Grandpa cleared his throat. “I saw her.”
“I don’t know who the daddy is.”
The puppy wailed again. Myrt started to turn away, back toward the one open stall door, and then stopped and looked at us again. My eyes slipped off the wiggling puppy and into the stall behind them. I went numb and took a step back, suddenly realizing why Myrt held a hammer. Still bodies cooled on top of a ’toe sack lying in the dirt.
“I don’t believe the daddy was a Brit. Some stray climbed over the pen and got at her. Daisy won’t hunt as long as these puppies are on her.”
Without thinking, I took a little step forward and then another. Myrt jogged the hammer up and down in his fat hand like he was tapping tacks. The little one wailed again. Myrt suddenly held it out to me without a word.
Grandpa looked at the pup and then me. “Take that little feller outside for a minute.”
“I don’t need a bunch of mongrel dogs to feed.” Myrt kept tapping at the air with the hammer.
I hurried outside, trying to breathe and not cry at the same time. Tears ran down my cheeks as I trembled, held the little puppy, and sniffed his hair. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I opened the pen’s gate and slipped inside with his mama. He wiggled even harder and I sat him on the ground. He ran to her and almost immediately went to nursing when she laid down.
The morning chill didn’t matter. I squatted there in the pen for a long time, watching them and talking softly to Daisy. After a long while Grandpa left the barn and stopped outside the dog pen.
“You ready to go?”
I didn’t say anything. It took a long time to raise my eyes to Grandpa. Knowing what would happen as soon as we left, I slowly stood and bit my lip to keep from crying.
“Well.” Grandpa pointed downward. “Grab Hootie there and let’s get.”
Relief washed over me. I picked up my new puppy and we got.
***
Miss Becky discovered a footprint in the soft soil under my bedroom window a few days later. She liked to put cut flowers on her table and she raised everything from black-eyed Susans to daffodils and irises in the beds around the house. Frost had killed everything, however, and the freshly turned dirt had only one track in it.
We knew the print under the window didn’t belong to any one of us because the sole and size didn’t match up to anyone. Grandpa Ned frowned for most of the day and kept returning to the print to stare at it and then slowly scan the pasture and trees at the back of the house, talking quietly to himself.
I could tell Miss Becky was concerned, and the pocket on one side of her house dress sagged with the weight of something heavy. I suspicioned she had a pistol in there, because once when she leaned over to get something out of the chest freezer, I heard a distinct bump. To see if I was right, I climbed up on the china cabinet to see if her little .22 automatic was still there on the top shelf where she always kept it. It was gone.
I’d heard stories about how the pioneers and Indians had fought all along the Red River back in the olden days, and with Miss Becky now carrying a gun like Grandpa, the tales became clear. I felt proud of her.
At dinner Grandpa also noticed the shotgun beside the back door and looked thoughtful for a moment. Then we both knew Miss Becky wasn’t taking any chances and the whole thing really began to scare me.
“Y’all make sure the winders are locked up tight,” Grandpa said after we’d eaten. “Hootie can sleep in there with you from now on, too.”
Miss Becky got up to wash the dishes. “He didn’t say in the bed with you, though.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I fed Hootie a fried potato under the table, knowing he’d sneak under the covers after dark.
Chapter Twenty
Ned’s eighty-eight-year-old brother died after Thanksgiving. Arnold Rob Parker had been a character all his life, and his adventures kept the community talking. Even his funeral on an unusually warm November day provided folks with enough fodder to keep the busybodies happy for years.
When Ned arrived at the church, he realized they’d forgotten to name the pallbearers. After a quick parlay, Cody and Raymond Chase were selected to join four other early arrivals to carry Arnold’s remains.
Ned then waited under a wide shade tree with the young men to watch the mourners as they arrived. Though the coroner said Arnold died from a heart attack, Ned wasn’t convinced the service was not for a murder victim. Even there, he couldn’t get the killer off his mind, and he wanted to study on every man that passed. It was probably wrong, but he found his entire life was consumed with finding the man responsible for the atrocities in his community.
Men in slacks and limp white shirts joined the group of pall bears to stand or hunker in the bare dirt under wide shade trees. Others observed the solemn occasion by wearing a blue sport coat over faded overalls. The gathering crowd talked of Arnold’s exploits and dimly remembered hunting trips and events best left unspoken so close to a church.
Some younger husbands almost stopped for a moment, knowing the conversation was bound to be good, but an impatient tug on the coat by an irritated wife persuaded them it was safer to continue inside.
Miss Becky and Aunt Ida Belle drug Pepper inside when they arrived, but Top joined his Grandpa Ned to hear Isaac Reader talk about one night long ago.
“Listen, remember the night Arnold Rob went to sleep under his ’34 Ford truck when him and Carl Dibner and all of us were camping out down at the creek?” Several nodded at the right time, having heard the story several times. “Carl pulled a rope across Arnold’s chest to make him think it was a snake. The first time he did it Arnold raised up so fast he dented his head on the muffler. Listen, when he laid back down Carl did it again. He nearly scared him to death that second time, too. But the third time Arnold Rob got mad.
“Listen, listen, he grabbed it and threw the rope toward the fire, threatening to kill the next one if he did it again. The only thing was, the third time it really was a big ol’ chicken snake. You should have seen the bunch of us scrambling to get away from a flying snake!”
Everyone laughed quietly. Ned’s eyes flicked from man to man, looking for a clue, any kind of an indication that someone in the group was the person he needed so badly to find. Even though the coroner said Arnold died of a heart attack, Ned was sure the killer would be at the funeral. Ned could feel him there.
Stories came thick and fast, causing the men to chuckle quietly in guilty pleasure. Twenty minutes later the funeral director waved them inside, and they reluctantly tore themselves away and filed in.
The dry autumn air warmed rapidly and quickly became stuffy, so every window gaped open to capture any available breeze. The ladies fanned with the McGinnis Brother’s Funeral Home fans. The Last Supper on one side and Jesus and the Lambs on the other fluttered so fast they ran together and looked like little lambs were standing around the supper table.
Arnold had the most pleasant expression on his face of anyone they’d ever seen in a casket. He looked positively pleased with himself. Most figured it was because he had passed on while sitting up in his deer stand the first morning of deer season. His buddies were proud Arnold took The Last Walk while in his stand. It was a good place to go for two reasons.
One was because Arnold loved to hunt deer. He went while doing something he looked forward to each year.
The other was because his large bulk would have been too much to bear if he had died while on a quail outing, because his friends would have been forced to carry him out of the field.
Even then they had to wait until Buck Johnson arrived to pronounce Arnold dead. Ned thought it was ridiculous, because rigor mortis had already set in and it was obvious to anyone with enough sense to tie his own shoes that Arnold had gone on to his reward.
Once he was pronounced, it took five grown men who responded to the news to lift him out of the stand and maneuver the corpse into the back seat of Sheriff Donald Griffin’s car for the ride to the funeral home.
Because he was so stiff
and already in a sitting position to begin with, the men simply put Arnold upright in the back seat. Sheriff Griffin wasn’t happy about this turn of events, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Ty Cobb Foxx slapped Arnold’s hat back on his head, because he didn’t know what else to do with it. When they shut the door he noticed Arnold’s right hand was still in the raised position because, when they pried the rifle out of his fingers, the arm remained upright.
Isaac Reader almost waved back before he caught himself.
Sheriff Griffin drove and at every stoplight in town folks saw Arnold’s upraised hand and waved in return. Later, it was a shock to realize they’d waved at a dead man. Others confidently said Arnold was alive when they saw him.
“I swanny, he looked so natural in that police car.”
The pallbearers filed down the aisle after everyone had settled in. They took their seats on the first row, directly in front of Ned and the family. The service began in the tiny church when Harvey Willoughby, the Methodist preacher, stepped forward and placed his worn Bible on the pulpit. “Arnold Robert Parker. Born November seventh….”
They suffered through the litany of dates, survivors and accomplishments as the heavy atmosphere began to take its toll on the congregation.
Accompanied by an out-of-tune piano, Arnold’s lifelong friend, Minnie Delores, stood and butchered The Old Rugged Cross with a caterwauling rendition that dried up a nearby milk cow for a week.
By the third verse Ned could stand her trembling voice no longer. For the first time in a long while he gave up thinking about the killer and once again began talking to himself. “After hearing that, I believe we’re burying the wrong one today.”
Miss Becky poked him the ribs for being disrespectful.
The out-of-character wisecrack hit six funny bones at the same time. Cody ground his teeth and tears trickled down his cheeks.
Eyes closed in musical ecstasy, Minnie Delores raised her chin for a high note. Her quavering voice and quivering neck wattles were too much. The pallbearers ducked their heads. “Think she made that sound with Arnold?” Cody nudged Raymond. The congregation thought the young men up front were shuddering with unrestrained grief.
“Bless their hearts.”
“God love those boys.”
Henrietta Lewis, whose hug led to the fight between Top and Cale Westlake, shifted her massive bulk forward in the pew and placed a meaty hand on Cody’s shoulder. “It’s all right, hon. He’s in a better place. He didn’t have too much fun in this old world anyway.”
Mary Lou Skaggs missed the last couple of notes on her piano but made up for it in volume. Minnie hadn’t heard it thunder in years and it wasn’t surprising to anyone when the singer and pianist failed to end together. Minnie suddenly found herself out of music and hurried through the last sentence to end alone, suffering Mary Lou’s glare.
The boys were on dangerous ground when Minnie finally tottered to her chair and plopped down. Since she was so deaf, she had no idea anyone could hear any better. She leaned to the side and loudly broke wind. The sound carried with clarity of Gabriel’s Horn.
“Praise the lord!” she said primly and gazed over the congregation of mourners.
“My lands,” Miss Becky sighed.
Cody and Raymond leaned against each other, hiccupping and wiping their eyes, desperate to get a grip on the laughter that rocked their pew.
“Bless their hearts.”
“Praise the Lord!” Willoughby temporarily forgot he was presiding over a funeral.
Ned snorted. “Praise the Lord’s right. We couldn’t have gotten through that song alone.”
Minister Willoughby mercifully wrapped up the service. Since the adjacent cemetery was only a few steps away, it was traditional to carry the deceased through the door, down the wooden steps, across the patchy lawn to the gravesite.
Hands folded in front, the minister closed his eyes and nodded solemnly. Tortured grunts erupted from three throats as they lifted the heavy casket. When they pivoted to walk down the narrow aisle, Cody’s knee popped like a firecracker.
Tears leaped into his eyes. He bowed his head in pain and took a step. “Oh, lord.”
“Yes lord! Please help those poor suffering souls!”
“Y’all look like you need help,” Ned said as the boys passed.
“Amen!”
More wails erupted from mourning women who simply loved funerals and were having a helluva time. The service was getting dangerously close to breaking out into a revival.
Six heads ducked toward the floor as the young men lock-stepped down the narrow aisle and squeezed through the open double doors to navigate the tricky wooden steps.
When they came through the doors, Arnold’s hunting buddies honored their friend with a ragged twenty-one shotgun salute. The startled pallbearers almost dropped the casket, thinking someone was taking one last shot at Arnold to settle a grudge.
The final act of the day unfolded at the gravesite. When they attempted to lower Arnold’s casket into the hole dug by several of Arnold’s closest friends and relatives, and Mr. Jack Daniels, Cody and the boys realized the casket was a good six inches longer than the grave.
“My lord,” Ned said to O.C. as the young men nearly dropped the casket head-first into the hole. Muffled four-letter-words wafted across the crowd of rapidly departing mourners. “What a send-off.”
It was the last time anyone laughed in Center Springs for a good long time, and they wouldn’t have laughed then, had they known the man known as The Skinner was right there the funeral the whole time.
Chapter Twenty-one
A week of freezing weather finally killed off the last remaining leaves. Deer season was in full swing and trucks went past the house with antlers poking over the sides of the bed. I wanted to hunt deer, but there was no one to take me since Grandpa wasn’t a big game hunter.
Pepper and I were reading comic books in the house when Raymond Chase pulled up in the drive and honked the horn. Miss Becky stomped from the bedroom to look out the window. “I swanny. Ned, when is he going to learn some manners?”
He picked up his hat and was pulling on his coat when we heard footsteps on the wooden porch. Raymond opened the kitchen door and burst inside without knocking. Miss Becky was about to light into him, when she saw a look on his face.
Grandpa did too. “What’s wrong?”
Chase hadn’t even taken off his hat in the house. “Ned, I got bad news. This morning some boys out deer hunting found your cousin Joseph in the woods out toward Slate Shoals, while you were gone to Dallas. He’d been cut up pretty bad. I don’t have a lot of the story yet, because Sheriff Griffin saw me over by the truck with the witnesses and threw a wall-eyed fit saying I had no business getting involved in the investigation.”
“Let’s go.”
“It’s already took care of.” Chase finally took off his hat and laid it on the television, beside Grandpa’s pistol. “They’re already gone.”
Grandpa settled back into his rocker by the space heater, angry because no one had called him. “Tell me.”
“You kids go in the kitchen.” Miss Becky shooed us toward the door.
It didn’t make any difference, because we could hear from in there, but we went.
Raymond turned his back on us. “It was pretty bad. Somebody spent a while killing him. He was broke down a little at a time, shot in both knees and both arms. I reckon it was to keep him from fighting or getting away. Then they field dressed him and skinned him like a rabbit, mostly likely while he was still alive.”
Horrified, Miss Becky covered her mouth. I could see Grandpa through the door, barely rocking and shaking his head. “Oh, lordy.”
Pepper couldn’t contain herself. “Shit.” We exchanged looks and I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. I noticed she had goose bumps on her arms.
“Those boys who found him are in bad shape, too. They was hunting out there and came across his truck. He was in the bed, like
you’d do with a dead deer.”
Joseph had been close to Grandpa when they were kids, but they drifted apart over the years. I even remembered hearing he took a notion to get into law work. For two or three months, Joseph rode with Grandpa at night on a few calls, but when he lost the bid for constable in Precinct 2 against Raymond Chase, it took the wind out of his sails and he went back to Slate Shoals to raise cattle.
“We don’t know how long he’d been dead. Could have been days, since he lived alone. The cold kept him…fresh, so the whole thing looked like it just happened.”
Miss Becky stood up. “That’s enough.” She came into the kitchen with us. Neither Pepper or I knew what to do or say, so we stayed at the table with our comics, not even pretending to read.
Grandpa stopped rocking and leaned forward with his hands on his knees, as if trying to get his breath. “Who found him?”
“Them twins, Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx. You know they run the woods all the time, but this one messed them up. Both of them were white as sheets when I saw ’em. I doubt they’ll be hunting around Slate Shoals any more for a while.”
Tears filled Grandpa’s eyes and ran down his cheeks. He wiped them away and rocked again. “Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx. Them two keep turning up in all this.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
Grandpa stood and gave Raymond a sad pat on the shoulder. “Thanks, son, for bringing me the news.”
“I’ll be around if you need me.” Raymond left, ruffling my hair as he passed. I shivered again as Miss Becky went into the living room to hold Grandpa for a while. He didn’t cry, but I could hear him blowing his nose in the bandana he always carried in his back pocket. Miss Becky prayed long and soft while Pepper cussed under her breath and told me what she’d do if she ever laid eyes on the Skinner.
We attended Joseph’s funeral, but it was a closed casket. Ty Cobb and Jimmy Foxx were there, and Grandpa kept watching them, mumbling to himself from time to time. It didn’t seem like he was all there to me. His eyes kept flicking around, even during the prayers. I know, because I peeked when everyone else’s head was down. It looked like he was busy watching instead of thinking about his cousin Joseph.
The Rock Hole Page 18