Bubba and the Missing Woman

by Bevill, C. L.

  Morgan thinks he’s alone. He thinks he’s clear for the moment. He doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t want to give it away. Bubba repeatedly warned himself to be careful despite the urgent need to rush.

  Bubba kept to the darkest shadows as he moved down the narrow ruts ground into the forest’s floor. He rounded a towering stand of hardwoods making an almost impenetrable barrier.

  An old building sat there. The Suzuki parked next to it. The engine was off. No one sat inside the vehicle.

  Bubba’s heart fell into his stomach. The place was secluded. It was isolated. Few people knew about it. However, Nancy had likely known about it. It could very well be a place where Miz Demetrice could be kept until all the others on Nancy’s Christmas killing list had been done away with.

  Morgan was nowhere to be seen which made Bubba’s heart drop even lower.

  He’s inside with Forrest? With Willodean?

  The front door of the building slammed open, and Morgan came out. Bubba no longer cared if he was standing in a shadow or not. Morgan wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve and shifted the rifle he carried in his other hand.

  Bubba’s eyes focused on the rifle and only the rifle. Rage saturated his entire being.

  Without hesitation, Bubba began moving forward in a direct line. In the beginning, it was a slow charge, but with each step it evolved into an increasingly faster pace, until he was a juggernaut intent on supreme destruction.

  Morgan didn’t realize Bubba was coming at him until he was ten feet away. Morgan’s head snapped up, his eyes went as large as saucers, and he fumbled to bring the rifle up.

  But it was too late. Bubba plowed into the other man with a great forceful impact. The rifle went flying into the bushes, and Bubba roared as Morgan’s back smashed into the wall of the building. Planks of wood cracked in response.

  Bubba took a step back and doubled up one great fist. A world-ending roundhouse punch took Morgan out. He promptly fell down on the ground and didn’t move again.

  Bubba spared the unconscious man only a brief glance. He turned to the building and hurtled inside.

  Coming to a lumbering stop nearly ten feet inside, Bubba realized the building was part of an old cotton gin. Bits of rusting equipment littered the floor. Crates once used for transporting bales of cotton sat along one wall. He unfroze and searched left and right.

  But neither Willodean nor Forrest were in the old building.

  •

  Steve Simms had selected a good point to block the highway into Nardle. Miz Demetrice had to admit it even while she cursed the deputy’s thoroughness. The Ford F-150 blocked the middle of the road. A deep ditch prevented going around on one side. A steep embankment kept anyone from driving past on the other side. The deputy kept himself centered in front of the truck. His sidearm was out and pointed downward.

  Miz Demetrice stopped the Cadillac and got out in a rush. “You’ll move!” she shouted. “Damned if you won’t.”

  “Now, I don’t want to have to arrest you, Miz Demetrice,” Simms said reasonably.

  Miz Demetrice chomped down to keep the slew of vicious words from pouring out of her mouth. She took a breath and glanced back to see the Gray family pulling up behind her; furthermore, two news vans stopped behind them.

  Reality crashed upon Miz Demetrice’s head. She didn’t want to admit it. Whatever Bubba and Sheriff John were doing, it was for the benefit of Willodean Gray and not for Miz Demetrice.

  She would have to trust that if the worst was to happen, Bubba would manage to restrain himself from killing Nancy Musgrave’s brother.

  Please, God, she prayed, don’t let Bubba murder that man in hot-blooded fury. I don’t believe the boy could live with himself. Amen. And if you’re listening, God, it would be right nice ifin Willodean were to come out of this alive and healthy. Thank you. Don’t listen to all those people that say bad things about you. You rock.

  Miz Demetrice glanced over her shoulder again. Celestine and Evan Gray climbed out of their car. Their other daughters weren’t with them. Miz Demetrice suspected they’d had to go back to Dallas and return to their everyday lives as if Willodean wasn’t missing at all.

  The PSS clambered out of the passenger side of the Cadillac. Precious tumbled out after him, and she immediately began sniffing at the side of the road.

  Simms kept a wary eye on all of them.

  Celestine approached Simms and said, “Is there anything you can tell us?” Her voice cracked with anxiety. Miz Demetrice’s heart warped at the sheer angst contained within the tone.

  Simms’ face twisted. “I ain’t heard nothing yet, ma’am. I wish I could tell ya’ll something else. I surely do.”

  Miz Demetrice had never particularly cared for Steve Simms. He liked to give tourists speeding tickets too much. He had several favored locations he used for speed traps in the county; additionally, he didn’t like Bubba, and Bubba had intimated that Simms hit on Willodean.

  But with that last statement to Celestine Gray, Miz Demetrice’s estimation of the man rose. A little bitty notch, but it still rose.

  She rubbed a tired hand over her face.

  None of them could do anything.

  “Hey!” The PSS said and lunged for Precious’s lead. The Basset hound darted around The PSS. She shot past Simms who said, “Dang it!”

  With long ears soaring in the wind and her crooked knees nearly knocking together, Precious galloped headlong into Nardle.

  •

  Bubba searched the building again. He took a moment to shred his t-shirt into strips and hogtied Morgan Newbrough in a manner which would have made calf ropers proud. Unfortunately it wasn’t timed; Bubba thought he might have broken a record.

  Morgan didn’t shoot anything just now. I didn’t hear a gunshot. I didn’t hear a gunshot. Bubba repeated the mantra as if it would save him. There wasn’t a gunshot.

  Bubba paused to call Sheriff John, but he hadn’t gotten his disposable phone back from Tee. He looked slowly about and decided he could look for a freshly turned patch of earth.

  Numbness began to settle in his bones.

  •

  Sheriff John looked in Forrest Roquemore’s house and shook his head. No one had been inside. The seal from the CSI team was still on the door, unbroken, until he had broken it a minute before.

  He stepped back onto the porch and thought about it. Bubba had to be around somewhere. The good ol’ boy had seen something and taken off like a bullet.

  Big fella like that dint fly away.

  A hint of movement caught Sheriff John’s eye. His eyes got big as he perceived what it was coming.

  Bubba’s Basset hound came bounding down the road, spared Sheriff John a brief glance, and turned down Forrest’s driveway. She went right around the house. A tan leash trailed behind her as she ran.

  After a moment of hesitation, the sheriff pursued the dog. As he came around the edge of the house, he saw Precious scrambling under a gate. A donkey hee-hawwhhhed at the dog and wheeled away.

  Precious ignored the braying donkey and chased ruts across the field.

  Sheriff John paused to open the gate on account he couldn’t squeeze under the fence. By the time he trotted across the field, the animal was out of his sight. But the other gate just inside the tree line wasn’t.

  •

  Bubba couldn’t find anything. He couldn’t find any sign the earth had been recently dug up. He couldn’t find Forrest Roquemore. Most importantly, he couldn’t find Willodean Gray.

  But he had Morgan Newbrough.

  Bubba stomped to where the man lay hogtied next to the broken wall of the building. Staring down at the still-unconscious brother of a killer, Bubba couldn’t decide exactly what to do next.

  Or just another killer?

  Bubba’s hands were nearly wrapped around Morgan Newbrough’s neck before he stopped himself.

  She still might be- oh hell. She still might be…

  His hands twitched longingly. Bubba could pick Morgan
up and bash his stupid skull against the wood until the man stopped breathing. He could break Morgan’s silly addlepated neck in a heartbeat. He could push Morgan’s face into the mud and wait until he stopped breathing.

  And oh, I want to, oh how I want to.

  His hands convulsed closer to the insensible man.

  Bubba stopped. His eyes closed.

  Then something licked his hand in a wetly salacious manner. His eyes snapped open.

  “BARRRR-OOOOOO!” Precious bayed at Bubba. She danced on the ground, attempting to paw at him while her tail wagged furiously.

  The air came out of Bubba’s chest in a convulsion of pain. He knelt in order to pet his dog. Precious licked his hands and arms and his chest. She then put her front paws on his knees so she could lick his face. He would have held her but he didn’t think he was capable.

  “I lost her, Precious,” he said to the dog. “I lost Willodean. We gambled and we failed. I’m the dumbest redneck in the whole county and that’s saying a lot.”

  Precious’s head perked up at the sound of Willodean’s name. She bayed again. “BARRRR-OOOOOO!”

  Bubba blinked at his dog.

  Precious dropped to all fours on the ground and systematically sniffed. Lew Robson had trained Precious to hunt just like the other hounds he raised, but she hadn’t been one of the best. That was one of the reasons she had been given to Bubba.

  “Hunt, Precious?” Bubba said hoarsely. He stood up and discovered his knees felt like warmed rubber.

  “BARRRR-OOOOOO!”

  “Hunt. Find Willodean?” he said with a strained voice. “You know her, girl, don’t you? She gave you half her sandwich from Arby’s when she thought I wasn’t looking.”

  Precious put her nose to the ground. Silly human. Of course I remember the one with the roast beef. She paused abruptly and bayed again. “BARRRR-OOOOOO!”

  Off she went like a rocket. Precious went around the Suzuki and into the woods. A barely perceivable trail curled into the thick forest. Bubba hadn’t noticed it before because it was overgrown with brush and fast growing pines. He staggered after the dog; the numbness stilling his chest was starting to fade as he moved to follow Precious.

  One hundred yards into the forest was another building.

  Bubba hesitated. It was falling to pieces. Wood planks lay on the ground near the walls. The roof canted to one side. The shingles were half gone. Those remaining were covered with green moss. One side had collapsed into the ground. He could see right through the walls and knew straightaway no one was there.

  Precious bayed again. “BARRRR-OOOOOO!!!” She cast an impatient glance over her shoulder at Bubba. She circled the house.

  Bubba stumbled after the dog. She stopped in front of a pair of doors set at a forty-five degree angle into a great hill of earth and rocks. It was about fifty feet away from an antique house at the center of a small clearing. It was an old storm cellar. This part of Texas was tornado country during the windswept spring, and shelters had been used for the better part of two centuries here.

  The breath in Bubba’s chest froze as he took in the sparkling-new chain and lock on the moss-covered doors of the storm cellar.

  Wouldn’t be a new chain and lock ifin there weren’t something to hide. Morgan put the rifle in the old cotton gin building so it wouldn’t be in his car. He’d stopped there to get it and was gonna come here next?

  Bubba didn’t bother with the chain and the lock. He simply ripped the doors off. The wood was old and the hinges rusted. They came off with an alacrity that even surprised him. An alarming thought speared through him.

  If Willodean is alive, she wouldn’t have been stopped by these doors. Oh no, no, no. Everyone gave up hope, but not me. I didn’t. Maybe there’s a little chance.

  With swelling trepidation, Bubba descended three stone steps into the darkness. The storm cellar was larger than he would have guessed. Once people stored canned goods here, as well as used it to protect themselves from the irregularities of a thundery Texas spring.

  His eyes adjusted for about three full seconds before someone shrieked loudly and slammed him on the head with something very hard.

  As Bubba fell over, he saw Willodean step into the light flowing in from the wide opening he’d just made. She stared at him with a horror-filled expression on her lovely face. Black laced tightly around his awareness as he made contact with the hard-packed dirt floor. An explosion of pain rocked his face as it connected violently against the lowest step. As the darkness closed in, he registered Willodean leaning closer to him. She seemed as though she’d lost ten pounds, and a blackened bruise discolored the right side of her face.

  Bubba heard a crotchety voice say, “That ain’t my thrice-damned great-nephew!”

  Willodean said, “Oh God, Bubba,” and it was like heaven to his ears.

  Before Bubba’s eyes closed he saw Willodean and Forrest Roquemore staring down at him from a great distance. Both wore heavy iron shackles around their wrists and chains that trailed into the darkness. Obviously, she had used the shackles as a weapon to hit him. Obviously, the chains had prevented her from escaping. Obviously, she was well and truly alive!

  Oh.

  Precious stared down at them from the opening. A panting Sheriff John materialized, holding his service weapon in his hands. “Holy God,” he exclaimed, “what happened here?”

  Willodean knelt next to Bubba and put her hand on his forehead. Nothing had ever felt better in Bubba’s entire life.

  It didn’t matter that the back of his head and his jaw felt as if they were about to explode. Bubba smiled as he lost the battle to stay conscious.

  Epilogue

  I Ain’t Giving Nothing Away with the Chapter Title So You’ll Just Have to Read It

  Saturday, January 7th or maybe Sunday, January 8th or maybe Monday, January 9th

  Bubba heard voices.

  Angels?

  The voices discussed him.

  “It’s only a little fractured skull,” said one.

  “But he’s been unconscious for a long, long time,” said another. That one sounded like an angel. Throaty. Sexy. Feminine.

  A saucy angel. Just the kind I like.

  “The doctor said it was okay,” the first voice said. “He thinks Bubba will wake up anytime now.”

  “I didn’t mean to- ”

  “Bubba will understand the light from the open doors blinded you, and you had to hit whoever came down the stairs in order to survive. After all, Morgan said he was going to kill the both of you. It could have just as easily been him instead of Bubba.”

  “If I had seen it was Bubba,” the second voice nearly wailed.

  “Oh hush,” a third voice said. “He’s got a hard head. One of those deputies said the local police officers tried to kick it in on Christmas Day, and he recovered from that, didn’t he?”

  “Mom,” the second voice said, “what if I caused brain damage or something?”

  “Then he’ll forgive you because he won’t know any better,” said the first voice.

  The third voice laughed.

  “That’s not funny,” said the second voice.

  Bubba wasn’t certain, but he thought the first voice was his mother. The third voice was likely Celestine Gray, and the second voice sounded a lot like Willodean.

  Ifin Willodean is here I have to be in heaven.

  His eyes slowly opened. He wished for toothpicks because the eyelids didn’t want to stay open. He forced them up and made an effort to keep them there.

  It wasn’t exactly heaven, but it did have one angel in it.

  Dimly Bubba recognized he was lying in a bed in a hospital room. If he wasn’t mistaken he’d been in this very room the last time someone bashed in his noggin. An IV was attached to his right arm, and he was covered with several blankets, one of which was his great-great-grandmother’s quilt made from Civil War uniforms.

  Worse yet, he was wearing one of the hospital’s baby-puke colored gowns again. He could just see
the sleeve of it on his arm lying on top of the quilt. It wasn’t a good color for him.

  But what wasn’t worse was Willodean standing at the side of the bed, looking at someone beside her. His eyes keenly roamed over her. She wore a red t-shirt and tight blue jeans. Her black hair tumbled around her shoulders, and she appeared as if she hadn’t slept for some time. The bruise on her face had changed to shades of blue, green, and yellow. Despite all of that, she was still incredibly beautiful.

  Thank you, God, Bubba prayed briefly.

  Behind Willodean, Bubba’s mother sat in a straight-backed chair. Her snowy hair was scraped back into a tight bun, and her cheeks were drawn. The normally spiffy clothing she wore was rumpled, indicating she wasn’t as relaxed as she presented. She didn’t appear as though she’d had much more sleep than Willodean.

  On the little table next to his mother sat an arrangement of sunflowers with a bouquet of balloons bouncing about in the air above it. Next to the sunflowers sat a largish box with a prominent red ribbon on it. Bubba recognized the box. It was a hat box, and he’d seen it before in Willodean’s apartment.

  Something warm and mushy happened to his heart kind of like what happens to chocolate when it’s been sitting in the sunlight.

  Bubba’s glance flickered back to his mother before something started to leak from one of his eyes.

  Miz Demetrice’s cornflower blue eyes widened as she grasped Bubba’s eyes were open. A lingering, heartfelt sigh emitted from her mouth.

  Celestine Gray walked in-between Willodean and Miz Demetrice. Willodean’s mother said, “I’ve got to get some coffee in me. Can I- ” She realized Miz Demetrice’s mouth gaped open and turned to look at Bubba.

  Bubba saw Willodean’s wrists were heavily bandaged and reached out to touch one.

  Willodean’s head spun back as she jumped and cried, “Bubba!”

  Bubba didn’t know what to say when she leaned over him and pressed her face into his chest. Awkwardly, he stroked her back and tried to talk anyway but found he couldn’t open his mouth.

  Miz Demetrice grinned broadly at him. “Willodean beaned your head with the manacles,” his mother said. “Then you broke your jaw when you fell down. The doctors have got it wired shut.”