by Paula Boyd
The fact that Agnes’ recently neutered cat had clawed a hole in the window screen and run off the night before the protest didn’t seem like a pertinent detail. Ditto the fact that Merline had bought a new rhinestone-covered denim jacket—that was just plain tacky—at the factory outlet store in Mineral Wells to wear in the picket line because she wanted to look good when the news people came out and filmed the protest, which she did not, look good, that is, according to Lucille.
What I did learn that seemed semi-fact-based was that SPASI was formed over a glass of iced tea and a hamburger at the DQ, thus the limited thought given to the name. It was, however, as Mother pointed out, a good generic name that could be used in the future as there were always stupid ideas that needed stopping. Who could argue with that?
She swore she had nothing at all to do with the AAC people showing up. In fact, the head space cadet seemed kind of worried that the out-of-towners might steal her activist glory. Worse still, apparently, was that Ethel Fossy—AKA that damned Bony Butt who didn’t give a hoot about the town or anybody in it—had lost her ever-lovin’ mind, and not in a way that benefitted Lucille. And just because she was a member of the Church of Christ, it sure didn’t mean that she was the only one going to heaven, because she was not. By God. Bony Butt’s Bible waving and preaching at the AAC people seemed to be a sore spot as well, although it was hard to tell exactly why. There was also a mention of Ethel climbing right into the very hotbed of sin she’d been preaching against, so to speak, but it was hard to follow. What was clear, however, was that the whole thing was just a sorry state of affairs, that’s what it was. (Paraphrasing Lucille is almost as tedious as interviewing her.)
When my mother starts talking, there are so many layers of angst propagated by the details that it’s hard to know where to start. Not starting at all would be the best plan, but that never seemed to work out that well for me.
Bony Butt, as Mother was happy to call her, at least behind her back, was Lucille’s rival in a weird religious/female competition sort of way. Basically, Ethel’d had a thing for Mother’s last boyfriend, the aforementioned now-dead mayor. Take a liberal dose of religious fanaticism, mix with politics, add a boatload of jealously, rampant adultery and multi-level coveting, and make up your own story. It can’t be half as ridiculous as what I lived through the last few times I’ve been in this state. A shudder rippled through me. Surely to God not again.
I don’t know when she quit talking or when I quit writing, but I was staring blankly at the wall when the sheriff’s department back door opened and Leroy came thundering in. “Man, oh man, I’m sorry I took so long,” he said, huffing and puffing. “Couldn’t find the right set of filters, and then the batteries in the flash were bad. Anyway, here it is.”
He patted a large gray padded suitcase-like thing, then opened it up and began assembling the appropriate lenses and flash. This was professional grade gear and I couldn’t help but be impressed. I’d kind of been expecting your basic digital camera, kind of like I owned myself and only halfway knew how to operate. It was not.
Leroy and I have developed a tentative truce of late, and while it was kind of weird, I preferred it to the serious head butting and round robin sniping of previous visits. Trying to keep him from killing me hadn’t been that much fun either. But Leroy really did seem to know his camera business.
“Okay, Miz Jackson,” Leroy said. “Where do you want your picture made?”
“Well, let’s start in the jail cell, the one next to the drunks, with me looking forlorn. Then we can do a couple of portrait types in the office just in case.” She held out her wrists. “Cuff me, Leroy.”
Lovely. I propped my elbows on the desk and buried my face in my hands, which apparently evolved into a nap because the next thing I knew, I was jumping out of my skin—and the chair—hitting my knee on the desk, yelping, and hearing a shrill “Wake up, Jolene,” and not necessarily in that order.
Lucille had her always-ominous black purse over her elbow, a small overnight bag in the other hand and a glint in her eye. “Let’s go. I’d prefer to stay here as a statement to the cause, but since you’ve made such a fuss about me going home tonight, I suppose I don’t have much choice.”
Oh, please. If I hadn’t been busy rubbing the throb from my knee and trying not to appear scraped from the ceiling, I’d have rolled my eyes at her lame attempt to pawn off her mind-change on me. As it was, all I could manage was a disgruntled “fine.”
“Leroy’s going to bring the prints out to the house in the morning for me to look over. We’re also going to take some more shots there. We’ve decided to go for one of those heart-wrenching photo documentary things. That’ll get some attention.”
We could all bet on that. And I wanted no part of it. “Sounds perfect.”
Chapter
Three
Morning dawned entirely too early. Nevertheless I was up watching Lucille ham it up for the camera. Photographer Leroy stood about ten yards away, on the far side of the house, getting a shot that showed the would-be parkland behind Lucille’s house. He had light meters and filters and lenses and, strange as it was to say, he looked like a pro.
Mother Dearest’s behavior, on the other hand, was leaning more toward goofy. She had cleverly, or so she thought, chained herself to the front porch post. I had no intentions of pointing out that no one was trying to drag her off of said porch or park campers on it, although it might have added a touch of real emotion to the pictures as she tried to get herself unchained to whack me for saying so.
I glanced at my watch. “Better finish up. Jerry should be here any minute.”
“Yeah,” Leroy agreed, a little more readily than expected. “He sure asked a lot of questions when he called back last night. I didn’t tell him about any of this though. I’m not on the clock anyway right now.”
Oh, shit, I’d forgotten to tell him to call. “I’m sorry, Leroy. He told me to tell you to call and I forgot.” I had no good excuse, except for my mother and the complete ridiculousness of the bizarre situation I found myself in that seemed to suck out all my brain cells. “I’ll tell him it was my fault when he gets here.”
“It’s okay. I think he kind of understood.”
Why didn’t that make me feel better?
“I need to get going anyway because I’ve got to get these on the computer to see if they need any work before I print. Dad’s working the desk for me until I get back.” He glanced at Lucille, but she turned up her nose, apparently still holding a grudge against Fritz for something. “He’d sure like it if you gave him a call, Miz Jackson. He’s been real down in the mouth since you two had words.”
Lucille lifted her chin even higher and sniffed haughtily. “If you all are through with me, I believe I’ll go make a fresh pot of coffee for Jerry Don.”
After she’d gone inside, I walked over to where Leroy stood, repacking his camera case. “Seriously, Leroy, I hate to butt in, but are you sure you should be doing this? Doesn’t this sort of qualify as one of those pesky conflict of interest issues that a deputy sheriff probably ought to avoid?” At all costs.
“Huh?”
“Taking these kinds of pictures, of someone charged with a crime. Since you’re the one who kind of charged her with the crime, it could be a bit of a conflict.”
“Nah, I’ve done it before. The gallery people think it’s kind of neat that I’m in law enforcement and take photos inside the jail. Think it gives me insight into the human condition. I don’t usually have people in the pictures, but they say you can still feel them there. They really like that.”
Wow. Big words in a big sentence. Scary. And how had it come to this anyway, chatting amicably with Leroy Harper? It was unnatural and unsettling, to say the least. Almost made me wish for the good old days when he breathed fire and looked ready to behead me. That, I understood. I didn’t know what to make of this version of Leroy that sounded halfway coherent at times, and it made me wary.
“Jerry says it�
�s okay as long as I’m off the clock and don’t take pictures of crime scenes. Besides, Lucille’s already paid her fine and paid to replace the radiator, including labor charges, so it wasn’t like she was really an inmate.”
Was that so? Sheriff Blackmail and I would be discussing many things at length. Jerry Don Parker’s propensity for letting Lucille off the hook for all her crap wasn’t helping anyone, especially me. I didn’t come down here for my health. It never helps my health to come down here. I get headaches, I shake and twitch, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. A lot. And that’s before I’ve even seen my mother. The ludicrousness of this particular situation triggered all the above and was even pushing me toward bitchy, which is shocking, I know. Whatever the case, it was long past the time for some scared straight tactics—for both of them, all of them.
“So, what you’re really saying, Leroy, is that the caption and byline under the picture you want published in the paper would go something like this: ‘Deputy Sheriff Leroy Harper photographs park protester Lucille Jackson pretending to be locked in the Bowman County Jail. Ms. Jackson had been arrested earlier in the day for shooting a county maintenance truck that was mowing grass on the right-of-way near the planned park site. When released by the sheriff’s department, she refused to leave the jail where Harper befriended her. Over a cup of coffee and the evening news, they devised this photo shoot to bring attention to Lucille’s plight and to give new meaning to serve and protect.’ Or something like that.”
He frowned, beads of sweat popping out on his brow. He shifted from foot to foot and scratched his head, all apparently important steps in his thinking process. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”
You think? I just shrugged at him. It was his call.
After a little more mental processing and fidgeting, the latter still being indicative of the former, Deputy Leroy Harper snatched up his camera case and headed toward his truck. “Tell Miz Jackson I’ll get back to her.”
“I’ll do that.”
* * *
As it turned out, there was no need for Leroy to rush off to avoid his boss since Jerry Don Parker did not arrive as arranged at nine-thirty. He also didn’t arrive at ten-thirty, and he did not call either. By the time eleven rolled around, I was not a happy camper, to borrow an unfortunate phrase. By noon, I was vacillating between seriously worried and seriously pissed.
Mother had been on the phone a good part of the morning, making strategy calls to Merline and Agnes, but she assured me that both Jerry and Leroy had her cell phone number. They also had mine. In fact, the entire Bowman County Sheriff’s department had every number available for both of us, and had used them all on a number of occasions. They knew how to reach us.
I had wasted most of my time sitting out on the front porch or staring over the back fence. I had several vivid memories rooted in that mesquite field, mostly ones where I found myself lying in a patch of red hot dirt and thorny goatheads after my pony “Dino-mite” flung me off and left me for dead. My dad loved me, really he did, but buying a horse named after an explosive material for a girl with the riding skills of a rock is a recipe for disaster. The next horse was no better, but he was bigger—a lot bigger. He was about sixteen hands tall and named Echo, probably because once he took off all you heard was the echo of his hoof beats across the prairie. I covered a lot of ground on or because of ol’ Echo. And it wasn’t all mesquite patches or perfectly flat either. There were a few real trees amongst the scrub. Echo loved those. He could scrape me off on a low hanging branch without ever breaking stride. He was good at finding ravines too. Well, maybe it had only been a drainage ditch, but he’d jumped it multiple times, leaping through the air like a Lipizzaner. I have no idea how I stayed in the saddle for that or for the race through the pump jacks and storage tanks that followed. I just remember being grateful that he hadn’t bucked me off in the salt flats. My mother had convinced me that the crusty white stuff would eat the skin off my hands and I’d be left with only bones if I touched it. Ah, those were the days.
I had just stepped back up on the porch to go inside when my mother rushed out the door.
“Jolene! You’ll never guess what happened! Get in here. Right now!” She spun and hurried back inside. “It’s on the news. Hurry!”
I followed, but got there in time to only hear a teaser on the weather, about three minutes of local news, four commercials and a brief interview with some idiotic author promoting a mystery novel as if anyone cared. After another commercial, however, we were visually whisked back to the breaking news.
“See there,” Lucille said, pointing at the TV with a long nail. “That’s why Jerry Don couldn’t come. Leroy either. It looks like a bomb went off.”
It is a fine art, listening to my mother and the news at the same time, but I have honed this skill to razor sharp precision. Thusly, I was able to figure out—all at the same time—that somebody had tried to blow up what used to be known as Vetterman Brothers Feed and Seed. Vetterman’s Feed, Tack and Computer Store didn’t have the same ring to it, but the times they were a changing, even in Bowman County. It was also noted that Mr. Sheriff was on the scene and handling the crisis personally. As the onsite reporter relayed more of the facts and less of the excitement, it became clear that the only things actually “blown to bits” were some bags of rabbit chow and horse feed. Eyewitness accounts described how the bags just exploded, spraying livestock pellets like buckshot. No one was injured but some poultry was still unaccounted for.
I glanced at my mother, who was suspiciously quiet during this big event. No gasping, no “see there,” nothing. In fact, she was slumped down in her velvet wingback chair with a frown on her face, a meaningful frown, and I didn’t like it one little bit. As I pondered exactly what it all might mean, the reporter on the scene gave me a nice big hint. It seems that the feed store bomber had left a note: Animals are people too! Free the chickens!
I looked back at my mother. “Free the chickens?”
“Chicks. Baby chicks.” She stared at the TV, scowling. “Vetterman always has a pen full of them this time of year.”
“Well, now, just when did you get interested in what’s in stock at the feed and seed?”
“They sell computers and fancy boots now too, catering to the hobby ranchers and such.”
I indulged myself in a brief but multi-purposed eye-rolling. “Unless Vetterman stocks Mary Kay Cosmetics between the chickens and the hard drives I can’t imagine how you’d know about any of this.”
Lucille hopped up from her chair and made a dash for the kitchen. “I had nothing to do with it, Jolene, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Of course that’s what I was thinking. “Not so fast there, spacey lady,” I said, following on her heels. “Just how hooked up is your little group with the chicken bombers?”
“They didn’t bomb the chickens, Jolene.” Lucille fiddled with some dishes in the sink then moved on to the refrigerator. “The AAC people are a little quirky, but they mean well.”
“Quirky?” I leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms. “They tried to blow up a feed store to free chickens. That’s more than quirky. Somebody could have been seriously injured.”
“They meant well.”
“You knew they were going to do this.” It was not a question.
Lucille shook her head firmly. “No, ma’am, I did not. I know their group likes to send messages to people and companies who exploit those who can’t help themselves.”
“That’d be the chickens.”
Lucille huffed and propped a hand on her hip. “And the horny toads. That’s why they’re here, Jolene. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Ah, yes, the horny toads. I’d love to hear your explanation for that one right after you tell me how you’re not an accomplice in a bombing—a pathetic excuse for a bombing, but a bombing nonetheless. Blowing up feed stores is against the law, Mother. A real no-no. Somebody’s going to jail.”
“Don’t you get smar
t with me, Missy.” She snapped her nose upward again. “Nobody knows exactly what happened or how so don’t you start thinking you do. I certainly had nothing to do with it. I was here with you all morning. Never stepped foot off the place.”
That was true in terms of a physical alibi, of course, but that’s all it was. “Oh, you’re involved, and we both know it. How deep you’re in is what I don’t know.”
“I didn’t invite those AAC people here,” Mother Accomplice snapped back. “They just showed up.” She grabbed a dishtowel from the drawer and wiped the counter out of habit. “They’re not from around here, and I made allowances for that, but quite frankly, some of them are just plain peculiar.”
Look who’s talking. I uncrossed my arms, sighed, heavily and grabbed my keys and billfold from the kitchen table. “I assume if I head down the main street of Bowman City I’ll find the Feed, Tack and Computer Store.”
Lucille nodded begrudgingly. “Won’t be much of a story left by the time you get there. It’s twenty minutes at least. Everybody will probably be gone by then. Be better to just write a story about me from here. That’s really the bigger issue anyway.”
“I’m going to the feed store.” And there will be no story writing. “Because you know, and I know, that exploding paint cans in front of the courthouse and rabbit chow raining down Main Street are connected to you because these things always are. And this time, Mother, I am going to find out what’s going on and put a stop to it before the actual shooting begins. Although that’s technically not possible since bullets have already been flying. They were your bullets, of course, and we all know—”
“You made your point, Jolene.” Lucille flung the towel down and mashed her lips into thin little painted lines. She managed to mutter something I was better off not hearing then ended with a quite audible “I’ll get my purse.”