On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (audio ebook reader txt) 📕

her aunt came in to rouse her. She did not hear a word of Liz's breakfast chatter. She was dying to get to school. She wanted to see Bill again and boy did she have an earful for Cindy.

As soon as Emma got off the bus she headed for Cindy's jeep, which sat in it's usual place in the corner of the gravel lot. "Cindy, my love, what sayest thou? " she spoke in her imitation of Elizabethan Shakespeare.

Cindy, who had her head buried in a textbook merely looked up and countered, "What's up, Emma?"

"Ooh, long face."

Cindy looked away from her pal.   She had decided Sunday night after watching Bill and Joy grope each other on the couch of the activities building after church that she was just not going to say another word about it to Emma.   She had already done her best to warn her. She would even lie if she must.   What was a little lack of truth in the face of friendship? She was damned if she would be the one to burst Emma's bubble.

"Just don't feel well," she said in a way of explanation.

"Well, I feel great" Emma actually shouted.

"Oh, how so?"

"Oh Cindy, I had so much fun Saturday night."

"I am glad to hear it."

"Bill is the most wonderful, sensitive," she stammered, at a loss for superlatives. "You could tell me that he hung all the stars in the sky and made the grass green and I would believe you."

"Oh boy." This was all that Cindy could croak. It was worse than she thought.

"No, really Cindy, he was just great. He said that he had been thinking about me ever since I had moved here. He said I was the most exciting..." Emma's words died in her mouth as she turned to look where Cindy was now staring (now Clyde darlin, are you just feeding me lines like this!?!?!?!?!).

Across the parking lot Joy Hutchinson sat on the hood of Bill's car. In front of her stood Bill. Joy had her arms stretched out around his neck.   Pulling her into him, he had his hands about her waist.

"Em, I am so sorry." Cindy hurt for her best friend.

"It's okay."

"No it isn't.   He's a jerk, an asshole," her voice lowered, "I am sorry I ever encouraged you to go after him.”

"No, no, it was a good experience for me."   Bitterness marked her every word.

"Are you all right?"

"Hell no. I am mad as shit."   Emma's eyes welled with tears.

"Cool for you."   Cindy reached out to embrace her.

Emma had no problem avoiding Bill that day. They only had two classes together. In one of them, Joy sat right next to Bill. As they sat side by side, Emma had painfully noticed every glance that passed between them.

When she got home, she had turned down Cindy's offer for a ride and a trip to the drive through for a shake, she had gone glumly up to bed just wanting to sleep. She had slept until Liz had called her down for supper.   Throughout the meal she had only stirred her food around her plate unable to take more than a bite or two. “I hate him," she had thought time and time again.

Back in her room after the dishes were done, she had not bothered to turn on any lights, but had crawled into a window seat. " How can this hurt so much," she asked herself. "It was only one date, one night, I can not let this get to me. I have been through so much more than this. I will not let this get to me." Her fists clinched and unclenched as she helplessly remembered every word he had said in lies.

"I am being silly," she finally said out loud.   "He did not promise me anything. He owes me nothing. Why did I expect him to give up a girl he has liked since grade school?" Her tears destroyed her words as she placed her face against the cold pane of glass in the window.

"I could get even with him for this."   The thought came almost from a place she did not know. For an instant she looked up as if someone else had spoken. "No, I don't want revenge," she assured herself.   "But you could have it," the alien words came back to her. "No, I would never hurt Bill Simmons, no matter what he does to me." She refocused. The violence she had felt had suddenly left her tired.

"A good night's sleep," she thought, "a good nights sleep and I will wipe him from my mind." Wearily she stood and walked in the darkness to her bed. The clothes she wore dropped to the floor. She pulled her gown over her nakedness, pulled back her covers and without thinking flipped on the light beside her bed. There she saw the small pouch.

It appeared to be some kind of leather. The top was drawn closed by a leather tie. She pulled the chords open and dipped in a finger. It came out covered in a bronze sticky dust.

 

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Sam Prather knew the laws against spot lighting. He knew it was a while before deer season, too. But Sam had never been one to let little things get in his way. His old man had earned what little income the family had by producing some of the most potent moonshine that could be had in the county.   And his old man had always managed to stay one foot ahead of the law.

Monday night Sam had set off in his four-wheel drive quasi- amphibious self styled truck. He had done the modifications himself. The truck sat a good five feet off the ground. The tires were large and bouncy. He could not actually fly across the river in the thing, but he sure could get through some rough places where few else would dare venture.

For this particular night Sam had picked a levee just this side of the largest plantation around. The levee went for miles and miles along soy bean fields into Federally protected land. He did not figure the Federal Government would be out there this night.

Spotlighting was not the kind of thing one did alone. One man must drive while another sat on the windowsill of the truck shining the high beam into the fields. As soon as the spotlight froze a deer, the rider must rap softly on the roof of the cab.   As the deer would stand there frozen, the driver would stop and bring his rifle up to fire.   The aim must be good, cause no one wants to go chasing down a wounded animal in the dark of the fields and swamps.   The first shot must kill.

For this night Sam had invited his pal Lacey Caine to join him. Lacey was an auto mechanic in Rolling Fork. His sinewy body was forever more stained in motor oil.

Lacey and Sam went back a long way together. They had known each other since birth and through eighth grade when both had dropped out, lied about their ages, and gone to Vietnam.

Lacey's life had gone from bad to worse after the service. He had moved back in with his Dad, a World War II veteran. Lacey Sr. had expected the service to make his boy into a man, not a sniveling, crying in the night, drug doing, idiot. His dad took to beating him in 1977 and these beatings only brought back the horrors to Lacey, who could finally take no more. One night he blew his old man away with a shotgun. The courts had ruled in Lacey Jr's favor, but life had changed forever after that.

After that, even freed by the courts, his neighbors only shunned him, at best. Often he was found with broken collar bones, fractures, and lacerations. A 'father killer' was not suffered lightly in the good ole boy land of the delta. But Lacey had refused to leave. He just worked at a low paying job and stayed drunk about half of his waking hours.

And this night was not different for Lacey Jr. He had brought his own six-pack to the truck when Sam had picked him up. Sam knew it was probably at least his second.

It was late by the time the two reached the levee. Sam had turned the headlights off. He could see Lacey's legs and waist sticking through the passenger window.

"Keep that light on the edge of the field," Sam spoke out the window toward the top of the cab.

"Shut your ass up. I know what I am doing."

"Like hell you do, you mother fucker."

Lacey reached through the window to pull another beer from the six pack.

"Lay off those would ya. I don’t want you to start singing and yelling out there. The sound carries for miles."

"So just stick to your driving. Sam threw on his brakes real fast and gave Lacey a lunge.

"Damn you cock sucker," Lacey screamed for the world to hear.

"Shut the fuck up or I will leave your ass out here in the wilderness."

“Go to hell," Lacey said more quietly.

"Over there, over there." Sam slowed the truck. "On the edge of that clearing." Lacey whipped the light back and forth erratically.

"Forget it man. It's gone...Get back in the truck." Lacey lowered himself back into the truck and swallowed the last of his beer.

"You ain’t gonna have another." Sam reached to stop him.

"So what if I am?"   Lacey brushed the hand aside and reached for another beer.

With the spotlight out the darkness around them was deep. Sam lit a cigarette and it's singular glow bobbed in the cab of the pick up. Sam could just barely see Lacey's features. In the darkness, which did not reach far, Lacey no longer looked to be himself.

The cooling clicks of the motor and the buzzing insects were the major sounds which broke the stillness. Sam looked down at his hand in the darkness and noticed that all the color seemed to be bleached out of it. "Might as well go home. Ain’t gonna spotlight anything tonight." Sam was pissed at his drunken bud.

"Suit yourself," Lacey propped up a knee on the dash and popped another beer open.

"Good God, what is that?" Sam craned forward as his headlights ignited again. About twenty feet in front of them in the gravel of the levee lay a stiffened corpse. Empty pools from the headlights reflected where her eyes had once been.

Monday morning Sheriff Red Humphries knew that he had a problem.   The body brought back in by Sam and Lacey was identified as Lucille May.   The mutilation had been near the same as those teenagers, the tongue and the heart had been removed. Part of the wounds looked like a wild animal had gotten to them while others were as sharp as a razor.

The problem was obvious. Eddy May had been chained up at the time someone had butchered his wife, just like them children while he was securely away. It was not so much as his own fallibility that frustrated Red as it was the predicament it caused him. How could he get out of this? He had been so wrong. One thing was sure there was no more reason to continue his inquisition of Eddy May. And he could not just let the man go free. He would lose his position.

He picked up his shotgun and headed for his truck.

 

 

Chapter 10