Hick Junction Devil
by Robert Tucker Harrell
In Fall of 1982 I reached a breaking point. I have been brittle since then, unsure of where the next break in the ice would be. Fall and winter of 1984 and early 1985 brought me to another breakpoint, much more brutal and wounding than the last. Two months of psych meds and confusion have uncorked my sense of strength permanently. I am inwardly brittle to the point of wondering if I can even afford to give a hellish shit!
From Journal, June 1985
Mandy Smathers stormed into the parish office with big news. “She was so scared, Fr. Ralph! I’ve never seen a girl that scared before! She handed me this note in the supermarket aisle, looked over her shoulder out the front window and ran out. I tried to go out after her, but she was gone. The only person I could see was some nasty guy with the salt and pepper gray hair, the heavy beard and mean looking black eyes. He stared at me till I went back in the store.”
“Let me see the note, Mandy.” She handed him a small soiled piece of paper with handwriting scrawled in pencil.
My fiancé is taking me away, and
I don’t want to go. Please help me.
Patricia
“How long since she got out of jail?” A knot formed in his stomach, the kind that forms slowly and keeps forming until that’s all there is to feel.
“I’m not sure; yesterday, I think.”
“Have you been over to ask the sheriff if he has any idea where she was supposed to go when she got out?”
Mandy, starting to sweat under her heavy neck, talking faster than she could think, blubbered, “Not yet. I wanted to tell you first. I just saw her and got the note 20 minutes ago, and I came straight to you. I don’t know what to do! I’m worried, and she was just scared to death! I think that guy has done something to her.” She snatched a tissue out of her bosom and mopped her neck.
“Do you think that guy who stared at you is her fiancé?”
“I don’t know!” she whimpered. “I’ve seen him walking around on the street downtown and on the highway. He’s a bad looking dude.”
“Look, I’ll go to the jail and check in with Jackson. He can at least give me an address. He was supposed to call me when he let her go!”
Fr. Ralph dubbed out his cigarette and locked up the church. Early June at 3500 feet elevation on the high plains felt good—not yet hot, but past the muddy thaw and spring rain. In two minutes he parked in front of the courthouse and jail complex to see if Sheriff Jackson Walker was still in the office. It was almost 5 o’clock; Walker was particular about being punctual for quitting time. In this little county seat, none of the local pastors gave a damn about the jail. Sheriff Walker had welcomed Fr. Ralph’s interest in making weekly rounds in the cells, conversing with any inmate who wanted to talk and passing out cigarettes. Mandy Smathers from St. Ninian’s had come along on the visits after a few weeks to talk with the incarcerated women, whose population went up and down depending on circumstances in the oil fields. When extra hands were in town, the whores got busy and so did the jail. Otherwise, it was the occasional drug bust that netted a woman or two. Young and middle-aged women seemed oddly involved in the meth and cocaine trade from time to time. Patricia Flanders had been rounded up in some odd drug related mess as a peripheral person. Nothing was very clear.
Patricia had become Mandy’s special project. In her early 20’s, Mandy was a short, cute and slightly plump brunette who had a domesticated sweetness about her, highlighted by her cheeky smile with one nasty greenish-black tooth that always ended up being the only thing you could look at when you spoke with her. When she talked, she caught folks off guard with her careful speech and low, earnest voice. She made people trust her by sincerely trusting them first, and she was hard to dismiss as the usual female jailbird. Over a period of about 14 weeks, Mandy and Patricia had covered a whole lot of ground on most every subject that could matter, especially matters related to Christian Faith, getting a job, and getting past the jail time. Jackson Walker had given Fr. Ralph and Mandy run of the jail on Sunday afternoons, and even allowed private visits with inmates who requested attention at odd hours during the week.
When the Bishop came to town near the end of Patricia’s sentence, Jackson had allowed her to attend church with an accompanying deputy to get baptized and confirmed as an Episcopalian. She didn’t even have to wear handcuffs. It was a grand morning for Patricia, Mandy, Fr. Ralph, and for the whole congregation at St. Ninian’s to see their little parish making such a difference in someone’s life. Mandy had things worked out for Patricia to have some work when she got released. The situation held much promise! On the day of her baptism and confirmation and first Holy Communion, Patricia was dressed up in new jeans and a lacy yellow blouse, free of her blue county jumpsuit for the first time in over 6 months. She cried, the Bishop cried, Mandy cried, the deputy cried, Fr. Ralph almost cried, and everyone was so very happy with lots of fried chicken and all the good stuff that went with it!
He walked into the jail office where Charlie, a Mexican with jet black hair and an angular jaw slung under high cheekbones, sat in perfectly pressed khaki slacks and shirt, his shiny black boots up on the desk with his arms stretched behind his head. Even in this posture, his deputy’s badge bore a measure of dignity; he was a very decent guy. The low volume of a baseball game played on a little black and white TV next to the phone and the radio. “Hey Charlie, is Jackson in this afternoon?”
In accent free English, he nodded, “Yeah, he’s still there in the back. Go on in, Father.”
Ralph walked into the Sheriff’s cramped backroom office. His skinny butt stretched tight in his jeans as he bent over under his desk, his fanny braced against the edge of his desk chair. “What the hell are you doing, Jackson? Lose something?” he chuckled.
Sheriff Walker was out of breath, his belly as big as his ass was skinny, groping under the desk. Hearing Fr. Ralph’s voice and footsteps, he yelled out, “Goddamned little thing! Lion’s club pin! I can see it, but I can’t reach it! Why do I have to wear the damn thing just to go to the meeting? They know me. Hell, they voted for me!” He breathed in and then out and then lunged and got his fingers on it; for a moment, it looked like his belly would shove his jeans right off his ass.
Walker reared up into his chair and took a deep breath. “Son of a bitch!” he shook his head. Adjusting his belt, he huffed, “What can I do for you, preacher?” His eyes bulged watery red.
“When did you release Patricia Flanders? She ran up to Mandy in the grocery store this afternoon and handed her this note, and then she disappeared out the door. Mandy said that some mean looking bastard with the graying hair and the black beard stared her down outside the store. She says Patricia was scared out of her wits.”
Embarrassed tension tightened the sheriff’s jaw. “We released her yesterday, a little ahead of schedule. The judge said she’d been in long enough. We had to let her go.”
Ralph narrow his eyes. “Well, I appreciate the shit out of your notification, man! Damn it, we have a lot of interest in how that girl does, you know what I mean?”
“I know, I know! It all happened pretty fast, Ralph. I was gonna call you all this evening.”
“Do you at least have an address where she was supposed to go when she left?”
“All we have is the address she gave us when we first booked her. Some little old place in that section of cheap apartments off the alley behind downtown. Charlie can look it up for you. You watch out if you go snooping around back there!”
Fr. Ralph paused. “What do you mean watch out? Watch out for what?
“It’s not the kind of shit I’m gonna discuss with you, preacher!” the sheriff answered curtly, his face turning redder as he continued. “There’s a side to this town that’s full of hate, and no one is sure where it started or why it stays around, but it’s real, goddamnit, and you don’t don’t want to get mixed up in it! Do you understand me?”
“I’m not sure, Jackson, but I wish you’d just cool down and not have a stroke or something,” Fr. Ralph retorted. “I’ll let you know if I find her.” The sheriff clamped his Stetson on his head and stormed out the back door of his office. Ralph heard the grinding screech as Jackson held the key too long as he started his car.
Deputy Charlie gave him the address: 274 Shady Court. “It’s part of a bunch of little wooden duplexes on the dirt roads that run off the alley behind Main Street. Don’t go at night. Don’t even go in the late afternoon. Wait until in the morning.” Charlie’s steady gaze matched the firmness in his voice. “I recommend you just don’t go at all! They’re all crazy back there!”
For the next 30 minutes, Ralph drove up and down the alley behind Main Street, the only real business district in Komdon, Texas. It ran about two miles, and most of the stores had closed for the day. There were only a few vehicles parked off the alley, most of them pickups or vans with business names painted on the doors. He didn’t see any duplexes on the other side of the alley, at least not at first. He finally noticed that down some of the dirt roads that T’d into the alley there were some worn out looking low structures with long front porches. He parked and walked up to a couple of them and noticed that there were two front doors on them. They had random numbers in rusty metal over each door, but without any street signs, it was impossible to know where he was. “T’hell with it,” he mutterd. “I’ll come back in the morning and ask around to see if any of these store owners have heard of Shady Court.” He went home, smoked some weed, ate some left over Tex-Mex, and fell asleep in the easy chair in front of the TV.
He woke up in a fog at 5:30 a.m. and took a hot shower followed by a cold rinse. A triple-bag dose of Earl Gray tea and dry toast jolted him awake. He emptied out last night’s bong water and put away his stash. On the back porch he sat down with his tea and a cigarette to wait for the day to fully dawn. He watched the prairie sky slowly start to burn, a glowing blue tinged red with some high clouds. Early June. Best time of the year! He sipped, smoked, and stared as full light finally flooded into his sitting area and warmed the air. “Well, all right then,” he whispered to himself. “Let’s go find us a lost girl, if she’s still in town at all.”
At the Exxon station on the corner of Main Street and the highway, Ralph asked the mechanic if he know how to find Shady Court off the alley behind the stores. “Well, you ain’t gonna find no street signs back there. Just go by the number of the address. You’ll have to look at all of them till you find the one you want. You got a house number?”
“Yessir, it’s 274.” He struggled not to react to the sour odor of the mechanics clothes.
“Well, just go to one after ‘nother till you find that number. There ain’t no sense to it. Nothin’s in any kind of order. When you find that number, you’re at where you’re lookin’ for.” He mopped his brow with a greasy rag; the morning was warming up fast; the breeze had gone stagnant. “And lissen’here. You watch out back there.” He paused and looked thoughtfully as he lit up a cigarette. “They’s nothin’ but white trash livin’ in that mess.” He drew down about a third of his Pall Mall and then exhaled smoothly. “I wouldn’t go back there even if I had a gun. You gotta gun?”
“Okay, and thank you!” Ralph shook his hand. “Can I bum one of those smokes from you?”
“Sure, here you you go.” He lit up and took a long drag on the Pall Mall. It was nice. Just then someone across the street shouted, “Gut wagon comin’!” The street cleared, as he and the mechanic jumped inside the station office. Late every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings the truck with the unusable refuse from the meat packing plant north of town rumbled right down the middle of Main Street. It smelled so bad that no one stayed on the street as it passed. The aroma was a combination of gut refuse and carcass leavings left over from the freshly slaughtered cattle and pigs that were processed continuously through three shifts per day. It was like death, still wet and warm; there was nothing to match it for rank nastiness. The usual practice was to wait at least ten minutes before venturing back onto the sidewalks; the wind would clear it away, or most of it.
He searched through six of the dirt side roads off the alley. Each one had three or four of the strange little unpainted ramshackle duplexes, so he was starting to get tired. Just like the mechanic had said, the numbers were random. Finally, there it was, number 274. This particular house still had some sizable remnants of white paint on it, and the numbers still had some of the brass that gleamed yellow in patches. The blinds on the porch windows were closed. He knocked on the door. Nothing. He knocked again. Nothing. He walked around the back of the house and found the window blinds closed there, too. He knocked hard on the back door. Nothing. He knocked again even harder and longer. Nothing. “Damn.” He returned to the front porch and knocked even harder than before on the door and on the window frame. Nothing. “Well. . . I guess that’s that.”
Frustrated, he sat down in his car with the windows open to let the hot air escape. Just past12 noon, it had warmed up enough to make him break a sweat. “Is there something I can help you with?” a raspy deep voice challenged. Three feet away stood the guy with the salt and pepper hair that Mandy had seen at the market, just as she’d described him. Up close, his stocky build, sinewy arms, and coarse black beard made Fr. Ralph wish he’d never come down this alley. The faintest trace of the gut wagon wafted from the back seat. Thick black eyebrows connected across the bridge of his nose. He smelled like he’d stood over a charcoal fire cooking meat for several hours. His face bore no expression at all, other than the tense sinister combination of his features.
“Yes, I’m looking for Particia Flanders. She’s a member of my parish and I have the address of 274 Shady Court, and the only 274 I can find around here is that house right there.” He pointed at the house with his right hand, his left hand on the wheel of the car.
Salt and pepper suddenly approached his car door and slammed his hands down on the ledge of the open window. The car shook. He thrust his face right up to Ralph’s and slowly enunciated in a stern, matter-of-fact tone, “Never heard of her. You’re in the wrong place, man.” Ralph looked into his eyes, and felt his insides surge out of his own eyes and into the dark tunnels of salt and pepper’s eyes; he stared into an abyss, a place of neither light nor dark, neither up nor down, neither liquid nor solid nor gas, as if nothing had ever come into existence there. This was not simple emptiness, but rather a cruel void. He forced himself to breathe out, and he could see his breath as on a cold day rush across the steering wheel.
“Sorry to bother you, man,” stammered Ralph as he turned the key in the ignition. He saw the frost of his breath again. The car was dead. Salt and pepper stepped back, and on the next try the engine started. Ralph drove away slowly, not wanting to make any kind of sudden movement to provoke a response. Fifteen of so yards down the alley he could still see his breath; salt and pepper’s eyes pursued him in the rearview mirror, still as large in the mirror as if he were right behind the car. At the next glance, he was not there at all. He turned onto the street and then right onto Main Street, pulling to the curb to collect his wits. “I don’t think we’re going to find Patricia,” he said to himself under his breath. He looked at his watch. His hands shook; it was 2:17 p.m. “How long was I there in that alley?” he said aloud. “How long?” he said slamming his fist into the dash.
He went to the Sheriff’s office. No one was there except the two guards who sat in the back room behind where Deputy Charlie usually sat. They waved, but they wouldn’t come forward. From the yelling and cursing from inside the cell block, it was clear that the inmates were agitated. “What’s going on?” yelled Ralph.
“Don’t know! It’s been like this for a couple of hours. It was all calm earlier, but now they’re all mad as hell about somethin’!” called back one of the jailors. “We gotta sit tight till Charlie or Jackson gets back.”
Just outside the door he ran into the deputy and the sheriff coming up the walk. “Preacher you look like you seen a ghost!” jibed Jackson with an odd sneer. “You all right?”
“Went looking for Patricia Flanders this morning with that address Charlie gave me. Not sure what the hell I got into back there in that alley!”
Deputy Charlie looked worried. “What happened?”
“Well I didn’t find her or any sign of her, just some rough looking son-of-bitch that told me he’d never heard of her and that I was in the wrong place. The whole thing was just so strange. I feel crazy!”
Sheriff Jackson was red-faced mad. “Well. . . damnit, preacher, you are crazy! I told you that’s bad shit back there! No telling what’s gonna happen now!”
“Well, Jackson, if you hadn’t let her go early without telling anyone this wouldn’t have happened. You are responsible if she turns up dead! And as far as what’s gonna happen now, I think your jailors are already working on that! I’m outa here . . . ”
Without another word, Ralph drove straight home. The first thing he did when he got in the house was check his bedside table drawer to be sure his 9mm was in place and ready. He checked it. Full magazine in the gun and two more loaded magazines next to it. He turned to the mirror over the dresser. His shirt was sweated out; his clerical collar was stained and dirty. He had black circles under his eyes that hid behind his thick glasses, giving his blue eyes a strange brightness, like someone else was looking at him through his own eyes.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They were sore and dry. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. Something swallowed his tears before they could form. He tried to recall Patricia’s face as she had beamed at church the morning of her baptism and first Holy Communion, but he couldn’t remember what she looked like. It was like she had never even been born at all. The only face he could see was salt and pepper bearing down on him in the car window in the alley. There in his bedroom, he could see his breath in the cold spot where he sat, unable to do anything but sit perfectly still.
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