Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller (8 page)

  Sheriff White figured it was just some old biddy that didn’t like any man who took a drink, or had any fun at all, for that matter. They probably told another old biddy, and then it spread like all rumors do in small towns and communities. Like a fire in a dry brush pile. But he didn’t want to be accused of shirking his duties by those who kept electing him. It was just going to have to wait until late in the evening after it had cooled off.

  “Man, I hate not bein’ home for supper,” he said to himself, but loud enough that his secretary heard him.

  “What was that, sheriff?” she asked.

  “Oh, nuthin’ Kate. I was just thinkin’ out loud. I gotta go check out a rumor I heard about a still today and I didn’t wanna go ‘til it cooled off. I just hate missin’ supper with my wife and kids. I had to work late last night. Those kids are gonna be gone before I know it. Time goes by in a hurry.”

  “Well sheriff, you have twelve full time deputies and four part timers. Why don’t you learn to delegate more. You don’t always have to be in the middle of everything, you know.”

  The sheriff let what Kate said sink in for a minute. “By golly you’re right, Kate. That’s what them boys get paid for. I’ll just send a couple of ’em down there in a little while. I don’t figure there’s anything to it anyhow.”

  Ben Goodman and Wally Yates were the two deputies that were not out serving papers or on a call, so the sheriff had the dispatcher get them on the radio. Both of them knew Hugh Williams and where he lived. Old Hugh pretty much stayed to himself and around home when he was drinking, but occasionally got adventurous and would take off in his old log truck. They had both pulled him over a couple of times and taken him home. They never put him in jail because they felt sorry for his wife and boys. He had never hurt anyone and his old log truck wouldn’t go fast enough to pose much of a danger to other cars. Hugh barely crept along when he was sober and drove even slower when he was full of liquor.

  The two deputies turned their car down the dirt road beside Hugh’s house. There were a few other people who lived on the road and the squad cars had been down the road several times, so the men didn’t think anyone would think anything of it. They pulled their car into a little side road that led into one of the neighbor’s pastures and got out. There wasn’t a house in sight where they had parked and hoped no one would notice. They were wrong. As soon as they had gotten out of the car and were about to cross the pasture fence, two pick-up trucks pulled up. Both were farmers who lived nearby and one had his wife with him.

  “What seems to be the trouble, boys?” J.F. Baxter asked in an excited tone.

  Yates answered, “Nuthin’ to worry about. We’re just stoppin’ to stretch our legs a little.” The two deputies could tell J.F. wasn’t buying it, though. Mack Simpson, the other farmer, got out of his truck and walked over to where J.F. was sitting in his truck, his wife at his heels.

  “Reckon what’s a-goin’ on, J.F?” Mack asked.

  “They said it wasn’t nuthin’. Said they was stretchin’ their legs. Sure picked a fine place to do that.”

  Deputy Goodman wanted to be nice, but he didn’t want the whole neighborhood knowing what they were doing, either. “You men need to move along now. We are here on business for the sheriff.”

  “Thought you was just stretchin’ your legs,” Mack retorted, spitting a stream of snuff on the ground.

  “We are,” Goodman said. “We’re gonna walk across this pasture here and give them a good stretchin’. We don’t need any help doin’ it either, so just go on about your business.”

  Mack walked back to his truck, his wife following him like a little puppy. J.F. told the deputies if they needed any help to just blow their horn or shoot their pistols in the air and he and Mack would be there in a minute. Goodman told him he would do just that. That seemed to satisfy him and Mack and they drove away slowly, looking back the whole time.

  The deputies crossed the pasture and entered onto the back corner of Hugh William’s forty acres. Hugh’s pasture was all grown up from years of neglect. The only exception was the few places his two milk cows had grazed it down. There were also a few of Hugh’s hogs that had rooted out from under their pen running around. Yates kept a close eye on the old sows. They were known to bite once in a while. They finally made their way down to where Hugh’s pasture joined Jack Bynum’s property, Big Wills Creek being the dividing line. From there they walked along the creek bank to where an old road ran from Hugh’s house down to the creek. If there was a still it would most likely be near the creek, close to the water source.

  They decided to walk up the road a ways before exploring the creek to see if there were any fresh tire tracks. When they had gone maybe fifty yards, Yates spotted two barrels that looked out of place. The lids were sealed tight and someone had used a lot of tape doing it.

  “Do you think there’s ‘shine in them barrels?” Yates asked Goodman.

  “Ain’t but one way to find out,” he answered, pulling out his pocket knife.

  “We need a warrant, don’t we?”

  “Do you wanna walk all the way back to the car, as hot as it is, drive to the courthouse to get a warrant, and have to walk all the way back out here?”

  “I guess not. But what if it’s not ‘shine and we ruin somethin’ that belongs to Hugh?”

  “We’ll just tell him the county will reimburse him for it. You worry too much.”

  Goodman took his knife and started cutting the tape away. It proved to be an arduous task. The tape was the thickest stuff he’d ever seen and there were several layers of it.

  “Hell fire. It’s gonna take me a half a day to get all this shit cut loose,” Goodman exclaimed, wiping sweat from his forehead and eyes with his shirt sleeve. “I wish I had a bigger knife.”

  The two men took turns sawing away at the thick layer of tape until finally they got enough cut loose that they could start tearing it with their hands. When they finally had gotten down to the lid, they saw that the metal band around the top was bolted on.

  “Shit. We ain’t got a wrench or nothin’,” Goodman said. “Run up to old Hugh’s house and see if you can find one layin’ around.”

  “What if they see me?”

  “Ain’t nobody home but his wife and she don’t get around good. Got rheumatism or somethin’. Just look around where he works on those old cars.”

  Yates slowly and reluctantly started toward the house, then decided he’d better pick up his pace. He didn’t want to be caught out there if Hugh came home early. Even if he was a lawman, he didn’t have any right to go pilfering through someone else’s stuff without a warrant. He finally made it up to Hugh’s yard and the old cars and after looking all around them, saw nothing but some old beer cans and other trash. Then he bent over and looked under one of them. He spotted an old rusty, adjustable wrench that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. But luck was on his side. He had spotted an oil can sitting on the edge of the front porch. If he could only be fortunate enough for there to be a little oil left in it. He walked quietly up to the porch, trying to stay low and out of sight of anyone that might be looking out the windows. Just as he reached the porch, he heard growling coming from somewhere underneath. He grabbed the can and took off like an Olympic sprinter, the dog chasing him and barking like he was going to eat him alive. He was afraid to look back at the beast. Then he remembered he carried a gun. He kept running, at the same time fumbling with the holster, trying to get his .38 caliber pistol free. When it finally was free of the holster he turned quickly, hoping he could get a shot off before the dog jumped him. When he saw the ancient canine, he almost laughed out loud. He would have if he hadn’t been so terrified. The old dog stopped as soon as he turned around and started wagging his tail.
That old dog couldn’t bite a pork chop,
Yates thought to himself.

  Goodman was waiting impatiently when Yates walked up with the old wrench, dripping with oil.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Kiss my narrow ass. I was almost ate up by a dog. Next time you can go.”

  Goodman went to work loosening the bolt. It was tight and the threads were covered in corrosion. Yates poured what was left of the oil on the threads and the nut started to get a little easier to turn. Finally, after a lot of sweating and cursing, Goodman got it off. The lid was still sealed tight, however, and they both looked around for something to pry with. Yates found a rock and started tapping the side of the lid to loosen it as Goodman used the handle of the wrench to pry.

  Finally, after using a long pointed stick they had found, they managed to break the lid free. It made a loud sucking sound like opening a huge soda pop bottle. Immediately, the two men stepped back as the odor almost knocked them to their knees. It was the worst thing either of them had ever smelled, including a decomposing body. The smell of decomposition was part of the odor, but mixed with an overwhelming, chemical smell. Yates bent over and heaved, losing the lunch he’d eaten a couple of hours before.

  After they had adjusted somewhat to the shock and horrific odor, they pulled there shirts off and tied their undershirts over their noses. Goodman walked slowly up to the barrel, took his foot, let out a grunt and pushed it over. The sight of what came gushing out, caused Yates to puke again. Goodman joined him this time.                                                                                                                                The bones were evident. They were bleached white, but mostly still intact. The rest of the contents looked like a combination of dissolved internal organs, blood, and other unidentifiable liquids, which is exactly what it was.

  “I guess that’s some kind of acid that dissolved those bodies,” Goodman told Yates when they were finally able to speak again. “I’m not about to open the other one.”

  Yates looked at Goodman. All the color had drained from his face. If Yates could have seen himself, he would have seen that he was as white as a ghost, too.

  “We better radio the sheriff,” he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was in the back yard, almost finished with the mowing, when I saw Daddy come driving up the hill to our house like a bat out of hell. He and Paul, one of our hired hands, had just finished the evening milking at our dairy farm. We lived about three miles from the farm at momma’s insistence. She didn’t want to have to walk outside every day and smell cow manure and have to contend with the flies.

  My daddy was about as laid back as any man you ever saw and I figured it must have been something earth shattering for him to drive up like he did and start for the house in a trot. He wasn’t much of a trotter, unless he was chasing an old ornery cow. I shut off the mower and ran inside to see what had happened.

  When I opened the back door, Daddy was about as animated as he ever gets. He was telling momma something and was using hand gestures, something else he didn’t do much unless he was really excited.

  “They were all over the place, Rachel,” he was saying, “sheriffs cars, state troopers, and city police from Collinwood and Fort Kane.” Fort Kane was the county seat and the biggest town in Putnam County.

  “What happened, Daddy?” I asked, beginning to get excited about the prospects of some major crime in our community.

  “It looks like they found two bodies on Hugh Williams place,” he said, never taking his eyes off momma.

  “You mean dead bodies, Daddy?” I asked, my pulse starting to race.

  “What kind of bodies do you think I mean, George?” Me and Daddy were both named George, but I had the honor and distinction of putting Jr. at the end.

  “Did you see them?”

  “No, I didn’t see them. They were decomposed. It seems they had been dissolved in some sort of acid. They found them in fifty-five gallon drums.”

  “Hush that talk, George,” Momma said. “He don’t need to be hearin’ about that sort of thing.”

  “He’s almost fifteen, Rachel. You can’t keep him under your coattail forever, one of these days…..”

  I immediately stopped listening to what Daddy was saying when I heard about the drums. The first thing that ran through my mind was what me and Glenn had seen last Saturday afternoon. The two men loading the barrels in the back of that truck. Could this be the same drums we had seen? I started getting that feeling of what they call “butterflies in your stomach.”

  “Well, Junior. Do you want to ride with me or not?”

  “Ah, yeah…. I mean, sure I do. Can we take Glenn with us?”

  “Call him now and tell him to be ready,” Daddy said. “Him and Roscoe may already be there. About half the people in Long Hollow are.”

  I ran to the phone and dialed Glenn’s number. It rang several times before Priscilla, Glenn’s older sister, picked up.

  “Hey Prissy, is Glenn there?”

  “No, he’s not here, George. Him and Daddy went over to the William’s place. Have you heard what happened?”