by Jay Jackson
THE
KILLING KING
OF
GRATIS
A Novel By
Jay Jackson
Copyright © 2014 Jay Jackson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
For Lori, and our family we share.
Table of Contents
1. Skipper | 2. Meg and Peck | 3. Delroy | 4. Kero and Newt | 5. The Turtle Palace | 6. Tommy | 7. Millicent | 8. Johnnie | 9. The Cabal of Justice
10. The Muscle | 11. Newt’s Problem | 12. Cozette | 13. The Lean | 14. An Early Triple | 15. Meet the New Boss | 16. The Pool Hall | 17. Whatever it Takes | 18. The Buster Problem | 19. Althea
20. Other Channels | 21. Althea Kicks the Habit | 22. A Good Round | 23. Anna’s New Room | 24. Nowhere to Turn | 25. One More For Cozette | 26. Meg is Bored | 27. A New Plan | 28. Hellfire | 29. A Gentleman’s Agreement
30. Skipper Regroups | 31. Motte Does Well | 32. Merry | 33. A Jail Visit | 34. The Guessing Game | 35. Amy’s On Board | 36. Change in the Air | 37. Johnnie’s Predicament | 38. Fresca and Tums | 39. Dear Old Dad
40. Old Trucks | 41. Planning a Trip | 42. The Bull Shark | 43. The Lola | 44. Finding Meg | 45. The Announcement | 46. Amy Digs In | 47. The Pre-Party | 48. The Truck | 49. The Judge Is In
50. The Scariest Thing in the World | 51. The Searchers | 52. Plan B | 53. Down By the River | 54. Skipper Gets Ready | 55. Turtle Palace Redux | 56. Old Mr. Bobcat | 57. Delroy Takes a Ride
About JAY JACKSON
1.
Skipper
Skipper stripped naked as he walked around the pool’s edge, a gin and tonic trembling in his hand. He finally tossed his boxers and, finishing his drink, jumped in and sank to the bottom. There he sat, hoping the cold water would clear his mind. Finally he surfaced, gasping for breath, as the sun began to peek over the Atlantic.
He spent the previous night in Gratis, a rarity on the weekend. He usually left as soon as he could on Friday afternoon, barely letting the clock hit five before speeding toward his home at East Beach on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. It was less than two hours from work if he sped, and getting to the island as soon as possible was mandatory. He preferred dodging the waves breaking on the beach to dodging south Georgia rednecks in their pickup trucks.
He grew up in Gratis, leaving to go to school in Florida as soon as he could. He would still be there if it was up to him, but Skipper had to return. His father demanded it. Mother left her entire estate to his father knowing he would use it to control their son. It wasn’t the only time she let him down before her death, but it was by far the most disappointing.
Skipper got out of the water, poured himself another drink, and tried to plan the rest of the day. Maybe he would get a foursome together and play golf at the Hampton Club. The twelfth hole, on the marsh stretching to the sea, always calmed him. He might go to Brogen’s North after that, where he knew the bartender with the heaviest hand. Right now, though, the fog in his head wouldn’t let him plan anything.
The night before, and the woman at the center of it, was all he could think of. He stared at the waves as his mind parsed through each moment with her. The green seaweed poking out of the white foam on the beach winked at him. Skipper imagined that she followed him home and was just now floating in with the tide.
He saw her not two weeks before, sitting at Le Café in Gratis, presiding at a table overflowing with some of the town’s most prominent ladies. They giggled as she spoke and only ate when she turned her attention elsewhere. The assemblage was amazingly synchronized, a water ballet of junior high boys vying for the prettiest girl. Even as she sat with her entourage, smiling at their stories and laughing, Skipper knew she was miserable. How could such a beautiful woman be happy in such a town?
She was trapped just like him, but at least he had his island to run to. She had nothing but her lunch ladies and whatever else she could wring from this small place. That can’t be enough, he thought, and then, maybe I can help her leave. One of us should be free.
Those thoughts grew, strangling all others, and finally led him to last night and the hours they shared, hours that flew by. Maybe he should have been ashamed of what happened, or even scared. Instead, he trembled with excitement.
The morning sky brightened to dawn’s inky blue and Skipper slipped back into the pool, swimming to the side overlooking the ocean. He made sure the green he saw in the surf was only seaweed and then ran his hands along his naked body. He felt good and didn’t notice any cuts or bruises. Not bad, considering.
Then he examined his hands. Dried blood still clung under his fingernails and around his cuticles, stubbornly resisting the pool water. He made a note to clean them thoroughly once inside, trying to remember where he put the bleach when he got home. He would have to do something with his clothes as well. They were a mess.
Well, Skip, let’s get this day started, he thought, closing his eyes and shaking his head for focus. First would be the clean-up, and then a round of golf. He tried to look forward to taking money from the others in his foursome, but failed. All he could do was look back. That’s where she was, and he knew he wouldn’t see her again. He missed her already.
2.
Meg and Peck
On the last day of school you could get away with murder. The teachers, some bleary eyed from celebrating their success at surviving another year, looked the other way at any student indiscretion. Nothing would delay their own vacations.
The children, taking their lead from the teachers, were louder and later than usual. Talking in class was allowed and running in the hallways was expected. Some of the eighth graders ditched the last two periods, sneaking away from teachers who wouldn’t look for them, not on this day.
Meg and Peck Jones attended the Gratis School, which housed grades one through four in one wing and grades five through eight in another. They were close and rode the bus together to and from school, only separating when they had to go to their respective wings. Meg always told Peck she loved him before leaving to go to her first class, saying “Love you, baby brother.” He would respond “I love you sister girl,” and watch her until she rounded the corner of the hallway, lost to him until the final bell and the bus ride home.
At thirteen she was a true beauty and as popular as a girl could be in junior high, if jealousy was a measure of popularity. Meg handled the popularity well, rarely getting snotty unless she had to. Early on she learned that a smile usually got her what she wanted, and smiling was easy.
Peck, on the other hand, was odd. He was a loner, not really caring what others thought of him, or at least not showing it. At nine he was skin, bones, and freckles, still housed in a little boy’s body refusing to grow up. He would be ten soon but was shorter than most in his grade. That was a tough predicament at his age, and so he spent most of his time lost in his own thoughts when Meg wasn’t around.
They lived on the Bird River, not far from where it seeped into the Crane’s Neck Swamp, which everyone called the Neck, outside of town with their mother, Anna. Father died when they were very young and mother was the only parent they knew. She worked at the bank and never remarried. Slight smile lines framed her mouth and eyes, remnants of earlier days with the children’s father.
This would be their last summer of childhood. Next year, with Meg in high school, things would be different. With high school came car
dates, the freshman sorority, cheerleading and everything else. She couldn’t have dodged these things if she had wanted to, and she didn’t want to. Being popular was fun, even if girls were catty and boys were intimidated. She wasn’t dumb and knew a good thing when she saw it.
Peck knew things would change with his sister as well. She was his best friend, and soon the days of spending so much time together would be gone. He wasn’t sure what he would do when that happened. His happiest times were with her, especially floating down the Bird in their father’s old johnboat.
Their backyard sloped down to where they kept the boat tied to a post at the river’s edge. Its engine barely pushed it forward against the river’s current, but took them anywhere the water was deep enough once they were in the Neck. Anna didn’t like it, but they were too hard to fight when it came to their father’s boat. She hoped he rode with them.
The pair would putter down the Bird and make their way to the far reaches of the Neck. The cypress trees, fat on the bottom like old Baptists, stood watch as the reeds and black water swayed and churned in the johnboat’s wake. Live oaks, shading their way, spread their ancient arms over the islands dotting the swamp that stretched for thousands of acres around them.
Every summer they drifted into this world. They awoke to the endless sunrises, lifted out of bed by the smell of Anna’s cooking, and at night slept to the Neck’s never-ending chorus. Before long the rest of the world would get in the way, but not before they spent this last summer of childhood together. For a little longer they would have each other, and that would be almost enough. A little brother would still have his big sister to himself, and everything else could wait.
3.
Delroy
“Look, Delroy, you’re a damn asshole, your family is out of control, and I don’t give a damn if everyone knows it.” This is what met Delroy Jones in his office the first Saturday morning of summer.
“Jack, keep it down. My head is killing me, and I can’t handle your mouth right now. What are you talking about?”
“Those two kids threw some muck on my boat last night, they woke up my dogs, and I’m about done with them.” He of course meant Meg and Peck, Delroy’s late brother’s children.
“How do you know they did it? Did you see them?”
“I didn’t have to see them. I know it was them, you know it was, and so does everyone else. I’m just flat tired of it, and they’re going to find themselves peppered with birdshot if they don’t stop.”
Jack North lived a half mile down the Bird from Meg and Peck, and never liked that they had the freedom to go where they pleased. He was a big outdoorsman who wanted the river for himself. He acted as if it belonged to him and complained if someone else was disturbing his fun. Although he wasn’t the kind of man to shoot children, Delroy didn’t appreciate the threat.
“Jack, when you see those two do something, call me. Until then, watch what you say about peppering anyone, especially those kids. If you have anything else to say to me this morning, you know where my office is.” At that Delroy hung up the phone and cracked open a coke to nurse his hangover. If Jack wasn’t a client he would have said more than that.
Delroy did Jack’s legal work, along with the work of many of the old families in Gratis. Being from one of those families, he had the advantage of getting the business of those he knew or was related to in one way or another. These people were his life blood. Even Jack North was related somewhere down the line.
Delroy kept an uneasy truce with himself. He didn’t like everyone he was related to, but never missed a church homecoming or some other get-together. Each of these was an opportunity to remind everyone that he was one of them and would be there when the need arose.
He didn’t plan to come back to Gratis. In law school he met his future wife, learned to enjoy Atlanta, and believed he would only come home for the occasional holiday and funeral. After prosecuting for a couple of years he joined a small firm and thought he would be in the city for good. One afternoon, though, taking a break from researching a big case for the managing partner, Delroy came home from work earlier than expected to surprise his bride. He did just that, walking in on her and that same partner in bed with their clothes sprawled across the floor.
After that he ran from the city as fast as he could, so fast that many of his friends didn’t know until they tried to call him and he wasn’t there. Some found him in Gratis and from there they eventually dropped off. Delroy left everything from that life behind. He couldn’t stand to remember and removed himself altogether. It was cowardice and he accepted it.
In Gratis he learned how to do a little of everything and looked after his clients better than he looked after himself. If someone died he went to the funeral one day and the courthouse the next. When children got arrested their parents called him. If he could he would go help bail them out. If he couldn’t, or was too deep in the bottle to go out just then, he never failed to come down the next morning. He spent many mornings describing the consequences of a child’s actions to one parent while being fed breakfast by the other.
He didn’t know what it was about a crisis that made people so ready to cook, but being a bachelor he was glad of it. Sometimes, with the poorer clients, he lowered the fee without mention if they fed him. Often, even if they didn’t, he still lowered his fee if the client was having a hard time paying. In the parlance of his profession he was a sucker. He wore that designation with pride.
After hanging up on Jack he started with his morning ritual of reading the local paper, ‘The Gratis Proclaimer,’ which trumpeted that “What happens in Gratis is YOUR business.” Usually that business consisted of property tax proposals or high school football. One could always count on lifestyle updates and being current on garden club elections or Kiwanis meetings. Like everyone else who plopped down their 50 cents, Delroy ignored these items and went straight to Johnnie Lee’s column.
Johnnie made a career of knowing what her neighbors, and everyone else in town, were doing. She knew if they had a good day. She also knew how deep they buried their trash and exactly where to start digging to find it. She was reviled and a socially prominent woman. Good gossip opened doors.
Johnnie, ambitious as she was, needed more than a platform of telephone calls, teas, and dinner parties. She bartered with the married publisher of the Proclaimer for a biweekly column called Lee’s Little Secrets. In exchange she kept quiet about his affair with the sports editor. A friend in Savannah saw the two getting intimate in a Jones Street parking lot behind her flower shop. The sports editor was also married and thereafter mowed her lawn during the summer. “He’s just a dear neighbor,” Johnnie told anyone who asked.
She never had to mention names in her column. Her combination of what so and so did, how many children they had, or what street they lived on was enough. Every column ended with, “well, I have to go now. The phone is ringing, and I’ve been expecting a call.” Her readers hoped they weren’t mentioned in that call, and checked twice a week to make sure of it. Delroy was the subject of one of those calls. Just three weeks after coming back home Johnnie gave him a very public welcome.
“The town’s newest esquire, fresh from the big city, comes to us with a heavy heart in need of mending. Seems he caught his new bride with his new boss. She stood by her man by lying down. Be gentle, Gratisians, even lawyers deserve some mercy.” After the initial shock, Delroy was glad that Johnnie outed him. His heartbreak brought him everyman status, not a bad thing for a lawyer. It also eased the burden of explaining why he came back and why he wasn’t married anymore. There was no use in getting angry at Johnnie. One could only hope not to get caught again.
On this morning Lee’s Little Secrets had one item of particular interest to Delroy. “A new attorney is coming to town. Seems she does a little of everything. I’ll let y’all know if she’s a jack of all trades or a master of none.”
There was plenty of business to go around in Gratis. That didn’t concern Delroy. He was concer
ned whether this new attorney knew his ex-wife and ex-boss. Against all reason his mind put together a scenario where she knew them both and somehow set up their tryst. After three years the memory was so fresh it startled him. His mind ran like a stock ticker, clacking with scenarios of how this unknown attorney and her adulterous cohorts laughed at him. Surely she was moving here, these sneaky thoughts told him, to make sure he never forgot.
With some effort he silenced this delusion, angry he let it creep into his mind. If folks knew I gave these thoughts any time, I’d go broke.
With this unsettling suspicion, brought on by three sentences in the Proclaimer, Delroy planned his day. He needed to visit a client at the county jail and then coach Peck’s little league team. Anna asked him to coach knowing it was the only way Peck would play. Delroy knew very little about baseball but agreed to coach. He pretty much did as Anna asked when it came to the children. Usually all she wanted was for him to love them. He did that anyway.
His head throbbed at the thought of standing with a coach’s whistle around his neck in the new summer sun. He contemplated whether anyone would care if he put vodka in his Gatorade. A little hair of the dog seemed a fair exchange for giving up a Saturday afternoon.
Well, I guess if they do they could fire me, he thought, closing his eyes to take a short nap. He wondered whether there was some Stoli in the office, and whether he could show Peck how to hit a fastball. Hell, I can’t even hit one myself. He laughed at the thought, despite his aching head, and hoped he wouldn’t dream of new lawyers and old wives.
4.
Kero and Newt
“Alright, Newt, let’s count those cases and bottles and see where we stand from last night.”
Kero Peters shouted at Newt MacElroy down the stairs where he was dozing on the back porch, catching the breeze coming off the river. They were at Daddy Jack’s, Kero’s juke joint in Gratis that hung over the Bird like a gnarled tree. It was the first Saturday morning after the last day of school.