Chief Ferguson's wife placed the phone back in its cradle and said to her favorite daughter, "Welp, t'ain't nobody knows where your Pa's gone off to, BettyJo."
Mrs. Ferguson wheezed audibly as she struggled to get a Virgina Slim lit with arthritic, yellowed fingers.
"Well, you know Pa. He's prolly out on another lark with some good ole boys an' jes turned his cell off."
"Well, your Pa better put in an appearance soon. Granny's due any minute and she sure 'nuff won't appreciate her only living son not bein' here to give her a proper welcome."
BettyJo thought on it some and said, "Nope. Reckon she'll prolly gut shoot Pa with his own sidewinder."
"Wouldn't surprise me one bit," Mrs. Ferguson wheezed. She suddenly turned her head toward the window and said, "Did you hear that, BettyJo?"
"Nope, Ma. Alls I hears is rain. All this goddamned rain."
"T'ain't rained like this in twenty years," said Mrs. Ferguson, eyeing the kitchen window suspiciously.
Out on Route 28 heavy sheets of rain battered against the tarmac. Next to a black van with blinking hazards, a gray haired man wearing a priest's collar was knelt down, tire iron in hand.
"Flat tire, eh?"
"Aye," said the man looking up, dark eyes squinted against the deluge. "I must confess I've never changed a tire in all me years on God's green Earth, Officer."
"It's actually, Chief. Well, let me give you a hand, Father."
"Aye, that'd be fine, Chief," the man said straightening up. He handed the Chief the tire iron and took a step back to give the Chief some elbow room.
"A big strapping man such as yerself..., that flat tire doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell."
"I reckon it don't, Father."
The Chief knelt down to attend to the tire and the gray haired man slid his hand deep into a pocket of his black trench coat. As the Chief began loosening a lug nut, big shoulders hunched against the rain, the gray haired man's hand reemerged from the abyss, fingers clutching a heavy sap wrapped in black electrical tape.
"Aye, Chief. Thar ya go..."
Officers Phife and Tipp approached the front door of the boarded up, decrepit house that was overgrown with weeds; their guns drawn. Somewhere in the not too distant woods a coyote yip-howled.
Ginnie, the night dispatcher, had radioed the two less than ten minutes earlier. A man had called the station to report witnessing a large black man dragging a white woman by the hair into the old McElroy place.
Officer Phife had radioed back to Ginnie that they were, "on it."
Officer Tipp had said, "The McElroy place? When I was a kid we used to think it was haunted by the ghost of Ol' John."
Almost twenty years ago, in that very house, Big John McElroy had scuffled with one of Macabre's finest, shooting the cop to death with his own service revolver. He'd been found the very next morning, hanging dead from one of the rafters in his holding cell, by then Deputy Ferguson.
There had been rumors about Mrs. McElroy and Deputy Ferguson but nothing ever spoken of in greater than a hushed tone.
Mrs. McElroy had claimed her husband shot the officer in self-defense. She had tried to tell anybody who would listen but her claims of Big John's innocence fell upon a town of deaf ears.
As it were, the McElroys were already a town oddity. As a black couple with white children they had long endured many a look askance. But, even had the town been endeared of the McElroys; facts was facts. Big John McElroy was, quite simply, a cop killer; and their little town didn't take none too kindly to those.
Mrs. McElroy and her sons had left town shortly thereafter; never to be seen again. The house had remained abandoned ever since.
"You on point, Phife?" Officer Tipp asked.
"All the time, Tipp."
Officer Phife took a deep breath and kicked in the front door with the heel of his jack boot. It fell forward, as if waiting all these years for someone to liberate it from its rusted hinges. Officers Phife and Tipp rushed in with the rain, guns drawn.
In the middle of the dark musty room, Officer Phife's flashlight illuminated a large man sporting a dolemite afro and big dark sunglasses. The man was seated in a decrepit recliner in the far corner of the room. The big man thrashed violently and grunted unintelligibly at the officers.
Officer Tipp's flashlight came to rest on the man's right hand, its light reflecting off the long steel blade of what appeared to be bloodstained machete.
Officer Phife's flashlight illuminated the man's left hand. It held, what appeared to be an oversized, all day sucker lollipop missing a bite or two. At the big man's feet an old boom box was blasting Johnny Cash.
"Get your goddamned hands up!" Officer Phife commanded.
Officer Tipp assumed a shooter's stance.
The man in the chair continued his unintelligible growl from behind lips curled in a ferocious snarl.
"Last chance," Phife bellowed. "Let me see those fucking hands!"
The big mans hands refused to oblige the officer. The big man's legs stamped against the floor. The machete waved to and fro in the haze of the flashlight.
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM
A pool of blood began to gather at the big man's feet. The machete hung limp from his hand. His head hung at an odd angle.
Officers Phife and Tipp approached the dead man, guns still drawn.
As they got within arm's length, Officer Phife said, "What the fuck?!?!"
Officer Phife holstered his weapon and then reached out towards the dead man's face. His fingers liberated a black oily rag from the man's mouth. The smell of shoe polish and catsup wafted up past the too long hairs within his flared nostrils.
"Somebody nailed his goddamned arms to the chair with fucking railroad spikes," Officer Tipp exclaimed.
Almost reluctantly, Officer Phife removed the dead man's big sunglasses.
A sharp gasp escaped from Officer Tipp's mouth. His gun slid out of his hand; performing a dead cat bounce against the splintered floorboards. A rat scurried out from under the chair. It dashed across the pool of blood and out the front door leaving tiny, red rodent prints, in its wake.
Officer Phife, with gritted teeth, stained brown from years of chewing Red Man, squeezed the stubble of the dead man's chin, slowly raising his face to eye level.
Carved across the dead man's forehead was the single word: RAPIST
With his free hand he grabbed the dead man's afro and gave it a slight tug. His hand quickly recoiled taking the faux afro along for the ride.
It fell to the blood stained floor where Officer Tipp's boots were already beating a path to the rainswept porch which he promptly got sick all over.
The two men stood in front of the tombstone, smoking in the rain from beneath the shelter of large black umbrellas.
"Well, Daddy," one of the men said, licking a big all day sucker lollipop between puffs on his cigarette. "I know it took us awhile but I hope you can rest just a tad easier now. Ma's pretty far gone with the dementia so I reckon you'll have some company purty soon."
The other man said, "We promised Ma she wouldn't have to face you while that rapist Ferguson was still walking God's green Earth."
A black crow suddenly landed on the tombstone, obscuring the word, "beloved."
Cain McElroy shooed the crow away. He knelt down and placed a bloody priest's collar gingerly on the tombstone.
He said to his little brother, "C'mon Abel. I reckon it's time we were getting our half-black asses the fuck outta Dodge."
Ten minutes later, as their black van was approaching a road sign that read, "You are now leaving Macabre Mississippi. Pop. 300," Abel said, "Pull over Cain."
Cain slowed the black van down, easing it over to the side of the road. Abel opened his door halfway and spat a large clot of mucous on the ground.
"Now we can get the fuck outta Macabre."
Cain took a lick of his lollipop. A faint smile passed across his big ass lips and he said to his twin brother, younger by a mere two minutes, "Amen to that little brother. Amen to that."
From Crucifiction by Krafto Matix.
