Only the Truth

ALSO BY PAT BROWN

The Profiler

Killing for Sport

How to Save Your Daughter's Life (Sept 2012)

The Murder of Cleopatra (2013)

PAT BROWN

Cover art by Shirley E.
Sonnemann

COPYRIGHT © 2012 by Pat Brown

For

all
those

brave
souls

who
seek

the
truth

I

She was just standing there by the side of the railroad tracks, not seeming
to know where she was. There hadn't been any trains in hours, nor would there
be for the rest of the day. She was standing there like a statue, with the little
red suitcase beside her.

She wasn't real pretty, but she was hardly ugly. She was a tiny thing with
light brown hair that hung limply onto her shoulders. She made me think of my
dog, which maybe isn't too nice a thing to say about a girl, but her hair
reminded me of my dog's fur, soft and long, but also worn and tired.

"Hey, girl!"
I yelled at her as I came up
the bank onto the gravel.
"
Whatcha
doing there?"
I wasn't worried too much about scaring her. I never
seemed to cause much fright to anyone. I was too short and too skinny. I didn't
look like I'd harm nobody.

She gave me a slight smile, but she didn't answer. She just looked my way. I
came right up in front of her, waiting for her to speak, but she didn't. She
had clear, sky blue eyes that looked kind of empty, but I found myself staring
in them, searching them for something, anything.

Then, I reached out and touched her shoulder.

She didn't flinch. She didn't move a muscle. She didn't even seem to feel my
hand there. She just kept looking at me. It was a strange feeling, staring into
someone's eyes, eyes that never blinked and just kept staring back at you. I
wondered if she was reading my mind and whether she would be able to know more
about what I was thinking than I did. Hell, I didn't even know what I was
thinking.

She finally spoke. "Who are you?"

"Billy Ray."

She seemed to think about my name a bit. Then she said, "Can I go with
you, Billy Ray?"

She said it so plain and sweet, I didn't know what she meant.

"Go with me?" She looked lost but I didn't understand what she
wanted.

She kept her eyes locked on mine, still not blinking.
"Just
with you?"

I didn't have
no one
at home. No momma. No daddy.
No family.
Just the one dog.
She didn't seem like she
would be a problem to me, so I picked up her bag and took her hand and we
walked out of town and the three miles up Makin Road to my place.

********************

There is no real understanding Charlene. But then I never learned much of
anything about women, so I didn't think I had to make work of it. Besides,
Charlene
don't
ever get mad at me. She cooks like the
Mama I never had and maybe if she had shown up twenty years ago when I was
still a
growin
' boy, she would have made a real man
out of me. Now, all
them
biscuits she puts out make me
round in the middle, but I
ain't
complainin
'
and she laughs and pats me there, so she
ain't
complainin
' neither.

My dog likes her and that's saying a lot. He knows
good
when he comes into good. Charlene likes him, too. She feeds him her food before
she even starts into her own, and she lets him keep his place on the bed beside
me with no
complainin
' about no dirty dog
gonna
be
sleepin
' in her bed.

I
ain't
never had been with a girl before and she
says she's never had no one before neither, and when we lie down for the first
time, I'm scared and she's scared and I don't know what to do to make her
happy. I never hung with the boys and I never went to look at dirty movies so I
don't know what girls like, but then Charlene says I'm doing all right and I
keep doing what she says is all right till she smiles and whispers my name like
I never heard no one say my name before.

And she adds "Sweet" before it, saying "Sweet Billy Ray,
Sweet Billy Ray." She says she likes running her hand through my hair, with
its tight curly and steel-pad feel. She likes to rub her face over my hair,
too, but if I get stubble on my chin, she makes me go straight to the shaving
kit and make it smooth again.

I don't know why she likes it so rough on the top of my head but not on my
face.

So I don't let her shave her legs like she wants. Her hair there is soft and
I like running my hand over it. Sometimes we
jest
like
curlin
' up on the bed,
forgettin
'
to get up and do anything,
feelin
' each other all
over until we get so hungry I make Charlene cook something for me. I never had
much good in my life before Charlene came, just days of sweeping up the streets
in town and
heatin
' up the frozen food I buy at the
Acme and
sittin
' on the porch with Big Dog.

Somethin
' was always missing from my life but I
didn't know it was missing until Charlene came along. Now I finally have
someone to talk to besides myself and someone to listen to my stories, and she
likes my stories and she asks me to tell '
em
to her
again and again even though she already knows exactly how they all end.

********************

Charlene
won't never
leave the house. She won't go
to town and
do
shopping like you would expect girls to
do. She never asks about what I do in town when I come home from my work, and
even if I tell her 'bout something happened, she never asks
no
questions and after a while I just don't even talk about
anythin
'
outside our four walls.

She's strange, but she's nice, so I let her be whatever way she wants to be.
One day, she hung some garlic cloves right inside the front door and when I
asked her what she did that for, she told me it was to keep the vampires out. I
laughed
cause
I never heard of no vampires in these
parts; lots of ghosts and spirits, but no vampires.

I thought she was being silly. I should have paid attention to her and left
that garlic hanging there. It was the first of the mistakes I made that started
all the trouble with Charlene.

********************

He moved in across the road about a month before our second anniversary.
That old house across the way had been empty for as long as I remember. Don't
know who owned it and never thought of anyone living there. I was the only one
who ever lived on this road since my aunty died when I was fourteen and then I
jest
kept
livin
' in the house
alone till Charlene came if you don't count Big Dog who showed up when I was
about twenty.

********************

He was an old guy. He was white like Charlene, but his skin wasn't creamy
like hers. Must be he spent his life in the fields and that made him look two
shades darker. His hair was long and gnarled up like he didn't know 'bout
brushin
' it. He had a mustache and a beard that covered
most of his face and since his hair hung down long over it, best you could see
was just his eyes. I wandered over cross the road and looked at him more
closely and he smelt of liquor.

He nodded and grunted; I guessed it was a hello. Then he walked away and
went back around the side of his house. I went back to my side of the road and
the first week he lived there, the old man across the road stayed to
himself
and never set foot outside. I never went back over
to his side of the road, and he never came over to ours.

********************

Charlene sat with me on the back porch with our lemonades. It was a hot June
day and we could hear Big Dog across the street, barking.

"What's he barking at?" Charlene asked me. "I've been
listening to him bark all week long and I never heard him bark '
cept
for when you come back from town at night."

I told her about the old man who'd moved in. I told her he was her color and
he stunk of liquor and he didn't seem too interested in
talkin
'
much. Charlene and I took to
sittin
' on the back
porch in the evening,
listenin
' to Big Dog cause a
ruckus every time that man must have opened his front door. Didn't bother us
none; it would have all been fine if the old man had just stayed over on his
side of the road.

********************

The old man suddenly decided to be neighborly; at least that's what I was
guessin
' when he showed up at the front door. Charlene was
in the back bedroom and I guess she didn't hear the knock or she might have
told me to tell whoever was knocking to go the hell away. But she wasn't there
to tell me and so I opened the door.

Even worse, I pulled down the garlic that hung in the doorway lest it scare
our visitor away. When I opened the door he didn't say
nothing
,
just stood there, so I told him to come on in though I didn't know what I was
inviting him in for.

Charlene must have heard the door open or me
talkin
'
and she came out of the bedroom. She took a few steps into the room and when
she saw the old man at the door, she just stood still and didn't offer any
greeting. The old man muttered something about sugar, and
seein
'
that Charlene wasn't
movin
' toward the kitchen, I
went over and scooped two cupfuls into a paper bag and brought it to the old
man. It took me a minute to get his attention to take the sack because he was
looking at Charlene in a way I damn well didn't like.

I wanted him to go then, and I shoved the paper sack at him and stood
between him and Charlene, and he grabbed it out of my hand, turned and left. I
never saw him again.

Charlene stopped
talkin
' three days later. She
stopped
askin
' to hear my stories. She moved through
the day like the hours was
pressin
' heavy against
her. She didn't leave the house to sit on the back porch with me and she took
to using a chamber pot rather than the outhouse. She still did the
cookin
' and the
washin
', but I
began to feel like I was alone in the house with just Big Dog again.

I figured it was just some temporary thing, that Charlene would come around
in a day or so, but nothing changed all that week, or the next week, or the
next.

********************

My other mistake was going out for cigarettes on our second anniversary.
Charlene made a nice dinner and afterwards I presented her with a Hostess
cupcake with a candle in it. She almost smiled and that made me smile and I
helped her blow out the candle and I danced around the room with her and it
seemed like she was the old Charlene again. I felt like maybe we
was
going to be happy like we used to be. I should have kept
on dancing with her but I wanted some cigarettes
cause
I had run out, and I wanted to buy Charlene some candy. But to be honest, I
probably wouldn't have gone out to get Charlene candy if I hadn't really been
craving a cigarette, so it was thinking about me, not
her,
that
let the bad thing happen.

"I'll be back in a jiffy," I told her and jumped behind the wheel
of my truck. I'd just got her for $100 off of Melvin, who owned the liquor
store in town, and said his new truck was too sweet to be parked next to that
"Piece of Crap" on wheels, his dented Ford pick-up that was almost as
old as he was. Piece of Crap may be headed for the junkyard soon, but for now,
it was good for someone like me who just needed a ride once in a while if there
was
somethin
' like an emergency. We got no phone to
be
callin
' for an ambulance so if Charlene would get
sick or hurt, I needed some way to get to the big city. Piece of Crap was all
banged up and made lots of noises I didn't know nothing about, but Mel told me
I could pay him $10 a week till I owned the whole truck and if it broke down
before I got to the ten-week final payment, then he would give me my money
back.

I really never drove much before, but there
ain't
no traffic on the dirt road between my house and the town, so I can't kill
nobody if I drive bad.

I walked into Tom's Grocery to get me the cigarettes and candy. "I need
me some of that candy you got there for my girlfriend," I said, pointing
to the jar near the cash register. "And I need me some smokes." I
realized for the first time since Charlene showed up, I had said something
about her to someone else. I guess I'd always been afraid saying she was with
me might jinx her staying.

Lizzie raised her eyebrow and looked surprised as all get out, handed me
over my cigarettes and a handful of the little drops in the jar. I grinned and
walked back to my truck, feeling like a grown man for the first time in my
thirty-four years of life.

I must have smiled all the way home cause my jaws was
achin
'
when I turned up the mountain. Then I saw the smoke. There was a glow up toward
the house and it already felt hotter as I drove up the hill. I knew I was
panicking
cause
I was breathing way too fast. I
pressed my foot to the floor but the truck didn't seem to know how to go any
faster and it took what seemed like an hour to climb that steep hill.

I couldn't see over the top of it so I didn't know if the whole forest was
on fire. Finally, Piece of Crap bumped over the last rise in the road and I
could see a house on fire.
Took me a moment for the relief to
wash over me that it wasn't mine.
It was the old man's house across the
way. The thing was
blazin
' pretty darn
good
and I could hardly make out the structure, but lucky no
wind was blowing and the little house just looked like a well-kept fire someone
was
watchin
' as they burnt up a bunch of scrap wood
and old furniture. As I pulled up, I could make out the stove and a couch
through the flames, but I didn't see the old man in there.