Detective Tankersly said, “Aw, hell, Flossie—ever'body's married. What's the big deal?” His words were all flat and mushy. Drunk man's words.
Detective Tankersly said he didn't know she was a stick-in-the-mud. He was wobbling and having a hard time standing up. His white cowboy hat was on crooked.
When Detective Tankersly tried to kiss Mama, she shoved him back and called him some names she usually saved for my daddy when he was showing his fanny. Detective Tankersly said he wasn't surprised she used that kind of language, because Sara Jim had already told him Mama was a hellcat.
Mama said, “What did you just say? When did you see Sara Jim?”
Detective Tankersly hemmed and hawed and first said he hadn't seen Sara Jim. Then he busted out laughing and clapped his hands. He leaned back against his car and started talking. He really said a heap too much.
“I'll tell you what, Flossie, it's like ‘is,” Detective Tankersly drawled. “That bread man come home a month ago. I gave him a hunnert bucks and he told me right where Sara Jim was at. I told Sara Jim if she made it worth my while, I wouldn't tell old man Ave where she was hiding.”
Mama said, “I knowed it. You've been beating Uncle Ave out of his money.” And then she called Detective Tankersly some names I hadn't heard before. Detective Tankersly kept on talking like Mama hadn't said nothing. He musta sho’ nuff been drunk.
“Of course, Sara Jim didn't have no money. So, we worked out another payment plan, if you get my drift.” Detective Tankersly laughed and raised his eyebrows up and down.
Then Detective Tankersly said, that old man's got aplenty of money. He said he was gonna tell Uncle Ave where Sara Jim was after he got enough out of him to pay off his car.
Mama told Detective Tankersly that he wouldn't talk so big if Uncle Ave was listening, and she was gonna tell him. Detective Tankersly told Mama to go get him, meaning Uncle Ave.
Uncle Ave's old yellow Mercury was parked in the usual place in the front yard. Be durned if Uncle Ave didn't open the car's driver's-side door and ease out. He had been sitting in the car all the time and heard ever'thing they said.
Uncle Ave walked over to Detective Tankersly's new black Oldsmobile and took the keys out and throwed them off in the dark. Detective Tankersly followed the motion of Uncle Ave's arm like a dog watching somebody throw a tennis ball. He stumbled back real surprised and said to Uncle Ave, “I can't believe you did that!”
Uncle Ave grabbed the front of Detective Tankersly's red cowboy jacket and asked him where Sara Jim was hiding. Detective Tankersly, drunk and wobbling, said, “Don't mess with me, old man.” He balled his fat fist up in Uncle Ave's face and shook it.
Uncle Ave told Detective Tankersly to wait right there, and went inside the house. As Uncle Ave started up the steps, Mama screamed, “Oh, lord—he's going after his gun.”
Mama followed Uncle Ave inside, begging him to not do something crazy. Uncle Ave ignored her and went into the little room where he had been sleeping. He came out with his rusty old pistol. Like he always did, Uncle Ave was creeping along, not in no great big hurry.
Mama run in Paw Jack's room to wake him up, but he was already awake and putting his pants on. When he came out in the hall, Uncle Ave was going through the screen door.
Uncle Ave stood on the porch and cocked the pistol and pointed it at
Detective Tankersly. “You tell me where Sara Jim is hiding, or you're a dead man,” Uncle Ave said.
Detective Tankersly staggered over to his car, opened the door, and fell inside it. He came back up with a big automatic pistol he had pulled out from under the front seat. The gun looked way too big for his little fat hand. He aimed the gun at Uncle Ave.
About that time Paw Jack got to the door and said, “Avie, wait. Put the gun down,” Then Detective Tankersly fired a shot at Uncle Ave. Bam! The bullet missed and thunked into the porch wall behind Uncle Ave and Paw Jack.
Uncle Ave cussed and pulled the trigger on his old pistol. The gun snapped. Uncle Ave pulled the trigger again and the gun snapped again. Click. Click.
Paw Jack said, “Avie, I'm trying to tell you something. I bent the firing pin on that pistol so it won't shoot.”
Uncle Ave turned and looked at Paw Jack like he had gone crazy. Uncle Ave said, “What the hell did you do that for, Jack?”
Paw Jack said, “I didn't want you to shoot Sara Jim. I didn't know what else to do.”
Uncle Ave started to say something, but Detective Tankersly had staggered closer to the porch and was using both his fat little hands to take aim at Uncle Ave. Bam! This time when Detective Tankersly fired his big pistol, the bullet hit Uncle Ave right in the middle of the chest pocket on his bib overalls.
You would never think a fella as skinny as Uncle Ave would make such a racket when he hit the floor. Wham! Dead as a doornail. Dust fell out of the porch rafters.
* * * *
When the police got there, after Mama called them, Detective Tankersly was still crawling around in the dark looking for his car keys. You woulda thought a big-shot detective woulda had a flashlight.
The cops all knew Mama from Slow Bob's Quik Shop. The oldest one asked her to tell them what had happened. Detective Tankersly was still so drunk he had trouble explaining what happened. He said he wasn't really that sure.
Mama finally said if Detective Tankersly didn't tell about the trick he was pulling on Uncle Ave she would slap it out of him. Mama was a head taller than he was.
Detective Tankersly swallowed hard and said to the police, “It was the old man or me.” Then he added, “My mama didn't raise no fools.” He grinned and nodded at the police like he had just said something real smart.
Detective Tankersly stopped smiling when Mama said, “Well, who the hell raised you then?” Mama could shuck it down to the cob.
* * * *
Uncle Ave didn't have much of a funeral. There was just a few of us in the funeral-home chapel, until Sara Jim showed up, wearing a black dress and holding a white handkerchief wadded up in her hand.
Sara Jim said, “I guess I'm not too welcome here.”
Mama said, “Damn—you're a heap smarter than I thought you was.”
Paw Jack didn't recognize Sara Jim at first because of his cataracts, but later said he recognized that loud perfume. He said it made his eyes water.
Sara Jim stood around a few minutes, trying to look sad. Then she got down to business. Paw Jack said Sara Jim put the hay down where the goats could get it. She asked Paw Jack if he knew where Uncle Ave put his will. She said that Uncle Ave left everything to her in a new will he made when they got married.
“Seems like I remember you running off on him,” Mama said real sarcastic, like she used to do to my daddy.
Sara Jim was trying hard to cry, but there wasn't nothing coming out of her eyes. “I mighta run off for a short while, but I didn't divorce him,” Sara Jim said, real pitiful-like. “Flossie, I just needed some time to think.”
“What was you and that young buck bread man thinking about?” Mama said. “Trying to decide on regular or whole wheat?”
* * * *
We all had to go to court for Detective Tankersly's trial. They didn't ask me nothing, and I saw the whole thing. But Mama and Paw Jack testified. Mama said that Detective Tankersly had got knee-walking drunk at the country music club where they went and she had to drive his car home. And he didn't tell her that he had a wife in Columbus, Georgia, neither.
Paw Jack said that he thought he might have done the wrong thing by fixing Uncle Ave's pistol so it wouldn't shoot. But it seemed like the right thing at the time. He said that Uncle Ave didn't never miss with that pistol and he'd saw Avie shoot the heads off black runner snakes with it.
Sarah Jim put on a show, crying and taking on over Uncle Ave's getting shot. She denied ever having done personal things with Detective Tankersly, even though he had asked her to do something ugly several times.
She said she was put off by Detective Tankersly's tattoos, even thou
gh she had a rose tattooed on her back, and several of her husbands’ names in private areas.
But none of it mattered ‘cause the jury said that Detective Tankersly acted in self-defense.
They said Detective Tankersly didn't know Uncle Ave's gun wouldn't shoot. Detective Tankersly's lawyer said that he woulda done the same thing. He told the jury that all of them woulda done the same thing too. I could see some of the men on the jury nod their heads. And a few of the women. Everybody's real bad when they talk about what they woulda done. I always noticed that.
Later, Paw Jack told me and Mama that he felt kinda responsible for Uncle Ave getting killed. No wonder—he wuz responsible. But I didn't say that. I ain't that stupid. But I was thinking it. Who wouldn't of? Anybody would think the same thing.
* * * *
So after all that, things rocked on awhile pretty normal. Paw Jack's eyes got worse and Mama was still working at Slow Bob's Quik Shop.
After Uncle Ave sold all his stuff and put the money in the bank, he hadn't made out no new will leaving his money to Paw Jack, like he promised. So Sara Jim got a lawyer and got what money Uncle Ave had in the bank, except what the lawyer got.
And Sara Jim got the U-Haul trailer full of Uncle Ave's stuff that had been sitting in Paw Jack's yard all that time. Detective Tankersly came and hooked the trailer up to his Oldsmobile. Sara Jim, that lyin’ heifer, was with him. They had a deputy sheriff with them in case Mama and Paw Jack started trouble.
Paw Jack didn't do nothin'. He said he was too old to tussle with a big redheaded deputy sheriff. But he said it woulda been a different story thirty years ago.
I said, “Would you a-whupped him, Paw Jack?”
“Whupped him and two more just like him,” Paw Jack said and made that clicking noise with his tongue that means he's serious. "Chirk, chirk."
Mama was at work when they come and got the trailer, but she was sho’ nuff stirred up when Paw Jack told her about it. She said Sara Jim and Detective Tankersly deserved each other. She said if they had a young'un together they might as well take the little bastard straight from the maternity ward to the penitentiary and be done with it.
Mama and Paw Jack was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking beer and talking about all this stuff. Paw Jack said he was really surprised that Uncle Ave put all his money in the bank. He said, “Avie didn't never trust banks. He usually hid most of his money. I've knowed Avie to put money in a clay jug and bury it in the ground.”
Mama suddenly jumped up and ran to the little room where Uncle Ave had been sleeping and started looking for money. She hadn't thought about this before. She was about to give up looking when she pulled Uncle Ave's old skint-up suitcase out from under the bed. It had $80,000 inside it, in hundred-dollar bills.
Mama let out a whoop so loud that Paw Jack almost jumped out of his brogans. The neighbors’ dogs started barking.
* * * *
So when the weather warmed up that spring, me and Mama and Paw Jack took a ride in Mama's new green Camaro, with white stripes, over to Pine Mountain for a picnic.
Mama still worked at Slow Bob's Quik Shop, but she had bought herself that Camaro and was sho’ nuff tickled about that. She parked the Camaro in front of Slow Bob's when she was at work. When things got too aggervatin’ for her, she would look out the window at her new ride.
Paw Jack got them cataracts took off and could see almost good as new. He kept saying how purty everything looked, even the weeds by the road and the mailboxes. We was sitting at a picnic table on top of the mountain, looking away off and eating baloney sandwiches, when Paw Jack started crying. That sorta scared me some. It sounded like he was choking. Like he mighta been having a stroke or something.
Mama said, “What's wrong, Daddy? I ain't never seen you cry before.”
Paw Jack said just looking at that beautiful view off the mountain made him realize just what a miracle blessing it was that things turned around to where he got his eyes fixed with Uncle Ave's money. And Mama got a new car. Who in the world could have seen all this coming? he said.
“Flossie, I thought I was blind for good,” Paw Jack sobbed. “I see the Lord's hand in all this—I always heard that God moves in mysterious ways. It's Him that's to be thanked and to be give the glory to.”
Now, that was sho’ nuff funny. Like Paw Jack didn't have nothin’ to do with it. I couldn't help bustin’ out laughing. I couldn't hold it in.
Paw Jack frowned up and said, “What you laughing at, boy?” He swallowed hard and his big Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a tomahawk blade.
I decided I better eat my baloney sandwich and change the subject.
“Nothing,” I said. “And it's Bremen. My name's Bremen.”
Copyright © 2012 J.L. Strickland
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Fiction: FONTAINE HOUSE
by Terrie Farley Moran
* * * *
Art by Allen Davis
* * * *
Terrie Farley Moran's short stories have been published in several anthologies, one of the tales, “When a Bright Star Fades,” earning mention as a Distinguished Mystery of 2008 in Best American Mystery Stories 2009, edited by Jeffery Deaver. She is also the editor of the second anthology of the New York/ Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime: Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices. A new collection of her short stories, The Awareness and Other Deadly Tales, is available in e-book format.
Silas Newberry wandered into the Fontaine House kitchen. He tucked a pen between the buttons of his yellow pique golf shirt, staining the placket with the same blue ink that smudged his fingers.
“I can't comprehend how this place functions. Research material disappears in the night. How am I supposed to get anything done?”
The four people in the kitchen continued with their chores. No one so much as glanced at Silas.
“Mrs. Garcia,” he addressed the chef-in-charge. “Have you seen Mr. Swanson? How can that man run this entire complex and never be available?”
Mrs. Garcia sighed. She smoothed her long white apron from chest to hip in a calming motion before plunging into the daily conversation.
“Mr. Newberry, everyone who works at Fontaine House is especially busy today. Miss Cyncy is flying down from New York with her wedding planner.” Mrs. Garcia practically sang those last words.
“Fontaine House hosts weddings all the time, while my research...”
“I'm not implying that your research about the Civil War isn't important. But Bellefontaine weddings have been celebrated at Fontaine House for two hundred years. Miss Cyncy's will be the first family wedding held here since nineteen eighty-seven. As an historian, you must admit that's significant.”
“All well and good, but I have discrepancies to reconcile and no means of doing so without further access to the house literature, and Mr. Swanson is among the missing.”
“Well, I really must get back to work. Duncan has been directed to pick up Miss Cyncy at the Fort Myers airport. The family is coming over from North Captiva Island for a welcome luncheon at one-thirty.” And Mrs. Garcia pulled her eyeglasses down from the top of her curly, russet-colored hair, pushed them on her nose, and turned away, leaving Silas Newberry to his own devices.
* * * *
Settled in the Mercedes with Duncan at the wheel, Cynthia Fremont Bellefontaine was talking on her BlackBerry.
“I already told him that Bellefontaine Investor Group is not interested in his project. I'm not going to forget he went to my brother to try to get the deal signed behind my back. Tell him I said no means no.”
Cyncy tapped the phone off, pursed her wide, red lips, and shook her head, sending long, dark curls circling like a halo.
“Ninety years after women got the vote, this idiot still thinks my little brother should tell me what to do. I'm the CEO of Bellefontaine Group, not Gerard.”
Greta Howell threw her arm around the slim shoulders of her old college roommate.
“
As your wedding planner I insist that for these few days you are the bride-to-be, nothing more, nothing less. “I can't wait to see Fontaine House. My grandparents came to America in the fifties, so I can't fathom having a home in the family for so many generations.” Greta wiggled her elfin nose. “You must feel so settled, with such strong ties to this place.”
“Like all Americans, we were uprooted. The Bellefontaines wouldn't be here were it not for Le Grand Dérangement, when the English army forced the Acadians to leave the Maritime Provinces centuries ago. The Great Upheaval sent most Cajuns to Louisiana. Eventually, my ancestors drifted across the Gulf of Mexico to the Florida coast.”
Cyncy leaned forward in the seat. “Duncan, as we approach the bridge, please move to the slow lane so that Greta can get a view of the river.”
The car crested mid bridge and Cyncy pointed to the northeast.
“All that glorious foliage is Caloosahatchee Regional Park, more than seven hundred acres of open space, sharing the riverbank with our two hundred or so acres. As kids, my brothers and I used the park as the Fontaine House backyard.”
Within minutes, Duncan turned the car onto a long driveway lined with royal palms, leading to a red brick Federalist building. Greta began making mental notes. The words “horse-drawn carriage” came to mind.
Cyncy asked Duncan to veer off the main drive and slip behind the stables to the storehouse. Stables! Greta put a double check next to the horse-drawn carriage on her yet-to-be-written list.
The car stopped about twenty feet from a squat building clearly erected from a tube of outsized Lincoln Logs.
“Before you see the mansion or explore the grounds, I want you to see what's in here. My brothers and I spent days at a time playing with all the treasures we found.
“After the magic you worked in planning Lisa's wedding around her World's Fair theme, I can't wait to see how you use some of the antiques in here for my nineteenth-century wedding.” She pulled on the rusty door handle.
Just beyond the arc of sunlight that flooded the storehouse floor, a shadow moved, followed by an odd moan.
EQMM, August 2012 Page 13
