As she rumbled down the canyon road, the rain began falling harder until it was like a storm of boots stomping on the steel roof of her ’69 Pontiac Lemans. On the left the creek had risen to the top of its banks and in places was lapping over the edge of the road.
On the right the hillside was giving way at intervals invading the road in cascading piles of soggy mud and rocks. Above her the rain pelted through the towering trees, an occasional branch breaking away in the wind making the road into a game of pick up sticks which she had to navigate like a video game, avoiding the creek on one side, the landslides on the other, and in the middle the fallen branches and brush.
She usually played the radio or a tape of some of her favorite hits, but now she needed full concentration. “Just let me make it to the Highway,” she chanted like a mantra under her breath watching and listening for each crack and rumble warning of impending disaster.
What she didn’t expect to hear was a gunshot and the feeling that something besides Mother Nature was stalking her on this road. A malcontent, someone she had slighted, a disturbed unreliable mind bent on issuing her a warning, “Get out and stay out!”
She heard one shot and then another. She was sure something hit the side of her car – the driver’s side! She couldn’t stop to think about it now. Not during this storm. Later she would examine the side of her car and see the evidence: a small indentation, but no penetration, probably a pellet gun. Someone with a sniper’s heart who had it out for her. She had an idea of who it might be.
“These people up here are private with their own way of doing things,” she had been told. There was one family in particular that was just a little bit odder than the rest. The three boys had killed a sow and caught her little piglets in the woods. Now they were raising them in the bathtub in their cabin. This turned the whole bathroom into a sty, as a neighbor found out when she asked to use the facilities.
The mother of this family was the smart one. She was an excellent shot at 200 yards. She had a reputation, but she could play it both ways – country or city. She put on a dress suit, a pair of heels, and some make-up to go to work for the real suits: lawyers. She brought in the cash her family needed to survive.
Her passel of boys were left to run wild shooting everything in their path: wild turkeys and buzzards alike, breaking windows, trespassing… The Old Daddy was a whacko and took exception to being called out by his neighbors for letting his boys run wild disturbing everyone in the west county. Old Daddy tracked the two beautiful liver spotted hounds smiling to himself and strung them up in a tree for the complaining neighbor to find hanging dead like some macabre Christmas decoration.
Mrs. Lu wasn’t scared, but she was vigilant. She made sure that everyone was treated with respect – even the whackos. But she knew that if Old Daddy cornered her alone, he would have his way with her and maybe string her up too.
Those shots had come from their property, but she never breathed a word of it to anyone but Mr. Lu. Just in case she turned up missing or dead, she wanted him to know where to look. Those boys were pervs, no three ways about it. She had heard the stories.
(First published 1/24/12)
