Feeding Gators: Book 1 in the Shiner's Bayou Series

by Gen Anne Griffin

  “You think we ain’t got no money?” Anger flashed in her eyes.

  “Be honest, I know you don’t have any money, and I’m pretty damned sure your boy over there ain’t nothing but a drifter. Judging by the smell of him and the layers of clothing he’s got on. This ain’t a homeless shelter, Sharyn. I don’t hand out freebies.”

  “How dare you?” Sharyn’s eyes narrowed in fury as Cal watched the man she was drinking with approach the bar. He was probably trying to determine what the holdup was on their next round of bottom of the barrel draft.

  The man had light brown skin spotted with an assortment of liver spots, freckles, and dirt. His hair was a tangled mass that appeared to have several sticks and twigs stuck in it, hinting that it had been awhile since he had stayed a night indoors. His torn coat gaped open to reveal a thin body with a massive potbelly.

  His body odor cloaked the bar like a humid fog of sweat and cheap, stale wine.

  Sharyn gestured at Leon as she turned to her companion. “He don’t wanna get us no more beer. He says he don’t think we kin pay for ‘em.”

  The man tried to glare at Leon. The effect was diminished by the fact that he had a lazy eye and was so drunk he couldn’t stay upright without leaning heavily on the woman. She nearly toppled over under the force of his weight combining with her own intoxication.

  “It don’t matter,” the man finally slurred. “This jerk ain’t wanting our money if he’s asking if we kin pay. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She blinked for a moment and then nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Let’s go have some fun then.” She pressed herself into the man and rubbed against his body.

  “I’ll bet you another bottle of whiskey he doesn’t have a quarter to his name,” Leon said as he and Cal watched the drunken couple stumble out the door of the bar. He pulled out an already open bottle of Jack Daniels and filled a 12-ounce glass nearly to the brim. Cal watched with amusement as he tossed a splash of Coke into the glass for appearances sake before he pushed it across the counter.

  Cal shrugged and stared down at the glass in front of him for a moment before closing his eyes and downing it in three long swallows. His eyes watered as the whiskey seared its way down his throat and boiled in his stomach.

  Leon raised an eyebrow at him and held up the rest of the bottle of Jack. There was slightly less than half of the amber liquid left. “You just want the rest straight from the bottle?” he asked as he held it out to Cal.

  Cal took it by the neck with a small smile. “Make your life easier if you don’t have to bother pouring it?”

  “I figure if you’re going to empty the glass that damned fast there ain’t no sense in wasting my time putting ice and Coke in it.”

  Cal shrugged and took another swig straight from the bottle. “I’m just curious where the hell that guy came from? Last time Pappy found a bum sleeping under the store awning, he told Wally Hall that he was gonna cut his re-election campaign funding in half next election if he didn’t run ‘em all out of town.”

  Leon laughed. “What, somebody piss on the sidewalk in front of Walker Hardware?”

  “Something like that,” Cal admitted with a shrug.

  “Old Joshua Walker don’t play around when it comes to his personal comfort.” Leon shook his head and poured himself a draft beer. “I’d guess that feller ain’t nothing more than a drifter passing through. If Wally’s campaign funding is on the line then he’d better pass through in a hurry or Wally will personally make sure he passes. He ain’t gonna risk ticking off your granddaddy.”

  “Not too many people will,” Cal said flatly. He watched through the window as the pair made their way out of the bar and climbed into a battered Toyota he had seen parked outside. The truck was red, rusted out, and looked like David’s truck would if it got stuck in the crusher down at the scrap metal yard. He wasn’t just talking about Wally, and they both knew it.

  “I just wonder what her husband’s gonna say when he finds that feller in his bed?” Leon gave Cal a wicked grin. “If that happens, that feller ain’t going to live long enough for Wally to have to worry about getting rid of him.”

  *

  Panic kept threatening to overwhelm Gracie as the sleek BMW cut through the crisp night air. She had rolled all of the windows down despite the cold. Maybe the coppery scent of Austin’s blood would start to fade if enough damp, chilly air blew through her nostrils.

  She was freezing. She’d used her thin shirt to wipe Austin’s blood off the steering wheel and the vomit off her mouth once she was done upchucking every greasy dining hall meal she’d eaten in the last week. She’d tossed the shirt into the back seat with Austin’s still warm body. The lacy black bra she was wearing was trimmed prettily with red ribbon and offered absolutely zero protection from the damp wind. The fabric barely covered her nipples. She’d bought the matching set because she’d known Cal would like it. She was pretty sure she’d been wearing it on that miserable Saturday night eight months ago when they had gotten in to an argument they hadn’t been able to get back out of. He’d dumped her that night but she’d kept the matching bra and panty set because it was the only sexy lingerie she owned that wasn’t contaminated by memories of his hands on her bare, hot skin. She’d worn it tonight because she’d needed a bra that was cut low enough that the tops of the cups wouldn’t stick up over the deep-v neckline of the shirt Brittany had dressed her in.

  Brittany had pawed all the way through Gracie’s underwear drawer earlier tonight. She’d mocked Gracie for her plain cotton thongs and boy-short panties. Bright colors apparently didn’t make up for the lack of sex appeal. Gracie didn’t trust Brittany anywhere near enough to admit that the thought of going shopping for something sexy knowing Cal wouldn’t be seeing it had been so downright depressing that Gracie still had an unused $100 Victoria’s Secret Gift Card in her wallet that had been there since her birthday in July.

  She shuddered. She had been unable to shake the nausea that had begun during Austin’s last reckless journey into the rural neighborhood to the west of main campus. It had taken her 30 minutes to get his deadweight body out of the driver’s seat and into the back floorboards. His phone had been ringing and receiving alerts the whole time. She’d finally forced herself to get it out of his pocket and take the battery out of it.

  She was driving the flashy car down dark, mostly empty two-lane highways heading back to the tiny Southern backwater town that she’d always called home. She tensed every time a set of headlights approached, certain that somehow the cops already knew she’d killed Austin. Every time the other vehicle kept cruising right on by without so much as a show of brake lights, she felt unreasonably relieved.

  David had said to come home. It was a good enough excuse to run like hell away from State University.

  *

  The scene that greeted Jo Beth and Addison in the trailer was unlike anything else either of them had ever witnessed before. Camilla had apparently fallen through the soggy floor next to the air conditioning duct the raccoon was stuck in. The floor had collapsed and taken out the duct with it, trapping Camilla and freeing the coon in a twist of fate Addison would have found amusing at any other time.

  “Not cool,” Addy whispered under his breath as he surveyed the scene. Camilla was screaming at the top of her lungs. The raccoon had apparently climbed over her on its way out of the floor and she had bloody paw prints on her shirt and cheeks. The coon was sitting in the corner of the room. It was holding what remained of the bag of donuts and hissing viciously at Addison.

  “That’s pretty much the understatement of the year,” Jo said. She was standing at his elbow and making no attempt to move into the room. Addison noted that her honey-brown eyes were still framed by perfectly applied eyeliner and pink eye shadow. When she licked her lips she pulled a tube of lip gloss out of her pocket and reapplied it automatically.

  “Get me out of here!” Camilla bellowed. “What are you doing just standing there? I’m gonna su
e the both of you!”

  Jo pursed her lips then leaned towards Addison. “Don’t suppose you have access to the county crane?” she whispered. “There is absolutely no way the two of us are going to be able to get her out of that floor.”

  Addy shook his head. “The biggest thing I have access to is David’s wrecker. I reckon we could knock out a wall and try to winch her out?”

  Jo almost smiled.

  The raccoon, apparently having had enough of Camilla’s screaming, darted towards her flailing arms and scratched her hand as she let out another squeal of anger. “Do something! I’m being attacked!”

  Addison scowled and tightened his grip on the dog catcher’s pole he was holding. He had no choice but to try and go across the weakened floor to get the coon out. “I was really hoping that dumb son-of-a-bitch would have run off by now,” he muttered, gesturing at the raccoon. He turned to face Jo Beth. “Go get the ax out of the bed of my truck and bring it back here. Please.”

  “Ax?”

  “How else are we going to get her out of that floor?”

  Jo stared back at Camilla, who was failing madly and making the whole floor quake and shift. “Should I call someone? Like, back up or something?”

  “Wouldn’t do any good. Perkins is on duty tonight. He’d be more of a hindrance than a help.”

  Jo Beth nodded and headed out the door. She left Addison to deal with the raccoon and the screaming.

  He turned to Camilla as the coon hissed at her again and laid its ears back flat against its head. She responded by flinging the television remote directly at the critter. The remote hit the coon squarely in the nose making it hiss and snarl furiously.

  “That didn’t help,” Addison said tiredly as he stared at the angry animal with a growing sense of dread. He wasn’t exactly an ace with the pole, and he was not going to have much of a margin of error on this. He wouldn’t have wanted to trade places with Camilla right now.

  Addison loosened the metal wire noose on the end of the pole and attempted to move it slowly towards the coon. The coon took one look at him then growled and ran across the room. It trampled over Camilla’s head in the process. She screamed again and Addison decided to make a go for coon. He missed the coon and knocked over a cheap, ugly ceramic lamp in the shape of Jesus. Camilla howled. “That was my Mother’s!”

  “Guess she’ll have to give you another one,” Addison snapped as he lunged after the coon again and fell through another hole in the floor. Pain shot through his ankle and he cursed. “Fuck!”

  “My mother is dead!” Camilla yowled. Addison attempted to pull his leg back out of the hole in the floor. He succeeded at getting free but he ripped a long slit through one of the legs of his jeans as a sharp nail stuck him. The coon glared at him from under a coffee table and hissed. He swiped at it with the pole, which the animal easily dodged.

  Addison crouched on the edge of the hole he’d just created, muttering obscenities and glaring at the raccoon. Camilla’s howling was giving him a headache. “Will you kindly shut the fuck up?”

  “You can’t talk to me like that! I pay your salary!” Camilla glared at him and he considered her for a moment. Her house dress was shredded across her chest, exposing one large blue-veined breast. Her curly hair was completely disheveled. She had blood running down from the areas where the coon had bitten her.

  “Do you want me to get this raccoon or not?” Addison snapped as he turned his attention back the raccoon. Addison carefully slid the pole towards the raccoon and eased the noose carefully around its neck before tightening it down. He wasn’t fast enough. The raccoon grasped the pole in its paws and began climbing up the pole towards Addison. He cursed and was about to drop the whole contraption when a shot rang out and the raccoon dropped to the floor of the trailer twitching.

  Camilla abruptly shut up.

  “Jesus Christ,” Addison whispered. He turned to see Jo Beth standing in the doorway with a palm-sized pink .22 caliber pistol nestled neatly in her hand. He was disconcerted to see that the gun was the exact same shade of pink as her hoodie. The ax was leaning against the doorway behind her.

  “You just shot my trailer!” Camilla wailed.

  “Technically, no.” Jo shook her head and brushed her bangs out of her eyes. Addison watched numbly as she clicked the gun’s safety back on and put it into the pocket of her cotton capri pants. “I shot my trailer. Or rather, my step-daddy’s trailer.”

  “Nice shot,” Addison said, finally recovering his wits. “You always carry that thing around with you?”

  “Pretty much,” Jo said with a shrug. “Never know when some creep might decide to prey on an innocent girl.” She shot him a nasty look. Her implications were clear.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Addison tried not to let her see him shudder slightly. The coon hadn’t been an easy shot. She could probably shoot his balls off. That little talent made her a lot more dangerous than he’d previously suspected. He decided he might have to make an attempt to be nicer to her. He liked his anatomy the way God had made it. He grabbed the ax from where she’d left it resting against the door frame and headed towards the center of the room where Camilla was still trapped.

  “Hold still,” he told her roughly as he began hacking at the floor. Addison was trying his damnedest not to do any more damage than he needed to. A few well-placed swings later Camilla was free of the plywood floor but still down in the hole.

  “What are you waiting for?” she demanded. She held both arms out to him. “Lift me up.”

  Addison groaned and took her hands. His back and legs were already aching from the day’s abuse, not to mention his own fall through the floor. He pulled up on her as hard as he could with his muscles screaming in protest. He thought it was working as Camilla budged an inch and then two. She was almost free when she suddenly stopped trying to help and turned into dead weight with a death grip on his hands. When Camilla fell back through the floor, she took Addison with her.

  For a moment he lay under the trailer, groaning as he rolled off of Camilla and into a nest of harmless but still disgusting wood spiders. Camilla moaned beside him. “You’re trying to kill me,” she said accusingly and then started to cry. “You did that on purpose.”

  Addison blinked at her in complete disbelief. He was coughing and brushing spiders off his chest and arms.

  “No, I don’t think he did,” Jo Beth spoke from above them. She knelt carefully near the edge of the hole and held out something long and metal in one of her hands. “I saw this outside,” she said as she lowered the item into the hole. It was a step-ladder. Addison was tempted to kiss her as Camilla clawed into his shoulder and used him as a post to hoist her massive body out from the underside of the trailer. He was having a hard time breathing. He suspected the problem had something to do with the fall, his dust allergy, and having three hundred pounds of woman pressing down on his ribcage.

  Jo Beth gracefully helped Camilla onto her feet and onto more solid ground. No sooner was the ungrateful woman back on her feet than she glared at Jo. “I’m not paying you any more rent. In fact, I’m going to sue you as soon as the courthouse opens tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s fine,” Jo said calmly as Addison worked his own way out of the hole from hell. “You’re not on the lease anyway. You moved in five years ago when your mother died and Matt let you stay because he’s a nice guy. I’m planning on evicting you in the morning. If you sue me you should be aware that I’m going to counter-sue you for destroying the trailer.” Jo gestured at the holes in the floor and then turned on her heel, picked up Addison’s ax and walked neatly out the door.

  Addison considered his options for half a second and then gingerly used the pole to pick up the dead raccoon and followed after her. Camilla slammed the door shut behind him.

  *

  “Either I’ve had way too much to drink tonight or nowhere near enough.” David was sitting on the top step of the porch when Gracie got out of the BMW. The moon was bright enough that sh
e could see the details in the tattoos that were covering his chest and arms when he stood up to greet her.

  David had too many tattoos. The only thing Addison had learned in the Navy was how to work a tattoo gun. David had been content to let Addy practice his new skill on his body when he’d come back to Shiner’s Bayou. The result was a disturbing collection of artwork that displayed a lot of raw talent but rather questionable taste.

  The words ‘Southern Bad Ass’ framed David’s collarbone. Immediately underneath the writing he had a large toothy alligator with the skeleton of a confederate soldier resting against its side. The gator and the solider were surrounded by a wicked, decaying swamp full of bullfrogs and stumps. The confederate flag itself covered the flesh over his heart. When he took a drag off the cigarette he was holding, the entire image rippled like it was breathing on its own.

  “Nowhere near enough. I promise you. You can’t buy enough whiskey to make tonight okay.” Gracie shivered as she shut the door of the BMW and walked unsteadily towards the ramshackle porch of David’s singlewide trailer. She wasn’t surprised to find him awake and waiting on her at quarter past three in the morning. She felt his dark, hooded green eyes burning into her as she delicately stepped over the busted rear-end that had come out of Addison’s truck last year. Neither of them spoke as she picked her way barefoot through the broken glass and miscellaneous truck parts that had accumulated in the front yard over the last decade or two. He had been living alone in the trailer since high school. The place was beginning to bear a strong resemblance to a junkyard.

  She turned to face him directly as she reached the porch. He was taller than her by a couple of inches. The top of her head came up to his eye level when they were both standing barefoot. He had his tanned, muscular arms crossed over his narrow chest. David was as thin as a skeleton when compared to Cal and Addison. He was strong, but he didn’t look it unless he had his shirt off, like he did right now. Gracie could see the lean muscles that cut decisive lines in his toned body. Lean corded muscle covered in endless tattoos and scars. Plenty of scars on David.