Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel

by Warren Williams

  In between the heavy gunfire, I started yelling that I’d been hit but hell, everyone was still down and I thought I’d better shut up until this thing was over before somebody got himself killed trying to get to me. I watched the blood pool by my foot getting bigger by the minute and that worried me, a lot. Was I gonna bleed out before I could get back to the outpost and they could get a chopper for me? I was starting to feel woozy and thought I was gonna pass out when I hear something just off the road. That’s when I saw Jason Woods crawling up and over the edge. Wouldn’t you know it, he was still wearing that same ol’ shit eating grin.

  ‘Hey, you fuckin’ Okie. You think you could maybe use a hand from an old Longhorn? Or you too proud to ask a Texan for help?’

  I gave him my best middle finger and his grin got even wider. Putting the bipod of the SAW on the boulder above me, he cut loose with all the firepower that machine could muster. Spent bullets rained on me like a brass hailstorm as Jason poured at least a couple thousand rounds on the mountain as fast as the weapon would spit them out. Then he ran out of ammo and things got quiet again. Outside of an occasional pop from one of our guys, that was the end of the shooting. It seemed like it took forever, but eventually the guys got me forward and up the mountain far enough to find a landing zone big enough for the evac chopper. That was the end of the war for me. You know the rest Sheriff; hospitals, rehab…and here I am.”

  Lester sat silent for several minutes, thinking about what his deputy had gone through, wondering how much of that war was still in him.

  “Did you lose any soldiers on that patrol?” Lester asked quietly.

  Billy Ray said nothing, the noise from the Pirate’s Den the only sound. If you listened close, between the laughter and the clashing of beer bottles, you could hear bits and pieces of George Jones and his pure country voice singing The Race is On.

  Eventually, the deputy spoke. “Yeah, we lost a guy that day, a kid from Iowa. I didn’t know him that well. Probably best that way. Hey, somebody’s pullin’ in.”

  A late model Buick found a parking spot and a man and woman stepped out. Both were wearing jeans, him with a black cowboy hat and the woman in a western style shirt, pink with pointed pocket flaps and an image of a guitar across the back.

  “Just a couple folks lookin’ to kick up their heels on a Saturday night,” Lester said. Billy Ray made no comment, his thoughts now half a world away on a rugged mountainside in the Middle East.

  Chapter 20

  On the step just below Melissa’s feet, the candle flickered now and then when a breath of wind slipped beneath the cellar door. The snake, wherever it was, had not reappeared and she hoped the tiny flame was enough of a deterrent to keep the thing from slithering up the stairs after her. She sat on the top step, as high as she could go, her hair brushing against the steel door. At the moment, her entire focus was on two things, the snake of course, and the rate at which the candle, her only source of light (and sanity) was melting away. So far, the rate of burn was imperceptive, but how long had it been since she had used one of her five matches—now down to four—to light the candle and help to calm her racing heart? Two hours, three? Would it last until morning when the sun peeked through the crack and the precious golden light shed its meager, but oh so important, illumination on her cave of horrors? That’s what it was now, a horror show. The Disney-like cast of cute little mice and her special friend Lulu were gone, disappeared into the night, or…eaten. Now there was a villainous long black (at least it looked black) slimy, tongue-flicking serpent full of poison, ready to sink its sharp fangs into her at the first chance it got.

  “Okay, Lissa, suck it up. Snakes aren’t really slimy. You know that. You got to keep your head on straight little girl. Panic is not your friend. You know something about snakes, right? Remember when the Wildlife Department visited the school and brought the raccoon, and the Red-tailed Hawk, and that snake for Wildlife Appreciation Day? You got your courage up and touched that snake, didn’t you Lissa? It was a common Garter snake, completely harmless, not scary at all. And afterward you were glad you’d handled it, let it wrap around your wrist, because all the other kids did except for that big sissy Amy Newton. Remember that? Remember how you were surprised when it wasn’t slimy, but dry and smooth? So what kind of snake is it, the one down there hiding in the leaves? That’s the important thing Lissa. Does it have poison fangs or not?” An involuntary shudder coursed through her body.

  “Who are you kidding girl? If that thing touches me, I’ll die of fright, I know I will. I’ll go to heaven bawling like a baby with a diaper rash. What was it the wildlife guy had said? Something about the shape of the head. If it’s oval, its likely non-poisonous, but if it looks like a triangle, beware? Something like that. Oh sure, like I’m supposed to get close enough to see the shape of its head? Fuck that.”

  Melissa’s mouth clamped shut. Had she just used the F-word? Out loud?

  “Well, there’s a first for you, Lissa. Seems like I’ve been doing a lot of things for the first time lately; going to a bar, getting drunk, getting…raped, (that word stuck in her throat for a while) and now here I am cussin’ like a sailor. Keep this up girl and you can forget about heaven. Yep, you’ll be headed the other direction, be on a first name basis with the guy with the pitchfork.”

  She glanced outside, through the grass and weeds, toward the sky, searching for a star but not a single, glittering speck of light could she find, no moon either. Without the candle, her prison world goes black. The thought of being on the top step in absolute darkness and with a snake somewhere down below, lying there motionless, waiting, made her want to scream as much as she had ever wanted to scream in all of her eighteen years on this earth. But somehow, she held on. She tried to focus on her religion, what she had learned in church, all those times her mother had forced her to go, never realizing just how badly she might someday need the inner strength that had helped her mother make it through all the tough times with her father and his…abuse. Another prayer couldn’t hurt.

  “Jesus, first of all, I’m sorry I dropped the F-bomb. I promise, promise, promise it won’t happen again, okay? The S-word might slip out from time to time, but if you help me get out of here, I’ll work on that too. I’m not sure how you normally handle this kind of thing, you know, a girl locked in a cellar, but I’d guess you have your ways. Maybe I should have listened to the preacher a little closer and gotten to know you better, but if there’s a way to open this door over my head, I’d be beholdin’ to ya. Any chance you could like, make my mom or somebody, have a dream and show them where I am? Would that work? I’m getting awfully thirsty down here Jesus, and hungry too. Truth is, I’m not sure just how long I can hold out, but I think not more than another few days at the most. So, if you could come up with something, a plan, I’m not sure what, I’ll do the very best I can to live a good and decent life and not cuss or drink Tequila. I can guarantee that last part. Thank you and amen.”

  Melissa stared at the candle, watching closely, hoping for a sign that her prayers had been heard, but the flame was steady with not so much as a wiggle. A single tear made its way down one cheek.

  “Stop that! You stop that Lissa. Crying is not gonna help you.”

  Angry at herself, she wiped away the wetness with her forearm. Her vision blurred, she was still blinking and wiping when she thought she saw a flash, or something, out of the corner of her eye. She pressed her face against the cement wall shivering at the chill of it, her eyes as close to the crack as she could get, glued to where she remembered the horizon to be. There was nothing out there, no beams from a passing car, no flashlights from a search party, not even a firefly. She remembered her mom complaining about the floaters and flashes in her own aging eyes. Maybe it was something like that, some part of her retina playing tricks on her. A good five minutes passed before she saw it again. There, in the distance, another flash, as a violent flow of lightning rippled across the southern sky.

  Chapter 21

 
By eleven o’clock, Lester’s coffee had grown bitter and cold and he tossed what was left of it out the window. The Saturday night crowd at the Pirate’s Den had morphed from the middle age set who had dropped by simply to get out of the house and do a little boot-scootin’ on the tiny dance floor in front of the juke box, to a younger crowd mostly twenty-somethings–a little louder, a little more rowdy. Some of the non-smokers had migrated to the bar’s front porch (Earl liked to call it the patio) for some fresh air. A few sprawled on the old green couch while others huddled around small tables filled to overflowing with beer bottles. If anyone had spotted two men wearing tan shirts and badges in a black Camaro at the far side of the parking lot, the word hadn’t gotten around.

  “How long we gonna stick with this Sheriff?” Billy Ray asked once again. “Don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen anything but ordinary, everyday beer guzzlers come and go, nothing close to anyone that looks like a kidnapper as far as I can tell. If you could elaborate on just what type of suspicious characters we’re looking for, maybe I could help. As it is, I could be just as productive at home in a nice comfy bed. Hell, let’s write a DUI or two as long as we’re here. Plenty of opportunities. Make the county a little money and break the monotony all at the same time.”

  The Sheriff said nothing. With his cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes as it was, Billy Ray wasn’t sure whether Lester was listening or sleeping. When the deputy decided a reply was not forthcoming, he made a humph sound and said, “I’m telling ya, I’m ready to walk inside there, right now, and have me a cold one. We are wasting our time and not only that, I ain’t even getting paid for this am I?”

  From under the hat, “Hush up, Billy Ray, more cars a comin’.”

  A shiny dark maroon Pontiac Firebird, a 2001 model, slowed to make the turn into the Pirate’s Den and squealed into the parking lot before kicking up a cloud of white dust as it hit the gravel. It slid a foot or two as it came to a halt in front of the barbed wire fence that surrounded the property. A healthy stereo system blasted out bass notes so loud that the vibration could be felt across the lot in Billy Ray’s Camaro.

  “Good looking Firebird,” Billy Ray said, admiring the twin scoops with the pin stripe accent on the hood. “Too bad Pontiac quit making ‘em.”

  “Too bad Pontiac didn’t leave that damn radio off of it,” Lester mumbled.

  Two young men wearing jeans and tee shirts jumped out of the car and quickly mingled with one of the groups on the patio. Lester made the obvious assumption that all were well acquainted, laughter, back slapping, and fist bumps being the tipoff. As the lawmen watched, one of the boys from the Firebird entered the bar and a few minutes later, reappeared on the patio carrying two longnecks. He handed one of them to his buddy.

  Lester raised the front of his hat. “How old you reckon those boys are Billy Ray, if you had to guess.”

  “Kind of hard to tell in the this light, but I’d be surprised if either of them was 21.”

  “Well then, I think they just might be the fellas we’ve been waiting on. Let’s check ‘em out.”

  The boy with the backwards cap had no clue that the Law was standing right behind him until his buddy’s eyes went wide.

  “Evenin’ Son,” Lester said, flashing his best good ol’ boy smile. “You boys having a nice time tonight?”

  Tommy Newhart didn’t really know how to answer that question, especially with an illegal beer in his hand, so he simply nodded a meek yes. His friend, Damon Martinson, had already taken two steps backward with the idea of slipping off the patio and into the night, maybe hiding behind the Dumpster until the incident had passed. That plan never reached fruition. Billy Ray appeared from another direction, tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed to an empty chair. “Sit.”

  By now, Lester’s grin had faded—his blue eyes a mere six inches away from the concerned face of young Mr. Newhart.

  “You boys live around here?”

  “Uh, Boise City.”

  “Are you employed in Boise City? Just curious.”

  “I, I mow lawns sometimes.”

  Tommy looked around for a little support from Damon, but got no help on how to deal with this man only inches from his face.

  “Do you go to school in Boise City? Just askin’.”

  Tommy lowered his head. “Yes sir.”

  “High school?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you have any ID on you son?

  Tommy reached for his back pocket and produced a wallet. A drivers license lay behind a clear panel.

  “Take the license out of the wallet for me please.”

  Lester slid the Mini-Mag flashlight from his belt. Somewhat surprisingly, the license looked original and unaltered. Lester looked at the photo and then at the boy in front of him. It was a good likeness. He handed the document back.

  To Billy Ray, “Deputy, Tommy here appears to be the ripe old age of seventeen. Did you check that young man’s license as well?”

  “I did. His name is Damon and he’s also seventeen.”

  Lester nodded in thought. The long silence making the teens antsy.

  Finally, “Boys, let’s all walk out to your car and we’ll chat for a bit. Leave the beers.”

  As the foursome left the porch, a man rose from the old green couch and stepped inside the bar. A moment later, Earl Redman took a look out the front door.

  “Oh shit,” he muttered.

  It took only a few minutes before word had passed down the length of the bar, across the dance floor, and on to the pool shooters that the Law was outside and talking to a couple guys. The news prompted more than one customer to head for the door. Others, including J.O. Mecham, held their ground. J.O. had been sipping his free beer all day and was well aware of the fact that he had no chance of passing any type of sobriety test. No way could he walk a straight line or touch his finger to his nose, more likely sticking it in his eye instead.

  Best to sit still, at least for now, and keep a low profile.

  Out in the parking lot, Lester asked Billy Ray, “You want to do the honors here, Deputy?”

  Taking the initiative the deputy said, “I need for you boys to put your hands on the hood of the car please, take a step backward, and spread your legs.”

  “What!” the boys said, almost in unison.

  “Relax, this is just for our own protection.”

  Billy Ray patted both boys around the waistband and ran his hands along their legs but found no weapons.

  “They’re clean.”

  Lester had his flashlight out again and was shining it inside the Firebird.

  “You boys have any illegal drugs in here? Weed, pills, that sort of thing? Maybe a crack pipe or two?”

  Both Damon and Tommy shook their heads in an emphatic no.

  “Any weapons–guns, hand grenades, land mines, rocket launchers?”

  “Rocket launcher?” Tommy asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Billy Ray had to hide his grin.

  “Want to open the trunk for me please?” Lester said.

  The lid sprang open with the turn of a key, the only visible content being a blown out tire with most of the tread gone.

  “This your car, Tommy?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you have your proof of insurance with you?”

  “Um, I think so. Let me look.”

  “Deputy, you want to open that glove box for him? Make sure there’s no surprises in there.”

  Billy Ray took a quick look and backed out of the car.

  Tommy found napkins, a map, and assorted papers, mostly expired warranties, but nothing from any insurance companies, a document required by law in Oklahoma.

  “Sir, I have insurance, I do, but I guess I don’t have it in the car. My dad pays for it. He probably has the forms in his desk. I can call him if you want.”

  “That’s okay, son. We’ll check on that later. Now, would you mind stepping out here for a minute?”

  When the boy stood, Le
ster held a silver ink pen a few inches in front of his face.

  “Follow the pen with your eyes and hold your head perfectly still, okay?”

  Tommy did as instructed and after a few lateral passes, Lester put the pen back in his shirt pocket. He took his hat off and arched his back, trying to relive the pain that had built up from the long sit in the car. For the first time that evening, he noticed the lighting building in the inky black sky.

  “Looks like we might get some rain, Deputy. Lord knows we need it. Did you know we only average about 16 inches a year in these parts?”

  “No I didn’t but the way my foot is aching, I could have told you it was gonna rain. Happens every time.”

  “Good to know,” Lester said.

  An awkward silence fell over the little group standing around the car. The two teens shot glances at each other. Now what?

  Billy Ray patiently watched the light show in the heavens that was getting more spectacular by the minute, knowing that Lester was making a decision and would take his own sweet time about it. There was no point in trying to hurry the process, frustration being the inevitable result. Working with Sheriff Lester P. Morrison had its drawbacks, especially if you were an impatient sort. A startling clap of thunder rang out, loud and angry, causing every living soul in the parking lot to flinch.

  Lester put his hat back on and confronted the boys.

  “I got you for two offences; one, being in a bar under age and two, no insurance verification for your vehicle. The good news is you’re not drunk. What I would like propose is this: I’ll ask you a few questions and if you’re honest with me, absolutely honest now, everybody can go home happy, no ticket, no fine, and nobody knows about this but you and me and the Deputy here. How does that sound?”