Family Thang (41 page)

“Over-the-counter products, Mr. Bledsoe, are also effective reducing acid production in the stomach. Tagamet HB, Zantac 75, Pepsid AC. If one of those doesn’t work come see me Monday morning. Good-bye, Mr. Bledsoe.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Doc, I tried all those. In fact I mixed up a batch of stuff this morning--didn’t work. I know it’s Sunday and I shouldn’t have called your house. I’m in pain here!”

“All right, Mr. Bledsoe, I’ll give you a prescription. I shouldn’t do this without first examining you. If it doesn’t alleviate your discomfort come see me in the morning.”

“Doc, I can’t thank you enough. How do I get to your house? I’m on my way.”

“Hold your horses, Mr. Bledsoe. I’ll call Tim Hudson at the Wal-Mart pharmacy. He’ll fix you up. You may need to hurry, he closes at seven.”

Sheriff Bledsoe thanked him ten times, hung up the phone and looked at his watch. A quarter till seven. He didn’t need to hurry; Wal-Mart was a five-minute drive away. He got into the cruiser and just as he was reaching to turn off the dual band radio, it called his name.

“Ennis? You there, Ennis? Pick up.”

He stared at the radio as if it were a bomb. He wasn’t aware his eyes filled with tears.

“Ennis? Pick up if you’re there.”

He grabbed the mike, put it to his mouth, put it down and picked it up again. “Ennis, here,” he said, voice cracking.

The city of Dawson couldn’t afford its own dispatcher, so Tracy Walls, the dispatcher in Ashley County, provided the service for a nominal fee. She rarely radioed Sheriff Bledsoe except in emergencies.

From his stomach came a loud rumbling noise, similar to stampeding cattle. Excruciating pain would soon follow. He leaned to his right and massaged his chest, a futile attempt to head off the oncoming agony.

“Ennis, a man just called, said there’s a family disturbance next door. Shots fired. A shotgun, he said. Ten-Fifteen Dixie Drive. You want me to call the state police for backup?”

After the pain subsided a bit, he sat up and stared out the window, up at the sky, wondering if he had somehow been cursed. Maybe his misery was for the time he posted his ex-wife’s boyfriend’s car as a stolen vehicle.

“No,” he said into the mike. “Ten-four, I’m on it. I’ll let you know if I need backup.”

On average there were two or three shootings a year in Dawson. Just his luck, a few minutes from the purple pill, which he was certain would end his misery, a dang shooting occurred. It was enough to make a man swear.

Ten minutes later he knocked on a door and a man appeared in a side window and said, “Next door.”

He crossed the yard to where Walter and Colleen Riley were standing on the porch. “How you doing, Walter?” Neighbors were looking on.

“Not good,” Walter said.

“What’s going on? I heard someone out here shooting.”

“I was.”

“What for?” looking for a weapon.

“A pervert broke into our home,” Colleen said. She wore a blue uniform, a Hillard Catfish Farm patch on the right arm. “We almost got him.”

“How you know he was a pervert?”

She and Walter exchanged looks. “We know,” she said.

“Why don’t we go into the house and discuss this,” and saw the shotgun propped behind a plastic lawn chair on the porch. “Bring it in with you, Walter.”

“We can’t get in, Sheriff,” Colleen said.

“Why not? He’s not inside, is he?”

“No,” Walter said. “Our daughter pushed something against the door and locked us out.”

“Why she do that?”

“I don’t know. She needs her ass whooped, for one thing.”

Sheriff Bledsoe knocked on the door. “How old is she?”

“Twenty-one.”

“What’s her name?”

“Linda.”

“Linda, this is Sheriff Bledsoe. Open the door, sweetheart.” He waited. “Linda, if you don’t open the door, I’ll have to break it down. You don’t want me to break your parent’s door, do you?”

He heard something scrape across the floor and then the door opened. One look at her and another herd stampeded inside his stomach. 

“I’ma beat your ass!” Walter said to Linda. “When I start working on your ass, I’m beating you for old and new. Mostly new!”

“Hold the threats, Walter,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “C’mon, let’s go inside and figure out what’s going on here.”

“Ain’t no threat,” Walter said, staring at his daughter.

Inside, after Walter put the shotgun behind the door, Sheriff Bledsoe requested everyone take a seat. Colleen and Walter sat on the couch while Linda remained standing. Sheriff Bledsoe said, “Did someone break into your house?”

“Yes,” Colleen and Walter said.

“No, he didn’t!” Linda said. “I let him in. He didn’t break in. I let him in. We didn’t do nothing.”

“Dammit!” Walter shouted. “Go to your room!”

“Wait a minute, Walter,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “Let her talk.” To Linda: “Who did you let in?”

She looked at her father and stuck her thumb into her mouth. “Erbic.”

“Who?”

She took her thumb out. “Eric.”

“What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know his last name.”

“Tall, lanky, bushy eyebrows?”

Linda returned her thumb to her mouth, rubbed her nose with the index finger and nodded.

“Eric Barnes?” Sheriff Bledsoe said.

Walter said, “He’ll have to change his name to dead meat when I get through with him.”

“Why did you let him in?” Sheriff Bledsoe asked.

She shrugged.

“What did he do when he was here?”

Linda, one eye staring at her father and the other a
t Sheriff Bledsoe, garbled, “We
dint do
o
nuffin!”

“She’s not helping you, Sheriff Bledsoe,” Colleen said. “Can she be excused?”

“I guess so,” avoiding looking at her.
What the hell was Eric thinking?
“I may need to talk to her again.”

“What you waiting on?” Walter shouted at his daughter. Linda ran out of the room and seconds later Sheriff Bledsoe heard a door slam. He thought to tell Walter to lighten up on the girl, but didn’t think it would help matters.

Walter said, “I’ve been trying to get his name for a while. I’m glad you told me.”

“Walter, you may already be looking at a weapon discharge violation, so hold the vigilante talk. This is what I’m paid to do, so let me handle it, okay?”

“Hell, Sheriff,” Walter said. “You saw her. You can tell she’s Super Glued on silly. Can’t even talk without sucking on her damn thumb. It ain’t right! A rusty butt man! In my house! You know it ain’t right, Sheriff. What if she were your daughter?”

“She said nothing happened.”

“Maybe nothing happened today,” Colleen said. “We know for a fact he’s been fooling around with her.”

Walter said, “Hell yes, Sheriff. It ain’t right! Ain’t none of it right! Here I am sleeping on the couch and I hear Colleen screaming, and this fool ran out and started attacking her. Scared me so bad I didn’t know what to do first, beat him with my bare hands or shoot him?”

Colleen said, “He didn’t attack me. I grabbed him.”

Walter pointed to the shotgun behind the door. “I had him--sight alignment, sight picture, right between the eyes. Damned Linda jumped on my back.” Shaking his head: “I had him!”

“Walter, you’re lucky,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “If you’d shot him, you’d be on your way to jail now.”

“Linda’s the one who’s lucky,” Walter said. “She’s damn lucky that woman didn’t hurt her.”

“What woman?”

“His wife, or girlfriend,” Colleen said. “She’s a big woman. Last year she caught Linda and that man inside her house and she walked Linda home. Told me to keep an eye on my daughter ’cause the next time, she said, Linda wouldn’t be able to crawl back. She told me this to my face, about my own daughter. Anyone else I would’ve raised hell, but she had this look in her eye--it scared me. She was serious than diabetes.”

“Shirley Harris,” Sheriff Bledsoe said, rubbing his chest. “I’m surprised you don’t know her.”

“No, I don’t know her. Is she any kin to Larry Harris?”

“Yes, he’s her father.”

“Oh,” Colleen said. “Explains why she’s keeping house with a pervert.”

“What do you mean?”

“Larry worked at Hillard Catfish Farm. We used to call him Loony Larry. He was mad all the time, always telling the supervisor what he would or wouldn’t do. I’m surprised he kept his job as long as he did. Somebody
told me he ate spoiled pig feet
, got sick and died.”

“You think someone at his job was angry enough to do something to him?”

“Sheriff,” Walter said, “what’s this got to do with the situation here? We want to know what you’re doing about Eric Barnes.”

Colleen said, “Everybody who worked there, including myself, wanted to do something to him one time or another. He had a bad habit of name-calling. You ask him to stop, he’d keep at it, say it more often. He really got to tripping right before he retired. For years he’d been telling everybody how much money he’d invested in the company’s stock plan. A million plus, the way he told it. Come to find out he’d never signed up for the stock plan. He thought it was automatic. All those years and he--”

“What!” Sheriff Bledsoe shouted. “You mean he never had a million dollars? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Everybody--everybody at Hillard knows about it. Ask anyone there, they’ll tell you.”

Sheriff Bledsoe stared at her.

“Sad news,” Walter said. “Sheriff, are you gonna arrest this scumbag? If you don’t do something to him, I will.” Sheriff Bledsoe kept staring at Colleen, his mind obviously elsewhere.

“Sheriff? Sheriff?”

Sheriff Bledsoe rubbed his chest and squeezed his stomach. “What?”

“Are you listening to me?” Walter said.

“I hear you. I hear you loud and clear,” and got up and walked out the door without saying another word.

Chapter 37

“Reap what you sow. Reap what you sow.”

Eric talked to himself as he walked to Count Pulaski State Park. “Reap what you sow.” His mother had told him that a thousand times.
Man, was she right!
He’d sowed bullshit and he’d definitely reaped bullshit.
Big time!