The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

by M. Glenn Graves

  Suddenly, Laurel became aware that the rocking rhythm … back and forth, feet up, feet down … touching … up again … back … forward … was in time with each step that she and Homer took along the old dirt road.

  Then she knew who it was on the porch.

  Laurel touched Homer on his hip without looking at him.

  “Follow me,” she said and moved gradually to the opposite side of the old road.

  No sooner had she spoken than the figure on the porch stopped rocking and stood.

  “Been waitin’ for you little girl, been waitin’a long time. Good to see you, Miss Laurel. Really, really good to see you,” he said and grinned. “Who’s your friend there?”

  He raised the .22 rifle quickly and fired.

  The first shot hit Homer in the shoulder and he flinched. Laurel slid into the deepest part of the gulley along the road. It was no more than a foot deep, but at least it might provide her with some cover.

  “Get down, Homer!” she yelled. “Get down!”

  Homer shook his head. He handed her his crossbow and arrows.

  “Stay down,” he said and turned to face the man who had shot him in his now bleeding shoulder.

  Homer felt a silent rage inside his body. There was no fear in him as he walked to the middle of the road in front of Laurel’s position in the gulley.

  The second shot hit a glancing blow around his waist. The bullet only caught a small portion of his side but hurt just the same. Homer grimaced but stood his ground.

  “Get down, Homer! Get down!” Laurel pleaded.

  Homer began walking slowly toward the figure with the gun. Homer could now see that the man held a small caliber rifle. Homer knew that the man would have to kill him before he would stop. This would have to end. One of them would be dead soon. Homer believed that he would not be the one dying today.

  “Fellow, I suggest you stop right there. I’ll kill ya, don’t think I won’t.”

  The man lifted the rifle to his eyes and aimed at Homer’s midsection. Homer was nearly fifty yards away from the porch steps. The man with the rifle had moved from the rocking chair to the top step.

  Homer continued his slow but steady approach toward the man with the rifle.

  “Fellow, I ain’t kiddin’. You’re dead if you jest keep on comin’. I got nothing to lose here.”

  Homer’s pace was slow but purposeful. He had no intention of stopping. The man would have to kill him, or, he would kill the man.

  Twenty-five yards from the porch, the man fired again. This shot caught Homer in the right shoulder just below the shoulder blade. Homer paused and touched the spot where the bullet had entered his body. He was now bleeding from three wounds.

  The man cocked the rifle. He lifted the weapon and raised the sights to his eyes. His aim was for Homer’s head. Homer remained motionless as he stared at the man with the gun. The only thing going through Homer Gosnell’s mind was his need to protect Laurel from this man.

  Homer bolted straight for the man. It surprised the man. The surprise caused him to miss his large target as Homer rapidly closed the gap between them.

  Homer hit the man in full stride and drove him into the wall next to the screen door on the house. He dropped the rifle. Homer lifted the man with ease and drove him a second time into the wall. With his mighty hands locked around the man’s waist, he picked him up and repeatedly rammed him into the wall until the man had no fight in him.

  The man stopped breathing but Homer continued to ram him into the faded gray boards of the house. The boards cracked and begin to crumble with the repeated ramming action.

  The man’s body was limp. Homer continued the pounding.

  Laurel ran to the porch and tried to stop him.

  “He’s unconscious, Homer. You need to stop,” she pleaded.

  Homer was relentless with the bashing. Laurel yelled at him repeatedly to stop.

  Homer rammed two more times before he allowed the limp body to drop to the floor of the porch. The figure beneath him was motionless. Homer was finished now.

  Laurel knelt down to the figure. It was Curly McClure, or what was left of him. She felt his wrist for a pulse. It was faint but present.

  “We need to go, Homer.”

  Homer stood over the man’s body. Homer was bleeding from three wounds. Some of the blood dropped on Curly’s limp body. He shook his head.

  “Not until he’s dead,” he said.

  “He’s hurt really bad.”

  “He was coming after you.”

  “I’m safe now. We can go.”

  “He may come after you again,” Homer said.

  “It will be a long time before that happens. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “He’s a bad man.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want you to kill him.”

  “He’s not a good person,” Homer said.

  “I’m safe with you,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Laurel turned and walked off the porch back towards the road. She hoped that her walking away would cause Homer to follow. She was wrong.

  It was the crunching sound which made her turn quickly back to look at Homer. He had Curly’s body in his arms face up. Homer was looking into Curly’s eyes. In that brief interval when she had turned her back and walked off the porch, Homer had lifted Curly’s body and crushed him somehow.

  Laurel watched Curly McClure’s carcass slide slowly through the arms of Homer Gosnell as it landed on the old porch with a thud. There was no need for her to check Curly’s pulse this time.

  Homer turned away and walked past her to the road and on down the little hill. Laurel followed him, thinking about what her new friend Homer had just done. Something in her was apprehensive but not fearful. She knew that Homer Gosnell was her protector, and anyone who tried to harm her would suffer grave consequences. She looked back at Curly once more. Curly would not be bothering her ever again. Curly would not be bothering anyone again.

  Laurel picked up Homer’s bow and sheath of arrows, and then trotted to catch her fast-walking friend.

  “You could’ve shot him with your bow,” she said as if to question why he acted as he did.

  Homer continued walking, but said nothing in response.

  “Why didn’t you use your bow to stop him?”

  Home stopped, turned to face her, and placed his large hands on her shoulders. He seemed to be lost in thought for a few seconds.

  “It didn’t seem like the thing to do at the time,” he said.

  He turned and headed down the road. Laurel followed.

  Chapter 22

  “Rifle shots,” Starnes said to me.

  “Not a good sound.”

  We bolted into a sprint. Our gait was nothing to write home about, but at least we were now running as fast as we could toward the rifle shots. Starnes was a faster runner, but I had longer legs. I was within a stride of her lead. The dogs followed with ease. We heard two more shots during our enhanced pace.

  Twenty minutes or so later we left the trail and found ourselves on a logging road.

  I was the first one to stop running. Starnes pulled up a few yards in front of me. She stopped and waited without turning around. Her breathing was labored as was mine.

  “Grapevine entrance?” I said.

  “Yep. Should be a house about a quarter mile on the left.”

  “You know who lives there?”

  “Empty. Been empty for several years. The owners just up and left one day.”

  “Particular reason?”

  “Remains one of Grapevine’s unsolved mysteries,” she said.

  We walked a little to catch our breath and then jogged to within sight of the house.

  “There’s the place,” Starnes said.

  “I don’t see anything … wait a minute … something on the porch.”

  We ran the last few yards to the house.

  By the time we approached the front yard we realized that it was a body lying on the porch. It was Curly McClure.<
br />
  He was dead.

  Starnes checked for a pulse but that was useless. We both knew that Curly was dead. She also checked the body for the cause of his demise. I noticed the rifle lying on the porch about five feet away from his body.

  “Anything?” I said.

  “Nothing visible, but I’d say offhand, because of the way the body is crumpled on the floor, his back was broken.”

  “Lot of head wounds, too,” I said.

  “Yeah, somebody beat him to a pulp.”

  I picked up the rifle and examined it. It was a .22. It had been fired.

  “Help me here,” Starnes said.

  Starnes and I turned the body over and she lifted his shirt. His back, shoulders and lower torso were red. Some bruising was beginning to show.

  “If there was a fight, he didn’t fare so well,” she said.

  “Nice deduction.”

  Starnes pushed on his shoulders and back.

  “Whattaya thinking?” I said.

  “Never felt anything like this. I’d say offhand that most of the bones are broken.”

  “How so?”

  “Well a stampede of cows could do it,” Starnes said.

  “Or a giant of a man?”

  “Well, Laurel probably didn’t do it,” she said.

  “Not sure it’s good police work to jump to any conclusions here, but I think we can agree that Laurel didn’t do this. That leaves only one viable suspect.”

  “Now who’s jumping to conclusions?”

  “Merely a deduction considering who we’re following on the trail.”

  “I will say that Homer the Giant is certainly capable of inflicting this kind of damage on another person. And allowing for the fact that Curly was not a large man … yeah, Homer could’ve done this.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “It’s a safe bet,” she said.

  “They can’t be too far ahead of us now,” I said.

  “We need to find them,” Starnes said. “It’s a different game now.”

  “I don’t believe Homer would harm her. You think otherwise?”

  “He pulverized the man’s head and body. Then he crushed the life out of ‘im. As far as I know, the only weapon Homer had with him was his crossbow. I see no signs of any arrow wounds. The rifle shots we heard were likely fired by Curly. I’ll wager that’s his gun there. It would appear that Curly shot at Homer, or at both of them for that matter, and then Homer overtook him. With his bare hands, Clancy. With his hands! That’s violence.”

  “And shooting someone with a rifle is not violent?”

  “Touché. Still, Laurel is only fourteen years old. What if …,” her voice trailed, but I knew what she was thinking.

  We both moved into the yard to see if we could find some evidence as to what may have occurred at this abandoned house. Starnes stayed in the yard searching intently for some small clue. Sam began sniffing at some ground odor and I watched him as he diligently tracked whatever it was that caught his attention. He moved away from the porch. I followed. As I moved towards his location, I searched the ground for whatever I could find.

  “I have blood here,” Starnes said.

  Dog was sniffing around the area, and Starnes was trying to keep her away from the blood spatter she had located.

  I looked down at the spot where Sam was paying close attention.

  “Me, too,” I said. “I have lots of blood here.”

  She left her area and joined me near the road. I moved onto the road, still searching for more blood or anything else, but found nothing. I walked a short distance back from the direction that I believed Laurel and Homer would have approached the front of the house. I spotted some tracks. I called Sam over to my location.

  “Did they stop here, boy?”

  Sam sniffed around for a minute or two. He presently sat down, wagged his tail, and barked once. That was good enough for me.

  “I believe they stopped here,” I pointed to some heavy indentions in the rain softened ground. Sam and I agreed on that.

  I watched Starnes take some blood samples – first from the spot I had discovered where the blood was the heaviest, and then closer to the porch for the next one. She pocketed the two evidence tubes.

  “Come on,” she said. “I know a couple who lives about a mile or so from here. They have an old Ford pickup. We can borrow it and maybe overtake them.”

  Neither one of us had a working cell phone. Our batteries had long since run out of power. We came to the house where Starnes knew the couple. They allowed us to use the phone and we called the sheriff to report Curly’s demise. We also reported on the other two men back at Homer’s place.

  I listened while Starnes was on the phone with one of the deputies.

  “You know where Homer Gosnell lives?” she said.

  There was a pause.

  “Is Rufus around? He probably knows where Homer lives since he knows where everybody else in the county resides.”

  Another long pause. Starnes was waiting impatiently.

  “Nothing to check out, D.C. You need to have those two bodies brought down the mountain. Both are dead.”

  Pause.

  “Still investigating that.”

  Starnes looked at me and rolled her eyes.

  “There’s no way you can reach us. Our cells are dead. Tell Buster that there’s another body at the old Willis place at the end of Grapevine. The Willis place… on the right where the road makes a cul-de-sac … just before that long stretch of the logging road ends at the trailhead.”

  Starnes turned around a few times as she listened to whatever was being said to her.

  “Yeah, that’s the place. Listen, we should go. We’ll call again as soon as we can.”

  I listened as Starnes told the deputy our location. She also told the deputy that we were still in pursuit of Laurel Shelton, who had been missing for a few days now. I also heard her tell whoever was on the other end that if they wanted a statement from us, we would be at Starnes’ home.

  The old couple gladly let Starnes borrow the truck. It took a few minutes to get it started, but Starnes seemed to know exactly how to do that. Master of many talents.

  We were sputtering down the road in no time after Starnes had finished her phone conversation with the law enforcement of McAdams County and her jackleg mechanic work.

  “We’ll have a lot of explaining to do when we finally meet up with your sheriff and his staff,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I noticed that you didn’t give out much detailed information to whomever you were talking with.”

  “D.C. Smathers.”

  “Friend or foe?”

  “Neither. Just an acquaintance. Known her for a few years. Went to high school together. She’s a good person but not much with investigations.”

  “Compared to your skills in that area, I don’t come out looking good myself.”

  “Unlike her, you have some investigative qualities.”

  “Thanks for noticing.”

  “She can get lost in a crowded room,” Starnes said.

  “It takes a mountain forest for us to get lost.”

  “We’re not lost. We just can’t seem to find the people we’re looking for.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’ve been bewildered for almost three days.”

  “D.C.’s been bewildered most of her life.”

  “That would make her perfect for this adventure,” I said.

  “All I can say is that she and Rock, the other deputy, make for an interesting couple.”

  “Couple as in coupling?”

  “Something like that. They think nobody around town knows anything, but everyone knows. Hard to keep secrets in a small community. They’ve been hooking up for a few years now.”

  “Both single?”

  “What difference does that make?” Starnes said.

  “I’m old-fashioned.”

  “Yeah, both single.”

  “So why are they hiding the fact th
at they are … uh, dating?”

  “Long story. You ever heard of the Hatfields and McCoys?”

  “You’re kiddin’.”

  “No, they’re not Hatfields or McCoys, but the storyline is similar. Feuding families from way back. Their clans would not tolerate such a relationship, at least not openly.”

  “Hence the clandestine romance,” I said.

  “Bingo.”

  “So where are you taking us?”

  “Well, if we don’t come across Homer and Laurel walking along the highway in the next twenty to thirty minutes, then I’m going home. I’m tired, hungry and fed up with your adventures.”

  “My adventures? You called me,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, this time. But we seem to end up in a mess… always.”

  “You mean like finding dead bodies strewn around?”

  “I mean precisely like finding dead bodies, as well as hiking in the woods for days on end, hunger, and the strange people we meet.”

  “And this is my fault?”

  “Fault might be a bit harsh. Messes seem to follow you around.”

  “You could always call someone else next time,” I said.

  “Don’t know anybody else to call. I’d rather have you.”

  “Messes and all, huh? Can’t live without me.”

  “Don’t get too cocky. I’m training Dog to take your place.”

  “Let me know when she finishes her schooling.”

  Chapter 23

  Starnes drove the old Ford pickup slowly through Grapevine. Such endearing names in the county, it seemed to me. Both of us expected to see two figures walking along the road as we headed the borrowed vehicle towards Highway 213 between Athens and Madison. Sam and Dog pretended to be farm dogs taking in the sights and breezes of rural life from the bed of the truck. They learned quickly that it was better to lie down in the bed as opposed to catching the full force of the wind as the vehicle moved steadily along the road. Fast studies.

  Ten minutes later, we had not spotted a solitary figure walking the road. We moved along around forty miles an hour searching both sides of the highway. Our efforts proved fruitless. Starnes was frustrated with our lack of success.