?”

“Sure,” Manny said, then looked at the two women for approval.

“That would be fine,” Molly said, in her husky voice that sounded like she had drunk too much whiskey in her days.

We hightailed it back to the car. Manny and the women followed us. We hurried off to the church and were let out in front. They escorted us into the church. Everybody rose and stared. I wanted to start waving, but knew that would cause my mother to have a meltdown.

Instead, I acted solemn and nodded. I was actually quite happy! I wanted to be talking to my brother and my niece, not getting stared at by a crowd of people who were at the service to see and be seen, not to honor the dead.

Squiggy and Mule were sitting on the aisle. Mule waved at me and Squiggy elbowed him.

“Ya cain’t do that at a funeral!” he said, loud enough that half the church could hear.

Squiggy had his hair all slicked back and wore his best clothes. He looked rather funny and out of place with all these other people dressed so nice. I decided Squiggy would be better company than most of these people.

The coffin was parked at the front of the church. The old man was in there, his body waiting for its final resting spot. As soon as I saw this, the joy left. I realized that my father’s body was in that box and would soon be placed in a hole and buried.

It upset me badly. I no longer wanted to be here, but knew that leaving was impossible. I sat between Manny and my mother. She was holding a box of tissues in her lap. M.J. was looking around the church in awe, staring at the funny windows with the bright colors.

The preacher came forward and welcomed everybody. Some lady sang a couple of songs, including my old favorite Amazing Grace. This was the signal for all the women and some of the men to start crying. I refused to cry during the song and stared at the Baptismal area.

Mom’s preacher came forward and gave an abridged version of my father’s life, giving the date of his birth and when he departed this life. He made my father out to be a better person than I remembered, but that was okay.

We knew the truth, or at least Manny and I did. Mom chose to look at the positives, but I knew she was aware of all that happened. The service was much longer than necessary, of course, and included the preacher giving a stern message to everybody about how if they die and are not saved, their soul would go to the bad place, instead of the good place where my father was now, waiting for his beloved wife and sons.

I was treading water and okay until they opened the coffin. My father was there, his skin all pasty, wearing his favorite blue suit. His Bible was placed on his chest.

I tried not to stare, but it was hard. Mom was shaking and I put my arm around her. Manny was crying and I saw Molly trying to comfort him. I wished there was somebody to comfort me, but knew I was out of luck.

The preacher finally finished and the funeral staff lined everybody up to view the body. A bunch of people came by and hugged us and told us how sorry they were that my father had died.

I was going through the motions. I would respond, but only wanted this to end. Sandy was one of the last ones to come through. She hugged everybody’s neck. I stood for her, the only person that got that honor, if that is what it was.

Trevor was next to her, holding her hand. She let go of him and hugged my mother’s neck. Sandy was crying harder than most. She grabbed me and leaned her head against my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but for some reason I thought it wasn’t because of my father’s death. Or it might just be what I hoped it meant.

Trevor shook my hand and didn’t try to squeeze any bones, this time. The crowd finally had left. Now, it was time for us. I followed behind my mother. She took slow steps while approaching the casket, holding M.J.’s little hand.

She stood next to the casket for a while, just looking at him. Finally, Mom put her hand on my father’s chest, almost like she was trying to wake him. This was a man she had been married to for almost half a century and was seeing for the final time. She held her composure in and only lingered for a little while.

Mom moved on and waited for her sons. I was next, but couldn’t bring myself to touch him. It was hard enough just to look at him. He almost looked like one of those wax creations at a wax museum. At least he wasn’t in pain anymore, I tried to convince myself. It didn’t help.

I slowly moved on and waited for Manny. He held his composure a lot better than I did. Of course, he was the one person my father hurt more than me. Manny hugged my father and whispered something to him. He paused for a minute and straightened my father’s coat and put his hand on my father’s shoulder.

The tears were flowing hard now. I watched as Molly and Emanuel walked by. Molly stopped for a minute, also staring at a man who had messed up her life. Emanuel only briefly glanced at a grandfather she didn’t know and never would.

I felt something tugging at my pants. When I turned around, it was M.J.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll play wif you when we get home.”

I braved a smile and nodded. M.J. was not my son, but it made me wonder what it would have been like to play with my father.

We finally left the church and got back in the car. I saw the pallbearers bring the casket out and load it in the hearse. Our car was second in line as we left. The police blocked the intersections and we drove out to the cemetery on a hill at the end of town.

This time, everything was much quicker. I guess my tears were exhausted. The clouds were thickening and promised a storm. A cool breeze came blowing in from the west as we gathered under the tent.

The preacher said a few more things. Finally, it was over. Most of the people came by to try and comfort my mother. Since I didn’t know many of them, I escaped off to the side where I could be alone. I stared back toward the town I wanted no part of for so long, one that had trapped me once again by the cruel fate that life sometimes delivers.

I didn’t see her come up next to me, but could feel her presence. This time, she was alone.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sandy asked. I continued to stare straight ahead.

I nodded, wanting to talk to her and have her explain why life was this way. She was the only one who could, or that I would listen to.

“Call me if you need somebody to talk to,” she said.

I knew that wasn’t possible. My life was screwed up enough. I wasn’t going to mess up anybody else’s.

Sandy walked away, her head down. I started to get in the car when Nancy came rushing up, out of breath.

“Sorry about your father,” she said. Her disco doo was having trouble with this breeze, flopping all over the place.

I nodded. This wasn’t why she was here.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered in my ear.

“Why?”

“They found a body at the lake!”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know, but they’re saying it wasn’t from natural causes.”

Chapter 44

Chapter 42

2005-07-28T07:09:00.000-05:00

One thing I have never really cared for was going to meetings that seemed to drag on forever and nothing gets done.

In my experience, at least half the meetings I have covered or attended in my life were too long or held just to justify somebody’s job or importance.

I get bored fairly easily. I have never actually fallen asleep, but have been so bored that the only way to keep my eyes open was by drawing or scribbling. Occasionally, there is a blowup at a meeting and that makes it worthwhile when the people call each other idiots or worse.

Those are fun, as long as they don’t turn Jerry Springerish. I do not like having to dodge chairs. I have before, but do not enjoy it. You can get a serious knot on the old noggin from one of those.

The Langford School Board’s meeting that night was boring. Nothing exciting happened, just a bunch of people getting together to pay the school’s bills and conduct business.

The branch manager, the guy Squiggy called “Slick” was in charge of the meeting. He tried to keep it going at a fast pace, something I admired. There was a good crowd for such a boring meeting. Along with the school board members, the superintendent, the financial person and a secretary to take notes, several teachers and employees from the school were there.

Langford’s teachers were a lot different from when I went to school. Back then, most of them were the grandmother type. These teachers were around my age and a lot more modern.

The meeting only lasted just over thirty minutes, a record for school board meetings. I introduced myself to as many people possible, hoping that would spur them on to buy our little newspaper and purchase ads.

I actually sold two ads on my father’s memorial ad. Yeah, I should be ashamed, but the needing the money part weighed a lot heavier than the worry about profiting from my father’s death. It was just business, I tried to tell myself, but it still bothered me.

Mom and M.J. were coloring something on the dining room table when I got home. We talked for a little bit and I faked some interest in the coloring project, just enough to keep Mom from getting on to me. I slipped upstairs and went to work. I had brought my laptop home and spent the rest of the evening writing and laying out stories for what I consider the new and improved Langford Review.

Up to this point, The Langford Review was rather boring. Just a few pictures, mostly the kind brought in from Joe Schmo who had a family reunion and wanted to share this with all the other readers, like they really cared. I would have to continue to put pictures like this in, especially since Joe Schmo and his family would be more apt to buy that edition, but I really wanted to juice the paper up.

My plan was to put in more pictures and get as many names as possible in the paper, hoping each person and their family would be so excited that their name was in the paper that they would want to buy one. It was going to be a lot friendlier Langford Review. This violated all my journalistic principles, but I needed the money.

We did pretty well that first day. I milked over eight hundred dollars in cash and checks from people for ads, not to count the classifieds that were bought. That money was deposited with my new friends at the branch bank.

In between hitting on me, I had Nancy send out reminders to a lot of past-due accounts and I hoped some of that money would come trickling in. She was a good worker and very persistent, which I admired except when it came to trying to lure me over to her house.

Mom and M.J. had left me alone, but paid me a visit just before ten.

“It’s beddiebye time!” she announced. I always hated that term. Just say it’s time to go to bed. M.J. had just gotten out of a bath and was wearing pajamas that seemed to cover all his body other than his hands and head.

They appeared to be Tigger pajamas. He stood behind my mother, holding on to her leg and keeping a good eye on me to make sure I didn’t try any sneak attacks on him. His hair was combed to the side, the same way Mom always combed my hair.

“Can you give Michael a hug?” she asked the boy. It should have been “will” instead of “can”. Sure, he could give me a hug, but actually doing it was the question.

He shook his head, way too hard. Fine, don’t hug me. I’ve bathed today! I never bite except in self defense!

“Are you sure?” she asked.

This time, M.J. nodded with just as much emphasis.

“Okay, where do you want to sleep?”

M.J. looked at her with a questioning look. Like most boys, he had the look of not caring, just get him a pillow and a blanket and that would be fine.

“Do you want to sleep with Michael?” she dared to ask. What? Hold on one second, mother of mine! I didn’t need to worry. M.J. was completely against that idea.

“No way!” he practically screamed. Good, that’s how I felt about sleeping with him. I had never liked sharing a bed, at least to sleep, and was too used to spreading out.

“Do you want to sleep alone?” Mom questioned.

“Not weally.”

“Where do you want to sleep?”

“Wif you?”

That seemed to make Mom happy. I wondered if her snoring would bother him, but decided to let M.J. deal with that.

I actually slept well that night, the first time since returning to Langford. It was raining on Tuesday, which was appropriate since it was the day of my father’s funeral. The weather never seems to cooperate for funerals. It’s always raining, hot or cold. I can’t remember a funeral on a nice day.

Mom was already in the kitchen when I came downstairs at just after six. She started cooking breakfast and had bacon frying and biscuits cooking in no time. M.J. was sacked out on the couch. She had brought him into the family room after getting out of bed.

He looked so peaceful. I longed for that feeling, but knew that M.J. didn’t feel that way while he was awake, poor kid. Mom had the Tulsa newspaper on the table, waiting for me. There wasn’t any story about my firing!

I expected it to be front-page news. Not really, they always keep things like this under wraps. Newspaper people always want the dirt on everybody and everything else, but don’t like to share their own.

There wasn’t anything exciting going on. I skimmed the paper and ate more than I should. Mom kissed me as I walked out the door. M.J. continued to sleep.

Nancy was already at the office when I arrived. Her disco doo was riding high, I quickly noticed, and wondered when she would realize that was out of style. I was afraid the leg warmers and leotards would soon resurface.

She was happy, even though I had stood her up the night before. Nancy smiled and greeted me like we had not seen each other in years.

“Hello, Mister Hunt!” she said.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

She looked a little confused.

“What?”

“Excuse me?”

“How’s what going?”

“Uh, everything.” That was a mistake. Nancy told me pretty much everything that was going on in her life. I lost interest within the first minute, but acted like I was paying attention in the typical guy fashion by grunting or giving an “uh huh” every minute or so.

I started walking around, getting things organized. She followed me, telling me all about her family and all the exciting things that Nancy had been up to. Nancy went to the mall over the weekend! She bought a book on Martha Stewart, who apparently was an idol. She had only read the first chapter, but thought this was going to be one of her favorite books.

The book was apparently written in better times for Martha, back before she got an extended vacation in the slammer, so everything was good. Nancy told me her brother was getting a divorce! This deeply upset the family. Her grandmother was in the hospital for bedsores, something I did not need to know.

Nancy said a lot of other stuff, but it was deleted in my mind. She was a lot perkier than I was used to in the morning.

She mentioned something about missing me the previous night. I nodded, not wanting to enter that territory. Nancy finally got back to putting out the newspaper and other work. She had the irritating habit of asking me if I needed anything, almost every five minutes. It reminded me of my former wives, back before we were married. That always stopped right after we were married, unless they were trying to butter me up for something.

A little later, a lady walked in and stood just in front of the door. I looked up and saw Nancy was waiting on her. That was fine with me. I went back to work, heard them talking and happened to look back. The customer looked a little rough. She was about my age, but looked a lot older. Her face was already wrinkled and her hair was sprinkled with gray. The woman wore some strange shirt that had little balls dangling from it. She had on a pair of jean shorts that were frayed at the bottom. Underneath the shorts, it looked like her boxers were sticking out.

Nancy took care of the lady, who actually paid us some money then left. She walked over to me and handed me the cash.

“This is for your daddy’s ad,” she said, smiling cheerfully.

“Thank you,” I responded. “What was up with that woman?”

“What do you mean?” she looked suspicious. I should have known better.

“She had boxers hanging out from under her shorts.”

Nancy frowned for a few seconds.

“That was my mother.”

I felt about two-foot high the rest of the morning. Nancy told me not to worry about it, but I worried that had hurt her.

I was supposed to go visit Lydia Wallace at nine. She was the lady who came in the office yesterday, wanting me to do a story about her. I felt like this was going to be a waste of time, but her husband was opening a store and hopefully that would encourage them to spend money with their local newspaper.

Nancy reminded me of this twice, worried that I would forget. I waited until the last minute, trying to get in as much work as possible. We had several pages done, which was a relief. The front page was still a mess. But we had over 24 hours to get it done, even though some of that would be blown at my father’s funeral.

Lydia lived just outside town, an area that was attractive to most of the white people since the Mexicans seemed to only want to live in town. The house was a large brick home that told me they were either in over their heads, or possibly had money! I hoped they would share some of that money with me, which was sad, but I was desperate.

It stopped raining on the drive out to her house. I parked in the driveway and walked to the front door. There was a little weenie dog in the front yard, barking at me like I had come to rob the family and eat his dog food. I tried to soothe him, but when that didn’t work, I growled back at him, which sent him running off into the woods.

Lydia happened to see this. Great, now she’s going to think I was mean to her dog.

“I hate that dog,” she said. Lydia looked like she had been getting ready all morning. She was wearing her makeup, way too much in my opinion, and had her hair all fancied up. Her shirt was a white blouse that buttoned up in front. The slacks were tan and pleated. She wore a pair of high heels that looked like they cost more than I made in a week, back when I was still employed. “Come in.”

I was carrying my camera and a notebook to jot down Lydia’s comments and observations. This was a waste of time. I felt like a male prostitute, selling my time and services to get something in return. Not sexual, thank goodness, but the feeling was strong.

She showed me around the house. Her husband, Darrin, and their two daughters were in the family room, sitting on the couch and doing something with the television.

“This is Michael Hunt,” she said. Her husband turned around and shook hands.

“Who cares?” the oldest girl commented. She was about five. The other one was roughly three. They were dressed in their nightgowns and were extremely interested in what their father was doing. The youngest girl was running her fingers through her hair, making little twirls.

There was a loud noise from the television, like a gunshot.

“Good shot, Daddy!” the older daughter said. “Kill that stinkin German!”

Lydia looked like she wanted to bury her head in a pillow. I looked at the television and saw some guy point his rifle at some guy dressed like a German, zoom in and shoot. The bullet hit the Kraut in the head, causing a tinging sound from hitting the helmet. Some blood splattered out the far side of the guy’s head and he did some kind of cartwheel.

“Yeah, look at him flop!” she said. The girl had a controller like her father’s. She was hitting buttons like crazy, but nothing seemed to happen. “There’s another one! Let’s get him!”

The good guy snuck up a little closer, aimed and shot the German in the leg. Again, blood seemed to explode out his leg. This was not a kill shot, so he fell to the ground and started flopping.

“Shoot him!” the younger girl chirped in.

It was a head shot, pretty much right in the face. His face seemed to blow apart.

The girls started giggling, as did Darrin.

“We can go in the dining room,” Lydia suggested.

“Yeah, just a second,” I said. This was cool. I had never seen a game so authentic. “What is this?”

“X-box game,” the younger girl said.

“What’s the purpose?”

“Kill Germans!” the older girl said, looking at me like most people did Squiggy.

Aw, what a touching moment. A father and his two little girls killing people in a video game, I should be outraged! Offended, I say!

On the screen, he nailed another German. This time it’s a gut shot. You can hear the whop when the bullet hits.

“Nice shot!” I say. “Man, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig!”

“Yay, Daddy!” the younger girl said. “Shoot him again!”

He does, right in the helmet. Another ting. The German stops writhing.

Steam is practically coming out of Lydia’s head. I don’t think she is fond of this game, or how much the girls enjoy it. I believe she would be happier if the girls were playing with Barbie.

“The other controller doesn’t work,” she whispers. Apparently the girl doesn’t know that. She is hitting buttons like they’re going out of style.

Uh oh, it’s a tank. A German tank is coming toward the good guy. He scurries behind what is left of a building. I can’t get over how realistic this is. The tank sounds like it’s coming into the family room. The shooter just happens to find a hole in the rubble to escape from. This is almost better than a movie.

“We can go in here,” Lydia suggests.

I nod and follow her into the dining room. Every few seconds, we hear encouragement from the girls and then celebration as another nasty German is downed. Lydia shakes her head.

“Sorry about that,” she said. What? There’s nothing to be sorry about. That was one of the cooler things I have seen.

“Don’t worry about it.” I want to ask her how much all that cost, but knew she wouldn’t like it.

We talk for a good thirty minutes about her. We go outside to take some pictures. She flashes her fake smile and tries some different poses, always asking me which one is better. Lydia tries some glamour poses that fail badly.

“Should I unbutton my blouse?” she asks. Lydia already has two buttons open. I decide she has gone far enough.

“No, that’s fine,” I answer.

“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

I decide it’s time to quit taking pictures. This is going to test my creativity. Lydia’s life is not really worth documenting, but she was once a candidate for some beauty contest that I’ve never heard of. She also bragged about coaching cheerleading.

We bid our farewells and I head back to town. Nancy looks a little bored, until she sees me.

“Gosh, I was missing you!” she said. I was relieved that Nancy didn’t seem too upset about my questioning her mother’s strange clothing.

“Uh, okay. Anything going on?”

“It just came on the scanner that some old lady’s cat is stuck up in a tree on west third.”

In normal times, that would not generate any excitement. These were not normal times. A photo opportunity! I could just see the big picture across the front page, some brave fireman, who hopefully had a lot of relatives nearby, crawling down a ladder with a little furry kitten, safe in the fireman’s hands.

I rushed to the scene, even passing some old lady on one of our little roads. But by the time I got there, the firemen were going back to their jobs and lives.

“Where’s the cat?” I asked.

“Aw, it jumped out of the tree and a dog got it,” one of the firemen said.

“Pretty gross,” another added.

A woman was surrounded by neighbors and friends. She was bawling and throwing her arms about. Apparently seeing her cat killed by some dog was more than she could handle. I wondered if she would mind if I took a picture. What the heck, I thought, and snapped off a couple of pictures until they started staring at me.

“Why are you taking pictures?” one woman yelled. “Can’t she mourn her cat in peace?”

I waved and headed back to my truck. I realized that I had not gotten the crying woman’s name. One of the neighbors who had been comforting the woman was walking past. When I asked, she gave me the crying lady’s name. She even told me the cat’s name!

This was just too cool. I needed to find some other things to take pictures of. I needed some human interest stuff. You know, the kind of pictures that aren’t the least bit newsworthy but make people buy newspapers. I drove by the school and saw some kids playing. I took a couple of shots before noticing one of the little boys was picking his nose, and then closely inspected whatever it was he dug up.

I got the names from the teachers. I looked back over my pictures on the viewfinder and discovered there was a good one of the boy with his finger buried up his nose. His parents would be so proud to see that in the newspaper, along with the following caption: Joe Littleboy, the son of Mother and Father Littleboy, goes digging for gold during recess at the Langford Elementary School on Tuesday morning!

They would probably tar and feather me. I did get a good one of one of the teachers checking on some little girl who banged her knee.

Nancy brought us some large, greasy burgers for lunch. I could feel my cholesterol rising, not that I cared at that moment. The burger was too good.

I worked up to the last minute. Finally, it was time to go home, get dressed for the funeral and go bid my father goodbye.

Mom and M.J. were ready when I got there. She was a little flustered.

“Michael, you should have been here thirty minutes ago!” she said.

I ignored her and got dressed. All I had were slacks and a dress shirt and tie, no jacket, so that was my attire. We sat around and waited for the people from the funeral home. They showed up in their fancy white car and escorted us out to it. I tried to not notice the neighbors staring.

Mom and M.J. held hands as they walked out to the car, and after they got inside. As we pulled away, I glanced back and saw something. It took two glances to convince me that it was real.

“Stop the car!” I hollered. The funeral home director threw on the brakes, causing his assistant to hit his head on the dash. They turned and stared at me while my mother looked at me like I was crazy. M.J. scooted farther away. I didn’t care what they thought. We had to go back. This was much more important than a funeral, even if it was my father’s.

Chapter 43

Chapter 41

2005-07-27T06:35:00.000-05:00

It was almost to the point where I dreaded getting phone calls from my mother. Her calls were either to complain about something, to give advice that I really didn’t want to hear, or to deliver bad news.

I would love to get one of those “just called to say hello and hope you’re having a great day” phone calls, from her or anybody else. But those kinds of calls had gone away, not that I ever enjoyed many to start with.

Nancy showed a little more interest in the phone call than she should. There was no privacy in the offices of The Langford Review with all our desks crammed together. Sadly, unlike Las Vegas, what happened at The Review did not stay at The Review.

I would feel her staring at me in the strange way a person always knows they are being stared at. I would turn in her direction and she would look away. It almost got to be a game, except the phone call was too serious to take things all that lightly.

“Michael, I just got through talking to your boss, some Bruiser fellow,” she began.

“Was it Brewster?” I asked.

“Yeah, he sounded like one of those guys who has his pants buttoned too tight. The man talked too quickly, like he didn’t want to have a conversation. I thought that was rather rude, Michael. If a person calls you, they should continue with the conversation until both sides are through and…”

Oh joy, a phone call about telephone etiquette. I wanted to tell her to get to the point, but knew that would bring on another lecture. You didn’t tell my mother things like that, it would just keep her talking that much longer.

She continued on for a couple of minutes. Every few seconds, I would mumble something into the phone to let her know that I was still there. I almost caught Nancy twice, but the woman was awful fast in shifting her gaze. I tried the just stare at her until she looks at me trick, but Nancy saw me staring at her and smiled back.

I nodded at her. She smiled and did a little wave, like I had brightened her day.

Mom was rattling on about some phone call last week with one of her friends. Apparently her friend was right in the middle of something important and continued talking, even after nature called.

“The woman was talking to me while using the restroom!” Mom stated. The outrage! I didn’t see what the big deal was. I did it all the time. The trick was to cover the mouthpiece when the package was delivered.

“I can’t believe she’d do that!” I exclaimed, showing more unease than I felt. Who cares? I wanted to tell her that, but knew it would hurt her feelings. Mom didn’t need any more hurt right now. She was up to her quota in hurting, just didn’t show it.

“Anyway, that Brewster guy called for you,” Mom added. “He said you won’t answer his calls.”

“I’ve been having trouble with my cell phone,” I answered.

“How come I can always get hold of you?”

“It’s because he’s calling from Tulsa. You’re calling from here.”

“I didn’t think that would make any difference?” she declared. Mom would have been a great detective, at least if I was the only person she had to investigate. Mom always knew when I was twisting the truth a tad bit. Notice, I didn’t say “lying”, it was “twisting the truth” or omitting some details.

She could just stare at me and I’d melt and confess sins that Mom didn’t even know existed or suspect me of committing.

“The man said he left messages for you to call him back, Michael,” Mom chastised me. “It’s very rude not to return messages when people need to talk to you. I really can’t blame him for being mad.”

“He was mad?” I asked. That was not good news.

“Yes, he expected you back two days ago. I told him your father had died on Saturday. This Bruiser guy thought you should have been back at work yesterday.”

“Yeah, well he’s a butt zit.”

There was silence for several seconds. I had broken one of our laws. Mom did not like for me to talk badly about a person in her presence. Calling people names was even a bigger “no-no”. She could do it and Dad always did, but one Michael Hunt just did not do those kinds of things. I had never tried the old “butt zit” comment before on her. Now, I wished it had been held in storage.

“Michael Hunt!” she almost hollered. “I didn’t raise you to call people ‘butt zits’!”

I almost laughed. It wasn’t every day that I got to hear my mother say that.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s okay, this time,” she decided. “I know you’re under a lot of stress.”

She had no idea. My blood pressure was probably off the charts.

“What else did he say?” I asked, snuck a peek at Nancy and caught her. Success!

A woman walked through the front door, came right to my desk and sat down in the chair. It was obvious that I was talking on the phone, but it didn’t matter to her. She picked a pen off the desk and started tapping it on the desk.

The woman had too much hair and makeup. Her clothes were not purchased at Wal-Mart. I didn’t know much about clothes, but knew her attire was bought at a store that was much fancier. She apparently didn’t think I should be on the phone when my services were needed by her.

I covered up the mouth piece.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” I said.

The woman nodded, continuing to tap the pen. It was difficult to listen to my mother and this other woman playing taps.

Nancy came to my rescue and took the woman over to her desk. I noticed the woman wearing high heels that appeared to be almost four inches. Her feet were twisted in some strange direction that couldn’t be comfortable. She sat down at Nancy’s desk and they seemed to be staring at each other without talking.

Mom had gone off on another rampage about something that was bothering her about society, before getting back to the point.

“He wanted to get hold of you,” she added. Okay, that wasn’t too bad. “So he asked where you were.”

This was getting worse.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“That you were at the newspaper office.”

“And what did he say next?”

Uh oh, there was a silence from the other end of the phone. Mom didn’t want to tell me what happened. This was bad. She always paused before delivering the bad stuff.

“He, uh, asked why you were at the newspaper.”

“Mom, you didn’t!”

“I wasn’t thinking,” she admitted. No, I’m sure she wasn’t.

“You told him that I was putting out the paper,” I said.

“Yes, I’m so sorry, Michael. I didn’t think he would care.”

I wanted to tell my mother that when people were paying you to work for them, they didn’t appreciate you doing the same thing for somebody else.

“I take it that he cared.”

“Well, uh, yeah, he did.”

“What did he say, Mom?”

She paused again.

“Just tell me,” I urged her.

“He said your services were no longer required.”

I was fired? Me? Canned? Let go? Given the dreaded pink slip? This had never happened before. It probably should have a few times, but I had always survived.

Brewster fired me by telling my mother! I didn’t know what to do, but this was too much. Brewster would regret this, somehow and someway. I might even send Squiggy and Mule to pay him a little visit. The boss in the Christmas Vacation movie would think he got off light compared to what was going to happen to him.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later, Mom,” I muttered.

“I’m sorry, Michael!”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, but knew it was a waste of words. She would worry about it. So would I.

As soon as the phone was in the cradle, the woman was back at my desk.

“Good morning,” she said, trying to be cheery but failing badly.

“How are you?” I asked, while staring at the front door.

“Fine, I want you to do a story about me,” the woman said. “One of those features things.”

I needed stories to fill the paper so I showed some interest.

“What’s newsworthy about you?”

That took her by surprise. I guess she thought just her presence was newsworthy enough.

“What do you mean?” she fired back.

“What is there to write about?’

“Oh, I just moved back to Langford.”

I held out my hands. That didn’t interest me a great deal, and I doubted it would our readers either.

“My husband is putting in the hardware store out on the highway,” she added. “He will buy a lot of ads!”

She was getting more newsworthy all the time. We made an appointment for the following day and I sent her on her way.

Nancy snuck up behind me and put her hands over my eyes.

“Guess who?” she said.

Since she and I were the only people in the office, I took a wild guess and decided it was probably her.

“Uh, Nancy?” I said.

“How’d you know?” she asked.

“Lucky guess.”

She laughed, it almost sounded forced.

“I was wondering, do you have any plans for tonight?” Nancy asked.

“I have a city council meeting at six,” I answered, never more grateful for an event to cover.

“It’s actually a school board meeting at five thirty.”

“I’ll cover that. Why do you ask?”

She moved over to the side. I saw her look and knew this was not good.

“I wondered if you might want to come over for dinner and a movie?” Nancy asked. “I’ve got a DVD player!”

Yeah, and so did half the population. Alarm bells were going off. The inner me was issuing a warning. You did not date people who you worked with, especially when they were some fifteen years younger.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said.

She looked hurt, almost like tears were fixing to fall.

“Nobody would have to know,” she fired back.

“I’m not worried about anybody knowing. It would just be awkward.”

“Okay, but let me know if you change your mind,” she started walking away, then stopped and turned around. “I used to be a gymnast.”

That bothered me for a lot longer than it should. I settled back in and started writing stories, answering the phone and practically begging people to buy ads.

After a while, I was in a zone. I was writing about my father dying, the large story that I planned for the front page. I needed to get as much of the paper done today as possible since the funeral would be the following afternoon.

I finished the story on my father and the football game. I didn’t question the coaching or the ability of the players, just bragged about the good effort. That would sell more papers and right now, I needed to sell all the papers I could.

Nancy was a good camper. She had forgiven me for turning down her date and kept bringing me drinks and stuff to eat. I’d start to get hungry and food would appear in front of me. If I was thirsty, she would bring me something to drink.

She was also a hard worker. Teresa popped in and out several times. I could tell she was stressed about her breast enhancements. Hopefully, Teresa getting bigger breasts would not tempt Nancy to get some new ones. Her cups were already running over.

We got a lot done, which was a relief. Teresa turned in two stories that were pretty much fluff. I wished she could handle the story on the lady who visited earlier, but no, getting better breasts was more important than work. I’m sure her drunk of a husband would appreciate them.

I announced that it was time to call it a day just before five. Nancy said she had to wrap some stuff up and would close later. Teresa was already gone, probably at the nearest convenience store getting her pride and joy some beer.

“Call me if you get lonely or want to do something,” Nancy said.

I waved and headed out the door. It was almost time for the school board meeting, but first I wanted to run by mom’s house to get my camera and check on her.

Sandy was not at her house, I just happened to notice while driving past, a lot slower than was normal. There weren’t any cars in the driveway at Mom’s house, so I was glad none of Mom’s cronies were visiting. They liked to dispense advice a lot more than I cared to hear it.

I parked and walked up on the porch. There was laughter coming from inside. That was a little strange. I opened the door and walked in. All I could see was Mom’s back. She was sitting on the floor and appeared to be playing with something.

As I started to ask her what was going on, she turned around to look at me. A head looked around from behind my mother.

It was M.J. He was dressed in jeans, a tee-shirt and a Bob the Builder hat. M.J. was smiling, until he saw me.

“Hello,” I said and walked inside. They were in the family room, playing with little cars. Mom seemed happy to be playing with M.J.

“Good evening, son!” she said, with way too much enthusiasm.

I tried to pet M.J. on the head while walking past. He dodged away.

“Hello, M.J.,” I offered.

He waved and went back to playing with his cars. I remembered playing cars with my mother in the same spot on the carpet.

I walked into the kitchen to get something to drink. Mom got her creaky old bones up from the hard floor and followed me. I was exploring the refrigerator when she arrived.

“What’s he doing here?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” Mom answered. “April came by about thirty minutes ago and asked if I would watch him.”

“How long?” I got a Diet Dr Pepper and some leftover ham.

Mom looked down at the floor and around the kitchen before glancing back at me.

“Apparently a long time,” she answered.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, and took a big bite out of the ham. Apparently, it was too big of a bite.

“Michael!” she said, then got back to the important stuff. “She dropped off all his clothes and toys.”

“I didn’t think that was supposed to happen until later this week.”

“It wasn’t,” she said. “Something’s wrong with her, she acted really strange.”

“She probably had to go to the hospital early.”

“I don’t think so, Michael. April had her car loaded up like she was leaving.”

M.J. burst through the door into the kitchen, saw we were there and acted relieved, for a second.

“I miss my Mommy!” he said, and started to cry. “I wanna see her!”

The boy and I had that in common. I wanted to see her also, to find out what was happening, but had a bad feeling that wasn’t going to happen.

Chapter 42

Chapter 40

2005-07-26T07:03:00.000-05:00

I’ll admit that my faith in Squiggy was not at its highest point when he suggested that we should go see his “boys”. I would rather hear Kenny Rogers sing “Lady” a hundred times back-to-back instead of having to rely upon him for help.

We stood out in front of the Bank of Langford looking out over our dying downtown as Squiggy tried to convince me to follow his recommendation.

It was a little sad to see downtown like this. Back when I was a kid, it was so alive. This was where everybody went. Now, there were less than ten cars and trucks parked in front of the buildings. Most of these were parked at the Mexican stores. Without them, there would be less than five businesses downtown in these crumbling old buildings.

The only time there seemed to be any life downtown is at the annual Lion’s Club Carnival in October. The block in front of the bank is filled with people, a crowd that seems to grow every year.

“What’re ya lookin at?” Squiggy asks.

“Just remembering how it used to be,” I answered.

“That’s good, let’s go see my boys. Youse wastin time.”

Squiggy’s lack of sentiment was a little disappointing, but he was right, I was wasting time. I had less than an hour to round up over four thousand dollars to keep the checks from being returned. If that happened, it would be the final nail in the coffin.

I was afraid that going to see his “boys” was a waste of time, but I had no choice.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To that branch bank thingey over by the Sonic. Git in!”

I looked in his truck and saw Psycho leaning out the window, staring at me and drooling.

“I’ll just follow you,” I announced.

Squiggy nodded his head. He pulled a package out of his pocket, opened it up and pulled a huge wad of tobacco out and stuck it in his mouth.

“We’re going to the bank and you’re getting a chew?” I asked.

He had so much tobacco in his mouth that it was harder than normal to understand him.

“Is okay, they don’t care just as longs as I don’t spit on the floor again.”

“You’re going to carry in a spit cup?”

He shook his head. I was such a moron in these matters.

“Naw, I’ll just swallows it.”

Now that was pretty disgusting, but it seemed natural for Squiggy. He hocked up something from deep inside and spat out a huge loogie. It soared almost to the middle of the road.

“Yeah!” he hollered. “Top that un!”

“Do what?” I asked.

“See if ya can beat it.”

“I can’t, Squiggy.”

“Yer scared.”

I looked around and saw two older women staring at me. They had the look of mother’s friends on them.

“I’m not scared, Squiggy, I just don’t want to have a spitting contest in front of the bank.”

“Yer just scared what them old biddies would say,” he added, then turned to the women. “Ya got a nose problem?”

The two women looked at each other and shook their heads.

“I have some sinus problems, but not nose problems,” the woman on the left declared. “Especially when my allergies are bad.”

“All I have is gout,” the other woman added.

We stepped away from her.

“Y’all run along,” Squiggy said and waved his hand at them. “We’s busy.”

The woman looked a little disappointed, but walked into the bank.

“Give her a try,” Squiggy stated.

“I can’t,” I argued.

“Yer just chicken. Ya know ya cain’t top the Squigster.”

I shook my head and snorted. Nothing came up. I tried it one more time and could feel the spit stuff enter my mouth. I about threw up.

“There ya go!” Squiggy said. “Toss that baby!”

I looked around to make sure nobody was watching. The coast seemed pretty clear. I reared back and jumped forward, at the same time trying to shoot my miniscule spit loogie as far as possible. It barely made it into the road. I was defeated. The shame!

“That wadn’t worth a bucket of worm innerds,” Squiggy announced, then laughed. “Dat the best ya can do?”

I nodded. I could do better, but would need to drink a can of Coke.

“Let’s go,” I said. He nodded and I was relieved.

Squiggy was parked next to my truck. It paled in comparison. Psycho ran across the cab and leaned her massive head out the window. I thought she wanted petted so I stuck my hand out. She growled and tried to bite me.

“Squiggy, your dog tried to bite me,” I hollered.

“Don’t be stickin yer hand in the danged window wifout me,” he told me.

I edged around the truck, keeping an eye on the dog. We got in our trucks and took off. Squiggy squealed his tires, just because he could, I guess. He was behind me, so he couldn’t go that fast. Especially once we got behind an old man driving a scooter.

Heck, I didn’t even know scooters still existed. He was poking along at a good five miles an hour. The man wore a beat-up baseball hat, overalls, a light blue shirt and what looked like moccasins. He passed by one of the Mexican shops. There were several muchachos out in front and they laughed at him.

He shot them the bird and kept on driving. The man held his hand up to signal a turn. I followed him and wished he would get out of the way. Squiggy was not enjoying this at all. He started honking as we made the turn and kept it up all the way down the block. The older man didn’t like the honking, either. He was staring at me in his mirror, obviously convinced that I was the one honking.

The man turned in the same direction as I intended. Squiggy had enough and sped around me and pulled next to the old man. I slowed down to the pace of a turtle, hoping nobody thought I knew this idiot.

Squiggy hollered at the old man to get on the sidewalks. The man gave Squiggy the bird and kept trucking along. I could tell Squiggy didn’t like being flipped off by an old man on the scooter, but then again, who does?

He flew around in front of the old man and threw on his brakes. The old man had to skid and jerk to the right to avoid the collision. I saw Psycho had her head out the window, her tongue hanging down almost to the door handle. She seemed to be smiling.

The old man lost one of his moccasins in the near wreck and had to pull off the road. I felt sorry for him. But he was slowing traffic.

I drove over the railroad tracks, making sure no trains were coming in either direction. There was always a crash between train and car every year. I had seen one, and couldn’t help but notice the train won, so I always looked before crossing.

We pulled up to our only four-way traffic light and had to stop. The cars and trucks going north and south were flying through the intersection, way too fast. I wondered where our local cops were, but figured they were off drinking coffee somewhere.

Finally, the lights changed and we headed off to the north. Squiggy weaved in and out of traffic like a madman. Several cars and trucks had to throw on their brakes to avoid a collision. I was afraid he would lose it when Squiggy pulled into the bank’s parking lot, he was going way too fast.

But he squeeled his brakes at just the right time and was able to coast into a parking spot. The parking lot was pretty full. I found an empty spot next to Squiggy and parked. He was parked in the nearest handicapped spot, which didn’t surprise me.

We got out of our vehicles and started walking toward the entrance.

“You’re parked in a handicapped spot,” I told Squiggy.

“Guess I better limp then,” he said and spit on a flower. Squiggy seemed almost too excited. “Yer gonna like them!”

I nodded. Liking somebody and doing business with them is not always the best recipe. We opened the first of the two doors. Squiggy had to stop for just a second at the entrance to see if there was anything interesting on the peg board. There were several notices and ads on the board. He pointed at a word.

“What’s that spell?” he asked. I looked closer and saw it was a person’s name.

“Dick Cannon?” I asked. Squiggy giggled. I didn’t want to know what was so funny.

There was a teller line to the back with a waiting area in the middle. Several people were sitting there, reading magazines and even The Langford Review. Yes! Offices were on both sides of the lobby. Squiggy walked in like he owned the place. There were two men in the offices to the right with two women on the left, all of them waiting on customers.

The phone was ringing like crazy.

In the first office to the right, Squiggy walked in, even though somebody was sitting at the loan officer’s desk. I waited outside.

“Y’all needs to hurry up,” Squiggy said. The customer looked at Squiggy like he was crazy. So did the loan officer, a younger man sitting behind the desk. But he seemed to be used to crazy customers.

“We’ll be through in a little bit,” the loan officer announced. Squiggy nodded and left the office. He tried to walk in the next office. There was another guy in there with a customer. This one was a little older with even less hair than I did.

“What’s up, Slick?” Squiggy practically hollered. Everybody turned away, not wanting anybody to know they knew this man.

There was a customer in this office, also, an older man who also didn’t like somebody barging in.

“Not much, Squiggy,” the bald banker said. “Go on out in the lobby and we’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Squiggy walked around the branch, talking to anybody who didn’t run off when they saw him coming. There were two tellers in their little areas. The one on the right was waiting on a customer. The other one smiled at Squiggy, a smile that seemed to say that I’ll talk to you, but it’s only because it’s my job.

“How you doin, Lacey?” he asked, leaning against the counter.

“I’m fine,” she replied, looking around for backup.

“Still hitched?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Okay, but once ya git deevorced, you give old Squigster a call now, ya hear?”

She didn’t bother to respond. I didn’t blame her. I walked over and sat down in the waiting area. People were moving about and scurrying here and there. They were a lot busier than in the other bank, but still seemed a lot friendlier and more relaxed.

The customer left the office of the younger loan officer. There were some other people waiting in the lobby, but Squiggy marched right in. He stood at the office and waved at me.

“Were you wanting to see him?” I asked the other customers.

“Yeah, but go ahead,” one man said. “That’s the only way we’ll get rid of that idiot.”

I felt bad cutting in line, but did so anyway. I walked into the office. The loan officer stood and came around the desk to meet me.

“This is my buddy, Michael Hunt,” Squiggy announced, then turned to me. “This here’s my banker, Dirk Cutter, but I call im ‘Swifty’.”

We exchanged our greetings. He seemed like a nice person, especially for a banker. His computer kept making some ringing sound but Swifty didn’t seem too concerned. He was wearing a golf shirt and slacks. His hair was a little long in the back, not that it bothered me. Swifty was average size and seemed normal enough, always a plus in Langford.

“How come they call you Swifty?” I asked.

“It’s cause he don’t always move too fast,” Squiggy answered. Swifty smiled, but looked like he would have preferred answering the question.

“What can we do for you?” he asked.

Squiggy started to tell the story, but I interrupted and told Swifty everything

“So, you need a loan?” he asked.

“Yeah, I can’t get the money in from my bank in time,” I answered.

Swifty pulled out a few pieces of paper and we filled them out.

“Crapfire, Swifty!” Squiggy said. “I told you that he was good. Just give im the dang money!”

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to calm down Squiggy.

“Ya goin to check and make sure he’s got two nipples?”

Swifty and I frowned. We had no clue where that came from. I understood this was just something that had to be done. After getting rejected at the other bank, I expected it here also.

He had me sign a few things, then typed up something on his desk. Swifty returned a few seconds later with some papers.

“I’ll just need you to sign these papers then we’ll get you the money,” he said.

“I got the loan?” I asked.

“Yeah, you’ve got great credit. Why wouldn’t you get the loan?”

I looked over the loan papers. He was loaning me what I wanted and at a rate that didn’t make me feel like I was getting gouged. This was good, I decided, until noticing there was some insurance added.

“What’s this here?” I asked.

“It’s credit life to pay off the loan in case something happens to you,” Swifty said.

“Do I have to have it?” I asked. Credit life was too expensive and most financial experts declared it a ripoff

“No, it’s just something we offer that protects you and the bank.”

“Take er off,” Squiggy said. “If he croaks, I’ll pay it off.”

Swifty showed a little doubt over Squiggy’s promise. I didn’t blame him. Swifty went back to his computer and seemed to be ignoring the dings every few seconds. He got up, left the room and returned within a minute.

“Here you go, I took off the credit life.”

I signed the papers. Swifty left and came back with a check with my name on it.

“I’d like to open an account,” I told him. He took me back to the new accounts area. Both women were busy. The one on the left seemed to be about my age. She looked familiar but I couldn't place her name. We waited while Swifty went in to talk to the other woman. She came out and introduced herself.

Her name was Dena and seemed very professional. She was a little older and I remembered going to school with her brother. Dena invited us into her office and was able to ignore Squiggy's questions and advice. She told us about the different accounts and we decided on one. Dena opened the account and we were on our way. From this point, I planned on making all the deposits in this account, other than the money that would be needed to cover any hot checks at the other bank.

Squiggy and I got to talk to the guy he called "Slick" earlier. His real name was Alex Gordon and also seemed like a nice guy. He was the branch manager and didn't even flinch when I hit him up for the ad. Alex bought the largest one possible for my father’s memorial ad.

We walked outside and I was still in disbelief.

“Gosh, Squiggy, you actually knew what you were talking about,” I said.

Squiggy was smiling, but it slowly disappeared as he heard what I said.

“How come that’s surprising?” he asked.

I wanted to hug him, but then again, I didn’t. Instead, I thanked him again and headed back downtown. I made sure to put the check on Woodard’s desk with a snide little comment concerning the deposit.

When I got back to the office, Nancy and Teresa were actually working. They looked up to see that it was me, then returned to work. It made me feel a little better. We might actually get a newspaper out in two days.

I started working on the story for the football game. About halfway through, Teresa came over and sat down in a chair by the desk.

“You know I’ll be gone the rest of the week, right?” she asked, speaking real soft so Nancy couldn’t hear her.

“No, I didn’t,” I answered. This was not good. It was going to be tough to get the paper out with a full crew, with her gone, it would almost be impossible.

“I told your father two weeks ago and he said it was okay.”

I nodded, but didn’t feel good at all.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

She looked around to make sure nobody was listening. Nancy was peeking over in our direction every few seconds and obviously wanted to hear, but was too far away.

“I have to go to the doctor,” she answered.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and immediately regretted the question. I had learned a long time ago to never ask a middle-aged woman what was wrong if she had to go to the doctor. It was almost always medical problems with their private parts. They usually would tell what was wrong, leaving out nothing.

“I’m having a boob job.”

I almost laughed, but then caught myself.

“A breast job?”

She nodded.

“Only one? What about the other?”

She frowned, not understanding me.

“Are they gonna do both of them?”

Teresa nodded, looking at me like most people looked at Squiggy.

“Why do you want to do that?” I asked. Heck, she was married and had lived this long with them, why would she want to change?

“I’m tired of being flat chested,” she declared.

“I don’t know why,” I shot back. “It’s never bothered me.”

“Yeah, but you’re a guy.”

Good point, I guess.

“Can you choose the sizes, like medium, large or super size?”

“Yeah, I’m going with the large ones,” Teresa answered, like she was discussing shoe sizes. “I’ll bring in the before and after pics.”

I cringed. Seeing my cousin’s enhanced breasts was not something I wanted to experience.

The phone rang and Nancy answered it.

“It’s for you, Mister Hunt!” she said. Mister Hunt, please!

“Thank you,” I said, and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Michael, this is your mother,” she said, like I couldn’t figure that out. “I just received some bad news.”

Just what I needed, more bad news! Surely it couldn’t be that bad. My mother told me and she was wrong. It was much worse than just bad.

Chapter 41

Chapter 39

2005-07-25T06:41:00.000-05:00

Will Rogers used to say he never met a man he didn't like.

Now, I'm no Will Rogers, not nearly as famous or witty, but I share that belief. I pretty much like every man and don't hate any of them. There are some I like a lot more than others, but I don’t dislike anybody.

I have found it is a waste of time. If you don’t get along with somebody, stay away from them as much as possible. There have been people in my life that didn’t see eye-to-eye with me and I avoided them whenever I could.

So I didn’t like them as much as some others, but I didn’t want something bad to happen to the person. As I sat in the office of Allen Woodard on this Monday morning, Squiggy and Mule were not liked as much today as they were yesterday.

They got me drunk and I made a rear out of myself. Heck, I didn’t even hate R.D., who gave me this shiner everybody kept staring at. Again, I didn’t like him a lot, but I didn’t want him to die. He had paid the price last night, thanks to Mule.

But I could tell one Allen Woodard didn’t feel the same way about people. He leaned back in his chair and looked down at me above his glasses. I just couldn’t feel the love. He was all business. It was all about the profit to this guy, nothing else mattered.

His cheeks were a little red this morning and the hair was combed forward again, nary a hair out of place. He had some papers in his hand, looking at them until finding what he was looking for. Woodard tossed the papers on his spotless desk and stared back at me with those thoughtless eyes.

I don’t know if he was trying to intimidate me or if this was how Woodard greeted everybody.

“I understand that you are managing the paper’s affairs,” he stated, without bothering to say hello or even comment on how stupid it was for a person of my age to get in a bar fight.

“Yes, I am,” I answered, but got cut off before I could say anything else.

“The paper’s DDA account had three checks presented as insufficient today.”

All right! Now that’s just what I wanted to hear. In addition to being behind on everything, the account was overdrawn. I pulled out my pocket notebook and pen to write this down.

“How much?” I asked.

“Four thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars,” he reported.

“That much came in today?”

He picked up his papers and checked on the account.

“No, only thirty four hundred of it came in today. The rest was already overdrawn.”

Would the good news never stop?

“Okay, can you cover those checks?” I asked.

Woodard stared at me for a few seconds before he snorted. The man snorted! He didn’t say no, shake his head or anything.

“I don’t think so,” he finally replied after too long. “You’ll need a deposit of that amount by ten thirty or those checks will be returned.”

He leaned forward in his chair, still looking at me over his glasses.

“You don’t want that to happen,” he added.

Really, I don’t? Gosh, how did he know that? That intelligent comment must be from all his years of playing banker. My word, how could such wisdom be stored up in one person?

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. Darn, I just didn’t quite have that much money to deposit.

He seized the moment. It was almost like he enjoyed a customer having difficulty.

“I’d try to get some money together to cover the checks,” he suggested. Such brilliance! Man, if only I had thought about that.

“Okay, how far behind is the loan on the paper?” I asked.

“And your mother’s house,” he tossed in. It was a beanball, one that sailed right at my head. I wanted to charge the mound, grab his outie and stick it in his mouth or some other body orifice.

Woodard turned to his computer and typed something in. Then, he typed something else in. Finally, after what seemed like it took way too much time, Woodard seemed to have found what he was looking for.

“The loan is almost three payments late,” he announced. It was like he was reading off a menu, showing no emotion. “The total due is three thousand, nine hundred fifty dollars. Plus late charges.”

Oh yeah, don’t want to forget about them, do we?

“How quickly does that need to be paid?” I asked.

“Today, would be nice,” he replied. “Our attorney is sending out a letter this morning demanding payment within thirty days.”

“Who will the letter go to?”

“The remaining person on the loan.”

It was my mother. She didn’t need to get that.

“Can you give me a couple of days to get the payments in?” I asked.

“I’ll give you until the end of business of Wednesday,” he countered. Wow, that was a little over fifty hours.

“What’s the collateral on that note?” I asked. He looked at me with scorn. That would mean getting up from his desk and getting the file, wherever it is kept. The gall!

“I’ll have to go get it,” Woodard declared. He got up from his chair slowly and started walking out of the office. I’ve seen old people with walkers move faster. I wanted to tell him to get his rear in gear, time was a wasting.

I looked around the office. He had several pictures of himself, like that was a surprise. In most of the pictures, he was with a woman with big hair and a big smile. She was truly hideous in appearance, looking like Cruella DeVille in 101 Dalmations. Woodard failed to smile in any of the pictures. I probably wouldn’t either, if that was my wife.

He was talking to a secretary behind me. I turned around to look at him, then saw something really bad. I jerked my head back around, hoping I wasn’t seen.

It was relatively quiet for a few seconds. Then, the silence was broken.

“How’s it goin, helmethead?” I heard from behind me.

“Pardon me?” Woodard replied.

It was Squiggy. Who else would call the bank’s president “helmethead”?

“Hey, what’s up wif that hair?” Squiggy asked.

““Excuse me?” Woodard responded.

“Ya ain’t foolin nobody combin yer hair like that. We’s all know yer slick as a baby’s butt up there. Just let it happen. If the Good Lord wanted ya to have hair on yer head, He woulda given it to ya.”

This couldn’t be happening. Squiggy was giving the bank’s president grooming tips.

“Who do you need to see?” Woodard asked.

“Him,” Squiggy answered. I knew who the “him” was he was referring to. I tried to hide, but knew it was no good.

“Sir, we are in the middle of a meeting!”

Like that would stop Squiggy. He walked into Woodard’s office and sat down beside me. I hoped that if I didn’t acknowledge him, he would go away.

“He called me ‘sir’,” Squiggy related, laughing. “Lemme see that eye!”

“No.”

“C’mon!”

“No! What’re you doing here?” I asked.

“Just checkin up on ya.”

“How’d you find me?”

“That girl at yer office, the one wif the disco doo.”

I would have to remember to thank Nancy.

“She said you was comin to de bank,” he added.

“Squiggy, you need to leave.”

“Naw, it’s okay. I ain’t goin fishin wif Lefty till noon.”

“Who’s Lefty?” I foolishly asked.

“His real name’s a Bob, or something. I just calls him ‘Lefty’?”

“Why? Is he left handed?”

“Nope, it’s cuz he don’t got one.”

“Doesn’t have one of what?” I asked.

“A left hand,” Squiggy replied, holding up his hand. “Got it cut off right above the wrist at the saw mill last winter.”

I’m sure the man really liked that nickname.

"Where's Mule?" I asked.

"Jail," he said, chewed on a fingernail then spit it out on the floor.

"Why's he in jail?"

"Assault'n a battery."

"For what?" I asked.

"Fer hitting that little cowboy feller in that fight you started," Squiggy said, got another nail, but spit this one on the president's desk. I wiped it off on the floor.

"I didn't start the fight."

"Yep, if'n you hadn't been hittin on that cowboy's ugly wife, none of that woulda happened."

I couldn't believe Mule was in jail. He did beat the snot out of R.D., but this was Langford. It was expected to have fights.

"Go tell R.D. that if he doesn't drop the charges, I'll file on him," I told Squiggy, who was about through biting the nails and spitting them out.

"Good idear, I'll call him after we get through here."

“You really need to leave,” I told him. “This is serious.”

“Is it bout yer dad’s money problems?” he asked.

“How’d you know about that?”

“I know everthing,” Squiggy replied. “That’s what I do.”

“Okay, but I need to talk with him in private.”

“Do ya need some money?”

“Yeah, a lot.”

Squiggy considered that for a second.

“I could hep ya out, ya know?”

“Really?” I perked up. Squiggy had money? “How much?”

“I got thirty dollars on me.”

“Thanks, Squiggy, that’s not enough.”

“I got six more out in the truck.”

Woodard was coming back into the office. He was staring at Squiggy with disgust. The whole “helmethead” remark had gotten them off on the wrong track.

“Sir, you need to wait in the lobby,” Woodard remarked.

Squiggy looked at me and laughed.

“Old helmethead called me ‘sir’ again!”

“Go, Squiggy.”

“I’ll be in the lobby starin at the fish in case ya need me.”

There was a large fish tank in the lobby. I hoped Squiggy didn’t stick his hand in and try and catch them.

Woodard waited until Squiggy left to sit down.

“Friend of yours?” he asked.

“Sort of,” I answered.

Woodard opened the file and started paging through it. Every couple of pages, he stopped and looked at me and my eye.

“Here it is,” he announced. “The collateral on the note is the newspaper building, all furniture and fixtures, receivables and the personal residence.”

“What would it take to pay off the house?” I asked.

He snorted again.

“The only way I’ll release the house is if the loan is paid in full,” Woodard said.

“You don’t give any value to the office and the newspaper?”

“Not really.”

I let that comment hang in the air for a few seconds. My father had thought enough of it that it ruined him.

“Who were the checks to that came in today?” I asked.

He turned back to the computer and played with it for a few minutes. Apparently, that didn’t work so he got on the phone and called somebody and relayed my question.

“The checks were to some printing company and somebody named Teresa and Nancy,” he said.

That meant the checks were to the company that printed the newspaper along with payroll checks. They didn’t need to be sent back.

“Is there any way I could borrow the money?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Do you actually have a job?”

I actually had a job before getting thrown in this mess.

“Yes, I do,” I tried to sound sarcastic but it would up sounding pathetic.

“That’s always a plus,” Woodard said, and actually tried to smile. But his lips could only go so far before it was like there was some kind of block to prevent them from breaking into a full smile.

I guess that meant that it helped for a person to have income coming in to borrow money. This Woodard was one sharp tack.

He pulled out a stack of papers. Woodard handed me a couple of things to sign. I looked them over to see what they were.

“Just sign them,” he said. “Those papers don’t mean anything.”

I guess that was why I was signing them. They seemed harmless enough, just giving the bank permission to pull my credit and telling me that I was not required to purchase insurance through the bank if it was required.

“Do you have any photo identification?” he asked.

I dug out my wallet, found my driver’s license and tossed it to him. He filled out all the information.

“This says here that you live at some number,” Woodard stated. “Do you live in an apartment?”

“Yeah, I do.”

He apparently didn’t like that. Or that I didn’t have any assets other than money stashed in retirement accounts.

Woodard pulled my credit and looked mildly surprised.

“You have really good credit,” he remarked.

He meant it as a compliment, but it still got on my nerves.

“But we can’t extend any credit to you at this time,” he announced.

“Why?” The good credit didn’t carry much weight, after all.

“You don’t have enough collateral.”

“What about my truck?”

“We need something a little stronger than a Ford Ranger.”

“I’ve never been late on a payment in my life.”

“Not that I can see,” Woodard added. “But you just don’t have the financial statement that we require.”

“Well, excuse the crap out of me.”

He sat back in his chair. Apparently, that wasn’t the response he wanted to hear.

“There’s no reason to lose your temper, Mister Hunt,” Woodard said.

Actually, there were a lot of reasons. He had just added several to the list.

“I’ll pay you off somehow,” I told him, realizing this was a person that even I probably did not like. “You won’t touch my mother’s house.”

He nodded. Woodard looked a little worried, like I was going to hurdle the desk and start pounding on him.

“Okay, just get the money in within an hour.”

I nodded, got up and started to walk out.

“Say, we’re selling ads for a memorial to my father,” I said. “Want size would you like?”

He got all puckered up.

“How much does it cost?” he acted like it would come out of his account.

I hit him with top dollar, the price reserved for banks and attorneys.

He looked like something was caught in his throat, but Woodard nodded.

I walked through the lobby. Squiggy caught up with me as I walked out the door.

“Ya look a little hacked,” Squiggy said. I told him what had happened and what was going to happen. He studied this for a little bit, then smiled. “I know how you can git outta this.”

“How?” I asked.

“We’re goin to see my boys,” he added.

I didn’t have a clue who his boys were or what his plan was, but it wasn’t like I had many choices.

All I knew was it was a good thing Will Rogers never met Allen Woodard. That quote would be a lie.

Chapter 40

Chapter 38

2005-07-22T06:59:00.000-05:00

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Nancy and Teresa did not exactly see eye to eye as per The Langford Review. They were apparently good friends away from work, but once they crossed the threshold of the Review, they were mortal enemies, always worried about what the other one was doing or wasn’t doing.

Over the next thirty minutes, each one snuck over to report on something the other one was doing.

Nancy: “Did you know Teresa’s spent the last ten minutes shopping on eBbay?”

Teresa, only a short time later: “Hey, how come Nancy spends so much time in the bathroom? This is her third trip this morning?”

Probably to fix her hair, I thought. Figuring out why Nancy was in the bathroom was not high on my list of priorities. Her hair seemed higher now than it was when she came in. I know, I was supposed to be the boss, an entirely new situation for me, but there were other things bothering me.

The receivables were located in my father’s desk, the second drawer on the left. They were in bad shape, as to be expected. They were kept on an old pad, handwritten. Luckily, they were printed and not in his handwriting. There were accounts that were over six months late that were still advertising. Plus, it didn’t look like anybody had sent out statements in a month.

I walk up behind Teresa and see that she is shopping on eBbay for some of the strange clothes she chooses to wear. She’s taken an advance on her pay and will be working the next three weeks for free. From what I understand, she spends all her money either shopping on eBay or buying her husband his nightly six-pack of beer.

She is watching the clock on some hideous blouse. Apparently Teresa has the bid and time is running out! Less than two minutes are left! She’s sitting on the edge of her chair, chewing on her fake nails with one hand. The other hand is on the mouse, ready to bid again if somebody steals her blouse.

“What’re you doing?” I ask. She jumps for a second, but doesn’t seem too concerned.

“I’m buying this shirt on eBay,” Teresa answers. “It’ll be over in just a minute.”

“Why weren’t the statements sent out at the end of August?”

I am clearly bothering her. Teresa doesn’t have time for work-related questions, even though she is on the clock.

“You’ll have to ask your father.”

She leans forward in her chair. Teresa is actually bouncing in her chair. Time is about to run out and she will be the winner of this blouse, for $3.31, even though the shipping is stated at $9.99 in the continental U.S.

I guess she doesn’t understand how difficult it will be to get that information from my father, since he is currently on display at the funeral home. I’ve been meaning to go by there and see him, but I’m afraid it would be tough. Plus, I don’t want to deal with the people who show up just to sign the book, or who come just to see what a dead person looks like.

“From now on, you'll need to do your shopping after hours,” I add.

“Your father didn’t care!” Teresa fires back.

“Shop again during work hours and you'll get an unpaid vacation.”

This was my first real managerial decision. Ooh power, it felt good in some strange way. I’d cracked the whip! Yes, heads will roll! Now, where was Nancy. Back in the bathroom again, I detected.

I walked to the door and heard her talking, hopefully on a cell phone and not to herself. Now that would be more than I could handle.

“He’s old, but kinda cute,” she told the other party. Nancy was talking about me, I realized with a little surprise. This also needed to be stopped, but first I am curious to find out what she says about me. “No, he doesn’t act gay.”

There is a pause. Why would somebody question my sexual preference? I have never been attracted to another man’s hairy chest! The outrage!

“Just cause he’s not married doesn’t mean he’s gay,” Nance added. She was talking a little lower. I leaned closer to the door, only an inch away when it opened, striking me in the head. Good, now I’ll have two black eyes. She stuck her head around the door and put the phone to her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Great, now I was the one who was busted while I was trying to bust her. This boss thing is tougher than it's cranked up to be.

“I needed to go to the restroom, but thought I heard voices in there,” I lied. She bought it!

“Sorry,” Nancy said, and smiled at me. She hung up the phone and walked back into the office. Teresa was glaring at her the whole time.

“Where have you been?” Teresa demanded.

“None of your beezwax,” Nancy retorted. “Did you win that ugly blouse?”

I stepped into the bathroom, mainly to fulfill my lie. I didn’t really need to use the facilities. The bathroom badley needed to be cleaned, just like the rest of the place. I waited the appropriate time and flushed the toilet. That waste of water would cost some money we didn’t have, but it was necessary.

When I emerged from the bathroom, Teresa was working on her fake nails that she had just chewed on. Nancy was actually working on putting together an ad. As I walked past, there was a bad feeling that she was checking me out. I thought about flexing my glutes, but decided bosses don’t do that sort of thing.

Besides, it was almost time to head to the bank. I was going to have to beg and grovel, two things I wasn’t good at.

I told the women where I was going and told them to mind the shop. Nancy smiled at me. Teresa gave her a dirty look.

Flora’s Flowers was located just a couple of doors down from the Review. In looking over the receivables, I noticed she was well over sixty days late. I didn’t know this Flora and she didn’t know me well enough to run when I came through the front door.

There were some fake flowers in the window, just below the painting. Wow, you could send and receive money here, along with paying your electric bill. All while you were bought flowers, roses and home decorations.

The inside was filled with a bunch of flowers, cards and stuff to decorate your house with. One shelf was covered with some fuzzy little toys, all of different looks and sizes. A girl was sitting at the counter, reading what I presumed to be the latest People magazine.

She looked up to see who was disturbing her, then went back to reading about the latest celebrity divorce or drug problem. It was a younger woman, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t the Flora. Her hair was dyed pitch black. Her lips were roughly the same color, along with her fingernails and clothing. She had some kind of ring stuck in her lip. Some other shiny thing was sticking out of her nose.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to buy anything from this woman. I doubted the little old ladies would either, which was probably one of the reasons why Flora couldn’t pay her bill.

“Is Flora here?” I asked.

“There’s no Flora here,” she answered, without ever looking up from the magazine. She blew a bubble with her pink gum, a huge one that I hopped popped and got in her hair.

“Isn’t this ‘Flora’s Flowers’?”

She stared at my damaged face for a few seconds, right before giving me the look that all teenagers use on adults who they believe has asked a stupid question.

“Like I said, there’s not a Flora here. I might could call one in the phone book and get her here, if it’d make you happy.”

She obviously did not know who I am. Not that it would probably matter to her.

“Well, who’s in charge?” I asked.

“My mother,” the girl replied, right as she rolled her eyes.

“Is your mother here?”

“Depends.”

“What does it depend on?” I asked.

“Who you are and what you need.”

This girl could have used some more spankings as a child.

“My name is Michael Hunt,” that wasn’t worthy of getting her attention. “I’m running the newspaper.”

That also did not budge her.

“I need to send my mom some flowers,” I added. The goth chick closed up the magazine, got off the stool and walked to the entrance to the back. She poked her head through the plastic sheets and said something to her mother.

The mother emerged from the back, moving quite briskly. It might be a paying customer! She looked a lot like her daughter, without the goth look. Her hair had grey streaks in it, mixed with different shades. She had on some kind of robe and was without shoes. The woman grabbed an order book and pulled a pen out from behind her ear. I didn’t even notice one was hiding there.

“Howdy,” she said. The woman stared at my black eye. I was a stranger, probably from out of town. She was trying to impress me with her country charms.

“Hello,” I countered. “Do you own this place?”

A little of her smile faded.

“Uh, yes,” she glared at her daughter. I was probably a bill collector.

“My name’s Michael Hunt,” I said and stuck out my hand. She looked at it like I had just pulled it out of a cow’s butt or something. The woman took my hand for what I considered to be the shortest handshake in recorded history. “My father owned the newspaper.”

She brightens up a bit. The woman obviously knows that my father has kicked the bucket and assumes that I want to buy something. I do, but that’s not the only reason for my visit.

“Glad to meet you, Mister Hunt,” she responds. I hate that name. My name is Michael, not Mister Hunt. He’s getting stared at by a bunch of people so they can tell other people how good or bad he looks. “My name’s Sissy. Sorry to hear about your daddy.”

I nod, playing along. Why do people always say that? It is assumed, of course. I have never heard anybody tell a family member that they are glad that so-and-so croaked.

“Yes, it was quite a shock,” I say, knowing that makes me sound like a doofus. “I need to get my mother something.”

She guides me over to the most expensive gifts in the place, of course. I am from out of town and might have money, after all.

Sissy shows me a lot of crap that I wouldn’t get if it was free. I was looking for something simple. My mother wouldn’t let a lot of this stuff even in her house. I settle on some potpourri thing. It only sets me back nine dollars and some change. She looks disappointed that I didn’t dig a little deeper.

“Will that be all?” Sissy asks, braving a smile.

“I think so,” I add, then act like I’ve just remembered something. “Sissy, I’m going to be running the newspaper for a while.”

Sissy is still smiling.

“We’re going to put out a memorial ad for my father. Would you like to buy a spot?”

Where has the shame gone? I’m trying to make money off my father’s death. Sissy isn’t smiling so much now.

“How much would it cost?” she asks, now biting her lower lip. We have several sizes, the large ones that I will hammer the banks with, along with the smaller ones that are more affordable. I pull out a sheet of paper with sizes and prices. “I guess we can handle that one.”

She picks the cheapest one available, the $10 ad. It will be so small that if anybody actually looks at the advertisement, which I doubt they will, Flora’s Flowers will hardly be visible. My first sell! I’m feeling a high.

“It’ll be ten dollars,” I say. Her smile has left the building.

“Just bill me,” she counters.

“That was something else that I wanted to talk with you about.”

Sissy is now frowning.

“Uh, what about it?” she asks.

“I noticed that you were three months late.”

“Yeah, uh, times have been a little tough.”

Like she needed to tell me how hard things have been. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

“We need to get some money in.”

“I hope to do well on the funeral and…”

She figures out the funeral is for my father. She also wants to profit off my father’s death. It’s a sad world out there. Nobody will profit as much as the funeral home, I realize and dread going out there later on.

Sissy gets in the cash register and gives me twenty dollars.

“That’s all I can pay,” she offers.

Ten dollars is money I just gave her. I’m up ten now. I’m surprised, somebody actually gave me money. I stick it in my pocket and bid farewell. Sissy looks glad that I’m leaving. They are talking about me as I leave, carrying my potpourri thing in a sack.

There are several other stops I need to make, but it is time to go to the bank and visit with Allen Woodard. My pace slows as I approach the place. I have never had a problem with banks before and it has never bothered me to enter one. Most banks would be happy to have me as a customer. I carry a decent balance and always pay my bills on time. But I was afraid this wouldn’t be that good of an experience.

The Bank of Langford is the largest building in town. It is a large, two-story structure that takes up almost half a block of downtown. There are only two trucks parked out front. I open the door and walk inside. There are a few women in the lobby. Most of them don’t bother to look up and see who has entered.

It’s a pretty building, I guess. The teller line is to the right. There are offices to the left with windows so people can look in and out. I stand at the front desk until the secretary finally looks up. She looks like the typical secretary, hair fixed to perfection and dressed as nice as her meager salary allows. The smile looks real, and I am surprised.

“Can I help you?” she asks, then grimaces after seeing my eye.

“I have an appointment with Allen Woodard,” I answer. That doesn’t impress her, not that I care. She picks up the phone and buzzes back to the big guy. I look around and spot him in one of the offices at the back of the building. He is talking to her on the speaker phone. Aw, too good to actually pick up the phone.

“You can sit down,” she says. “Mister Woodard will be with you in a few minutes. He’s rather busy at the moment.”

She called him “Mister Woodard”, like it was the way I should also address him. I see that he is busy reading a newspaper. Well, we certainly don’t want to interrupt him so I can get on back to work, do we?

I watch the second hand pass by the 12 over fifteen times. Every few minutes, I look back at his office. Apparently he reads every word of every article. An older man comes in and heads in my direction. I feel like I’m in a doctor’s office instead of a bank. He’s the type of guy who obviously doesn’t get out of the woods very often. The man is wearing old overalls, a long-sleeve shirt with holes where his elbows are, along with a hat that should have tossed aside several years ago. He also has on a pair of tennis shoes that don’t go well with the rest of his outfit. He’s a skinny guy with huge ears and a bunch of whiskers on his face.

He has his mouth open all the time. The man moves a little slow, but shuffles his feet very quickly, almost like he was dancing. He sits down and stares at me. I want to give him the old “Take a picture, it’ll last longer” line, but I don’t.

“Awful hot out thar,” he says, very loudly. I pick up a magazine and start looking at it. I don’t realize that it is some woman magazine until it is too late. “Need some rain!”

I nod and look around. Surely the people don’t think that was me.

“Ya got a pretty good shiner, boy!” he adds. I wonder if the people can hear him across town.

I nod and want to thank him for shouting that out so everybody can stare at me.

“Who ya here to see?” the man asks. I point at Woodard without looking up. I’m reading about getting rid of that fat in the back of an arm. I have never had that problem, but now know what to do if I ever have fatty arms. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

This was another one of those stupid questions people always ask. How the heck would I know if he knows me? I can’t get in the old geezer’s head and do a google search in there.

I shrug and wish he would be quiet. The secretary gets buzzed and picks up the phone. She mumbles something, hangs up the phone and walks over in my direction.

“Mister Woodard will see you now,” she says, then turns around and goes back to her desk.

I rise and slowly walk in the direction of the big guy. His hair is again combed back toward the front. His outie is not as prominent today, thanks to a looser shirt. He doesn’t bother to rise and meet me. I’m not all that surprised.

He nods at a chair. I guess this means that I am allowed to sit. Woodard waits until I am seated, then drops the bomb.

Chapter 39

Chapter 37

2005-07-21T06:58:00.000-05:00

I woke up that Monday morning shortly before six, covered with sweat. After sitting on the porch and consoling each other, Mom helped me into the house and escorted me to the couch. I was just going to sit there for a while, but liked the feel of it so much I fell asleep.

Mom had wanted to make sure I didn’t get a chill with the thermostat set at eighty degrees in the house, so she put about four blankets on me. I guess she wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose any limbs from frost bite.

I felt terrible, which is one reason why I don’t drink on my own. I also don’t like the things it makes a person do when they are drunk. For me, I apparently get a smart mouth. At least R.D. the Cowboy thought so.

Mom had put a trash can next to the couch, just in case I wasn’t through upchucking. My mouth was dry and sore. I had a headache that was the worst since the last time a hangover visited. Had I known what was in store for me, I would have taken a "chaser." When I looked in the mirror, I cringed at my eye, the one with which I tried to hit R.D.’s fist, now black and almost swollen shut.

That will look good as I try to put out a newspaper today. Mom didn’t nag me about what happened, too bad. She wasn’t real fond of me getting drunk, but neither was I. Squiggy shall pay for that one. Plus, Mom didn’t really think it was a good idea for me to be at the bar. Again, neither did I. But I also didn’t want to expose Squiggy, Mule and Big Uns to her friends and if they had mad their way inside our house, they would still be here.

I dreaded going to the paper this morning. This wasn’t my job. I should be in Tulsa, getting ready for my one feature story of the day, not tackling the problems associated with putting out a newspaper.

Mom was sitting at the table in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading my newspaper. I wanted to grab it and read it, to find out what was happening in the real world. She jumped up and started cooking breakfast. My stomach was empty and in need of nourishment.

“Good morning, honey,” she greeted me. I mumbled something that I couldn’t even understand.

We ate breakfast and I felt a little better. I invaded her medicine cabinet and took the strongest pain reliever she had. After taking a long shower and getting dressed, it was time.

I was going to the Review and I feared this would be a terrible day. In addition to getting the newspaper out, I would have to visit the bank today and find out what needed to be done.

Mom is waiting for me at the door. She kisses me on the cheek and hugs me.

“Have a good day!” she says, and I kind of like it. Many a moon has passed since anybody kissed me at the door and wished me a good day as I was leaving for work. Technically, this isn’t my work. Just my temporary work until I sell the Review or it goes belly up.

I drive downtown and park behind the building. It is an old one, in bad need of some repairs, just like all the other buildings downtown. I got Dad’s keys and let myself in. Nobody is here yet, of course. The other two staffers, my cousin Teresa and some lady named Nancy won’t get here until much later.

I turn on the lights and unlock the front door. It has been a long time since I have been in this old building, but notice little has changed. There are a few old printing machines at the back. A darkroom is set up just inside the door, next to the bathroom. I come through some swinging doors and here it is. This is where the news happens in Langford, Oklahoma.

There are three desks scattered around the front of the building. On the far wall, there is a layout table, angled so a person can put copy on the paper. It is dirty and stinks.

But it is nice and quiet. I enjoy the solitude while sitting at my father’s desk and looking at the calendar to see if anything was scheduled for today. There’s some deal over at the school for the child of the month at ten and then a city council meeting this evening.

Not real exciting, but at least it will help to fill the twelve pages that need to be ready by Wednesday at noon. I grab last week’s copy and thumb through it, trying to see if there is anything that needs followed up.

I’m not real impressed. Teresa had to get the paper out with Dad laid up. I guess she decided the most important news event in town was the marriage of some lady who I never heard of. Apparently, real news took a break.

The front door opens. It’s just after 7:30. I don’t expect it to be Teresa or Nancy, or who it is. I look up to see some man heading in my direction. It’s not R.D. or Trevor, so I don’t get too worried. I decide that it is probably somebody who is having a garage sale later this week and wants to invite all the Review readers.

He’s a tall man, about my age. He has some kind of wrapping covering his head, tilted at an angle. His right eye is almost covered. The man has on glasses that are bent, making the one eye piece set higher than the other. The shirt is a long-sleeve dress variety, despite the heat. His jeans are a little baggy. Apparently, the man has no rear to hold up the pants, but he does have a fairly large belly.

The man sits down in the chair next to the desk. I really don’t feel like it, but I scrounge up a smile.

“How’s it going?” I ask.

“What?” he replies, leaning forward and tilting to the side. Apparently one ear doesn’t work all that great and he’s wanting me to talk into the other.

“I asked you how it’s going.”

He frowned for a second and gave the question more time than it deserved.

“How’s what going?” he asked.

“Uh, everything.”

He put his hand over his mouth and rubbed his face. This question was difficult to answer for some reason. He started nodding his head.

“I’m good,” he finally said. “And you?”

“I’m okay.”

He leaned across the desk and stared at me. The man moved a little each direction so he could get a better look.

“Say, you ain’t the old man!”

An amazing discovery! Call National Geographic!

“No, I’m not,” I answered. Since I’m from Langford and have worked at newspapers for so long, I am used to dealing with strange people. But that doesn’t mean I like it.

He appeared to be eating the top part of his mouth with the bottom. His lower lip almost touched his nose. The man had tried to shave this morning, but wasn’t successful. Some of his face was clean shaven, there were patches in other locations that had not been touched. I noticed that he had a far away look in his eyes that I should have expected.

“Where is he?” the man asked. “The old man is my friend!”

“He died Saturday night.”

“You don’t say?” the man continued, smiling for some reason.

“Yeah, actually I did.”

“Bummer. Was it the STD?”

I could not have heard him correctly.

“The what?”

“STD. You know, sexy transferring disease. Ain’t you heard of it?”

“Sexually transmitted disease?

“I reckon so,” the man replied, nodding again. “Is that what got him?”

“Not that I know of,” I followed up, then asked something that I really didn’t want to know. “Have you heard something that I don’t know?”

“Probably if I was some place that you weren’t.”

“No, about the old man.”

“Not really. I was just wondering if he had it, too.”

Okay, I should have cut this conversation off right now. But I was a little interested now.

“You have an STD?” I asked.

“Shoot, not just one,” he answered. “I got two of em.”

“You been fooling around?”

“Naw, got em from me wife.”

“I guess your wife’s been running around, huh?”

The pursed his lips and studied the question.

“Not that I know of,” he answered. “She’s a little on the fat and ugly side. The little lady says she got it from a toilet seat at McDonald’s.”

I needed to go to work, but was curious as to why the man was wearing what appeared to be a sheet around his head.

“Do you have a head injury?” I asked. He had to think about this for a second.

“Yeah, I got like this open sore that’s oozing.”

That was a little more than I wanted to know.

“My cousin Jake shot me the other day when we was hunting. The doctors said the bullet was too close to my brain so they left it in my head.”

Very interesting stuff, I knew, but it was time for him to go. This guy should be off somewhere taking heavy medication.

“Now my friends call me ‘Bullethead’,” he added. “I like it when they just shorten it to ‘Bullet’. Sounds like somebody in one of them westerns they have at the library.”

I wondered if this guy was going to stay here all day.

“What are you doing out this morning, Bullethead?” I asked. He seemed to get a kick out of that.

“Does that mean we’re friends?” he asked. I cringed, never expecting that to happen.

“Sure.”

He smiled and looked around the paper.

“I’m a waiting on the little lady,” he replied. “She’s over at the clinic getting a shot.”

I nodded. Nobody could pay me to ask why she was getting a shot.

“I guess I better get to work,” I said, hoping he would get the hint.

“You go right ahead. I’ll make sure nobody bothers you.”

He was actually quiet for almost a minute, then started whistling. It started off really light, but the longer he whistled, the more energy was exerted. I recognized his whistle was an old Aerosmith song.

“You’re quite the whistler,” I pointed out. He kept on whistling, even turning up the volume. His cheeks were sucked in and his lips were sticking out like he wanted to kiss somebody. Bullethead stopped suddenly and looked at the watch on his arm. Then, he looked at me.

“What time you got?” he asked.

“What time do you have?” I countered.

“Don’t rightly now. I can’t remember how to tell time.”

That must be the reason why he was wearing the watch.

“Seven forty five.”

“Guess I best get going,” he announced. “Wanna go get some breakfast with me?”

“I’ve already ate.”

“Bummer, guess I’ll go on down to the café. I like their eggs. They make them good and runny, just how I like them.”

He stood up and stuck his hand in his pocket.

“Darn the luck!” he exclaimed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I guess the little lady’s got my money. Hmm, figger I’ll just stay here until she comes back.”

I immediately grabbed my wallet and handed him a five spot.

“You can pay me back later,” I said.

“I won’t get paid until the first of the month,” he said. “That’s my payday.”

“You have a job?”

“Naw, I work for the government. They send me a check on the third of each month.”

He thought that was rather funny. I realized that I was helping to support him in more ways than giving him a bribe to leave. Bullethead walked out of the building and headed across the street to the Mexican store.

Several minutes later, I watched him come out of there with some money in his hand. Next, he went to the clothing store. He had a pretty good racket going on. Next time, I would remember to keep the door locked.

I called the police station and talked to my good buddy, Officer Arnold. He told me everything was pretty quiet. They did have some woman who reported somebody stole her panties at the grocery store. I showed no interest in that one.

The clock showed after eight and none of my help had arrived. I wasn’t surprised. The phone rang, for the first time today. It was some old lady.

“What’s the weather going to do today?” she asked.

“Beats me,” I answered. “Turn on The Weather Channel.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused.”

“Who is this?” she demanded. “Mister Hunt always tells me if it’s gonna storm.”

“Mister Hunt died Saturday.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“Well, I’ll be. Was it the hemorrhoids? I hear they can be awful dangerous.”

“No, it was his heart.”

“I always liked him,” she added. “I remember when…”

The woman was telling a story that would probably last ten minutes. I set the phone down and started looking at the dummy sheets for this week’s paper. Not many ads, which didn’t surprise me.

Every few minutes or so, I picked up the phone and gave her some kind of “uh, huh”. I finally heard a "goodbye" and a click, so I hung up. Do people in Langford have any kind of a life?

Teresa finally showed up at eight thirty. Nancy came in right behind her.

They were both wearing dresses that were too short for their age. Teresa was my age, but looked twenty years older. All the shopping had an effect on her. She had kept the weight off since the last time the doctor had sucked all the fat out, I saw. Nancy was younger. She had been to the tanning bed too much. Her skin looked all wrinkled. She was wearing too much cheap makeup and had her hair puffed up like the women did in the early 1980s.

They both stopped and stared at me.

“What’re you doing here?” Teresa asked me.

“Trying to put out the paper,” I answered.

“You mean I don’t get to run it?”

“Nope.”

“That stinks,” she added and walked toward her desk. “Nice shiner.”

Nancy stopped by the desk and stuck her hand out.

“I’m Nancy,” she said. I had already figured that out, but wasn’t going to disappoint her. I noticed that she had a necklace with her first name on it. The necklace looked cheap, but she appeared proud. Nancy shook my hand and smiled. “Does it hurt?”

“A little bit,” I answered. “Nice to meet you.”

“Every time my brother gets in a fight and winds up with a black eye, he puts a steak on it. Want me to go get one?”

“No thanks.” I didn’t think that would look real good as I tried to persuade people to advertise in the Review.

“Okay, just let me know. Is there anything you need?”

“Not right now.”

Nancy walked off and I heard Teresa berating her for trying to brownnose me. The front door opened and a man walked in. He stopped and looked around. The man had on a Langford hat, a blue shirt, jeans and work boots.

He walked over and stood at the desk, staring down at me. I looked up and smiled.

“Looks like you oughta stick to writing instead of fighting,” he pointed out. That was so funny I fogot to laugh. “Are you in charge?”

“Afraid so,” I replied. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember his name. “Have a seat.”

The man sat down and leaned forward. Apparently he didn’t want Nancy or Teresa to hear him. I noticed they had their radars up and were trying to listen in.

“You aren’t going to run that story, are you?” he asked.

“Which story?”

“You know, the one about my family.”

“I really don’t have a clue what you are talking about.”

He told me the most unbelievable story. The man and his wife had three children, two sons and a daughter, all in their twenties. They were all married and lived close to each other. Their daughter just had a little girl and wanted to go to college. Turns out her husband started having an affair with the wife of one of his brothers.

That caused the younger son and his wife to get divorced. His daughter beats the snot out of the woman who had an affair with her husband. Then, the daughter and her husband patched things up and she wound up getting pregnant again. Things seemed to be pretty smooth until the daughter’s husband started having an affair with the older son’s wife. The oldest son and his wife split up.

The daughter and her husband also went their separate ways. She goes after her brother’s wife and has assault charges filed on her. Her husband goes back to dating the original sister-in-law, the one who he initially had an affair with. She is now dating the husband’s brother and is pregnant with his child. The oldest son and his wife patch things up. The middle son gets remarried and finally, the daughter can go back to school.

Her former husband leaves the woman who is pregnant with her brother’s child and eventually marries a lesbian, who tries to get the daughter to date her.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say.

“I wish I was.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Nobody would ever believe it.”

“So you won’t write a story about it?” he asks.

“Not in my lifetime.”

He looks relieved. I don’t know how he has maintained his sanity. The man shakes my hand and leaves. I look down at the clock and see that it is time. I have an appointment with the man who will go a long way toward determining what will happen with the paper and my mother’s house.

I feel sick to my stomach, even before meeting with him.

Chapter 38

Chapter 36

2005-07-20T06:12:00.000-05:00

As I lay prone on the dirty floor covered with spilled beer, cigarette butts and other things it would be best not to know about, I tried to remember the last time somebody had punched me.

That memory was lost, as were most other memories at that moment. Squiggy and Mule had gotten me drunk. Actually, this seemed more like something Squiggy would do. Mule wasn’t bright enough to hatch this plan and I don’t think he would try to get somebody drunk, especially a male.

There was a ceiling fan spinning over my head. I watched it out of one of my right eye. The left one didn’t seem to be working at the moment. Squiggy and Mule appeared above me, looking down.

“Yuck,” Squiggy said, which was how I felt. Mule looked highly agitated. He spun around and was off.

I heard some shouting and tried to see what was happening. Squiggy left me alone with the ceiling fan. I set up to see what was happening. Mule had grabbed R.D.

“You punched my friend!” Mule shouted. R.D. didn’t look crazy now. He looked scared.

“He was talking to my woman!” R.D. argued. That argument did little to sooth Mule. He had the little cowboy held up by the shirt. Everybody near by cleared out, knowing what was fixing to happen.

Mule continued holding R.D. up by one hand, then started rabbit punching him with the other. Quick little shots that were making the cowboy’s head go back and forth like a bobblehead.

“You (punch) don’t (punch) mess (punch) wif (punch, a hard one that drew blood) my (punch) buddy!” Mule added.

Mule and R.D. collided with a bunch of people, who banged into some other people. This caused several other people to start fighting and throwing beer bottles. I realized that I was the reason behind this bar brawl, crawled under the table and assumed the fetal position.

Two bouncers rushed over to try and stop the fight. One of them came at Mule, who was still delivering a beating to R.D. He stopped in mid-punch and pointed at the bouncer, a huge man who would intimidate 99 percent of the male population.

“You leave Mule alone!” he yelled, and the bouncer did. Mule let go of R.D., who slid to the ground like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. He turned around and looked for somebody else to hit. There were fights going on all around the bar.

Squiggy and B.J. had hold of each other, but weren’t actually fighting. They had to act like they were in a fight to keep people from feeling the need to punch them. I saw they were smiling as Squiggy held B.J. in the loosest headlock I’ve ever seen. They made pro wrestlers look good.

Amber leaned down to check on me. She was ugly once again.

“Are you okay?” she asked. I shook my head. “Wants me to kiss it and make it better?”

I had never punched a woman in my life. Amber was going to be my first if she came any closer.

“No,” I said and raised myself up. The fights had all moved outside. Mule and Squiggy were about the only people still inside, other than R.D. He appeared to be unable to move. I looked around and it was like a tornado had just swept past.

Tables and chairs were turned over and scattered everywhere. Some were broke and splintered. The others were in a lot worse shape than they were just a few minutes ago. Beer bottles were spilled and broken glass was all over the floor. The bartender stood at the bar, surveying the damage. He looked sad. I don’t blame him.

I started walking to the door. Mule grabbed me by one arm and Squiggy held the other.

“Let’s call Sandy!” Squiggy suggested.

“Yeah, she’ll know what to do,” Mule agreed.

It took a second for that to settle in. My legs were a little shaky and my mind was not functioning at full capability.

“What’re you doing?” I asked Mule.

“He’s callin that Sandy.”

“Who is?”

“The Squigster.”

I turned around and looked for Squiggy. He had walked off and was using a cell phone. I realized what he was doing.

“No!” I yelled, loud enough the bartender scampered back behind the bar. He must have thought I was going to start hitting Squiggy. He deserved a beating but I had been in my quota of fights for the evening.

“Okay, bye,” Squiggy said as he shut the phone.

“Did you call Sandy?” I asked. He nodded. “How’d you know her number?”

“I used your phone.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That you needed help.”

Now, I started feeling ill. I didn’t want Sandy to see me like this. I staggered to the front door. I never knew it was that hard to walk in a straight line. There were several fights in the parking lot. I didn’t really pay any attention to them, other than one where it looked like Squiggy’s date in the hog contest appeared to be beating some skinny cowboy.

I couldn’t find my truck. I just wanted to get in it and leave before Sandy arrived. My eye was still causing me some problems. It wasn’t hurting all that bad, but it was hard to see out of. Somebody must have stolen my dang truck, I thought, before remembering I parked around back so nobody could see me.

I walked around the building. As I rounded the corner, I tripped over some wire and fell in a mud puddle. It drenched me. Two girls were sitting on the back of a truck and they laughed. I failed to see any humor in the situation.

“It’s not funny,” I told them. They didn’t agree with my assessment. I dragged myself up and staggered over to my truck. I opened the tailgate and sat down. Gosh, I didn’t feel good, I thought, right before getting sick.

I had never been this bad before. Sure, I had gotten drunk and threw up before, but that seemed like it was in another life. I was too old for this. I was still heaving when I felt somebody tapping on my back. It was Mule.

“Gimme a dollar and I’ll throw up,” he said.

“Why would I want to give you a dollar to throw up?” I asked.

“Squiggy thinks it’s funny to watch me vomit.”

“I don’t want to see you get sick.”

“Okay. She’s here.”

Mule started walking away. A car pulled up beside my truck. The passenger side door opened and Sandy emerged. She was wearing jeans and an Old Navy shirt. Her hair was put up for the evening. I doubted this was how she wanted to spend it.

I knew this couldn’t be a pretty sight. I tried to wipe the vomit off my cheek and face. She came up next to me, making sure she was off to the side, just in case another yack attack hit.

“Aw, Mikey,” she said and put her hand on my back. “Let me look at you.”

I’d rather she didn’t see me right now. All I had wanted to do all day was see her. Now I had the chance and didn’t want her around when I looked like this.

She leaned down and looked at me. I could tell that Sandy was a little worried. That made two of us.

“We need to get some ice on that,” she suggested. I nodded. Heck, I didn’t know what to do. I barely even knew who I was.

Squiggy and his crew were standing nearby. He had his arm around Big Uns’ shoulder and his hand was getting awful close to her chest. She didn’t seem to mind. That was another thing that didn’t surprise me. Mule was looking at his knuckles. They appeared to be bleeding. Only thing was I didn’t know if it was his blood or R.D.’s.

“Squiggy, could you go get us some ice?” she asked.

“Go git some ice,” he told Big Uns.

“Git yer own dang ice,” she fired back and removed his hand and arm.

Mule went off in search of some ice without being told. He was gone a couple of minutes then came running back out. His hands were cupped together with what looked like four ice cubes in them.

“Ere ya go!” he offered.

“Ya idiot!” Squiggy hollered. “That ain’t enuff ice!”

Mule was hurt. Here he was trying to be helpful and Squiggy criticized him.

“I don’t think I like you no more,” Mule told him and started walking off with his head drooping.

Squiggy watched him go. He was smiling for a few seconds, but must have realized that if he didn’t stop Mule, there wouldn’t be anybody to drink beer with.

“Hey, I’m sorry!” Squiggy hollered. Mule stopped and turned around.

“Ya sure?”

Squiggy nodded. They started walking toward each other. I thought they were going to hug, but they punched each other on the arm instead. It was touching in some strange way.

“How about some ice?” Sandy asked.

“Oh yeah,” Squiggy said. He looked at his woman, but she was determined not to help. I was afraid this brief romance had bloomed and was starting to dim.

Squiggy walked into the bar. He came out a little later with an armful of beers and a sack with some ice in it.

“Where’d ya git all them beers?” Mule asked.

“I helped meself to em,” he replied, then handed Sandy the bag. “Ain’t nobody in there.”

Squiggy had just stolen all the beer he could carry. It was sad, but not surprising. He and Mule hit the beer like they were dehydrated. Big Uns acted like things were okay now, since Squiggy got her a beer.

Sandy put the ice up against my face. It hurt, which I guess was good. It seemed like most things that were good for you hurt. She sat down next to me and stared at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Sandy answered. I took the bag from her and held it. She rubbed my back. Life was much better. “I didn’t know you drank.”

“I don’t,” I answered and pointed at them. “They were spiking my coke.”

“At least they didn’t try to take advantage of you.”

I’m glad she pointed that out. That was really something I wanted to think about.

She moved a little closer and looked at my face. I had never seen anything so beautiful. She didn’t have on any makeup and her hair was pulled back, but Sandy looked like an angel. Trevor’s angel, I guess, but it didn’t diminish her beauty in my eyes.

“Was that your mother that drove you?” I asked.

She nodded. I knew my mother knew all about this by now. There was a cell phone ringing, coming from Squiggy’s pocket. He had his hands full of beer and couldn’t get it.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

We sat out there for a few minutes. The fights must have stopped as we saw people filtering back into the bar.

“Want me to take you home?” Sandy asked.

I turned and smiled at her.

“You have no idea how bad,” I replied.

She smiled and looked down.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Sandy stated.

I tried to get up and about fell again. She held my arm and escorted me to the side door. I opened the door and climbed in. Mule’s sack of beer was still in the floorboard. I grabbed it and held it out the window.

Squiggy walked over and got the sack. He handed me my phone and patted me on the shoulder.

“See you,” he said and walked away. We pulled out and drove away. I tried to not stare at her, but it was hard.

I hoped we would ride around, maybe go out to the lake, but Sandy drove straight to my mom’s house. She parked in the driveway, killed the engine and got out. I didn’t want to go inside and face my mother. It would not be easy telling her that I got drunk and punched. She had enough to worry about without that added on.

Sandy helped me to the porch. I sat down on the steps and hoped she would join me. Sandy stood there for a few seconds.

“I better go,” she said.

“Want me to drive you?” I asked.

“No, I’d rather get home alive.”

She was leaving again. I wanted her to stay, but didn’t know what to say or how to make that happen.

“Thanks,” was all I could say.

“You going to be okay?”

I wanted to tell her the truth. No, I wasn’t going to be okay. If she walked away, another part of me was going to die. I wanted her to stay, to never leave my side. But that only happens in some fantasy world. Not in the real world where I live. The guy might get the girl, and vice versa, but it’s not always the one they want.

My head goes up and down, two short nods. She looks sad while walking away. Sandy walks down to the sidewalk

“Sandy,” I say, without meaning to do so.

She stops and turns around. Now I don’t know what to say. This is a person who I would tell my deepest and darkest secrets to. I would trust her with everything, other than how I felt about her.

“Goodbye.”

She waves and walks away. I can see her until she gets to the end of the block and turns. The door opens behind me and I hear footsteps. I feel a hand on my back, the same one that comforted me when I was a kid and was hurt.

Mom sits down beside me and puts her arm around me. I can’t hold it in any longer and let go. She joins in and we sit on that little porch and comfort each other for lost loved ones. Her love had passed on. Mine passed on, also, but I was the one she passed on.

Chapter 37

Chapter 35

2005-07-19T07:12:00.000-05:00

The Last Call, just the mention of the place makes my stomach get a little uneasy. I know that country bars have their place, I just haven’t figured out where.

Even before I go, I know the music will be bad and loud. The place will be dirty and smell like spilled beer and cheap cigarettes. There will be fights and somebody throwing up. The people that attend places like this are usually desperate, looking for something they can’t find without the help of alcohol and people in the same situation.

I park around back, hoping Mom and her bevy of spies will not see my truck. Just to be safe, I turn my cell phone off. That way, there’s no way she can call me every five minutes asking where I am and who I’m with.

That gets a little old for a person of my age. Mule is smiling as we park the truck and get out. He likes this place and looks forward to coming. That’s fine for Mule. It’s just not my cup of tea.

“I’m a gonna git lucky tonight!” Mule announces. His pace quickens until he’s practically jogging toward the door. He leaves the sack of beer in my truck. I would have preferred money. There are two men sitting in lawn chairs off to the side, smoking a cigarette and minding a big steel smoker.

The Last Call isn’t licensed to sell food, something about the health department not willing to license them because of safety concerns. Looking at these two guys, I long for the restaurants where you don’t have to see the cooks.

Both of these guys look rough. They have heavy beards and eyes that can pierce right through a person. I know one of the guys, a veteran who went through Vietnam and came home a changed man. When he was sober, you would never find a better person. But if the man’s drinking, you don’t want to irritate him.

I wave at them as I cross by. The smell from the smoker is good. If I wasn’t stuffed, the ribs would hit the spot. But I’m not hungry and it always worries me what they put in the barbeque sauce.

Both men are heavyset with long, grey hair and ZZ Top beards. Their overalls are faded and need replaced.

The other man glares at me. He doesn’t know me and obviously is not fond of strangers. I’m with Mule, not that it improves my social status in the eyes of many.

I remember the other guy’s name, the one that I know. It is Gene Long. His sister and I were the same age and took many classes together. They come from a good family and Gene’s a good guy, just one that you really don’t want to anger.

Gene finally waves back and whispers something to the other man, who nods and turns his attention to the smoker and the fifth of whiskey on the ground. He picks the bottle up and pours it into a drink.

My pace slows as I near the door. I don’t want to be here. I’ve met my quota on bar appearances for my life and don’t want to go in any more. Especially on Sunday, I believe the Sabbath should be a day where a person can forego the bars.

There’s a nasty-looking woman at the back door. Her hair is at least six different colors. I believe red is the main theme, but I’m not real sure. She is wearing a sleeveless shirt, revealing large tattoos on both arms. One of them is some guy on what looks to be a Harley. The other is a name that I can’t read or want to find out.

The woman is too skinny. I decide she is either a crankhead now or was one in the past. People don’t get this skinny at her age without putting some heavy stuff in her system. I can see the outline of every bone in her face, not that I want to. Her eyes are like sunken pits with a look of evil in them. The woman’s jeans are still tight and have slits on both sides, revealing skin that doesn’t do anything for me.

She is staring at me, making me feel uncomfortable. I decide her life would be an interesting story, one that somebody else would have to write. I don’t care to know anything else about her.

Mule walks right past her. I notice that she checks out his rear as he walks into The Last Call. She smiles and licks her bottom lip. I want to vomit in a bad way.

The woman climbs up on a stool. I guess she’s the lookout for all things that aren’t supposed to be here, like cops and Baptists. Apparently, she does not like my looks. Good, I’m not too fond of her appearance, either.

“Got some idée?” she asks, putting her leg across the door to block my path. The leg is so skinny, it almost looks like a toothpick.

I’m in a sarcastic mood. The woman is doing her job, but I feel like this authority thing has probably gone to her head.

“Yes, I do,” I answer, standing at the door, wondering how hard it would be to snap her leg in two parts. I didn’t really want to do that, it was just one of those strange thoughts a person has.

“Lemme see it.”

“What?”

“Some identification.”

“Why?”

The questions were confusing her. I could see that she wasn’t used to this. She looked around for a second then leaned toward me. I saw that her teeth looked fake, not that it surprised me. I doubted she was a person who did the six-month cleaning thing at the dentist.

“Cause I says so,” she continued.

Squiggy must have seen that I was having trouble getting in. I would have preferred that the lady didn’t let me in. He strolled up, carrying a pitcher of beer and drinking out of it. I saw that he had foam all over his mouth.

“Hey Slick, let im in,” he said. The woman nodded. I had no idea where the name came from. My mind started going through the possibilities. There was one that stuck out and it was something that really bothered me.

Slick dropped her leg. She sat on the stool with her legs spread wide open. Not real lady like, I thought, rather appropriate for Slick, or whatever her name was. I hoped she wasn’t checking out my rear as I walked in. I, for one, shall not be a sex object for some crankhead.

Mule was at the bar, getting him a pitcher of beer. I saw that Big Uns had a pitcher, also. Good, we’ll have three pitchers of beer at the table. Never want to risk running out of warm beer, did we? I slowly made my way across the bar to where she was sitting. Big Uns appeared to be one big insect bite on her face. It was swollen and scratched. As if on cue, she got after a bite on her left chin. Big Uns went after it with a fury, leaving lines on her face from scratching with her fake nails.

She saw me and smiled. I tried not to groan loud. Her shirt was another low cut, like that was a surprise. This one was white and I was relieved to see that there was the outline of a bra.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Much better now,” she replied, still smiling. I was getting hit on by Squiggy’s woman! Would the nightmares ever cease? “You look awful good tonight, honey.”

I had to step back. She called me “honey”? I groaned and didn’t care if she did hear me.

“Uh, thank you,” I responded, and sat down on the chair farthest away from her. The table was high, as were the chairs, better to help you look into the face of whoever was trying to ask you to dance, I guess. “How’d you sleep last night?”

Her smile disappeared. I had hit a touchy subject. She must not have liked sleeping in the back of Squiggy’s truck with Psycho and the mosquitos. Big Uns grabbed her pitcher with her manly hand and the fake nails that were a good half inch long, and took a big swig. I could see the level of the beer drop. It was amazing to see, in sort of a sad way.

Mule set his pitcher on the table. Big Uns was still gulping from her pitcher. A small river of beer was flowing out of the corner of her mouth and down to her shirt. Mule watched it and looked like he wouldn’t mind licking it up. Not in a sexual way, I just don’t think Mule liked to see beer wasted.

“Here, I gots youse a Coke,” he said and put a plastic cup in front of me. I should have been suspicious.

“It is a Coke?” I asked. He nodded and I took a sip. Yep, it was a Coke. Squiggy came and sat down. He had almost emptied his pitcher during the walk from the door to the table. Squiggy exchanged a look with Mule. They both smiled.

“Go git me a beer, Big Uns,” Squiggy demanded.

“Git yer own beer,” she fired back. I must have got Big Uns all fired up with the sleeping comment. “And stop a callin me that! Use my name!”

Squiggy looked lost. I realized that he didn’t have a clue what her real name was. So did Mule, as he giggled.

“What’s so dern funny?” she asked, grabbed her purse and tried to hit Mule with it. He grabbed it before the purse could hit him. Big Uns was dragged into Mule and banged him with one of her bosoms. It had enough force to almost knock Mule off his chair.

I could tell that Mule liked it. That also didn’t surprise me.

The people were starting to flock in. It was a wide assortment of people. There were some that looked normal and others that needed to be sent back to the deep woods where they came. Several people dropped by to exchange some small talk. I tried to ignore them. I didn’t know them and failed to put out any effort to buddy up.

There was a waitress that kept coming by every few minutes. She was a short thing that looked like a block. The waitress had lived a hard life and showed it. She had her blonde hair back in a ponytail. Her shirt actually advertised The Last Call. I doubted they sold many of those, until I saw several people proudly wearing them. Her shorts were too tight, revealing a wedgie every time she turned away.

The waitress was determined not to let my drink get emptied. Every time I made some progress, she grabbed it and left to fill it up. That seemed a little odd, but I decided it must just be good service.

Squiggy and Big Uns made up and were soon kissing every few minutes. There appeared to be something going on under the table that I definitely did not want to see or find out about. Mule was staring at Big Uns’ breasts. Since she had slammed him with one of them, he seemed to have a new appreciation for the monsters.

I had started to loosen up. I was starting to relax and actually enjoy myself. Somebody tapped on my shoulder and I turned around. It was a woman standing behind me. I never really knew ugly until that moment. I got a new appreciation for the word.

She was hideous, easily the most unattractive person I had ever seen. Her eyebrows were long and bushy. She had a nose that looked like it had been smashed at one time. Her cheekbones seemed to be too high and big. Her lips were too small, almost nonexistent. She scared me and I jumped back. The woman wasn’t offended, apparently this happened to her frequently.

“Wanna dance?” she asked.

I shook my head. No, I didn’t turn her down just because she was “butt ugly”, a term that Mule had earlier used to describe somebody. I just didn’t like to dance. Every time somebody talked me into getting out on the dance floor, I felt like an idiot.

The woman walked away, looking for other innocent males.

“Man, she was a hurting,” I commented.

Big Uns was not amused. She glared at me and grabbed her pitcher. I realized that she was about to toss the beer on me just before Squiggy grabbed her hand.

“That’s my sissy!” she declared.

“What the crap is a ‘sissy’?” I asked. Where did that come from? I usually tried to not use the word “crap”.

“She’s my sister!” Big Uns fired back.

“Well, you got an ugly sister.”

Squiggy and Mule snorted up some beer, a lot of it from their nostrils. They didn’t expect to hear that from me. I didn’t expect to say it, either. I realized that I shouldn’t tell Big Uns that her sister was ugly, but felt powerless to stop.

“Yeah, but she’s got a nice body!” she retorted.

I had to check it out. Yeah, her sister did have a nice body.

“Tell her to put a sack over her head and I’ll think about it.”

Big Uns was speechless. She looked at Mule and Squiggy, who were looking off into the corners of the bar.

“You didn’t?” she asked.

Neither one of them answered. I was curious about what she was talking about, but more concerned with getting a drink. This was the best-tasting Coke I had ever drunk.

The little waitress kept making sure my Coke was filled. I was starting to think she was a princess because of her kindness and despite her wedginess.

“Them hickies on yer boobies are ugly,” Mule mentioned. So that was why he kept staring at her.

That offended Big Uns and she went off in search of moral support.

“Sorry, Squiggy,” he added.

“Is okay, she was a gittin on my nerve,” Squiggy said. He looked around the bar, then smiled. “Y’all wanna have a hog contest?”

Mule was nodding and smiling. He acted like a kid who was just asked if they were ready to open their Christmas presents.

“What’s a ‘hog contest’?” I asked. They both looked at me like I was stupid.

“Don’t say it so dern loud,” he ordered. “We’s go git the biggest, fattest woman in here to dance wif us. After the song ends, we figger out who won.”

“Why would we want to dance with the fat women?” I asked.

“It’s fun,” Squiggy retorted. Mule nodded his head in support.

I shrugged. For some strange reason, dancing didn't seem like a bad idea, even if it was with large women.

“I like it!” Mule added. I believed him. This was right up his alley.

Squiggy took off in search of large women to dance with him. Mule was right behind him. I turned around and looked for somebody to dance with. There were a lot of big women in The Last Call. Many of them were with guys. I had just about given up when I found one. I walked over, asked her to dance and she acted like that was the kindest thing anybody had ever done for her.

The six of us were the only people out on the dance floor. Squiggy had one that looked like a rhino, easily the largest rear end I have ever seen on a woman. She kept shaking her rear, making it look like waves crashing into a beach.

Mule’s catch wasn’t any better. She was almost as tall as him and looked twice as mean. The woman was large, but not nearly as bad as Squiggy’s partner. I saw Squiggy put his hand on the woman’s tush and started laughing.

“What’re ya laughin at?” my dance partner asked. I pointed. She was smiling until then.

“Dance wif me, big woman!” Mule hollered. I looked around to see if anybody was watching us. Nobody seemed to care.

The song ended and we left the dance floor. Normally, I would have been relieved but I had enjoyed it. Squiggy came up behind me and pushed me.

“How come you was dancing wif Big Uns?” he asked. “She ain’t no hog!”

I laughed and walked away. He seemed almost as mad as she was after seeing his hand on the rhino’s rear.

We sat back down at our table. My drink was half gone. That was not acceptable. I saw the waitress walking toward us.

“How bout another drink, cutie?” I asked. She smiled back, but I got the vibes that she didn’t enjoy being called that. I started wondering what was wrong with me. Why would I call her “cutie”? Or actually dance with Big Uns?

Squiggy and Mule appeared to be having a contest to see who could drink a pitcher the fastest. My eyes were starting to get a little blurred. Big Uns’ sister came to our table. Man, she didn’t look nearly as bad now.

“Hey baby,” I said and got a smile in return. I almost saw some lip. “What’s your name?”

“Amber!” she answered, with way too much excitement. “What’s yer name?”

“Slim,” I answered.

“Nice to meet ya, Slim,” she exclaimed and held out her hand. Squiggy and Mule were staring at me. “What’s yer last name?”

“Pickens,” I answered. “We hug from where I’m from, little missy.”

She gladly accepted the hug, even hung on after I let go.

“Nice to meet ya, Slim Pickens!” she exclaimed. “I gotta go to the bathroom and I’ll be right back!”

“Hold on there a second,” I said, and grabbed her arm. “Would that be for a one or a two?”

My gosh, I was asking her what she was going to do in the bathroom! What was wrong with me?

She giggled, and looked around the table. They seemed to be interested also.

“I gotta wee,” she answered. I had never seen anything so cute in my life.

The waitress brought my Coke back. Man, I had been missing that.

“Boy, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” I told her. She started to walk off. “Hold up!”

She turned around to look at me.

“How about a hug?” I asked, holding my arms out.

“I think you need to stop hugging that drink so much,” she answered.

I frowned. That wasn’t what I was wanting from her. Besides, what was she talking about? I thought about it for a second, looked at the drink and realized something was amiss.

“Hey, what’s wrong with me?” I asked.

Squiggy and Mule were looking around, acting like they hadn’t heard me. I had a pretty good idea why I was feeling this way.

“You guys have been putting stuff in my drink!” I stated.

“Naw, it’s the bartender,” Mule added.

I started to get mad, but was too happy.

“Okay,” I stated. The woman was heading back in our direction. She was smiling, I could tell even without seeing her lips. There was a briskness in her pace that wasn’t there earlier. She stopped beside me and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Miss me?” she asked.

“Not really,” I answered, without thinking.

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She left in a huff. I didn’t care. There was some cowgirl over by the dance floor that was one hot filly. Squiggy and Mule started getting excited about something.

“There he is!” Mule exclaimed. I had not seen him this excited before.

“Gosh!” Squiggy added.

I turned around to see what had them so excited. All I saw were two little cowboys walking toward us.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

Squiggy looked at me like I was retarded.

“That’s B.J. Woods!” he said.

“Who?”

“You ain’t never heard of B.J.?”

“I’ve heard of them, but not him.”

“Man, he’s like a legend! He’s been busted for drunk drivin twenty five times!”

I never knew that was something to brag about. His butt ought to be in prison.

The two little cowboys came and stood by our table. I decided B.J. was the one who had the fake smile permanently attached to his face. They both wore cowboy hats, colorful shirts and Wranglers that were both tight and appeared to have been ironed before they honored The Last Call with their presence.

B.J. looked harmless, unless you were driving down the road, I guess. The other one had those angry eyes. He kept looking around for somebody to hit or something.

“Hey guys,” the drunk driver said.

Squiggy and Mule acted like they felt honored to have B.J. stop by our table.

“This here’s R.D.,” he announced. The other little cowboy nodded. He had such an angry look and eyes that could slice a hole in you.

“Is your name ‘B.J.’?” I asked.

He nodded, still smiling.

“You know what that stands for?’

He looked clueless. I noticed a little of his smile had faded.

“Brian Joseph,” he answered.

“How come you’re not in jail?” I asked.

The smile was gone now. His partner was looking evil at me.

“I gotta good lawyer,” he answered.

“You must,” I told him. “What’s up with the initials?”

Squiggy and Mule were trying to get me to settle down. Heck, I didn’t care what these two little guys thought.

“Nothing, that’s just our names,” B.J. countered. He was definitely not smiling now. Neither was his buddy.

“You guys real rootin-tootin cowboys?” I asked. “Like, you know, ride horses and step in cow poop?”

“I ride horses,” B.J. said. The other one was quiet.

Amber came walking up to us. She saw we had visitors and stopped in her tracks.

“There she is!” I hollered. “Come over here, little missy!”

“Who ya talking to?” the angry cowboy said.

“The ugly chick.”

He looked over at Amber, then back at me.

“You talking bout my girl?”

I looked at Amber. She was waving her hands at me, trying to get me to shut up.

“She ain’t yer girl,” I proclaimed. “She likes me.”

That was it for me for the evening. The next thing I saw was a flash of white and felt myself getting knocked back off the chair and falling. I seemed to fall forever.

Chapter 36

Chapter 34

2005-07-18T06:49:00.000-05:00

It was with a great deal of trepidation that I stared at the envelope with my name on it. There was no way to be positive, but I was pretty sure that bad news waited for me inside.

The old man had something to tell me that he couldn’t while still alive. Considering what he had already told me, it scared me. I had already gone through enough surprises in one weekend to last me for the next decade.

My father had already told me about the financial mess that was his life and that if I didn’t make a miracle happen, Mom would lose her house. I would get to share the news with her.

Then, since she didn’t have anywhere else to go, Mom would get to move in with me.

Ugh.

I have nothing against my mother and if she needed a place to stay, my door is always open. I would grin and bear it, but probably not like it. Let’s just say my lifestyle would undergo a major change. She would want to rule the roost and tell me what I should and should not do.

It’s a mother thing, I guess. The fact that I have lived past my fortieth birthday should convince her that I don’t need her constant direction, but it wouldn’t.

At least I would never have to worry about having clean underwear. Mom has this thing about dirty clothes. She can’t let them stay in the dirty clothes hamper for over a day, so Mom's constantly doing laundry, with small loads for the most part.

She probably had the washer and dryer going now, but I couldn’t hear it since I was hiding out from the mass of people visiting us and eating. Plus, I had made the mistake of sneaking back into my father’s office, since it was something I could never do before and there wasn’t anything he could do about it now.

I thought about leaning back in the chair and putting my feet up on the desk. It was something I always wanted to do. That would have sent the old man into orbit. But I decided to show a little respect for the dead, even though he seldom bothered showing me any while he was alive.

For several minutes, I took turns tossing the envelope on the desk, then picking it back up and staring at it. There was like some magical potion attached to it, drawing me in and making me want to read it.

Finally, I had enough. It was time to read it. I had never received a letter from a dead man before. Technically, he wasn’t dead when the letter was written, so it wasn’t from a ghost or anything. Still, this was a little too strange.

Just as I started to open the letter, Mom knocked on the office door. It must have been a habit that she couldn’t break yet. She even had to knock on the door before disturbing the old man. Sad, wasn’t it?

“Michael, are you in there?” she asked, opening the door a crack and peeking inside.

I waved at her. She opened the door and smiled. Mom was carrying a huge plate of food, which didn’t surprise me. She couldn’t let her son starve to death. What kind of mother would she be?

“I brought you some food,” she added, like I was unable to see this.

There was no way I could eat any more food. If I continued eating like this, I would look like the blob if and when I ever got back to Tulsa.

She set the plate down and pulled out a Diet Dr Pepper can out of her dress. I didn’t even know there was a pocket there and Mom was hauling cans around. Would the wonders never cease?

Mom looked around the old room. Even more than anything else in the house, this was her husband. Everything in here was his, from the desk, to the leather chair, the books and even the smell. She stood next to the desk for several seconds, looking around.

“I miss him,” Mom said, and sniffled. I was afraid she would start crying again, but she made a beeline toward the door. There were guests to entertain, no time to mourn the dead. That would come again later, and tear her apart.

“Bye, Mom,” I added, but it was too late. She was gone, probably back into the family room by then. Somebody new might have dropped by to see her and she had to be a gracious host.

I was glad Mom had not seen the envelope. She would have wanted to read it and I was afraid it would say something her eyes never needed to see.

It was time. I opened the envelope slowly, making sure I didn’t tear what was in it. There might be a check for a million dollars, but I doubted that was the case.

It was a letter, written on a typewriter, which I was glad to see. It would have taken forever to read it if it had been in Dad’s handwriting. The date was two weeks earlier, about the time when he got really sick.

MICHAEL,

IF YOU’RE READING THIS AND I’M NOT DEAD YET, PLEASE STOP. I DON’T WANT YOU TO READ THIS UNTIL I HAVE DIED.

FIRST OFF, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS A GOOD WOMAN AND DESERVES BETTER THAN I COULD EVER PROVIDE HER WITH.

SHE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT MY FINANCIAL PROBLEMS. PLEASE SPARE HER THE DETAILS. I DON’T CARE IF WE LOSE EVERYTHING ELSE, JUST DON’T LET HER LOSE THE HOUSE. THAT WOULD KILL HER.

IF YOU SEE MANNY, TELL HIM I AM SORRY. HE WILL KNOW WHY. PLEASE TRY AND HELP HIM ALSO. YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON HE WILL LISTEN TO.

NOW, TO YOU. I HAVE MESSED UP A LOT OF THINGS IN MY LIFE. I AM NOT PERFECT, LIKE I NEED TO TELL YOU THAT. BUT THE WAY I MESSED UP THE NEWSPAPER AND OUR MONEY SITUATION IS NOT WHAT BOTHERS ME THE MOST.

IT IS THAT I WAS NEVER THE FATHER TO YOU THAT YOU DESERVED. I WAS NEVER THERE FOR YOU OR DID THE THINGS FOR YOU THAT A FATHER SHOULD DO FOR A CHILD. I DON’T KNOW WHY I WAS THAT WAY. EVEN BACK WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, I KNEW I SHOULD DO THIS OR DO THAT, BUT NEVER COULD GET IT DONE.

YOU WERE A SPECIAL CHILD AND NOW A SPECIAL MAN. YOU HAVE GONE SO FAR IN LIFE WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM ME. MAYBE THAT IS GOOD. IF I HAD TRIED TO HELP YOU, LIKE I ALWAYS DID MANNY, YOU MIGHT BE IN THE SAME SITUATION HE IS.

BUT I DOUBT IT. YOU ALWAYS HAD TOO MUCH CHARACTER AND SMARTS. YOU HAVE DONE THINGS AND GONE PLACES THAT I ALWAYS WANTED TO EXPERIENCE. I AM SORRY THAT I MISSED OUT, BUT GLAD THAT YOU DIDN’T.

I KNOW IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORGIVE ME. I NEVER FORGAVE MY FATHER FOR BEING THE SAME WAY TO ME. BUT I DO WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM SORRY AND IT IS THE ONE THING THAT IF I COULD LIVE MY LIFE OVER, THAT I WOULD CHANGE.
LIVE YOUR LIFE TO THE FULLEST SON. LOVE AND BE LOVED. ALL THOSE SILLY CLICHES THAT YOU READ ABOUT, WELL, I HAVE DETERMINED THEY ARE TRUE AS I WAIT TO DIE.

WHEN YOU ARE IN MY SITUATION, I PRAY THAT YOU DON’T HAVE THESE REGRETS THAT I DO.

I LOVE YOU AND WAS ALWAYS PROUD OF YOU.

DAD

I spent a good thirty minutes reading the letter over and over. I would like to say that it didn’t bother me, but that would be a big lie. Now isn’t the time to lie. I didn’t start crying until the second reading. Then, I didn’t stop, even when I read it the fifth and final time.

I felt like Sally Fields when she won an Oscar. He liked me, Dad actually liked me. I always thought he detested me. But I have the proof in this letter, one that I plan on keeping until the day I die.

Did I still hate the old man? No, I probably never did actually hate him. There were times I really disliked him, but he was my father. He had his faults, a lot of them actually, but I wouldn’t be here without him.

I just wished he could have said those words to me. I wanted to hear those words come out of his mouth, instead of reading them in a letter after he was dead.

The plate of food had gone untouched and unnoticed. I wasn’t hungry, but started eating anyway. I took the letter, stuffed it back in the envelope and turned it over so I could see my name on the outside.

I had to get out of here for a while. I grabbed the envelope and took it into my bedroom and hid it in my closet, the same hiding space that I used as a child. Nobody knew about it, not even Manny. That was where all the top-secret stuff went.

When I got back in the family room, everybody was crowded together like sardines. There was no way I could handle this. I needed some fresh air and decided to talk a walk. Mom was talking to her preacher, a really nice guy. He hugged me and said they missed me this morning.

I nodded, thanked him and told Mom that I was going for a walk.

“Button up,” she advised. “There’s a chill in the air.”

Frankly, I didn’t have anything to button up with. I was wearing a shirt with no buttons and had no plans to put on a coat. It was at least 75 degrees outside, perfect weather as far as I was concerned. As I walked outside on the porch, I was surprised to see there were even more people out here, all of them with a full plate and a mouth full of goodies. There were cars everywhere. Several of the neighbors were gathered together, talking about the situation. It was obvious they didn’t like having all these cars and trucks parked like they were.

Bette Crossland was an old woman who lived on the corner. She was an old woman when I was a kid and didn’t look any different now, maybe just a little more stooped and bitter. We used to terrorize her. She was our favorite person to bug. We would always ring her doorbell and run off before she answered. Bette saw me and started coming toward me.

She had on what appeared to be a nightgown. Her wig needed a little adjusting. It was a black one, like an eighty-year old woman would have black hair. Bette’s face appeared to be one big wrinkle now. I noticed that she used a walker, but it didn’t seem to slow her. Bette was making pretty good progress.

“Mike Hunt!” she yelled, making several men jerk their heads around. “Is that Mike Hunt?”

Several men on the porch laughed so hard they launched food out of their mouths.

“Hello, Bette,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t holler my name out loud again. Some of the really old men might have a heart attack if they thought Bette was talking about her privates.

She stopped in the middle of the road and started waving her fist at me.

“You need to do something about these cars!” she shrieked.

There were two cars trying to leave, blocked by Bette and her walker.

I wanted to tell her to get out of the road, that would help alleviate some of the traffic, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to fight with Bette or the neighbors.

She finally noticed the cars and turned around and walked back across the road. When she looked back at our house to holler some more, I was gone, halfway up the block. Bette never saw me.

As I walked, I thought back to when we were kids. Back then, the west side of town was our playground. We knew it like the back of our hands. We knew where it was safe to go and the places to avoid. There were some angry people who didn’t want a bunch of kids in their yard, but they didn’t look like serial killers. Now, I didn’t feel all that safe. There were some scary people who lived in Langford.

I walked down toward the highway. My route just happened to take me by Sandy’s house. It wasn’t just a coincidence that I went this way and that my pace slowed considerably as I walked by her place. Her car was gone, probably parked at Trevor’s house. I had not seen her since the other night when she helped escort me out of the hospital room. She was there, then gone. Now I wasn’t even sure Sandy was ever there.

I wanted to talk to her. Actually, I needed to talk to her. She could tell me what to do. Sandy was that kind of person. She always knew the right thing to do, except when it came to marrying Trevor, that is.

There was a large house on the corner, one block from the highway. I heard the music from two blocks away, a song that sounded like Polka music with a faster pace and a bunch of words that I didn't understood.

Several Mexicans were gathered in the front yard, sitting on the porch and in lawn chairs, drinking what looked like a store full of beer. The music was too loud and I doubted the neighbors appreciated the party in the front yard, but the Mexicans seemed harmless enough.

Half the guys wore cowboy hats and boots. There were a couple of them walking around. Staggering would probably be a better way to describe them. I noticed the vehicles, a bunch of trucks with bright colors and stickers on the windshield.

All the guys seemed to be small. I wondered if they could box, for some strange reason. I hoped to never find out.

I stopped a block from the highway and went around the block and headed back toward Mom's house. I heard the roar of the motor, even over the Mexican music. There was only one truck that could make that much noise. I looked for some place to hide, but couldn’t find anything.

I kept walking, hoping he would go away. He waited until the truck was right beside me to rev the engine again. I almost wet myself.

“Git in!” he demanded.

I turned to see Squiggy, Big Uns and Psycho staring at me. I shook my head. There was no way I was getting in the truck with them. I didn’t know who was more dangerous, the woman or the dog.

“We’s goin to de bar!” he added, like that would change my mind. I wanted to get out of the house and do something, but not that.

“I’ll pass,” I answered, still walking toward my mother’s home. Squiggy was coasting beside me. Some country song was playing on his radio, one I had never heard before and hoped to never hear again. The main gist was something about his dog dying and a woman dumping him.

For the final two blocks, we continued in this fashion. Squiggy begged me to go with him, I declined.

The neighbors were still standing out in their yards, staring at my mother’s house and all the cars surrounding it. At least until they saw Squiggy. He revved his engine, making them all take a couple of steps backwards.

Bette was shaking her fist at Squiggy. He shook something back at her. I acted like I had never seen these people before. Squiggy pulled in beside my mother’s car. I knew that would make her happy. Just as I started in the house, I realized this was a bad idea. I couldn’t expose these people to Squiggy. They were nice, church-going people who didn’t deserve that.

Plus, I realized that if Squiggy discovered how much food there was in the house, he wouldn’t leave for a week. He was sitting in the truck, moving his head to the beat and singing along. I had to get them out of here. I came up with the solution and walked out to his truck.

“Okay, I’ll meet you out there,” I said.

Squiggy eyed me with suspicion. He looked over at Psycho for comments. The dog was too busy sniffing Big Uns.

“Okay, go git Mule,” he told me.

Now that wasn’t part of the plan.

“Why doesn’t Mule just drive out there?” I asked.

Squiggy shook his head. Me and my dumb questions!

“Mule ain’t go no license,” he explained, saying it like that was common knowledge.

“Did he lose it?”

“Naw, he never got one.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Ask im.”

I hopped in my truck and took off. I drove across town to Mule’s house. He appeared to be the only white person still living in the northeast part of town. The whites called this area “Little Tijuana” and I could see why. There were Mexicans everywhere. I passed several parties, much like the one I saw earlier.

When I got to Mule’s house, I almost kept driving without stopping. The house was a small one with a roof that looked like it had waves in it. I noticed that the white paint had peeled badly off and their screen door had a large hole in the screen in the bottom corner. The yard looked like it had last been mowed in March. There was trash scattered everywhere, some in sacks, others that looked like they had opened the door and thrown in the yard.

I doubted the Langford Chamber of Commerce was overly proud of this house.

Mule was sitting on the porch, leaned back in a recliner and drinking a beer. There were several empty ones on the porch. There was a couch next to the recliner on the porch. His mother was sprawled out on the couch, her right arm dangling down.

I had heard of people making the outdoors an extension of their house, but Mule and his mother took it to a new level.

Luckily, it was a fairly large porch, plenty of room for furniture. I wondered if this furniture was used exclusively for the porch or they also took it inside. When Mule got up from the recliner, about six kittens jumped out of his lap. He walked out to the road carrying a sack. Mule finished off a beer and threw the can in the yard, joining all the other cans and trash scattered around.

He was wearing a shirt that actually didn’t seem to have any stains on it, along with jeans and boots. His hair was even combed! Mule appeared to be about three sheets to the wind, but I guess that was to be expected. He got in the truck and pulled a couple of beers out of the sack.

"Beer?" he asked.

"I believe you're right," I answered. It whooshed right over his head.

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

"Want one?" Mule asked, as he popped the top on his.

“No thanks,” I replied and nodded toward his house. “Is your mother okay? I haven’t seen her move, even when that cat jumped on her.”

“Yeah, she’s just drunk. Ma passed out about a six pack ago. Cain’t ya hear her snoring?”

“No, I missed that.”

What a life! Sitting on the front porch getting drunk with your mother. And to think, I had never gotten to experience it! Darn the luck. It reminded me of one of those silly MasterCard commercials with the voiceover and images.

“A six pack of cheap beer, three bucks.”

“Used furniture for your porch, twenty bucks.”

“A satellite to watch dirty movies on the television that is worth more than your house, fifty bucks a month!”

“Seeing your mother passed out on the front porch, priceless!”

We drove off toward the bar. Mule finished two beers by the time we hit the city limits.

“How come you don’t drive?” I asked.

‘Cain’t git no license,” he answered, slurring his words a bit.

“You can’t drive?”

“Naw, I can drive okay, specially when I’s drunk. I cain’t pass no written test.”

“Why not?” I foolishly asked.

“I’m dickslexik. Cain’t tell one letter from the next. They tells me I’s color blind, too, but I think they’s lyin.”

We pulled in the parking lot. I hoped to drop Mule off, make an appearance and slip out when nobody was looking.

I was wrong. It would be a night I’d never forget.

Chapter 35

Chapter 33

2005-07-15T07:12:00.000-05:00

April and M.J. left a little later. The boy was bored, so was I. April felt bad about coming over since my father had just died. She promised to call and left.

Mom left a little later to go to church. She asked if I wanted to go, but I wasn’t up to it. All I was up to was sleeping. Mom was a warrior and went to church. I knew it wasn’t for the sympathy, Mom just felt like it was something she needed to do.

As soon as Mom left, I hit the bed and slept. My cell phone rang twice while I was asleep, waking me. I checked out the caller, saw that it was my soon to be former boss, Brewster, and ended the call. I was sure there was some tragedy at the paper and he needed me there pronto. He would have to take a number.

I got up at noon, knowing Mom would be getting home soon. It was another law in Langford that churches had to get out at noon, or people started sneaking out. There weren’t many good eating places in Langford since it was a small town, and the ones that were open on Sunday were small and filled up quick.

Some went to Poteau, of course, and dared to battle the fierce crowds at their restaurants. But for those who chose to eat in Langford, it was a race that Nascar would be proud of.

It was important stuff, I guess, getting to eat first. I heard one former Baptist preacher was ran out of town because he failed to get his congregation out in time three weeks in a row. They were pleased with his preaching, but the final straw was when they had to get in line behind the Pentecostals one Sunday after a long service.

Having to stand behind them was more than the members of that church could take.

My father used to get highly upset when service ran too long. He believed a good church service consisted of a couple of hymns (old ones, not that contemporary crap, as he called it), an offering, a short sermon and then prayers for the sick and the sinners.

There were at least ten churches in and around Langford, trying to redeem the sinners. Of that ten, there were more Baptist churches than any other. At least five of them were within a ten-mile radius.

The big one was the First Baptist Church. They even televised their services on the local channel. Their church was the nicest, taking up almost a full block on the west side of town.

That was my mother’s church. She loved the place. When the church doors were open, she was there. If somebody needed prayer or help, give her a call, she would jump right on it.

Usually, she fought the Sunday lunch crowd with Dad, but since he’s out of action, Mom returned home. I could tell she had been crying and felt bad, knowing that I should have been there with her. She perked up pretty quick after getting home and went straight to the kitchen.

Then, the first visitors came. Another group dropped by soon after that. Within an hour, our house was filled with old people, most of them members of her church, but some friends and neighbors.

Almost everybody brought food. That's another law in Langford. If somebody you know dies, take some food there fast! Lots of food! We can't afford to have the grieving family die from starvation. Put some food in their belly, that'll make them feel better. The food was mostly of the home-cooked variety! These were not the type of people to sneak off and buy something at the store.

The food soon overflowed the kitchen and made its way into the dining room. I had no idea how we could eat that much food. There were meats, salads, veggies and some desserts that looked like they had been prepared by professional chefs.

Some of the people around here aren’t the most sophisticated, but the women can cook.

I recognized many of the people. They were the same faces I had had seen while growing up.

It was amazing how some of them looked like they had not changed a bit. Others were a lot worse for ware.

Several of them acted like I was still a child by the way they talked to me. They all moved a lot slower, which was fine since I was the same way and a lot younger.

I snuck off in the corner, right next to the food on the dining room table, hoping not to be seen. Some of the old people ignored me, which I was grateful for. Others had to tell me how sorry they were. Then there were a few who tried to talk with me.

Most of them gave up after realizing I wasn’t in a talking mood. I was in an eating mood. I started off with a little plate, but quickly advanced to the larger one. I noticed most of the people had good timing. They waited until my mouth was full then asked me an open-ended question.

I wanted to open my mouth and show them that my mouth was full and maybe gross them out, but knew Mom would hear about that and it would bother her. She didn’t raise her children for them to act like Squiggy, after all..

One of Dad’s better friends, an older man named Larry Manard, corralled me, right before I could dive into the strawberry pie somebody had just placed on the table.

He used to be tall, at least my height, but over the years, Larry started leaning over and could never stop. His back was bent in a really strange position. He looked the way your parents always warned their children about if they slouched too much.

Larry shuffled up to me, making sure the cane hit everything between him and me. He took the shuffling footsteps of an old man. I saw him coming and tried to slip away, but was blocked by two large women. Okay, they were technically fat, but I’m trying to be nice. They did bring food and because of that, they were on my good side.

He pressed his cane down on my foot and I almost yelped in pain. Larry looked down and smiled. He kept coming toward me, pressing me back until I was against the wall. I had forgotten this about Larry. The old geezer liked to be about two inches from a person when he talked to somebody.

Larry was a little lacking in the hair on his head, but made up for it in other places. His eyebrows were long and bushy. There were a few stray hairs poking out of his nostrils, almost reaching his top lip. Those were mild compared to the bush that each ear sported. He was wearing slacks and a dress shirt, complete with suspenders to hold up his pants.

He tried to look at me in the face, but his back and or neck would not permit it. Larry was stuck staring at my chest.

“Sorry about your daddy, boy,” Larry stated. He turned around slowly to see if anybody was near. Since his neck appeared to not be working, his whole body had to turn. His feet made the small choppy steps to allow that.

It took him a good thirty seconds to turn around and then shuffle back around. He was satisfied that nobody was near. Larry had me cornered for a good fifteen minutes, telling me what a great person my father was and how the town would miss him. Every time somebody got close, he waited until they moved on before talking.

Larry stepped back once and looked up at me. His eyes looked rather glassy and bloodshot. I had always heard Larry liked to take a shot every now and then and he looked like at least one was needed, after escaping the insane asylum that was my mother’s house.

“I’ll be,” Larry stated. “There’s my banker!”

He waved and started walking away. I looked to see who he was talking about. There was a man in the middle of the room, looking like he would rather be a million miles away. He was a little shorter than me with an enormous belly. His shirt was a little small and I could see that his belly button was an outie, apparently a rather large one. It looked like a nose or something growing out of there.

Larry’s banker had all his hair combed from the very back to the front, trying to cover up the fact that a good portion of his huge head was bald. It almost looked like he was wearing a helmet. He was the man at the Bank of Langford, from what I understood.

As people approached him, he nodded and tried to smile, failing badly. He didn’t want to be here, but either his wife made him come or it was for public show. I wondered how helpful he would be. I didn’t think he looked like a pleasant person, but knew appearances were sometimes wrong.

I slipped through the crowd and approached him.

“Hello, I’m Michael Hunt,” I said and held out my hand. His hair was really bad. It looked like he used at least one can of hair spray to keep it in place. He looked at me, then my hand, and back at me. He avoided eye contact, looking over my shoulder.

Finally, he tentatively held out his hand. I met his and tried to shake it. It was the dreaded fish handshake. His hand was soft, almost like a woman’s. I am not a strong person, but knew I could have put him on his knees if I’d squeezed hard.

“Allen Woodard,” he finally answered. “Nice to meet you.”

He walked away, leaving me feeling like an idiot.

I’m not much for crowds. I don’t start having panic attacks or anything, just feel uncomfortable. Especially when the crowd consists of a bunch of old people who want to tell me what a fine person my father was and tell me stories about him I have heard many times before.

I waited until nobody is looking and slip off down the hall. There is a line at least six deep of old people waiting for the bathroom. One old woman is obviously in pain, shuffling from one foot to another. The first person in line is an old barber who used to cut my hair when I was a kid. I used to always tell him to cut just a little off the top. His idea of a little off the top was a lot different from mine.

He was tired of waiting. The man started hitting the door with his cane.

“Hurry up in there!” he shouted. “I gotta go!”

I had no desire to know where he needed to go.

“Hold your dang horses,” the restroom user replied. It took a second for me to recognize the voice. It was his wife holding up traffic.

“Geez, Louise!” he added, even though that wasn’t her name, then turned to face the others in line. “It takes the women longer to have a bowel movement than it did for man to walk on the moon!”

All the others in line act like they don’t hear him, or know him. I’m sure his wife appreciated her husband telling everybody that she was making a deposit in the toilet bank.

An old woman spots me. She lives two blocks away and is one of Mom’s best friends. The woman is a frail little lady, one who couldn’t weigh more than seventy pounds. Her name is Margaret Fine. It is impossible for a person to have so many wrinkles. She looks worse than one of those Shar-Pei dogs. You could lose a crumb in one of those babies and never find it again. Her glasses have slipped down to the end of her long nose, about to drop off.

Margaret has a hold on her big purse with both hands, like she expects somebody to try and grab it. Not these people, they’re more concerned with relieving themselves.

“Excuse me, Manny,” she says, then pushes the glasses back up her nose. I’ve been called this my whole life, just like my brother has been called “Michael”. She leans forward to whisper in my ear. “I really need to use the restroom!”

Oh, so that’s why you are standing in line here. Glad you told me. I nod, which is not what she wants to see.

“May I use your mother’s?”

Yeah, you can stink that baby up just as soon as a monkey flies out of my butt. Nobody uses Mom’s bathroom except her. She didn’t even like Dad in there since he was a little wild with his aim and cleaning urine off the walls was not something Mom enjoyed. Mom would rather live with Squiggy than let anybody into her bathroom.

“You’ll have to ask her,” I said. Margaret looks back toward the family room and all the people. Then, she looks at the line and knows her place will be gone.

I slip away, in search of peace and quiet. My mother had her private space in her bathroom. She used to spend way too many hours in there, making sure every thing was perfect. For my dad, his office was his private space.

Nobody was allowed in here, even Mom. My father only whipped me with a stick twice when I was a kid, both times because he caught me in his office without his knowledge. That didn’t stop me, of course, it just made me get more creative. He kept a key under the throw rug in the hall. I kneeled down and discovered it was in the same place, under the same rug.

I looked around to make sure the coast was clear, then grabbed the key, stood up and opened the door. The office had not changed in all these years. Some dust particles were floating in the air, highlighted by the sunlight coming in. His desk was back next to the window, with two chairs in front of them. I always had to sit in the one on the left, Manny got the right one.

This was where he delivered his stern lectures and admonished discipline. We hated to be called into his office, but liked to investigate it. That was a kid thing. Tell them they can’t do something, they are determined to do it. If the old man ever let us prowl around, we would never have wanted to sneak in and find out what secrets were hidden.

There never were any, or he hid them better than we could search. I used to love to sit in his chair. It was a leather one, a swivel chair that was fun to sit and spin in until you got dizzy and almost lost your last meal. It used to seem so big, like it was built for a giant.

The office has panel walls, making it darker and drearier than any other room in the house. That was appropriate, I decide, since it was my father’s lair. There is a bookshelf along one wall, covering the entire wall. My father liked to read and seldom got rid of a book, unless it was one he didn’t like. I recognized some of the titles, but they were literary books, the kind that just didn’t interest me.

There was a couch on the other wall, also leather, that Dad loved to take naps on. There was enough light coming in from the window that I didn’t bother turning any lights on. There was an overhead light, of course, and a desk lamp that was appropriately enough on his desk

I crossed over behind the desk and pulled the chair back. There was a cut in the chair, one that should have been fixed. It would be like a crack in the window now, always getting bigger and bigger. I sat down in the chair. It didn’t seem nearly as big as I remembered. Once I reached my teen years, I gave up sneaking into this room.

The only things on his desk were the lamp and a desk pad, the large kind where you can write down reminders and appointments. I looked at his calendar. It was still set in August. Dad had not written anything for the last two weeks, probably since he had been so sick.

The room smelled like my father, dark and dirty. I don’t know if I started looking through things because I hoped to find some clues for his behavior or from being snoopy. His desk was locked. It never used to be locked, and that intrigued me. Why would he need to lock something that nobody ever wanted to get into?

It used to always have pens and a writing pad. Now, I had to get in his desk and find out why it was locked. I examined the lock and tried to figure out how to pick it, like I knew how to pick a lock. My career as a criminal was short. I egged a teacher’s house one night. That’s it. I felt bad enough the next day to go over and help clean it up. I never told her I was part of the group that did the egging, but I think she knew.

So I had no knowledge on how to pick a lock or do anything like that. I rummaged through the other drawers, finding nothing of interest or a key. I leaned back in the chair and wondered how hard it would be to force the drawer open with a crowbar or something. That was when I saw something shining, just underneath the desk calendar. I raised it and viola!, there was a small key.

The fact that it was that easy never bothered me, then. I got the key, opened the desk and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were a few pens, scissors, just the typical drawer contents. I was about to shut the drawer and call my snooping a day when I decided to look in his legal pad. The front page was covered with his bad writing, as were many of the other pages.

I started looking through the pages, finding nothing of interest. There were plenty of items about exciting community activities that had come and gone, but no deep, dark secrets. I was frustrated and threw the pad on the desk. When I did, something came out. It was white against the yellow paper. I looked closer and saw that it was the corner of an envelope.

After pulling the envelope out of the pad, I held it up in the light and saw some writing on the front. It was almost too light, something written in pencil. I turned my father’s desk lamp on and placed the envelope under it.

Now, I could read it easily. In my father’s bad handwriting was a name I knew well. Michael was the name on the envelope, just like I feared.

Chapter 34