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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

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

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

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

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

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

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