Hiding Out in Dixie

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Gossiping about an older woman can get you killed.
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I caught the football.

I know I did because I still had a death grip on it when I opened my eyes. I was lying on a hospital bed and my best friend Jim-Bob Wheaten was standing by my side, looking concerned. He told me later that when the Dixon County linebacker hit me at the goal line, everybody thought I was dead. Still, there was celebrating in the stands because the first pass I caught all season resulted in a touchdown and a win over arch rival Dixon County. People in Wolf County, Texas love football even if it sometimes means sacrificing the lives of their young men.

"You're a hero, Longfellow," Jim-Bob told me excitedly. "They're talking about giving you the keys to the city."

"That would be great," I said, "but there aren't that many doors in Last Chance."

"Huh?" Jim-Bob said.

I had grown up in the area around the town of Last Chance, Texas. Years ago Last Chance had a Sears store but it had closed and now it pretty much consisted of the Alamo Café, a dollar store, a feed store, and a closed-up topless bar. It was once said that Charlie Goodnight watered cattle near Last Chance but if he did, the cattle drank all the water. It was also rumored that during the turbulent years of raids across the border, even the Apaches avoided Last Chance because it was too damn depressing.

"I don't even think the doors have locks," I said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jim-Bob asked. "They keys to the city are symbolic. They're not real. And why are you talking so funny?"

I wasn't sure what I was saying myself, and I knew I sounded funny. My voice sounded a little like the deep, subdued cadence of the local Methodist Pastor, and not like an eighteen year old high school senior. And all my thoughts were jumbled around in my head along with flashes of memory of the biggest, ugliest human being I had ever seen in a football uniform rushing at me like a freight train. I vaguely remembered thinking the last thing on earth I would ever do was catch a football as the perfectly thrown spiral hit me in the chest at almost the same time as the linebacker.

"You doctor's down the hall talking to your Dad," Jim-Bob said. "He says you're going to be okay but he wants to keep you for observation overnight. "

"I've got to take the train in the morning," I said.

"Huh," Jim-Bob said again.

"Yeah, I hear it coming around the bend," I said.

"Oh hell," Jim-Bob said.

I still sounded like a preacher or a college professor and Jim-Bob looked even more concerned. He left the room hurriedly and returned with a tall, skinny man who looked about fifteen years old and had a stethoscope. There was a man in overalls behind him.

"Jim-Bob tells me you think you're Johnny Cash," the man with the stethoscope said.

"Who's Johnny Cash," I said.

He didn't answer me but he put a light in my eyes, my ears and mouth, and then he listened to my heartbeat with his stethoscope. I still thought he looked fifteen. Also his nose looked too big for his face. I told him so. The doctor shook his head.

"I thought you said he would be fine," the man in overalls said.

"He will be. Physically, he's fine. There's some heavy bruising but nothing broken, but he suffered a pretty bad concussion and right now the sedative the paramedics gave him and the concussion are working together to confuse his thoughts. He's probably going to have a really bad headache when the sedative wears off but the confusion will clear up. Right now it's a little bit like he's had a stroke and he's liable to say anything that comes to mind. He'll be okay in the morning and we'll keep a close eye on him tonight."

"How much is this going to cost, doctor," the man in overalls said.

"School insurance will pay all the bills, don't worry about that."

I wondered who the man was and why he was worried about bills. He walked to my bedside and put a hand on my shoulder. His fingers gripped like iron. He looked as tough as a Texas cactus. When he left, I asked Jim-Bob who he was.

"You don't recognize your own Dad," Jim-Bob said, alarm in his voice. "Doctor, he doesn't know his Dad."

"Get a grip," the doctor said. "He's going to be fine. I understand some of your teammates are over celebrating at the Alamo Café. You should join them. Wolf County hasn't won a football game this year and there might be some appreciative cheerleaders hanging around."

At the thought of appreciative cheerleaders Jim-Bob's look brightened. He did give me one more sympathetic nod but appreciative cheerleaders win over childhood friendships every time. He was gone almost before the doctor finished speaking.

"Now I want you to try and get some rest," the doctor told me.

"Who the hell is Johnny Cash," I said, and he left... laughing.

Hospitals are places where they wake you up to give you pills to put you to sleep. I still had confusing thoughts when I opened my eyes again. This time a woman was leaning over me. She had a name tag that read Dixie. It was very near my nose, along with her enormous breasts.

"You have breasts," I said.

She jumped back from the bed a little and her face burned bright red.

"Of course I do," she said. "Girls have breasts."

"Not like yours," I said. "Those are huge."

"Men," she said. "Even with a concussion."

"And you smell like vanilla," I said.

"You never mind how I smell," she said. She giggled like a teenage girl. The giggle was irritating but I looked over it given the fact she was a petite woman with breasts that were too big for her frame stuffed into a starched white uniform that seemed a size too small. When she moved down to the end of the bed to pour water from a plastic container into a plastic glass, I noticed the other side of her looked nice too.

"Now drink some water and take these pills," she said. "The doctor said it will help your headache."

'I have a headache?" I questioned.

"You might," she said. "The doctor said these pills will help."

She leaned over me again and my head reeled with the snug pressure of her big breasts against my arm and the sweet scent of her perfume.

"Can I feel those?" I asked.

She looked shocked and then giggled again. "The doctor said you might say some crazy things."

"But I want to feel them," I insisted.

"You stop that," she said, avoiding my hands.

The next time she shook me awake, I got a really good look at her face. She was more striking than pretty. Her nose had been broken sometime and she had a slight scar under one eye. Her hair was short and auburn colored. Her eyes were light green. I couldn't guess her age but I thought she was around forty. She was slightly plump but not enough to take away from her desirability.

My eyes didn't stay on her face very long, not with those amazing breasts so close. Dixie saw me looking and she shook her head. "Okay, now you have to stop this. I know you've had a head injury but you have to stop thinking about my breasts."

"I just can't believe how big you are up top. I've never seen any so big."

"You're impossible," she said, and giggled. I could get tired of the giggling very quickly. She walked to the door but then stopped and turned around. "It's not that they are so big but I'm a small woman and they look really big because of it."

"Can I see them?"

"No, you can't see them," she said. "Now you go to sleep."

"You'll just wake me up again," I said.

She did, too. She shook me awake an hour later and made me drink some water and take another pill and she asked me to count her fingers.

"You have two," I said and I wasn't looking at her fingers."

She shook her head. "I don't know what to do with you."

"You could just give me a quick flash," I insisted.

"Are we going to keep this up all night?" she asked. "I'm not going to show you my breasts."

"But I caught the winning touchdown," I said.

"Yes, you did," and for a moment she actually looked impressed. People in Wolf County do love football. For a moment I thought she might change her mind and show them to me, but then she shook her head and left the room.

I think it was an hour before daylight before all the synapses in my brain came back together or something and I really knew who I was and where I was, and then I remembered all the things I had been saying during the night. When Dixie came to wake me, I was already wake and blushing.

She gave me water to drink and another pill to take and I realized something was different. It took me a second but then it was obvious she was no longer wearing anything under the uniform. Her large breasts shook as she leaned over the bed holding my water cup and I could see the outline of her nipples pressing against the fabric. She giggled at my expression. Lord, I could learn to hate that giggle. It was like fingernails scraping a chalk blackboard.

"Okay," she said. "You said you'd be good and you have been so you get one free look. You just get to look. And you can't ever tell anybody. A girl could get a reputation, you know."

I didn't remember making any kind of bargain with her but I wasn't about to argue. I sat on the edge of the hospital bed looking at her in amazement as she reached up casually and unzipped the top of her nurse's uniform. She peeled it down and she wore no bra underneath and a couple of the largest, most shapely breasts I had ever seen popped free. Well, honestly I hadn't seen breasts except in magazines and in the occasional movie, but Dixie's compared well to any I had ever seen. They were big but firm and her nipples were the size of silver dollars. She had a few freckles along the top but it didn't detract from the over-all creamy look. I licked my lips.

"Okay, that's enough," Dixie said, zipping back up quickly. "I paid my debt. An orderly will be here in a wheelchair in a minute. Your Dad's waiting downstairs."

One look at Dixie's breasts and I think my synapses were messed up again. I kept seeing her breasts jiggling in my mind's eye as I was wheeled downstairs. My Dad waited on me beside his pick-up truck. My Dad is nearly as tall as I am and just as lean. He has a no-nonsense manner. My Dad was a former Texas Ranger who settled near Last Chance after marrying his high school sweetheart. Mom passed away when I was ten, and he had never married again.

"You got lucky catching that ball, Longfellow," my Dad said.

"Yes sir," I said.

"But you held onto it afterwards and I'm damn proud of you for that."

I sat with Jim-Bob in the bleachers of the high school stadium in the bright afternoon sunshine. One of the real football players was running on the track and he waved at me as he passed. The Wolf County drum majorettes and cheerleaders were practicing on the field.

"He got a scholarship to play for the Aggies," Jim-Bob said. "They should have given you a scholarship."

"I caught one football all year," I reminded him. "I'm almost the slowest receiver on our team."

"But you've got good hands," Jim-Bob said.

I nodded. I was never going to play football again and Jim-Bob knew it. One near-death experience was enough. And there wasn't much of a chance I was going to college without a scholarship because I could not afford tuition. My Dad seldom had cash money. We ate well because we grew our own vegetables and slaughtered a beef cow every year, but real folding money was hard to come by. I had my dreams but in another few months I would probably be in the Army like most of other boys who grew up in Last Chance.

"So tell me about the nurse," Jim-Bob said.

"Come on Jim-Bob. I've told you about her a dozen times."

"Yeah, but I like hearing about it. You really did it in your hospital bed?'

"Yeah," I said.

Okay, so I slightly exaggerated the night's events. I was originally going to tell Jim-Bob about the ten-second flashing incident but somehow the story got out of hand. Then Jim-Bob started embellishing it and I sort of agreed, and things really escalated from there. I had forgotten what a big mouth Jim-Bob had. Now it seemed like the entire school knew, and some of the older female teachers were giving me funny looks and some of the male teachers were grinning at me. It was kind of scary how fast a rumor could spread.

The truth was the quick glimpse of Dixie's breasts had been the first real woman's flesh I had seen in my entire life. A girl named Becky Gunner had let me play with hers once in the back seat of an old abandoned car down near Gunner's Meal Emporium, but Becky's were like nubs compared to Dixie's.

"Man, what did she look like?" Jim-Bob asked, just as he had asked a dozen times since hat night.

"She had really big breasts," I said.

I had told the story so much; I was starting to believe it myself. At night I was having visions of her taking off her nurse's uniform completely and sliding into bed with me. I woke up feeling stiff every morning.

But I was also getting a little tired of talking about it. I kind of wished I had not started it in the first place. I even felt a little guilty. Dixie had been nice, except for the giggling, and I had heard the administrator of the hospital had called her on the carpet. I had not intended for that to happen and I hoped Jim-Bob would just forget it.

Down below a car pulled into the no-cars allowed section of the stadium. Wolf County Sheriff Leroy Jordan unfolded himself from the front seat and took a moment to look at the cheerleaders before turning and starting up the stadium steps to where we were sitting. He was a short, stocky man in jeans, cowboy boots, a uniform shirt and a worn Stetson hat. Like my Dad, he was a former Marine and like my Dad, a former Texas Ranger. He has the same no-nonsense quality as my Dad.

He reached us and nodded with his head at Jim-Bob and Jim-Bob scurried away without protest. Sheriff Jordon sat down beside me and took his hat off. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his head and put the hat back on.

"Good morning, Longfellow," he said. "That was some touchdown you made. People around here are going to be talking about it for a long time."

"Yes sir," I said. I was sure Sheriff Jordon hadn't walked up the steps to talk about football.

"Have you given any thought to what you're going to do when you graduate this year?" he asked me.

"I've been thinking about the Army, sir," I said.

"The Army's a good idea," he said. "A young man can mature a lot in the Army. You can travel some, and see the world. Course, that's all depending if you live long enough to join, which right now is doubtful."

I always knew Sheriff Jordan had a dry sense of humor but it didn't sound like he was making a joke. His eyes were on the field below and the cheerleaders and there was not even a hint of amusement on his sun-weathered face.

"Excuse me," I said.

Sheriff Jordan stretched his long legs out in front of him. "You ever hear of a man named Hoss Beckman?'

Everybody in Wolf County knew about the Beckman's. If there was any kind of crime, from burglary to auto theft, the Beckman's were probably involved. And they multiplied like rabbits. I went to school with some Beckman's. There were even Beckman's on the football team. I didn't remember one named Hoss, and I told the Sheriff.

"He's not from around here. He's part of the Beckman clan from Alabama. If possible, they're even more white trash than the ones from Texas. He played football in high school and got a scholarship at a school up north. He did okay for a while. He married a girl from Ohio, but the marriage didn't work. Neither did his college career. He got into some trouble and ended up going to jail. His wife divorced him while he was in jail and she moved to Georgia where she worked at a hospital and started dating a doctor. They let him out of the jail and he headed for Georgia where he broke the doctor's legs and was in the process of running over the doctor's head with the doctor's own SUV when the police got to him. He also knocked his ex-wife around a bit. It seems like he's got a bad jealous streak and he's unable to accept the fact that his wife divorced him."

I was beginning to get a very bad feeling.

"Hoss got ten years for the crime but last week, with the help of his cousin Willie, he broke out and the rumor is he's heading this way."

"But why is he coming this way?" I asked, even though I was afraid I already knew the answer.

Sheriff Jordan gave me a sad look. "Word is around town that you spent your night in the hospital banging the brains out of a cute nurse named Dixie. Is that the truth?"

I thought about lying but only for a second. Like my father, one did not lie to Sheriff Jordan.

"The story might have gotten exaggerated a little," I admitted.

Sheriff Jordan made a sound half-way between a snort and a laugh. Yeah, well it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference now if it was the truth or not. That nurse is Beckman's ex-wife. She moved here after Georgia."

I think I still might have been having trouble with concussion for it took a moment for it all to sink in.

"Oh Lord," I said quietly, prayerfully.

Sheriff Jordan nodded. "Yeah, prayer might help. It might also help if you pray while running just as fast as you can. I figure Hoss is going to greatly pissed at you."

"What do you think he'll do?" I asked.

Sheriff Jordan chuckled and slapped his knee. "That's a good one, boy. What do I think he's going to do? Hell, boy, he's going to tear your head off and shove it up your stupid ass." My Dad and Sheriff Jordan came up with a plan. They discussed it on our front porch, sipping malt whiskey and eating peanuts from a can.

"The best place is my old cabin out at Crippled Creek," Sheriff Jordan said. "I can run up there tomorrow and take some clothes and stock it with groceries. Then Sunday afternoon after church I'll pick your boy up and run him out there. He'll have to miss some school but he'll be safe enough there."

"Probably be best to take the shotgun too," Dad suggested.

"Hopefully he won't shoot anything important off," Sheriff Jordan said.

"Might be an improvement," Dad said.

He looked at me and I didn't care for what I saw in his eyes. My Dad believed all women should be treated like ladies and my talking about Dixie was not an honorable thing, even if it had really happened. More and more he was looking at me like something that had crawled out from under a rock. I was sure Sheriff Jordan had the same opinion.

"You keep the shotgun with you at all times," he said. "I don't think Beckman has a hope in hell of finding you but if the worse happens and he does, that old cabin is pretty sturdy and it's got good locks. A man would have to make a lot of noise breaking the door down and by then you'd be ready for him. Just use good common sense and you'll be fine."

"Good common sense might be in short supply where he's concerned," my father said.

I somehow got through the next two days of school and through all my chores on Saturday, but I was walking around constantly looking over my shoulder and jumping at the slightest sound. Jim-Bob kept asking me what was wrong, but I didn't explain. I had already gotten into enough trouble talking to Jim-Bob. On Sunday afternoon I met Sheriff Jordan in the gravel parking lot behind the church. He was in his personal car, a battered old Volkswagen beetle that had seen better days. I was surprised to see Dixie sitting in the passenger seat. She wore a pair of shorts and man's shirt and tennis shoes. She didn't look all that happy to see me.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Dixie asked.

"Keeping you both together is the safest way," Sheriff Jordan said. "The cabin's a little primitive but it's got two bedrooms, a kitchen and an inside bath. The best thing is that you can see for miles around and if you keep the front door locked, nobody's going to sneak up on you. And remember that this is only until we catch Beckman. I don't think he can stay free for long with so many people looking for him."