Family Thang Read online

“I don’t have no friends.”

  “Wonder why,” Darlene said under her breath.

  “Say what?” Eric said, moving toward her. “Say it so I can hear it.”

  Shirley cut him off at the path. “Go put on some clothes. She didn’t come here to see you.”

  “She came here to talk about me. She had a man she wouldn’t be over here all the time dropping salt on me.” Shirley pushed him toward the bedroom and he circled back. “A buncha men round here and she can’t snag one!”

  “Let’s go outside and talk, Darlene,” Shirley said, frowning at Eric. He started to say more, but Shirley walked out behind Darlene and slammed the door in his face.

  Cumulus clouds blocked the sun, granting a brief respite from the stifling heat.

  Darlene stopped at the foot of the stairs, started to speak, then gestured toward the house.

  Shirley turned and saw Eric looking out the window. “Forget him,” she said. Several houses down, her nine-year-old son, Paul, was playing tag with one of his friends.

  “Shirley,” Darlene whispered, “you know I’m not one to dip in people’s business, but it’s something I feel I should tell you.”

  “What?” Shirley said, knowing this was something she didn’t want to hear.

  “Shereka called me—you know her, don’t you? Donnie Ray Hall’s wife?” Shirley nodded. “She called me from the Blinky Motel. She and Lucky Davis were there—that’s another story. Anyway, she said she saw Eric there.” Darlene paused and glanced over Shirley’s shoulder. Shirley looked too; Eric was no longer in the window. “In the parking lot. Girl, he was flat-foot, bucky naked!”

  “Darlene, please!”

  “Ain’t the worst of it. Shereka said he was pulling on a woman, trying to rape her or something.”

  Shirley’s face warmed. If her right leg started shaking, she would go into the house, or else Darlene would be at risk for serious injury. “Is that it?”

  “Ain’t it enough? Shirley, don’t denigrate ’cause I’m telling you what Shereka told me. Eric was trying to assault a woman, and if this white man hadn’t stepped in, Lord knows what Eric would’ve done.”

  “Darlene, we’re girlfriends, been girlfriends for a long time, right?”

  “Right. Shirley, I’m telling you—”

  “No, listen. I don’t talk about your man”—if she ever got one—“and I don’t appreciate you talking about mine. Besides, that’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard. If what you say is true, why isn’t Sheriff Bledsoe over here kicking the door down? Eric’s not a ugly man—he doesn’t have to take it! Please!”

  “Hmmph!” Darlene snorted. “He might be handsome, I’ll give him that. He’s still a dog, Shirley. He’s a dog other dogs don’t mess with. Remember what happened with him and Linda Riley? Not for me you wouldna known what was going on.”

  Shirley inhaled and held it for a beat, not wanting to recall the episode when Darlene paged her at Wal-Mart and told her to rush home, which she did, and discovered Eric and Linda Riley in bed.

  “Darlene, that was a long time ago.”

  “Nine months ain’t a long time ago.”

  “To me it is!”

  Darlene frowned, her small features squeezing to the center of her face. “You hating me with all you got, ain’t you? He’s handsome, but he ain’t good for shit!”

  Shirley felt a slight tremor in her right leg. “I’ve got to cook breakfast, Darlene. See you later.” She started up the steps.

  “Where’s the truck?”

  Shirley stopped. “What?”

  “The truck? Sheriff Bledsoe searched a black S-Ten pickup parked in the back of the motel. Who you know drive a truck like that?”

  Shirley’s temples started throbbing. Bastard! “See you, Darlene. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Eric was not in the living room, the kitchen, nor the bathroom. She found him in the bedroom, and the sight of him lying in bed fully clothed, eyes closed, snoring, as if he’d not been at the window a moment ago but asleep all the while, made her blood boil. She stared at him a long time.

  In the kitchen she took a pot from the cabinet, filled it with water, set it atop the stove and… Her fingers were on the knob. This isn’t right! It also wasn’t right for him to cheat on her again and again.

  The arrow moved from OFF to HI. This would be the last time he humiliated her.

  Twenty minutes later she stood at the foot of the bed, holding the pot with a large bath towel. “Eric,” she said softly. He groaned and rolled from his side onto his stomach.

  “Eric, sweetie, we need to talk.”

  “Woman, I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Where were you last night, baby?”

  “I told you I was checking this guy about a job.” He grabbed a pillow and covered his head. “Don’t believe everything Darlene tells you. She wants us to breakup so you can be in the same boat with her. Lonely. Depressed. With a stinky two-way dildo.”

  “Last night you said the truck broke down, you had to walk.”

  “Yeah, right. After I checked with the guy about the job, I was on my way home and the truck broke down.”

  “Look me in the eye, honey, and tell me you weren’t at the motel last night with some woman.”

  He snatched the pillow away and quickly sat up. “What the hell are you—” The words caught in his throat. His Adam’s apple yo-yoed and somehow he managed to cast one eye on the pot and the other on Shirley’s face. “B-b-b-baby…”

  “Tell me to my face you weren’t with some woman at the Blinky Motel last night. Tell me. Don’t lie! Your truck was there, you were there! Don’t lie to me, Eric.”

  Eric scooted toward the headboard, pulling his limbs close. “B-b-baby, I promise I wasn’t! I swear on my daddy’s stones I wasn’t! The truck broke down, me and another guy pushed it off the road. Baby, put the pot down. Please!”

  “Why were your pants unzipped when you came home?”

  He raised both hands. “Please, baby, put the pot down! I took a piss, forgot to zip up. Please, baby, for the love of Jesus, put the pot down!”

  Shirley started crying. “All I ever asked was you to love me. If you don’t want me, tell me and I’ll leave you alone. We don’t have to go through all this.” She lowered the pot… then brought it up again. “Tell me the truth, dammit!” she shouted. “Or I’m going to dash you!”

  Sweat blotching his face, Eric said, “It wasn’t me, baby! I swear ’fore God and three Jehovah Witnesses it wasn’t!”

  Eric screamed as the water flew at him.

  He continued screaming after realizing the water was lukewarm. Then he jumped up and hurried to Shirley and smothered her with kisses. “I love you, baby! I love you, baby! I love you so much! I do, I do, I do, I do…”

  Shirley allowed him to move her onto the wet bed. “Don’t hurt me, Eric. My daddy is dead, I can’t take no more hurt.” She held him tight. “I can’t take no more hurt, Eric.”

  Eric, remaining perfectly still in her arms, mumbled, “I won’t hurt you, baby.” The doorbell rang. “Don’t get it, baby. Let’s just sit here, you and me.”

  “It might be Paul.”

  “He can wait.”

  The doorbell rang several more times… and then there was a knock at the bedroom window.

  “Shirley?” Darlene’s said. “Shirley, Robert Earl just called. Your mother is in jail. She confessed to murdering your father.”

  Chapter 7

  Sheriff Bledsoe downed three aspirins and two Pepsid AC tablets with a cup of hot coffee. His stomach simply couldn’t keep up with all the disappointments in the last twenty-four hours.

  Yesterday, nausea set in shortly after he’d talked to Bud Wilson, the owner of BW Feed Store. Juggernaut Gopher Bait, the high-level arsenic pesticide which ended Larry and his dog’s days of playing fetch, was a restricted use product: illegal to purchase without first obtaining a license from the Arkansas State Plant Board.

  Bumbling Bud Wilson didn’t keep proper records,
a felony; thus anybody could have purchased the pesticide.

  I should have arrested his lazy butt.

  With each passing hour, the prospect of solving the case, his first homicide investigation, was dissolving like an Alka Seltzer tablet in a swimming pool.

  Usually, Pepto Bismol did the trick, a couple or three spoonfuls and pain ceased. But last night, after arriving at the Blinky Motel and missing the victim and the assailant of a purported assault, he downed half a bottle of Pepto Bismol and instead of instant relief, the sharp, burning pain scorched up his stomach to his chest.

  A moment he thought he was experiencing the big one. How can you tell the difference, heart attack or gastric indigestion? They both hurt like the dickens.

  He wondered who were the players involved in the shenanigans at the motel. Several eyewitnesses reported a naked man assaulting a woman wearing a trench coat was thwarted by a cowboy in underwear toting a shotgun.

  Unimaginable!

  He had Eric Barnes’ truck towed to an impound lot, yet couldn’t imagine Eric, a petty ne’er-do-well, gallivanting naked in a parking lot. He’d called Eric’s brother, Duane, who said Eric lived with Shirley Harris in the mobile home park north of town but they didn’t have a phone. Duane gave him a neighbor’s number, a Darlene Pryor.

  He was dialing her number when Ida Harris waltzed into the station. The look on her face he could tell she had bad news. She took a chair in front of his desk. The phone to his ear, he gestured a hello. Darlene’s phone rang and rang.

  Mrs. Harris still had on her funeral attire, black skirt and blouse and a black-and-white hat she wore tilted to the side. He hung up the phone.

  Smiling: “Hello, Mrs. Harris, how are you—”

  Before he could finish she burst into tears. Her small chest inflated and deflated with each sob and a grayish mixture of tears and mascara gushed down her face. Sheriff Bledsoe sat quietly. He offered her a Kleenex, which she declined.

  Ruth Ann, he thought, would one day look exactly like her mother. Even now, save for the gray streaks of hair and crow’s feet around the eyes and the marked loss of muscle tone underneath the neck, Ruth Ann was the spitting image of her mother. Both shared the same caramel-colored skin tone, the small, hawkish nose, the thin mouth and the same Asian eyes.

  “I kilt him,” she said. “I did it. I kilt him. Lock me up and throw away the key.”

  Sheriff Bledsoe struggled to stave off elation. “Ma’am, Mrs. Harris, what are you telling me?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She snatched a Kleenex out the box and blew her nose. “Are you deaf? I said I kilt my husband, lock me up.”

  “Ma’am, why don’t you tell me all about it. Take your time. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Ida shook her head, tears still flowing down her face. “I just want you to lock me up. I confessed.” She blew her nose again. “It’s all my fault. Lock me up.”

  “Before we go any further, Mrs. Harris, I need to read you your Miranda rights. You have the right to—”

  “I know it already. Just lock me up so I can get it over with.”

  “It’s not so simple. Where did you get the arsenic?”

  Ida stared at him. “The who?”

  “The arsenic. The poison. Where did you get it?”

  Her lips quivered and she dissolved into another round of body-racking sobs. Sheriff Bledsoe realized then she was not the killer, as obvious as the varicose veins in the back of her small hands.

  Why she confessing to murder? Protecting someone? Her children! She’s sacrificing herself for one of her children.

  “Mrs. Harris, you and I know you didn’t murder your husband. I think you know who did.”

  “What you talking about?” Ida snapped. “I said I did it. I used rat poison. I don’t know anything about arsenic. I know Raid, D-Con and Black Flag. I said I did it, all you need to know.”

  “I see,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “Tell me why you did it?”

  “What?”

  “You said you did it, tell me why.”

  She licked her lips and glared at him.

  “Why? Why after fifty years of marriage you decide to murder your husband?”

  “Because I felt like it!”

  “Oh, I see. You felt like it. We’re cooking with hot grease now. Where did you purchase the poison?”

  “Piggly Wiggly.”

  Sheriff Bledsoe scooted his chair near her and took her hand in his. “If you know who murdered your husband, it’s best you tell me. It’s illegal to withhold that kinda information. I understand you want to protect your family… This isn’t the way to do it.”

  Ida snatched her hand free. “Are you a pissy fool? I told you I did it. What more I have to do? Hitchhike a ride to the penitentiary.”

  He picked up the phone. “Why don’t I call your children? Let’s see—”

  “No, no, no, no!”

  “—what they think about all this.”

  Ida stood up. “What kind of sheriff are you? Why you want to stir up a bunch of confusion? My children don’t even know I’m here—ain’t no need calling them!”

  He put the phone down. “Who killed your husband, Mrs. Harris? Leonard? Ruth Ann? Shirley? What’s your other son’s name?”

  “Robert Earl.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “Oh, my sweet Jesus!” and dropped into the chair and started sobbing much louder than before. She sat there, head on her knees, crying… and crying…

  Sheriff Bledsoe waited patiently; he wanted to ask her about her husband’s will. Who’s the executor? Did she have a copy?

  She never gave him the opportunity, her sobbing increased several decibels. Ten minutes later the noise irritated him, greatly. He was reaching for the phone when it rang. Robert Earl. Thank goodness! He would be right over.

  Her sobs equaled hogs squealing and long nails scratching a blackboard, grating on his last nerve, and each time she paused for a few seconds to catch her breath, he thought it was finally over and then she’d start up again.

  The burning sensation returned to the pit of his stomach. He stared at the door, hoping Robert Earl, or any one of her children, would come in and take her away.

  He was rolling up bits of Kleenex, for earplugs, when the front door flung open and caromed off the wall. Shirley barged in, followed by Leonard, Ruth Ann and Robert Earl.

  “Where’s my momma?” Shirley shouted.

  Sheriff Bledsoe pointed at Ida. “There’s your mother, and if you don’t mind, lower your voice?”

  Leonard, Ruth Ann and Shirley ran over to Ida. “Momma,” Ruth Ann said, “what’s the matter? What’s the matter, Momma?”

  Ida sobbed even louder, which Sheriff Bledsoe had thought was a physical impossibility.

  “What the hell did you do to her?” Shirley demanded.

  “What’s going on, Sheriff?” Leonard asked.

  “Frankly,” Sheriff Bledsoe said, “I don’t have a clue.”

  They started shouting at him. He gleaned: “Why you harassing my momma!… What did she do?… She’s an old woman!… You oughta be ashamed of yourself.” And, though he wasn’t quite sure: “You need yo fat ass whooped!”

  “Hold on!” he shouted over the din. “Everybody just hold on!” The cacophony ceased. “Everybody calm down. This is a police station.” He stood up and the pain in his stomach jumped a circuit and sent a jolt to his kidney. “Your mother came here on her own accord and I haven’t harassed her. Ask her.”

  “Did he hit you with a phone book, Momma?” Shirley asked.

  Before Ida could respond, Shirley turned to Sheriff Bledsoe. “You fat asshole!” She moved toward him, her face tight with rage. Reflexively he reached for his holster. Shirley kept advancing. “You better get your gun,” she said, “’cause I’m fixin’ to kick a clot in yo fat ass!”

  “Shirley!” Ruth Ann shouted.

  “You need to calm her down,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “She’s bucking pretty close to a night in jail.”

  Le
onard laid a hand on Shirley’s shoulder. “Why don’t we let Sheriff Bledsoe tell us what’s going on. Sheriff, please tell us what’s going on here?”

  Shirley pushed Leonard’s hand away. “Why don’t we all kick his fat ass! He beat our momma with a phone book.”

  “No, I didn’t! And I’m not going to be one more fat ass.”

  “Tell us what’s going on, Sheriff?” Ruth Ann said.

  “What’s going on is…” He paused and pinched his right side; the pain didn’t stop. “What’s going on is your mother confessed to killing your father.”

  They all stared at Sheriff Bledsoe, mouths agape. In perfect unison, they slowly turned their attention to Ida, who stopped crying, raised her head and nodded.

  “Ohhhhh!” Shirley yelled and fainted into Leonard’s arms.

  “Help… me!” Leonard gasped, struggling to keep Shirley upright. “She’s too… heavy. Help me!”

  Ruth Ann and Leonard took hold of an arm and Sheriff Bledsoe and Robert Earl grabbed a leg.

  “Over there,” Sheriff Bledsoe said, indicating the cot inside the cell. They carried Shirley, her blue dress dragging across the floor, into the cell and dropped her on the cot.

  “I can’t believe this,” Ruth Ann said. “This is a nightmare.” She rushed to her mother and knelt on one knee. “Momma, tell me the truth. Did you hurt Daddy?”

  Ida sat up straight and stared at the floor. “I did it. I kilt him. It’s all my fault. Fat ass over there don’t believe me.”

  “No, Momma. Don’t say that—you didn’t do it.”

  “Dammit!” Ida shouted. “I did it! How many times I gotta tell it! Y’all want me to write it on the wall. Damn!”

  “Jesus!” Leonard exclaimed, arms covering his head. “Help us all, Jesus!”

  Robert Earl stepped back from Leonard and said, “You fall I’m not catching you.”

  “Will everybody just relax,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “Now it’s obvious to me your mother hasn’t killed anyone.” He let them chew on that for a moment. “It’s obvious to me she’s protecting someone else. Perhaps one of her children?”

  He stared at Ruth Ann, who stared back. At Leonard, who looked away.

  Finally at Robert Earl, who said, “What you looking at me for? I didn’t do it. Momma said she did it, I can take her word for it.”