by Paula Boyd
She sucked in a breath and straightened her shoulders, having the good sense to at least appear offended. "Why, I can't believe you could even suggest such a thing."
"Well, if you don't mind, I'd kind of like you to be a little worried right along with me, or at least pretend to be, okay?"
Lucille huffed and puffed, but didn't say anything. She just went about the important business of cleaning her gun.
After a bit of strained silence, I heard a click and metallic sliding sound.
I snapped around to see exactly what she was up to, trying to prepare myself to see a red dot flickering about my nose when I did so. But no, Mother dear, had just popped the clip from her Glock in order to give it a good once over, or whatever you did to a clip in a gun that had just been fired at a sheriff. I said not a word, just gripped the steering wheel a little harder and stared straight ahead, looking for a sign that pointed the way to Megargel.
"You know," Lucille said, still doing something with her gun although I couldn't see what and didn't want to. "Jerry could be at his Mother's place. I was going to suggest we drive by there before Leroy interfered."
"I didn't know Jerry's mom was still living out at her place. Why didn't you mention this earlier?"
Piece by piece, she replaced the Glock and its accessories reverently back in the case and slipped it into her purse. "I didn't say Miz Parker was living there. She's not in good health, you know. Had to be put in one of those homes. She was real bad." Lucille shot me a wicked look to emphasize the extreme difference in conditions of Jerry's mother and the mother sitting across from me. "Out of her head, didn't know anybody, couldn't take care of herself. Real, real bad."
My mother does not truly harbor any fears about winding up at Shady Pines, or Semi-Shady Mesquites, or whatever the name of the most-feared nursing home is in these parts. We just like to keep one another on our toes, one of those weird family traditions, I suppose. I just nodded and murmured a clever "hmm."
"It was just another place to look," Lucille said. "Jerry Don must keep the place up because he takes her out there every now and again, not that she knows where she is, the poor old thing. But he's a good son." She let the statement hang there, and I figured that was a fine place to leave it.
It was getting dark fast now, but up ahead I saw a break in the mesquite trees. I caught a glimpse of a little tiny sign that blurred as we passed it, but I thought I saw a capital "M" and an "L" at the end. I hit the brakes. "Hang on." I took the turn on two wheels.
Lucille grabbed for the hand bar above the window with her good arm. After overcoming her initial shock, she let out a very unladylike whoop. "My that was fun!" she said, breathless and with more enthusiasm than I could ever recall her having. "I do believe I kind of like this riding shotgun business."
I sighed. "I can see that."
"You know, I just never imagined myself in a getaway car!" Lucille said gleefully.
Yes, indeed, the getaway car. I would have groaned and sighed and groaned again, but it would have only reinforced my rapidly darkening outlook on life. The idea of wearing handcuffs does not turn me on--for any reason. My mother did not appear encumbered by such worries as being arrested, and no, I did not want to know her opinion on handcuffs. One thing was perfectly clear, however--she was having fun, which to the best of my knowledge didn't happen very darned often. That it took guns, specifically hers, and high-speed car chases to make her smile was a little unsettling. I, obviously, did not share her enthusiasm for criminal mischief--or committing felonies--having been spared that particular genetic flaw. "It's real swell that you're having fun, Mother, but this is not some "Thelma and Louise" lark we've got going here. And even if it were, you know what happened to them in the end, right? It wasn't a good thing, remember?"
"Oooh, I hadn't thought about that," she said breathlessly. "That's such a good movie, one of my all-time favorites. I finally bought it for myself about a month ago, although it would have made a nice birthday or Mother's Day gift for me, if anybody actually ever thought about what I liked before they just sent any old thing that happened to be handy."
I did not acknowledge her not-so-subtle hint. I just kept driving as if I knew where I was going. "To hell" was probably the general consensus in and around Kickapoo, but that was not my most immediate concern.
Lucille continued, "Merline and Agnes watched it with me again one night last week. That real cute Pitt boy's in it, you know, although he played such a little stinker. Of course, I just love the part where that old rapist gets a what-for."
"Don't we all."
"That Susan Sarandon sure could drive, making a run for it here and there. No governor on that convertible, I'll tell you for sure."
"I'm not driving off a cliff, Mother, even if we did happen to find such a thing around here."
"Oh, for goodness sakes, Jolene, I was just making conversation. You get the silliest ideas. Off a cliff, indeed."
"Okay, then, you tell me our options because I don't see too many. If we get stopped, we're both going to be arrested. Handcuffs, fingerprints, the whole bit." I got the feeling I was beginning to sound like a broken record, but she didn't seem to grasp the seriousness of our situation. "Being arrested and thrown in jail is kind of guaranteed when you discharge a lethal weapon at a sheriff, particularly when you're running from him at the time."
"Haven't I taught you anything, Jolene?"
That caught me off guard and I had no clue to what she was referring, my lack of education being vast and sprawling.
When I didn't comment, she continued, "There's a time to keep your mouth shut and there's a time to fight. Now's the time to fight. We tried letting those goons handle things and look where it's gotten us. We've both been shot at, Jerry Don's been shot bad and now he's missing entirely. And that Leroy Harper is up to no good about something. I don't see how letting him get his paws on us is going to help a thing. Good Lord, he might have even killed us before we got hauled to jail. Now wouldn't that be something?"
My brain felt like a nest of bees, but for yet another time, I had to agree with my mother. Letting Leroy catch us wasn't going to help anything.
Lucille rustled around in her purse again, dug out her emergencies-only cell phone, along with pen and paper. After punching in some numbers and waiting for an answer, she said, "Agnes, this is Lucille. Is there some goofball deputy at your place? Well, that's good. Merline's got one breathing down her neck looking for me so don't go over to her house. Jolene and I are trying to get away from that oldest Harper boy. He shot at us. Can you imagine such a thing?"
My mother did not mention that she shot back.
"Well, Agnes, it seems we're in a bit of a bind. This whole murder and shooting business is just getting uglier and uglier. I tell you, I don't know how much more I can stand. I know it. Yes, I've got my medication with me. Oh, well, don't worry about the azaleas today, Agnes, what I really need is Calhoon Fletcher's phone number, if you don't mind. Yes, well, I'll have to explain later." Mother jotted down the number, thanked her other best friend, and started to make the next call.
"Uh, exactly why are you calling Fletch when we pretty much decided he's got to be the one in on this with Leroy?"
"That's exactly why I'm calling him." She kept dialing. "Hello, Fletch, this is Lucille Jackson. Well, not so very fine at the moment, Fletch. It seems your nephew has taken it upon himself to shoot at me and my daughter. No, I don't have any idea why he'd want to do that, but Jolene was thinking you might want to kill me because of that recall petition."
I sucked in my breath and flopped open my mouth like a shocked bass.
"And you know, Jolene was shot at, too. I tell you what, Fletch, I've had just about enough of this shooting business."
Lucille paused for a second and ventured a furtive glance in my direction. "The radiator, you say. Well, he ought not have shot at me first." Her face turned slightly crimson and her aristocratic nostrils flared widely. "I am not going to jail, Calhoon Fletcher.
I don't care what you or your stupid nephew says." She punched the hang-up button and huffed. "That sorry old buzzard. I'm gonna get him thrown out of office, you mark my words."
"Unless he kills us first," I mumbled. I was only a little surprised that Leroy had immediately informed his uncle. My best guess was that Leroy was playing both sides of the fence, that is, alerting Fletcher for nefarious reasons while sending his deputies after us for legitimate ones. "So, you did hit Leroy's radiator after all. I guess that explains why he slowed down. This is good, really good."
She lifted her chin. "You should be proud of me for helping us escape."
"Oh, and I am, I am," I said, with no sincerity whatsoever.
"I've got it!" Lucille said as we sped past another road sign. Turn right at the next intersection. "I know just where we can go. It's perfect. Nobody will ever find us at the lake."
"Kickapoo?"
"Of course, Kickapoo. I certainly don't have a cabin at Possum Kingdom, although your father was always trying to buy one down there, but we wouldn't have gone down there hardly at all and I very well knew it. We didn't go back to Kickapoo much after you got grown."
"You still have the cabin? I thought you sold that thing twenty years ago."
Lucille nodded. "You're right, we did, but the people who bought it couldn't make the payments so we got it back.
We figured it was fate and kept the place. You and your dad always seemed so fond of it out there. I preferred a less primitive getaway myself, but you two were happy so I went along. Guess that's why I haven't sold it."
She was right. I did have fond memories of that place. The little rectangular box of a house on a knob hill overlooking the reddish-brown lake wasn't much more than one big room, but it had seemed quite grand to me back then.
I could still see the place clearly, the ancient faded pink sofa with scratchy nubbed fabric, the old dining table with a red checkered plastic cover, and a black and white console TV with rabbit ears that couldn't catch a signal from across the room, much less anywhere else. But that was thirty years ago. I suspected the vision would be slightly deteriorated from that and accented with and lots and lots of dirt and cobwebs, all aptly accompanied by an old dusty, musty smell. And let's not forget the outhouse. It was there for a reason.
Yes, my happy little jaunt down memory lane had ended up in the toilet--literally--the kind without running water. The cabin had sat unused for at least twenty years and was probably falling down around itself by now, but it was probably the last place anyone would think to look for us. If I didn't know she had the cabin, I doubted anyone else did either.
I was not atwitter with excitement at the prospect of walking into the old place, however. Fond memories were one thing. Spending the night or the week in a run-down shack with all manner of vermin and no running water was quite another. I think I preferred to remember things as they were. But then, what were the options, really?
Making the appropriate twists and turns, we made it to the lake in less than twenty minutes. My fast-forwarded visions of the present-day cabin had become clearer and creepier the closer we got. I was not enthusiastic about trudging into twenty years of dust and disintegration. The thought was enough to choke a dust bunny. Maybe I'd just sleep out by a mesquite tree, or down at the crappie house.
We were almost to the little dirt road that wound around the east side of the lake. "Is there still a little store and bait shop on the corner up here?"
Lucille nodded. "Yes, I believe so."
"You know the people who run it?" I caught myself. "Better yet, do you think they'd know you?"
Lucille sighed. "Not everybody in the entire county knows me, Jolene. I'm not quite that popular."
"Well, I'm stopping there to get a few things. We can't just go out to the cabin to hide without food and water."
Within a minute, I saw the sign, not a neon variety, but a painted one with a bulb shining over the top. The paint had flaked off in a number of spots but I could still read Bud's Beer and Bait Shop. "Says they're open until ten." It didn't give us long to shop, but I wasn't complaining. In fact, I was starving.
I parked and Lucille wisely stayed in the car, just in case someone recognized her. I didn't bother mentioning that the Colorado plates made it hard to be incognito--even if you didn't account for my accent and my attitude. The attitude you know about; the accent is a bit of enigma. Here, my voice gets me pegged as an outsider to be wary of; in Colorado, it labels me a Texan in a heartbeat--and you don't want to know what that means. Either way, I'm in trouble. I'd just have to do my best though. I'd rein in the attitude, try to go native and hope like hell nobody looked outside at the plates on the car.
I walked in as Texan-like as I could and said howdy to a burly bald guy that I suspected was Bud.
"What can I do for you, darlin'?"
Darlin'? My skin crawled right up off the bone, but I swallowed down the sarcastic comebacks flowing freely to my tongue and said, as darlin'-like as I could manage, "So, how was the fishing today?"
It wasn't the question he'd expected and he chuckled as if humoring a three-year-old, a moron or a woman. "Oh, fishing's pretty good." He chuckled again, a very wise and knowing cackle. "Sunfish are hitting on top pretty good."
Six-inch sunfish had been quite thrilling when I was four, but I wasn't four anymore, and I wasn't really interested in fishing either. Was I? "I was thinking more along the lines of crappie, bass, catfish."
He shrugged. "Pulling in some nice cats on trot lines. You and the mister going out tonight?"
Ah, of course, I'd have to have a husband, now, wouldn't I? I certainly wouldn't be chugging around on the big old scary lake all by my little old female self, much less baiting out a big old, heavy trot line. I did not humor him with an answer as to my marital status, but acting like I was going fishing was turning out to be a pretty darned good idea.
"I'll take two dozen minnows," I said confidently. I'd free the little fish once I got to the cabin, although my daddy said minnows were trash fish and not to be worried over. I worried anyway. "Tell you what," I said, just as Bud lumbered into the next room to dip his net into a big metal tank. "I'll just grab a couple boxes of worms instead." Worms didn't weigh on my conscience nearly as much as little fish. Of course, I fully intended to kill and eat whatever I caught, meaning big fish, so the whole thing was kind of ridiculous anyway.
Despite his inherent chauvinism--and my reneging on the minnows--Bud seemed nice enough, watching me with both a brown and a blue eye. He started getting extra friendly as my non-fishing selections began to stack up by the register, these items being marked about triple what they were worth. Bud was going to have a banner sales day.
I bought the best of what was to be had in the food section, if indeed bean dip and spray cheese are considered food items. I also nabbed two jugs of water, the appropriate soda essentials, and a six pack of beer, bottles, thankfully.
Keeping my head amidst all the manly gear and the gleeful Bud, I also bought the necessary toiletries, toilet paper, paper towels, a can of Lysol, and some heavy duty bug killer. Deciding one can of instant insect death might not be quite enough, I grabbed another can that emphasized its lethal nature to eight-legged creatures. I was racking my brain for what else we might need for our little excursion when a dusty green Coleman lantern caught my eye. I moved my gaze to the hand-written price tag of fifty-three bucks and tried not to choke. Twenty dollars at Wal-Mart, easy.
"That there has an automatic lighter," Bud called from behind the counter. "Only way to go,"
I smiled. "Sounds great. I'll take it. It'll be good to have...out on the lake...at night...while we're fishing."
Before I was possessed to buy some other outrageously overpriced thing, I lit up Bud's life with a respectable 96-dollar sale. He grinned wide enough that I could see all six of his teeth. For that, we could have had a decent hotel room and a really nice meal. I tried not to dwell on it though, because truly, I was just having the time of my li
fe--or at least I was still alive at this time.
It was pitch dark by the time we snaked our way down the narrow dirt roads to the cabin. Pointing the headlights toward the door, I grabbed my sacks of essentials and followed Mother inside.
To my surprise, she flipped on the light switch, and I saw fifty-three dollars go up in smoke. Not only was there electricity to the place, but the mice hadn't chewed through the ancient wires and the place was brightly lit. While I marveled in half-shock at having power and light, Mother moved from in front of me, and what I saw then sent me into sputtering spasms.
The place was spotless--and totally refurbished. Very recently. It smelled of fresh paint, new carpet and duplicity. Lucille had really pulled one over on me this time. I stumbled to the dining area and set the bags down on a new glass-top dining table next to an expensive-looking vase with silk flowers. Through a newly installed door, I saw another little modification that could only be an added-on bedroom. After processing that development and gawking for a good three minutes, I turned toward my mother and asked the very most important thing on my mind, "Does this love nest of yours have a bathroom?"
Lucille huffed and opened what had been a closet door. "If you must know, BigJohn had it put in. I'd always wanted a real bathroom out here and I finally got one. It's no big deal."
The hell it wasn't. This remodel had to have cost twenty grand if it cost a dime. "When was this done?"
Lucille turned on the new refrigerated air-conditioning units sticking out of two windows then put the drinks and perishable food items in the new refrigerator. "A couple of months ago, I suppose. We hadn't been going together very long when we drove out here. Next thing I knew he had the whole thing redone and new furniture delivered. He did care for me, you know."
Whatever BigJohn's reasons for turning the spider-infested old place into a cozy little hideaway, I was deeply appreciative, at least at the moment. "You could have told me," I said, vacillating between being annoyed and hurt. "I spent at least sixty bucks on junk we don't need."