by Lila Beckham
“Hurry inside, son,” she told him. Once they were inside, she locked the front door and pulled the blinds.
“What’s wrong, Mama,” he asked. After she went to the kitchen and locked the backdoor, his mother looked toward him and smiled as if nothing at all was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong, honey, I am just being cautious, that’s all,” she said as she walked back to the front room and placed her purse on a small table by the door.
“Now, you need to start on your homework while I start dinner. You can do it at the kitchen table; that way, if you need help I will be right there.” She smiled and walked back into the kitchen.
“Sheriff Stokes, can you hear me?” Joshua heard the voice; it brought him out of his dream. He did not want to wake, at least not yet. He wanted to finish his dream or memory. Whatever it was, it was more than he had remembered thus far. However, whoever was shaking his shoulder and calling his name refused to let him slip back into dreamland. He wanted to yell at them, but could not find his voice. The harder he struggled to speak, the more pain he felt in his throat.
“He’s coming to,” he heard a male voice say, “Nurse, you can remove the oxygen mask.” the man then said, “Joshua Stokes, nod if you can hear me.”
Joshua tried and thought he nodded. His mouth and throat were so dry that his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He felt someone remove something from his face and ears. He struggled to open his eyes. When he finally managed to open them, everything was blurry.
“Sheriff Stokes, this is Doctor Lightcap. If you can you hear me, blink your eyes.” Joshua blinked twice. “Okay, now that I know you understand what I am saying, I can give you something to drink if you’d like. Are you thirsty?” Joshua blinked twice again. He had never been as thirsty in his life as he was right then. He felt a hand slip behind his head and raise it, and then he felt a cup at his mouth.
“Just a sip to start with,” the doctor said softly. “You’ve been out for nearly thirty hours. We can’t have you strangling to death on water,” the doctor said gruffly.
The first sip of water was hard to get down and it hurt going down, but the second sip was easier. The third, he held in his mouth and swished it around to wet his entire mouth.
When he could speak, the first thing Joshua said was that he wanted a cigarette. When the doctor informed him that he could not have one, he said, I’ll be damned if I can’t. If I can get up from here, I will. He then proceeded to try to get out of the hospital bed. No one offered to assist him, which suited him fine, he did not want any help. He finally managed to sit up on the side of the bed. That was when he realized that he wore only a hospital gown.
“What the hell happened? How did I get here?”
“The best we can figure,” the doctor replied, “Is that you were struck by lightning.”
“Lightning?” he questioned.
“Lightning,” Doctor Lightcap repeated and as he said it, Joshua remembered sitting on his front porch watching the storm coming closer, the split down the middle pine tree, and the warrior on horseback and how for just a moment, he was the warrior. He felt the rain, the rise of the hair on his neck and arms, the intense sadness the warrior felt… then the clap, clap of the thunder and lightning. He remembered the burning, searing pain that ripped through his left shoulder. It had reminded him of a bullet tearing through his flesh.
“You have a pretty nasty burn on your left shoulder blade. The heat of the lightning cauterized the tear in the flesh. If I had to guess, I would think that it had to feel much the same as a bullet tearing through the flesh. I am surprised that you made it inside. If John Metcalf and Emma Carr had not found you, you could have died.”
“They were on the back porch talking. I had gone onto the front porch to keep from intruding on their conversation… I remember watching the storm, the lightning striking a pine tree, splitting it down the middle. I even remember walking inside to the kitchen table, and I think I remember hearing Emma come in, but that is all I remember.”
“John Metcalf said that your heart stopped. He thought at first that someone had shot you. He thought it was powder burns from a shotgun blast to your shoulder blade but with no blood, he quickly realized that you had been struck by lightning. He performed CPR on you while Miss Carr called an ambulance. Metcalf kept you alive until they got to you. You were in bad shape when you got here to the hospital, Son.”
Joshua found it hard to believe that he had been struck by lightning and that his heart had stopped, but there was no other explanation for what happened to him. The doctor had to be right. Maybe that was why he had had the dream or vision of his mother.
“It was touch and go for a bit, at least until we got you stabilized. Since then, you have been in a coma of sorts. Miss Carr and Metcalf have been here at the hospital the entire time. She saw you twitching and trying to talk in your sleep; that was when I decided to try and wake you.”
“Hmm, sounds pretty damn rough” Joshua mumbled.
“Yep, Son, it was… another thing, I had to ban your friend Hook from the hospital. He wanted to drag you out of that bed and wake you up before you was ready. He said something about a damn fishing trip!” the doctor exclaimed. “I thought that man had done lost his mind. I had some of your men; a Deputy Cook and Deputy Calvert stand guard at the entrance to the hospital in case he tried to slip back in here again.”
Joshua chuckled. “Leave it to Hook to stir up some trouble,” he mumbled. Just as he said it, James stuck his head in the door. “Speak of the devil.”
“Damnit, Hoss, you scared the shit outta me!” Hook exclaimed as he came toward the bed. He reached and grabbed Joshua’s hand, shook it, and gave him a shoulder hug.
“I’m too damn ornery to die,” Joshua mumbled. “Find my clothes for me, Hook.”
The doctor spit and sputtered saying that he was not ready to leave the hospital yet. Joshua informed him that he had been ready since he opened his eyes and that he was leaving and he did not care whether he had his approval or not.
James found his clothes and helped him put them on. Joshua noticed the burnt spot on the shoulder. When the doctor realized he was not going to be able to stop Joshua from leaving, he called for a wheelchair. Joshua objected to at first and tried to walk out of the room. His legs turned to jelly and he had to grab a hold of the bed for support.
“I can tell you right now, you won’t be able to walk that far on your own steam; at least not yet,” Hook said. When Joshua still made no move to get into the wheelchair James looked him in the eye and said, “If the doc wants you to ride out of here, you’re gonna ride. Now, get your ass in the damn chair or I will tote you out on my back. It really don’t matter to me whether you walk or I tote you, but I’d rather push you than tote you, Hoss. So get you ass in the chair!”
“You’re going to need fresh bandages,” the doctor yelled as they wheeled down the hallway toward the elevators.
“It’ll be taken care of, Doc, don’t worry,” Hook yelled over his shoulder, and then bent forward to whisper in Joshua’s ear. “They’ll play hell catching us once we make it to the elevator.” Hook chuckled and grinned. When the elevator door opened, he shoved Joshua into the elevator and then wheeled him around to face the opened doors.
30
The Great Escape
Just as the elevator door was about to close, they saw Metcalf and Emma walking toward Joshua’s room. The doctor pointed toward Joshua and Hook in the elevator; however, they must have thought the doctor wanted them to hurry because they both hurried toward him. That was all they saw before the elevator door closed. James laughed and bent over Joshua’s shoulder. “It feels a little like we’re Butch and Sundance when they made their great escape! If only we was on horseback and not boots and rubber tires,” he chuckled.
Joshua had to smile at Hook’s enthusiasm. It reminded him of time they put a frog into their teacher’s desk and the teacher sent them to the principle’s office to receive their punishment. Instea
d of going, they hid from the principal by dodging him through the hallways. When the elevator opened on the ground floor, Hook guided the wheelchair toward the emergency room, which was located at the back of the hospital.
“Where the hell are you going?” Joshua asked.
“Out the back way, dummy; Cook and Calvert are at the front entrance. I pulled my truck around back and parked near the Emergency Entrance. They won’t be looking for me back there. We’ll make good our escape,” Hook grinned.
“I can handle my deputies. We could’ve gone that way.”
“Could’ve but we ain’t; it’s a long way from the front entrance around to the back.”
“You lazy scoundrel.”
“Yep, that’d be me. I ain’t gonna walk no further than I have to,” Hook replied. By then they had wheeled out the back entrance and made it to his pickup. He unlocked it and helped Joshua into the passenger side. As soon as James got in, Joshua asked if he had any whiskey with him.
“Does a cat have a climbing gear, of course I got whiskey,” he said reaching into the glove box and pulling out a pint of bourbon that he handed to Joshua. Joshua opened it and took a long swig. The whiskey burned going down, but it felt good and tasted even better. He lit a cigarette then rolled the window about half way down. As they pulled out onto the highway, Hook asked, “Well, did you see it?”
“See what?” Joshua asked.
“The other side… I’ve always heard that when somebody dies they enter a tunnel and see a bright light. I also heard that their kinfolks and loved ones are waiting on them when they cross over. What exactly did you see when you died?” Hook asked curiously.
“Not a damn thing that I can remember, but I had one hell of a dream or maybe it was a memory. It was of my mama and one of those Dixons. I haven’t talked to you in a while, but I’ve found out a lot of information on that bunch. They were some screwed up sons-a-guns. All the way back to the beginning from what I’ve found. One of ‘em; the one that owned the mortuaries, liked having sex with dead people, and if what they say is true, he had sex with farm animals before that. A real sick puppy if you ask me.”
“There are a lot of sick puppies in our world, Josh. As long as there have been people and animals, shit like that has gone on. When they was teenagers, I caught Danny Logan and Lee Phillips fucking one of my goats. They had her front feet hobbled and had her tethered right up to the edge of the creek, so that she couldn’t run off. I threatened to shoot ‘em if I caught ‘em doing that shit again - it was the damnedest thing I ever saw. Every time they stuck it in her and pushed her forward, she’d back up to keep from going into the water. I have heard a lot and seen a lot, but I’ve never known of anyone having sex with a dead person. It’s hard to say which is the sickest though.”
“Yeah, both are pretty damn sick, alright.” Joshua agreed.
“Let’s change the subject,” Hook suggested. “What about that fishing trip we’ve been planning; are you still tied up with that Mexican killer you was working on?”
“Well, I thought that one was over with, but now they say he turned and is headed back this way. It beats all I ever seen. Never in a million years would I have thought he’d do that. He got almost to the border, and then turned back. It’s kind of a lets wait and see where he shows up next sorta thing, right now.”
“I still want us to go over to Ferriday, Louisiana and stay about a week. It ain’t no piece from Natchez. It’d be a good little vacation for the both of us.”
“We’re still going, Hook. I need to get away, that’s for damn sure.”
They had made it to Fairview by then and James suggested they stop at Uncle Joe’s Café and a get a bite to eat. “I can hear your gut a rumbling from here,” Hook said as he turned in and parked near the front door.
“Do you think you can walk it from here?” he asked Joshua.
Joshua gave him a dirty look and said that of course he could. They got out and went inside. Instead of going to the bar and sitting on a stool as he normally did, Joshua seated himself in a corner booth with his back against the wall and stretched his legs out on the bench seat. As weak as he felt, he did not want to take a chance on anyone sneaking up behind him. Joe came through the swinging doors from the kitchen. He acted surprised to see Joshua and James there.
“What brangs the two of you in here ta’day,” Joe asked cautiously, as if he thought it strange for the two of them to show up at his place in the middle of the afternoon.
“We’re hungry, Uncle Joe, that’s why we’re in here,” Hook replied sarcastically. “Bring us a couple of greasy cheeseburgers and some fries. I’ll have a co-cola with mine. What do you want to drink, Josh?” Joshua said it didn’t matter as long as it was cold and wet. James spied the new jukebox against the back wall and hollered to Joe, who had gone into the kitchen, when did he get the jukebox in. Joe hollered back that if he’d come in more than once a year, he’d probably know.
“Ornery old cuss,” Hook mumbled.
“Yeah, he’s grumpy alright.” Joshua replied. “The last time I was in here he was saying that he might have to shut down if business didn’t pick up.”
“Well, if he wasn’t so damn grouchy, folks might want to come in here. As it is, they don’t want to sit in here and listen to him complain the entire time.”
“That’s just his manner, Hook. He’s been that way his entire life. I don’t see him changing for any reason.”
“I know that” Hook replied. “He ain’t no different than the rest of his kin that was born into the same generation. I know, because I am his kin and he is just like Daddy and them - they’re all grumpy like that. I don’t think there is a fun bone in any of ‘ems body. They’re as serious as the day is long… every damn one of ‘em!”
“I hear y’all out there bad mouthing me behind my back,” Joe grumbled from the kitchen. “You better watch what you say. I am cooking ye somethin’ ta eats in here.” Joshua and James both chuckled.
“I think I’m gonna drop a few quarters in the jukebox,” Hook said as he stood and went to digging through his pockets for some change. He walked over to the jukebox, dropped a couple of quarters in and picked out some songs. Before he made it back to the table, ‘Simple Man,’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd was already playing. Joshua liked that song very much. Every time he heard it, it reminded him of his mother, his father, and it reminded him of his grandfather for some reason.
“Troubles a come and they will pass,” James sung as he sat down.
“I hope you keeps yer day job,” Joe said as he came toward their table toting two platters. “I hopes you two boys is hungry as you say you is,” Joe said as he set the platters in front of them. “I cooked enough taters to feed a small army.”
“You might have to cook some more, Uncle Joe” Hook chuckled. “‘Cause I is shonuff hungry. I haven’t eat a bite since supper last night!”
“Why? Did Ilene quit your sorry butt and find her a good man?” Joe teased, and then chuckled at his own joke.
“Now, see, if you’d do that onced in a while, Uncle Joe, instead of grumbling all the time, you might have more regular customers.”
“Well, if’n they don’t like me the way I is, they can just kiss my crusty old ass!” Joe exclaimed.
“Hook, he was getting into a good mood, now you done gone and got him out of it,” Joshua complained.
“Where are you two headed this time of day?” Joe asked. “The last time I seen you two out together at this hour of the day, y’all had skipped school and was a dodging the truant officer. Your daddy tore your ass up for that James.”
“Yes, Sir, he did. I didn’t think I was gonna be able to sit down afterward. He told me that an education was the easiest thing in the world to acquire, because all you had to do was show up and listen. ‘You don’t have to hit a lick at a snake to get one’ was what he said. And he said that it was the easiest thing in the world to throw away, if you was just too damn lazy to pay attention.”
“Yep and when you
bucked him about going ta school, what’d he tell you. I’ll tell you what he told you, he told you not ta let the door hit you in the ass on your way. If’s you wouldn’t gonna go ta school you wouldn’t stayin’ under his roof.”
“Yes, that he did, Uncle Joe. And I was the only one that finished school, but I ain’t any smarter than my brothers are.”
“I didn’t say they weren’t smart - I said they didn’t have the chances you had, son. They was nearly grown when you come along. Times had changed; school had become important. Folks realized that their young’uns needed an education to make it in the changing world. Farming was no longer the way of life for everybody. Back when I was a boy, there was only two or three thangs a young man could do ta earn a livin’. That was farmin’, workin’ fer the railroad, or turpentinin’. I worked turpentine fer a few years, and then worked the railroad fer twenty-five years afore I retired and opened up this here café.”
Although Joshua had not said much, he was listening. He enjoyed listening to older folks like Joe talk, share their wisdom, and tell their stories.
“You forgot sheriffing, or deputying,” Hook reminded Joe.
“Nah, weren’t many cut out ta be lawmen, not back in those days… I knows y’all gets shot at sometimes nowadays, don’t ye, Sheriff,” Joe said, nodding to Joshua “But, back in them days, they’d just as soon as bushwhack a sheriff or a deputy as anyone else. It was dangerous work. Now, I ain’t a trying to take anything away from ya, Sheriff, but you have ta admit, it was more dangerous a few years ago than it is now, wasn’t it.”
“Yeah, probably,” Joshua admitted. He’d heard many stories about how lawmen in the late eighteen hundreds up through the nineteen forties were murdered just for setting foot in the wrong part of town. Many had gotten away with it too.
“I is glad y’all stopped by taday,” Joe said. “Taint been a soul in here all day I knowed, excepting Gypsy. She comes in nearly every mornin’ ta check on me. I know that was what she’s a doing. She don’t never get much, just sets and talks a while…”
