Cracker Town

by WF Ranew

  He needed to eat. Cleet hadn’t had a thing to dine on since the fried chicken dinner the night before last and two hard biscuits yesterday.

  Where was it? Oh yeah, Quitman. That was at the little café in Quitman. He’d walked and hitchhiked from Valdosta. Wasn’t a bad day, either, considering the driver of an empty watermelon truck picked him up just east of town. Next stop, Quitman.

  Good chicken. Cleet mused about the lady who’d served him at a corner table just before the place closed. She’d wrapped the biscuits in wax paper and slipped them to him on his way out the door. Around eight-thirty.

  The café lady might have come to mind in his moment of hunger. It would have cost him most of his remaining money, except the lady was kind. She let him eat for nothing.

  After he stepped from the restaurant, he nodded to a farmer leaning against his aging Ford pickup and engaged him in talk. The man offered Cleet a cigarette and a ride. Cleet’s easy manner got him just beyond Pidcock, Georgia. From there, he walked a few miles, strolling through Boston at eleven. Out on Old US 84, the moonlight-speckled pecan grove beckoned.

  Sleep came easily as Cleet leaned against the tree.

  * * *

  Five days before, Cleet tried hitching a ride after walking three miles down the road from the state mental hospital.

  Nobody slowed for him. Nobody stopped.

  In fact, most drivers sped up to get past the newly released inmate. Not that they knew he was one. They didn’t. They just assumed anyone thumbing a ride so near the Milledgeville state mental hospital might not be a suitable driving companion.

  Cleet knew this. He’d escaped three times, and no drivers stopped for him on those occasions either.

  Except this day was different as he had a legal release. Still, no one even braked, let alone give him a ride to south Georgia and a visit he needed to pay before heading on down the road.

  The memories haunted Cleet. Arrested for killing a woman…the lunacy board…the mental hospital. All the time, he kept mum.

  After all those years, a superior court judge ruled in Cleet’s favor and set him free. Seems another man bragged to a Georgia prison cellmate he’d killed young women in South Georgia around the same time Cleet was accused.

  Cleet knew the man had lied, at least where Mitsy’s killing was concerned. He didn’t know why Mitsy died, but if he had stabbed her to death—which he didn’t—it was because she wouldn’t pay him for the Bible. Not that the debt in itself was a reason to kill anyone. Cleet told his Aunt Gladys, who visited just after the hospital admitted him. Years later, Gladys hired a lawyer. Eventually, Cleet got cut loose.

  Now, he was a free man.

  Cleet’s release befuddled him more than anyone else.

  Still, he said nothing. To nobody. No way.

  * * *

  His journey zigzagged from Milledgeville to Macon, down to Fort Valley, back over to Hawkinsville, Abbeville, Fitzgerald, and on to Ocilla and Alapaha on US 129.

  Drivers started picking him up in Macon. He was far enough away from Milledgeville by then, and no one thought he’d been a hospital patient.

  South of Hahira, Cleet caught a ride with a trucker hauling chickens to Valdosta. He asked to get out at the courthouse square.

  He stopped for the day to visit someone.

  * * *

  Cleet went inside the courthouse to a phone booth. The local directory had been ripped apart. He walked outside and around downtown for one with the listing he sought.

  He squinted as he used a pointer finger to find the person’s number. No listing.

  Cleet recalled the doc said something about going to work at a college.

  He asked for directions and walked north along shady streets to Valdosta State’s main campus. It was Saturday, and many students at the suitcase college had departed for the weekend.

  But the double doors on the administration building were propped open. Cleet walked in and looked for the office. He found the door locked.

  A pretty woman walked down the hall toward him.

  Cleet asked her about Doctor Walter Goings.

  Chapter Eleven

  Walter A. Goings, MD, Ph.D., had no classes the day before he died. His office was open for student conferences, though he’d scheduled none.

  Instead of driving to the university, Goings took a leisurely walk to his office on the spring morning.

  Nancy, his administrative assistant, greeted him as he walked into the two-room suite in the Liberal Arts building.

  At twelve-thirty, Nancy went out to lunch.

  Walter reclined on his leather sofa and reviewed the final draft of a journal paper on mental care in state mental hospitals, entitled “How the Decline in Mental Care Links to Financial Distress for Patients and Their Families.” He made the point from the lead paragraph that the state of Georgia’s funding for its mental hospitals in Milledgeville, Georgia, depended heavily on General Assembly members who had a relative as a patient there. That is, those with a personal connection to the hospital voted in favor of substantial institutional funding. Those who had no such relationship tended to think of the hospital as an incumbrance, perhaps necessary but still a loony bin to house kooky people or the mentally ill in the state’s prisons.

  Unfortunately, a lot of legislators had family members who ought to seek care for their mental illness, even the elected officials themselves. That would easily increase the state budget. Goings laughed at his mental joke, which he’d scribbled in the margin but scratched out.

  The broader subject clung close to Doctor Goings’s heart and mind. He’d served as the hospital’s psychiatric director during funding cuts and a decline in service quality to patients.

  Goings made some final edits and decided the paper was ready for publication. He heard Nancy return from lunch and called her into his office.

  She closed the door and turned the lock to keep anyone from interrupting.

  Walter’s pulse rate picked up as Nancy walked over to the professor’s desk beside the sofa.

  Doctor Goings got up from the sofa and embraced her.

  “Oh! Walter,” she whispered. “Make me a happy woman.”

  Walter had felt ready for Nancy all morning.

  “Nan, dearest,” he said. “I love you.”

  Nancy twirled her right pointer finger around Walter’s nose.

  They held each other for some time, after which Nancy pushed herself back and sat on the desk.

  Walter moved close to her and dug his fingers into her waist.

  “Oh!” she said somewhat loudly.

  “Shh, sweetness. You know Doctor Kohli next door wants to pull you into his office corner,” Walter whispered. “If he hears us, it will only encourage his advances. Too, a student assistant has already walked in on us. We must proceed as quietly as your pent-up passion can muster.”

  Nancy put her arms around Walter’s shoulders.

  “As for that old coot Kohli,” she said. “He walked in yesterday and asked me on a date. He’s married, you know.”

  “As am I, but his wife’s in India,” Walter said. “And you. Your husband resides with you right here in town.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “Yeah, but I don’t get much at home,” she finally said.

  This was their routine, two or three times a week after lunch.

  * * *

  Nancy Simmons had wanted a child for years.

  Yet, she avoided pregnancy and insisted her husband Lawson use condoms. She was considering a divorce and did not want a child with him.

  She wanted Walter’s baby.

  Nancy had discontinued her birth control two weeks before the professor’s last day in the office.

  She was happy as she arose from the desk and embraced Walter A. Goings, MD,

  Ph.D.

  * * *

  At two that afternoon, as Nancy tidied herself after her dalliance with the boss, Candace Goings walked out of her doctor’s office with a big smile on her face.
Her visit confirmed what she already knew.

  She was pregnant.

  Candy had been married to Walter Goings for twenty years. She wanted another daughter. Oh, Randy was a wonderful boy. But at eighteen, he’d leave home soon for college, either in Valdosta or Virginia. And Lilly, twelve years old, was already showing signs of teenage moodiness.

  Mrs. Goings wanted a baby just for herself. Not for Walter, her husband, not for her two other children. She needed that baby to keep her busy while Walter occupied himself with his new job at the college. The position seemed to take an inordinate amount of time—much more than his office hours at Central State.

  Plus, he never came home for lunch anymore, as he did when they lived in Milledgeville. She had a lot of time to herself.

  * * *

  At four-thirty, Nancy checked the clock again. She had half an hour to finish retyping Goings’s paper and get it in the Friday mail run. She didn’t have much time.

  As her fingers sped across the IBM Selectric II typewriter—one of three in the office of two people—she took extra care not to make a mistake. Errors were rare for Nancy. She’d excelled in her two-year business course leading to an associate degree at Valdosta State College. Her highest typing speed was two hundred twelve words per minute. She could retype and make edits at a steady one hundred forty to sixty words per minute for long papers she was familiar with.

  Nancy had puzzled over the requisition from Doctor Goings the week after he arrived. They already had two relatively new electric typewriters, so why was he ordering a third.

  “It’s the new model,” he explained. “If we don’t spend the budget, they’ll cut our financial request for the next fiscal year.”

  Made sense. Other administrators came to mind from Nancy’s years at the college. None of the others would ever ask for something they didn’t need. But Doctor Goings was different. In so many ways.

  Nor did any of her past three bosses rush in, lock the door, and pull her up against the desk. Old Doctor Winston, a philosophy prof, made suggestive remarks and several times clutched her buttocks and her breasts. But at eighty-two years old, Nancy was certain he lacked the ability for anything more physical.

  Nancy hardly knew Goings when they first had sex in the office. She didn’t resist and told herself later it wasn’t so bad. In fact, she enjoyed it. Soon enough, it occurred so frequently that the act itself was ho-hum. Sometimes. When she accompanied him to a conference in Atlanta, things got exciting. She stayed in his hotel room or shopped while he lectured to other psychiatrists. All of whom to Nancy seemed horny as hell.

  Nancy prided herself on her work and her appearance.

  Standing five feet four, she was broad in the hips but not too much so. She wore tight skirts with hems falling to her knees. Occasionally she wore a mini skirt—the fashion rage of the day—but the college personnel director frowned on such attire. She got no complaints on her dress from Goings.

  Nancy’s sweaters and blouses stretched the limit of propriety, as well. Again, the personnel director reminded her to cover up. When school hours became relaxed in the summer, she wore a strapless sundress with plunging neck and back lines. Some days she didn’t wear a bra—another demerit from personnel.

  Nancy didn’t follow that admonition either.

  Her fingers raced over the keyboard, the golf ball spinning as she neared the end of the article’s final draft. Five pages to go.

  She heard the door behind her open and shut. She kept typing, paying close attention.

  Must be the cleaning lady, arriving early.

  Nancy then heard the lock snap into place.

  Her typing slowed to a crawl. One hundred-twenty words per minute.

  She turned briefly to see her boss man and love, Walter Goings, stepping slowly to her. Still, she typed away. Easily accelerating to 160 wpm.

  “Your article, sir,” she said and continued her work.

  Walter stood behind her and gently placed his hands on her shoulders.

  Her speed retreated to 120 wpm. Not going to finish until tonight if he starts fooling around.

  Nancy nodded. She went on, slowed a bit more, but she was determined to wrap up the article.

  Her boss massaged her shoulders. Nancy relaxed.

  Oops. She had to slow down to avoid mistakes and took it down to ninety wpm.

  Two more pages.

  Goings didn’t let up with the massaging. Nancy concentrated on the final pages, on which there were very few edits.

  She climbed back up to 170 to 180 wpm.

  One full page and a few lines on the last.

  Goings’s thumbs spread wide down to her shoulder blades. He pressed them deep in a circular motion.

  She typed the final paragraph and very slowly hobbled through the last two lines.

  Done.

  She looked as her lover’s hands moved from her shoulders down the front of her sweater.

  * * *

  Walter Goings had been surprised and thrilled when he got the offer to head up the psychology department. He’d been trying to leave the staff of Central State Hospital for some time.

  For years, Atlanta newspapers published nasty articles critical about the conditions in the Milledgeville hospital. While the doctor resented the implications of such public scrutiny, Goings agreed with most things the articles reported.

  He had to leave for the sake of his growing reputation in his profession.

  Valdosta State offered a great salary. He’d earn additional income with off-campus psychiatric sessions and lectures.

  On his first day at a reception for new professors the previous summer, he met all the deans and department heads. The college president heralded Doctor Goings as a brilliant mind in his field.

  He met Nancy Simmons that day.

  From the time he set eyes on her, Goings feasted on the fantasy of removing her clothes and pulling her into a bed. After three days of looking at her and lusting after her body, Goings broke. After lunch, he walked into the office, saw her sitting there, and went over to touch her.

  She stood up. He pushed against her.

  That day, Nancy wore a mini. Goings easily pushed the hem up as he moved along her stockings, fondled her garter, and touched her panties.

  He paused to unzip his pants. From there, he moved quickly and accurately.

  “What are you doing? Oh, Doctor Goings. Oh, my Lord.”

  Later, Goings chided himself for finishing so soon. He’d prefer to have made Nancy fully satisfied. But his lust had been building for days. He had to have her that way. Only that way.

  Slam! Bam! Thank you, ma’am!

  * * *

  Two weeks before that Friday afternoon, Doctor Goings met Nancy at their pied-à-terre in a garage apartment north of the college. He’d rented the place back in December for any occasion he and Nancy could meet alone and out of the office.

  The getaway was perfect except for the crowded parking arrangements behind a large Victorian house between the apartment and the street. By the early evening hours, when Doctor Goings normally met Nancy there on occasion, the parking slots were taken.

  But parking on the property had a disadvantage. A student who knew Doctor Goings lived in the big house. Parking on the street came with risks of recognition, too. He was careful, and he told Nancy to arrive and leave with great caution.

  Doctor Goings himself parked on a block over and found an alleyway through which he made his way to the apartment’s door. He tried to arrive after dark.

  “I hate this sneaking around, my dear,” he told Nancy in the office after lunch. They planned to meet at the apartment around eight in the evening. Walter’s family had left town to visit Candace’s parents for the weekend in Dahlonega, Georgia.

  Nancy walked in from her reception area into his office. She stood in front of him and hiked her mini skirt slightly as she raised her right knee toward him. “Do you want me, Walter?” she asked. “Or would you rather spend the weekend with your dusty old b
ooks?”

  “You, my dear. I always want you,” he said as he pulled her into his lap.

  They kissed.

  Chapter Twelve

  President Jonathan Madison couldn’t believe his ears. The county sheriff spoke to him on the phone. Yet, the law officer sounded ten thousand miles away and speaking through a pipe.

  Something must be wrong with this phone.

  The sheriff’s words echoed and wavered in Doctor Madison’s head and seemed to bounce off brain walls. Did brains have walls? He didn’t know; he got his doctorate in education, not physical anatomy.

  The president of Valdosta State College got up and sat on the side of his bed. Maybe that way, he could make sense of what he heard.

  All he could say was, “Ah, huh.” Repeatedly.

  “Doctor Madison, one of your professors was found murdered last night,” Sheriff Cameron Dixon started. “His family, too. Wife and young daughter.”

  A pause on the line.

  “Ah, huh.”

  “Sir, can you understand me?” the sheriff asked.

  A moment—maybe fifteen seconds—passed.

  “Doctor, I need to talk with you immediately. In person,” Sheriff Dixon said. “Might I come over to your house? Right now?

  “Ah, huh.” That was followed by, “Yes, sir.”

  The sheriff’s call ended.

  Madison sat there. He couldn’t move.

  His wife had already gotten up and probably was ready for Sunday School. He needed to get moving. The sheriff was coming over.

  Murdered?

  The sheriff didn’t say which professor had been killed. But given the family description, he had to be Walter Goings.

  “No! Lord! No!” Madison screamed as he toppled onto the floor.

  Madison’s wife, Mary, walked over and knelt beside him.

  “Jonny, Jonny,” she said.

  To him, Mary also spoke in an echo.

  “Sorry, but I’m having difficulty getting up,” Madison said. “Guess I ought to see my doctor for a checkup.”