Copyright © 2015 by Annie Rose Welch
Cover Designer: Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations.
Editor: Alisa Carter
Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or byany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For the Freud’s of the world… Here’s to the good guys.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Marigny Street
About the Author
The light of the righteous shines brightly, but the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out.
PROVERBS 13
“Aim at the high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, not the second time and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally you'll hit the bull's-eye of success.”
ANNIE OAKLEY
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
KATHARINE HEPBURN
“Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”
MARILYN MONROE
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
MARK TWAIN
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.
ECCLESIASTES 7:8
“I ain’t afraid to love a man. I ain’t afraid to shoot him, either!”
ANNIE OAKLEY
Murder in the Sixth Grade
Hank Huckleberry
I wanted to rob a bank. And not just for any ole reason either. For the sweetest reason of all: the ladies. Those hot young women who even at the tender age of twelve smelled delicious. I wanted all that green dough piled high and surrounding me. I was also in love with two girls. Who were both into the dough, only wanting to date the boys who had enough money to take them roller-skating and buy them nachos.
My older brother, Randy, he was a real ladies’ man. He dated every day of the week, and when I asked him how to get a girl to kiss me, all he had said was, “Toots, show ’em the green and you’ll have them eating out the palm of your hand. Girls, no matter what age they are, love the green. It’s their favorite color, man.”
All I had to offer was a little jingle in my pocket. Jingle that my stepfather made me work for. Girls like Leslie and Cassie didn’t want pocket change, they wanted the real deal. The kind you flash, the kind that pays for nachos and ice cream, and if you’re right on the money, enough to pay for a ton of games in the arcade. Hell, I would’ve thrown in one of those rainbow bracelets just for the fun of it, just so they’d call me Big Poppa.
How do people rob banks, anyway? Especially when you’re only twelve and the whole town knows who you are because your left eye droops so low sometimes the teacher accuses you of being half asleep.
“Hank Rivers, are you sleeping again?”
“No, ma’am, I just have a lazy eye…” Again.
Still, I had to try to think of something.
“I want to rob a bank,” I said to my friends, who were walking beside me. We were walking home from school on a hot, Tupelo, Mississippi Friday. Even though it was October, the air smelled of sweet honey and the air oozed humidity. “But I have to figure out how to do it without getting caught. I have a tell.” I pointed to my eye.
“You’re a special kind-a stupid, you know that? Rob a bank! Come on, Toots! Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in jail? Or worse, be sent to the electric chair because you can’t afford to buy those girls some nachos? You’re only asking for trouble,” Dylan Surr Cotton said.
Dylan Surr Cotton was aspiring to be sheriff one day, and although he was all for the law, he was all for breaking the rules too. He felt if you broke the rules, became one of them, once you were the man they couldn’t fool you. He was betting on being the greatest sheriff Tupelo had ever seen.
“Son, if you’re going to play the game, you gotta learn how to play it right, and robbing a bank ain’t no way to play.” He was also going through The Gambler stage.
“I don’t-I don’t know what you s-see in them anyway. Leslie stinks like f-fish sticks, and Cassie picks her n-nose. I saw her w-wiping the b-booga’ just the other d-day under her d-desk. When I tol-tol-told her I saw, she-she told me to m-m-min’ my own beeswax. Li-li-like I haven’t heard tha-tha-that one be-be-before,” Tommy Beeswaxes said.
Tommy was “bless his heart” special, as my mother, June-bug, had always called people who were less fortunate in life. Tommy had a speech impediment and usually stuttered and said things twice, but if the situation was extremely upsetting or exciting for him, he sometimes repeated himself three times. Although he couldn’t seem to help it, he was always getting into trouble at school. He sometimes wrote the same way he talked.
“Maybe if you’d stop letting people call you ‘Toots,’ the girls would dig you. I heard Leslie and Cassie talking about you today at lunch. They both think you were named after gas. I don’t think they even know that your real name is Hank.”
“Shut up, Curly!” We all shouted and started walking faster.
Curly Cootie was my stepbrother. He was only a month younger than me, but much smaller and shorter, with a girl’s smooth face and voice and wild, curly blond hair. Guys were always beating up on him. We let him hang out with us at school, but after the bell rang, we didn’t want him near us. But he followed me anywhere I went. June-bug got a new husband and green, and I was stuck with a damn Cootie bug.
“Stop, you guys.” There was wheezing and gasping. We all turned to look. “I can’t breathe.” Jesse Presley leaned over his legs, his book bag resting on the higher part of his back while he hyperventilated.
Jesse was the nerviest boy I ever met. He was allergic to twenty different things that one shot could supposedly cure. His mother gave us strict instructions on what we should do if he ever started turning colors—we had to call his name twice and then give him his miracle pill. Dylan tried them once and said they tasted like nothing but sugar to him.
We were also instructed that if any of the following came into contact with him, we should shoot him in the neck with a clear solution he kept in his emergency Presley pack: bees, honey, molasses, whole wheat, peanut butter, white socks, Brussels sprouts, goat, lamb, latex, or any type of alcoholic beverage. We never understood how they knew he was allergic to alcoholic beverages—he was too young to
try them—but it was on the list nonetheless.
Jesse never left home without his emergency Presley pack. His most prized possession was located in the secret department, which was his “panic-attack alert system.” It was a device hooked up to the local police and fire stations. If he had an attack or was generally in trouble, we were instructed to stab him with a syringe filled with his “medicine” and then immediately press the button.
He passed out a lot too. For no reason sometimes. The panic system seemed like a waste to us. We never used it on him and he was always all right. So once when he was passed out on someone’s lawn, we stole his system, pressed the button, and then tied it to ole Mrs. Shuck’s dog’s neck. We heard sirens all over the place. And Jesse had no idea.
“Jesus, come on, Jesse! I want to get home and watch TV. If you pass out and make me miss my favorite show, I’m going to eat all your miracle pills,” Dylan said, throwing his book bag to the baking cement.
“I smell honey,” Jesse wheezed.
“Wait,” I said, while Jesse continued the rasping. I threw my bag down next to Dylan’s. “Ya’ll aren’t coming with me to Wild Thang?”
“Hell no,” Dylan shouted. “I’m not interested in seeing Elvis appear out of a puff of smoke just ’cause Leslie and Cassie what’s-their-names told you to do it. You’re an idiot.”
“S-smoke,” Tommy stuttered. “F-f-forget it. I heard that sh-sh-sh really works. No way, you don’t pl-play with the dead like that. It’s dis-dis-disrespectful.”
“I’ll go,” Curly said, fanning hot air toward Jesse’s face with a spiral notebook.
“Shut up, Curly,” we all yelled again.
“Ya’ll are just afraid to try a cigarette. Randy said it’s not that bad, and it’s just a couple of puffs,” I said.
Jesse got deathly quiet and stumbled back a bit. “You,” he wheezed out, “didn’t tell me that I had to smoke a cigarette! I’m allergic!” He passed out on the concrete and we knew it would be a good ten minutes before he came to again.
I unzipped his bag and pulled out his list. I plucked the paper with my pointer finger and then pointed. “It doesn’t say he’s allergic to smoke. He’s going with me. Now, are you ladies in or out?”
“I’m out.” Dylan picked up his bag and stepped over Jesse. “See you pusses later. It’s pizza night and I’m going home to watch my show. Hasta la vista, babies!”
Tommy looked at me with an alarmed expression. “N-n-no way! I tol-tol-told you. It’s dis-dis-disrespectful. I’d rather rob a bank with you than try that shi-shi-shit. You pl-pl-play with the d-d-dead, they ai-ai-ain’t got nothing better to do than-than-than haunt you ’cause-’cause-’cause it’s etern-etern-eternity. I’m going to hang with Dyl-Dyl-Dylan.”
Curly hung around fanning Jesse until I made him go home. He walked away, his backpack hitting him in the back, giving me the third-finger bird all the way down the street. I looked down at Jesse. His tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth. Only a person with the name Presley could do it—he would have to suffice. He would have to summon up the ghost, just so I could get two girls to love me.
When Jesse finally came to, he was rambling and ripping about how his dead grandma came to him and warned him about playing with the dead. She had died of the fright and warned him that he might too. She swore to him on her dead body that it was going to be nothing but trouble for him.
I wondered how a dead person could swear over their own dead body, seeing as it rots away, but said nothing because his wheezing was getting worse and I didn’t feel like stopping and waiting in the hot sun until he woke up again. He was working up to a big one. I could tell.
“What am I supposed to do, anyway?” he asked while we made our way to the entrance of the woods.
“We have to light our cigarette and after you say hunka, hunka, burnin’ love three times, I take a puff of the ciggie and blow smoke out. You have to have the camera ready because when his face appears, you have to snap away. Then I can tell Cassie and Leslie that I saw Elvis.”
“They’re not going to believe you.”
“I know, but that’s what the camera is for. Then they’ll both kiss me.”
He stopped walking and took a deep breath. “Toots, I have a really bad feeling about this. I think I’m allergic to smoke. What if I pass out and Elvis decides he needs a pal or something?”
“Damn it, Jesse! You’re nothing but a big ole hypochondriac, you know that?” I snatched his Presley pack from his hands and he wheezed something terrible.
“I need that!” he barely got out.
“You can have it after we get to Wild Thang.”
Through the dimmed light of the woods, I saw a paper peeking out of the muddy floor. I shuffled my foot around the leaves, bending over to examine it. It was a bus ticket, the date set for that day, from Greenwood, Louisiana to Tupelo, Mississippi. I picked it up and stashed it in my pocket.
“But… but… Toots, you do a better Elvis impression than I do! You even have that curly lip thing going on that mother said she used to die for!”
I shook my head as I continued walking. Half of the time I had no idea why we hung out with Jesse. But the other half of the time I knew why. We hung out with him because he had the most colorful family in all of Tupelo, we were sure of it.
His mother was a hypochondriac Bible beater, and his daddy (although most of the time drunk off the sin juice) was the funniest man on earth. His mother went to church regularly and was always a part of church functions, but after his daddy would get to drinkin’ in the evenings, their house was anything but holy. His mother used to beat his daddy upside his head with the Bible, sometimes while he was passed out.
She would always say if she couldn’t preach the devil out of him, she would beat it out of him. A couple of times we thought we heard the sounds of the devil when he would moan and groan and ask her to beat him some more because it felt so damn good.
It never seemed to truly work, though. His daddy always drank and would ramble on about the most interesting subjects, even ones that didn’t make any sense. And the next day, he would have no idea what he had even said. During this time of his life, his rants had been aimed at the “supposed” issues that had been going on between two judges, Judge Maxwell Pilgrim and a new one who had just moved to town from up north, Judge Cyrus S. Booty.
“What did a northerner know about Southern politics? North and South mixed together just as well as fire and gasoline. And who has a name like Booty, anyway? A pirate, that’s who!” Jesse’s daddy had announced as though it was a declaration of the highest regard.
Then he went on to say that you could never trust a man with pirate running through his blood, because sooner or later, they’d always come for their lost booty. That was the args truth! Plus, he was built like a man you couldn’t trust. He had big, goofy feet. You should never trust a man with feet like that because as soon as you turn your back on them, they’ll kick you in the ass. He was just all-around untrustworthy.
His mother interrupted just then and sent his daddy in the kitchen because she said it was time for his exorcism. But before she could beat him, he passed out and tooted. That infuriated her so much, she told him he either had to sober up, or she was leaving him and taking Jesse and the rest of the kids to her sister’s. He had moaned something, and she told him that it was no toot, that he was really soiling himself, and if he didn’t get his soiling tail off her linoleum, she was going to mop the floor with him.
And she had.
Yeah, that’s why we loved Jesse’s place. June-bug was too proper to ever say the word “ass,” she always said “toosh,” and made us too. She thought it sounded French. I highly doubted she had ever seen my stepdad’s toosh. Seeing as he was always complaining that she never wanted to touch it.
I stopped walking for a moment and turned to Jesse. “Hey, before we walk all this way for nothing, did you bring the goods I told you to?”
He swatted away a gnat swarming around his f
ace. “Yeah, I got it all. A camera and snacks.”
Our footsteps cracked and popped beneath us as we walked. “Good. What did you bring? I’m so hungry.”
“I don’t know. Mother packed it all.”
Just then, we walked up to a fierce, towering oak tree. This wasn’t Wild Thang, but Wild Thang was hidden inside, like a heart hidden behind a chest. The oak tree was massive. The one tree seemed like five. As the oak rose from the earth, its humungous branches split in different directions, almost like a hand turned forward, its fingers cradling a box. That box was Wild Thang. It was hidden in the palm of this massive tree. Vines and branches and green leaves swarmed it, wrapping around it, hiding it away from the rest of the world. It had to be the best-kept secret in Tupelo. No one else but us seemed to know about it.
We found it after we dared Dylan to climb the oak. He climbed up, and when we didn’t hear from him after a while, we called up to him. He poked his head out and told us he had found a hidden hut, right in the middle of the tree. We didn’t believe him, so we climbed up after him.
Sure enough, he wasn’t lying. It was a small shack, a little man hut, painted green and splintering in different spots from age, but it was like new to us. We had just found our new hangout. No one ever came to claim it, so we did. We claimed it by the law of Squatter’s Rights. Then we named it Wild Thang in honor of its surroundings.
I had finagled a rope ladder, and after we climbed up, we’d pull it up with us so no lurkers could follow. We were always leaving Curly below the tree just to get him riled enough to try and climb it on his own.
I stood staring at the tree for a bit. I could’a sworn we left the rope down last time. Oh well, we’d just have to climb it the regular way. Jesse went up first. I climbed up behind him. I felt a hand grab my foot. I fell right on my back and got the wind knocked out of me. I was the one wheezing and trying to catch my breath.
As I rolled around on the muddy ground, Jesse poked his head out and called, “Do you need one of my suga’ pills?”
I tried to talk, but all I could do was gasp. When I looked up again, Curly was standing over me, a slight smile on his face. I tried to grab his foot but he ran away, climbing up the tree like a curly-haired monkey. When I was finally able to breathe again, I climbed up and found Jesse and Curly laughing so hard, Jesse was starting to turn colors. I felt like I should stab him in the neck.
Pistol Fanny's Hank & Delilah Page 1
