Dumping Grounds (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

19

Bad Blood

Daylight found Joshua on the back porch, still sitting in his rocker, his feet propped on the railing. The stiffness in his joints was worse this morning than previous mornings; he knew it was the result of the wreck.

A fifty-year-old body does not recover as quickly as a thirty-year-old body does. He knew that because he was thirty the last time he was involved in an accident.

He hoped it would be another twenty years before he was involved in another.

Joshua was about to light up a smoke when he heard them. The field hollers he had not heard in awhile.

He knew it was not because they had not been occurring; there was just too much else going on for him to pay attention to them.

After hearing the first hollers, Joshua lit his smoke then leaned back and listened.

He knew they were probably just echoes from the past, but just the same, he enjoyed hearing them. He felt the earth absorbed and held life’s daily occurrences, playing them back as you would a recording.

He heard the voices began to sing.

“Hey, he, hi, ho, off to werk the fields we go. Werk, werk, werk, the masser yells, and ye werk, werk, werk til he burins in hell” they sang.

Joshua wondered if they sang those words in front of their master or behind his back. They usually sang that song in the mornings, and they always sounded less cheerful in the mornings.

He thought it would be the other way around. After working the fields all day, they should be tired and unhappy, but no, the songs he heard late in the day were more cheerful in nature, the tone more jubilant, as if they’d defeated something they had not thought they could defeat.

Joshua knew from experience that cotton was a tough opponent. He had worked for old man Tanner back in high school. Dragging a cotton sack was the least of work. Picking cotton bolls from plants could leave peoples fingers a bloodied, sore mess by the end of an hour.

He lasted an entire week in Tanner Farms cotton fields, but swore he would never pick cotton again.

His fingers still carried the scars of that week of picking cotton. He could not imagine being forced to do it day after day, year after year.

He sure was glad Mister Tanner took pity on him and put him to picking up pecans instead.

Partial remains of Caledonia, slash, the Moffett Plantation House, still jutted up from the earth, about a quarter mile north of Joshua’s cabin.

The original plantation house that Mister Moffett built measured 35 feet by 35 feet square. It was three stories tall.

Joshua remembered seeing a photograph of it when it still stood, back about 1850. He saw it somewhere when he was just a boy, but the details failed him now. It might have been when Missus Christopher told him the story of it, or it could have been in school, he was not sure.

One corner had stood for over a hundred years until vandals destroyed it the previous year. It was most likely the cornerstone of the building.

Joshua had always wondered if it contained the infamous Confederate gold Mister Moffett supposedly had hidden on his land or maybe they had hidden some other treasure in there when the plantation was built.

He himself had thought of digging under the corner before just to see what was beneath it, but he felt it wrong to profit off others misfortune.

When the fire drew them there to investigate the previous year, he had first thought that someone else figured the same thing he did and busted it apart, stole the contents, and then set the fire, but upon investigating, found that no one had dug in the area.

Teenagers, one of them, Autry Reston’s youngest boy, Joe, set the fire and destroyed the wall. Joe claimed that every time he looked toward the window, he saw someone looking back at him. It had freaked him out so bad that he had nightmares and at first refused to go back there.

Then, Joe’s friend suggested they destroy the wall and windows so the ghost would leave.

Joshua had no doubt the boy had seen a ghost, but destroying the old glass windowpanes was uncalled for; it pissed him off. He should have taken them out and preserved them himself, but hindsight was 20/20.

The songs of the slaves got fainter with the light of day, but Joshua lingered in the rocker, watching the squirrels play. Jack stood up, stretched, and then wandered out into the yard for his morning constitutional.

Jack’s movement was not as graceful as it had once been; age was catching up with him too.

Joshua knew he should be breaking in and training a replacement, but dreaded Jack’s demise. He knew Jack was 12 years old and could possibly live two or three more years. He was the forth dog Joshua had owned in his lifetime. To Joshua, dogs were like family, much like children he reckoned. He found it hard to believe that dogs had no soul, but according to Preacher McNeil, that was what the good book said.

Whatever the case may be, Joshua knew dogs had some sort of spirit. He had seen the ghost of his first dog a couple of hours after he died. He had looked up and there came Spot, wandering around the corner of the house.

Dogs were a lot like people. They could be loving and protective, or grumpy and shy. Many were also very smart, and he knew they felt emotions.

You could see the sadness in their expression when they were sad or if they were scared, you could see that too.

You could definitely see when they were happy. Their mood changed the same as peoples do; most of all, they were good companions and great listeners.

As he thought about it, Joshua realized that some dogs were just plain mean and evil and no amount of being good to them would change that, but there were people like that too. Some people were evil and cunning and no amount of loving kindness could change them either.

Moreover, there were people who were also soulless; that too stood to reason.

Joshua stood up, stretched, and then went inside. While the coffee was brewing, he took a shower and shaved. His reflection in the mirror starred back at him from blackened eyes. An image of the black mustang coming toward him flashed through his mind.

The strange thing about the accident was, he could not remember the impact, at all.

Joshua was drinking a cup of coffee when he heard a car pull up to the front of his house. It was the garage delivering his new patrol car. He stepped out onto the porch and scrunched up his face; it was black with a white top. “At least its not solid black,” he mumbled to himself. The phone began ringing just as he was signing the delivery ticket; it was Deputy Cook.

“Did you have time to think about what we gone do about those boys?

“No, not really, but I still intend to go have a talk with Dotty Reston. She might need a little persuasion, but I believe I can get her to help out with them boys of hers.”

“I hope so, Sheriff. We cannot have all that bad blood spewing all over Moffettville. If you could a seen what was going on when we drove up in that parking lot, you would a thought those boys were the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s trying to kill one another.”

“That bad, huh.”

“Yes, Sir, even that big ox of a boy they call Boukie; you know how quiet he is. It takes a lot to get that boy riled up… anyhow, the biggest Reston boy was name calling him and threatening him, and just wouldn’t let up.

All of a sudden, I saw Boukie jump off the back of that truck, run at the Reston boy and knock him flat of his ass, then, when he was a lying on the ground there, he kept mouthing off so old Boukie, who had started back toward his truck, turned around and kicked him like a football.

He went about two feet up in the air, then landed in a crumpled heap.

He wouldn’t a spoutin’ off at the mouth after that, just hollering for help.That’s what busted that boys ribs and punctured his lung. Those boys of Hannah’s were right there in the middle of it too!”

“Why didn’t y’all stop them if you got there in time to see all of that?”

“What’d you want us to do, shoot em? They’s just boys, Sheriff. We didn’t know they was gonna get that rough.”

“And y’all couldn’t arrest any of them; was they to rough for y’all to handle too?”

“Naw, Sir. When Davis shot up into the air, all of them boys took off a running and left the injured one laying there. Boukie looked me dead in the eye, nodded his head as if to say good evening, then got in his truck and drove off, the rest of the Stringer gang jumps in the back and rides off with him. The Reston gang just ran off across the road and into the woods.”

“We’ll see what we can do about it, but ain’t much we can do to keep them boys from hating one another,” Joshua said, then he told Cook that he was headed into town to talk to the people at the tattoo shop.

Joshua hung up the phone and then headed out the door. As he got behind the wheel of the new patrol car, he sighed. He would have to see about getting his 8-track player installed so he could listen to his music.

Joshua drove out of his driveway and headed toward Mobile. As he neared Big Creek, he saw Junior Cobb standing alongside the road. Apparently, his old truck had broken down. Most folks took an immediate liking to Junior. Junior never met a stranger and he could talk the horns off a Billy goat, once you got him started talking.

He lived in a tarpaper shack next door to his mama.

Junior was a little slow in learning and he had never gotten married. Most women liked to talk to Junior and dance with him, but that was as far as it went; he was not husband material.

Joshua had learned a long time ago that when women were looking for sperm donors to father their children, they tried to get the strongest, best looking, and smartest they could find, just like with most animal species.

Junior was none of those, but he was a good soul. Joshua was not going to leave him stranded on the side of the road. He flipped on his blue lights and bumped his siren once just to get Junior to laugh.

It worked, Junior went to laughing and pointing at Joshua and saying “now Josh.” Joshua laughed too. He could not help it; Junior had that effect on people. He was always smiling, no matter how bad things seemed; but Stokes could tell that he was worried about his truck.

“What happened, Junior?”

“My truck done quit on me. I reckon it jumped time, this time.”

“You need me to carry you somewhere, or call somebody?”

“If you can call one of my brothers for me, either Charlie or William, one of them can come help me get it to the house.”

“Now, Junior, I don’t mind running you somewhere. All you got to do it lock it up,” Joshua told him, but he could tell when Junior went to gnawing on his thumbnail, that there was no way he was going to leave his truck.

“Don’t worry Junior. I will get a hold of one of them and send them on their way. Do you need anything before I go?”

“I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without my truck. I hope its not broke too bad to be fixed.”

“Don’t worry, that brother of yours is a pretty good mechanic, he’ll get it going for you. I’ll see you later, Junior.” He hated to leave him standing there, looking like a lost little boy, but he needed to get on down the road.

Joshua stopped at Tommy Creighton’s in Semmes and called Junior’s brother William. He had William’s number because he used him to mechanic on his personal vehicles for the last five or six years.

He did not know much about Charlie, just that he stayed close to home and was not much of a conversationalist. Joshua drove to Dauphin Street, parked in front of the tattoo parlor, and then got out and walked in.

The buzz of conversation immediately ceased when they looked up and saw him standing there.

“Can I help you, Sheriff,” Todd Jenkins, the owner and head tattooist asked.

“I have a picture of a tattoo that I’d like you to look at, see if maybe you recognize the artwork or the artist,” Joshua handed Todd the picture.

Todd did not look at it no time before he said, “I can tell you that I didn’t do this, nor did any of the artists who work here, but, you know, it looks a lot like Skip Normand’s work. His place is out there off Highway 90; you know where I’m talking about, don’t you.”

“Yeah, I know Skip. I had not thought of him though.”

“Why don’t you just ask the girl where she got the artwork done?”

“Well, I would if I could, but she’s dead. We are trying to ID her. All we have is her body.”

“Damn!” Todd exclaimed.

“Don’t call Skip and warn him that I'm coming; he’s not in trouble,” Joshua stated. “If he is the artist, hopefully he can tell me
who
the girl is.” Todd nodded affirmation.

On the drive to Skip Normand’s shop, Joshua thought of all he needed to do. Suddenly, he felt a bit overwhelmed. Of course, he could have sent someone else to talk to Dotty, but felt that he could best get through to her and accomplish more than any of his deputies could.

He could have sent one of them to make the rounds of the tattoo parlors too, but that too, he felt he needed to do. Trying to do everything on his own, had always been his downfall, but it is hard to turn loose the reins and give control to others. He knew that he was a control freak, but at his age, he was not likely to change.