Matchmaker Bandit Novel Pt. 05

When Ethan saw the lawman's finger was on the trigger of the shotgun, he knew from the deadly serious look on the man's face the deputy wouldn't hesitate to pull it. Without saying a word, Ethan dropped the weapon to the ground and slowly raised his hands, palms outward, so that Johnny could see that both hands were empty.

Probably given courage by the presence of the lawman, a few brave souls had decided to step outside once more and see what was going on.

"Has anyone called 911 yet?" Johnny yelled in the direction of the crowd forming behind him.

An unidentified voice called back, "Tim has, they said they'll be here three minutes."

"How's he doing Sammy?" The deputy asked his cousin.

Sammy, who was kneeling over his dead brother's body, looked up and cried out, "He's dead Johnny! That son-of-a-bitch killed him!"

"Call Mattie!" Ordered the deputy. Everybody in the county knew that Mattie was the Sheriff's wife. Then added, "Tell her to wake Uncle Jack and tell him to get his ass over here right now and then tell Doc Harris to get over to his office."

Just then, Sammy stood up and started walking in the direction of the pistol. There was a murderous look in his eyes and his face was crimson with rage.

Ethan suddenly got very nervous. Even though he and Johnny had been friends most of their lives, the deputy, dead man, and the dead man's brothers were all cousins so he didn't know how things were going to play out. He didn't have to wait long to find out.

"Sammy, cousin or not, if you pick up that gun I'll shoot you down where you stand!" Came the voice of the deputy. That was followed by the clicking sound of one of the hammers on the shotgun being pulled back.

Bert began rising to his feet, as he did, he said to his cousin. "You've only got one barrel left Johnny and there's two of us! You can't get us both!"

"You're right about that. And with you being related, I might even miss you. But I'll bet that Ethan will make it to that gun on the ground there before you can get to me. And since we already know he can shoot straight, I'm betting you two won't live to see tomorrow. You sure you want to take that chance?" Replied the lawman.

Shocked expressions on their faces, his two cousins looked at him for several seconds. Then Sammy said to him, "You wouldn't let that killer have a gun after he just shot down Jimmy, would you?"

"Well now, to tell you the truth. I trust Ethan a whole lot more than I do you boys! So yeah, I reckon I would!" Answered the deputy dispassionately.

They both knew their cousin didn't like them and they also knew he meant what he said. The two cousins decided to back off rather than face two armed men.

They were aware that the deputy was the only one that knew the full story about what happened the night Jimmy raped that young girl and he also knew that Jimmy wasn't the only one involved in it! No, there was no love lost between the three men at all.

Squealing wheels as it came to a halt, the sheriff's car pulled up. All four wheels had barely come to a compete halt when the driver's side door swung suddenly open and a man about six feet three inches tall got out of the car.

In less than one second he surveyed the situation, drew his pistol and aimed it in the direction his deputy's shotgun was pointing.

The sheriff was a big man, weighing about 345 pounds with large shoulders and a massive chest. He had just a touch of a potbelly but you could plainly see he was every bit muscle everywhere else. His wasn't by any means a handsome man, with his pitted face and large bushy eyebrows. In fact, he was down right odd looking, mostly due to the fact that in wore one of those old handle bar mustaches you usually only see in old westerns. From the look of his clothes, you could tell he had dressed hastily for he was wearing the blue jeans, a white tee-shirt, with his badge pined to hit, no socks and of all things brown Scooby-Doo slippers! On his head was a tan Stetson rancher style cowboy hat and, of course, his gun belt. But, as funny as he looked, nobody was laughing.

In an extremely deep voice, the man called out. "Everyone that did not see the what happened go home and stay there." Then he turned and said to his deputy, "You call the Doc yet Johnny?"

"On his way!" Answered Johnny replied.

The big man began walking over slowly as people started drifting back into their homes. "What happened here?"

"Don't know sheriff. I haven't had a chance to ask yet. I've been busy trying to keep these two dumb-asses from getting themselves shot." The younger lawman said to his elder as he motioned towards the two surviving brothers with the barrel of his shotgun.

Just then, Sammy spoke up, "He killed him Uncle Jack!" Shot him down like a dog. He didn't have no cause!"

"You're damned liar Sammy Oglethorpe! You know full well Jimmy was trying to kill me when Ethan shot him!" Yelled Becky.

The sheriff looked over at Bert and said, "Is that true?"

Bert looked glanced at his brother for a second, hesitated another second, then replied, "Nope Uncle Jack! She's lying. Jimmy didn't have no knife. He was just telling her how pretty she looked when she got all 'bitchy' and slapped him. Then Ethan took out a gun and shot Jimmy dead! Jimmy didn't even lay so much as a hand on her."

"Their both lying sheriff! Jimmy was drunk and tried to rip my blouse. That's when I slapped him in the face. Then he pulled out a knife and tried to stab me but missed. Ethan shot Jimmy when he tried to do it again!" Becky retorted.

The sheriff turned to his deputy and said, "We'll just have to sort this out at the station. Cuff him and put him in the back seat of my car," he motioned towards Ethan, "and then put her in the front seat." Then he turned to the two brothers and said, "You two boys can wait here while I go see if anybody else saw anything."

When the crowd dissipated, Ethan said to his friend, "Listen Johnny, I'm not lying. Jimmy attacked her with a knife. He dropped it when I shot him and it went under the car. Just look for it!"

If there had been any other witnesses, they didn't want to get involved for when the sheriff turned around everyone else had gone home.

"Hold on Uncle Jack, it'll just take a second for me to look under the car." The deputy said to his boss. Then he walked over and handed his shotgun to the sheriff and went back to his squad car. He retrieved a flashlight from the front seat. The young lawman then walked back to the side of the Ethan's car and knelt down. He looked under the car for several seconds, moving his flashlight from side to side as he looked intently for the fallen knife.

He stood up and said sternly, "There's no knife under here Ethan!"

As Ethan stood there in shock, the deputy walked over to him and said, "Ethan Barns, you're under arrest for the murder of Jimmy Oglethorpe."

Two minutes later, Ethan found himself handcuffed and sitting in the back of the Sheriff's patrol car. Becky was sitting in the front seat. There was the distinct odor of vomit and cheap wine mixed with a very heavy amount of some type of disinfectant he couldn't identify in the air inside the car.

With nothing else to do, the couple watched out the windows and waited for the sheriff to return. It was just about that time an ambulance showed up to be followed by a old gray ford sedan left over from the 1950's. The sedan was being driven by the town's doctor and coroner, 'Doc Harris'. The doctor was tiny, skinny old man with round glass. He must have be at least seventy-two years old and Ethan thought to himself that the man looked to him like a taller, skinner version of the actor Henry Fonda.

Most men would have retired at his age, but no, he just kept working. After all, how else could he keep control over the town and his investments? There was one other distinction he had; he was the grandfather of the deceased! As he sat there, Ethan realized that events had just spiraled out of control and an impending feeling of dread came suddenly over him.

Chapter Two -- "The Town"

Magnolia back then was a tiny, insignificant, depressing town that was at least a hundred miles away from every major city in Georgia. It was well known by anyone who visited Magnolia that the town was so dreary that it seemed to have a numbing effect on all hapless travelers that were misfortunate enough to enter its influence.

Most people that either visited the place or were former inhabitants lucky enough to escape said that after a while, the town would slowly lull them into a state of melancholy which grew stronger the longer they were there.

All this, of course, made the second leading cause of death amongst town's folk suicide, a close second only to alcoholism! It was so bad that people from the neighboring towns used to laugh every time they were asked for directions to the place saying, "Magnolia? It's a few more miles down the road a spell. Just look for the sign that say's Hell and then keep going south a bit. You can't miss it!"

That was part of the problem with Magnolia; it was so insignificant that you couldn't even find it on a map. And if you did, it was probably an oversight of the mapmaker, for had he ever been to the place, he wouldn't have wanted to remember it let alone tell anyone where it was!

Downtown Magnolia itself consisted of a town square and four large streets. Each street ran in some way parallel to the square and if there was a business in town, it could be found somewhere on one of those streets. Every street in the downtown area was lined with massive magnolia trees for which the town had been given its name over two hundred years ago by its founder, Jeremiah Harris, old Doc Harris's great grand father.

At the center of the square was city hall, a building that from the looks of it must have been constructed some time just after the Civil War, or as some of the older townsfolk called it, "The Great War Of Northern Aggression", and next to that was the County Courthouse.

Every major building from the town hall to the post office looked like something out of a 'B' version of Gone With The Wind, old, cheap, and badly maintained!

There was one general store, one drug store, one doctor's office, one auto parts store, the local finance company, and one feed store, all of which were owned by Joshua 'Doc' Harris or one or more of the members of his family.

Without a doubt Doc Harris was the wealthiest man in town for he also owned not only the town's one grocery store, but also the drug store and the town's only farm supply-general-hardware store. Hell, he even had half ownership in the town's only restaurant, the other half being owned by his brother.

But even though his family owned just about everything, there had been times when it looked as if he was in danger of loosing control over it.

About a year before, some of the locals had quite vocally started complaining to the town council about their inability to attract new business to the dying little community.

Everyone was surprised when he showed up one day at and demanded the council reform and become more active in trying to attract new business to "our poor economically depressed, but quite beautiful little community" as he so eloquently put it.

Two weeks later, his economic monopoly on the county appeared to be broken when out of town investors built not only a new convenience store but also a new drug store. The voices of the dissenters died down and finally disappeared.

Had anyone ever bothered to check into it, they would have easily discovered that the same corporation owned both franchises; and, that the head of that corporation was of all people, Doc Harris.

Before then, there had been only one gas station and one grocery store in the county.

At the time, the only business he had never been able to acquire in the past was the town's one and only gas station. He had not only not given up his monopoly but, the sly old bastard had made it stronger by building the convenience store. And so, in the end, "Doc's" ability to undercut the man's price per gallon on fuel, would lead to the eventual closure of the small family run business.

What only a very select few people knew was, Doc had been using his influence with his brother the Mayor, and the town council to make sure that no potential outside investor ever walked away with anything remotely resembling a favorable impression regarding the profit potential of the county.

In fact, until the malcontents started complaining, the old doctor had found it very easy to maintain his monopolistic control over the county, probably due to the fact that most of the council members were either his nieces, or nephews or in some way related to him by marriage.

The town and most of the county were totally dependent on 'Doc' and his family for just about everything from the food they ate to the mortgage on their homes.

And the rural community around Magnolia didn't fair much better. The small farmer with fifty acres of land just couldn't afford the large machines and supplies like peanut diggers, hand shellers, cotton carts, poultry house cleaners, employee salaries, fertilizer, and insect spray any more. He just didn't have enough acreage to make it profitable.

Many small land owners rented out what farmable land they had to the larger land owners and would take jobs at the local poultry processing plants or accept whatever work they could find.

While the state of Georgia might rank first in production of frying chickens, peanuts and pecans, and second in the production of cotton and rye, farming is an expensive business. It just wasn't profitable to plant a crop and have it bring in $1100 an acre at market when you spent half that to get it there, assuming you didn't loose most of it to drought, unseasonable rains, unpredictable freezes or worse.

No, the days of the small farmer were gone, having long ago been replaced by the professional businessman.

But times were changing and the old doctor was finding it harder to rule in the same iron handed manner that he used to and he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep outsiders from threatening his tiny little empire.

To sum it up, Magnolia was a decaying little town being run by a corrupt old man and his family of fellow vultures, all looking for any opportunity to pick it clean to the bone of anything of value.

Chapter Three -- "The Pistol"

It was early in the morning the day after the shooting. Sammy and his brother were knocking at the front door of the trailer belonging to James Rollins. James lived in a broken down old trailer that looked like it was built in the 1950's.

The trailer was located at the very end of a two-mile long dirt road in the back woods areas of the county laughingly called Route Three. The only sign of civilization, other than the tiny mobile home that is, were the power and phone lines running along side the road.

As they got out of their pickup truck, they were greeted by the annoying sound of mockingbirds screeching in the background and the sweet smell of honeysuckle growing in the nearby woods.

James's girlfriend, Cindy Benson, opened the door, still yawning as she pulled a rather flimsy house robe shut around her body, just not fast enough to keep the two brothers from catching a quick glimpse of her luscious young body.

Cindy was the hottest girl in town and had a reputation for being the its easiest lay. She would sleep with anyone that showed up with a couple six packs of beer or some weed and had probably slept with half the males in the county. If the truth were known, she was personally responsible for taking the virginity of most of the boys and men between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five.

In a town that small, there was no hiding a reputation like that and James knew all about her abundant sex drive. He just ignored it. Partly because she was the only girl in town that would put out to him, but mostly because she also just happened to be the sheriff's daughter! And, when you're the local bootlegger, didn't hurt at all to have advance warning before 'John Law' came calling at your door!

She just stood there, not paying too much attention to how much of her ample bosoms her two cousins could see.

She was about five foot four inches tall, had natural blond, wavy hair that flowed almost to her waist, blue eyes, large breasts for a woman her size and very sexy pouty lips.

The two brothers smiled at her lecherously.

"Morning Cindy!" Said Sammy. His brother was still staring speechlessly at his cousin's tits.

"What the fuck do you two pecker-heads want this hour of the morning that couldn't wait until later?" She asked, as she stood halfway in the open door.

Sammy replied to her, "I need to talk to James. Wake his fat ass up and tell him to get out here."

The young girl disappeared for about a minute, then came back and said, "He said to tell you it better be good or the next time you want some booze you're gonna have to drive all the way over to Newnan to get it." This was an especially hideous threat as Newnan was at least two hundred miles away!

The two brothers didn't respond. Sammy simply ignored her comment and Bert was still staring at her tits. The girl then she added in a softer voice, "Morning Bert, how's Tracie treating you?" Tracie was Bert's girlfriend.

Seemingly entranced, Bert remained mute.

Cindy giggled and said in a slightly louder voice, "Hey Bert, want some milk?"

"What?" She had caught him off guard. He tried to recover and forced himself to stop staring at her magnificent tits, "She don't talk to me no more ever since she found my girly magazines. She got mad and told me she out to be enough woman for me."

Cindy ignored her other cousin and said seductively to Bert as she ran the fingertips of her right hand slowly down the outer collar of her housecoat as though she were reacting to the chill of the morning breeze. The movement revealed even more of her bosom for them to see before pulling it tightly around her, "That's no way to be. I look at them myself. They got some real interesting pictures in them. I wouldn't mind if you looked at them magazines if you was my man."

Cindy had been after Bert since she was in the sixth grade. Despite his obvious attraction to her, he had never given in to her blatant sexual advances.

"Yeah," he replied to her, "and your daddy would cut my balls off and feed them to the chickens down at the hatchery too if he even thought I was so much as looking at you!"

As she purposely let her gown slip open just enough to show off a little more bosom, Cindy said to Bert, "What daddy don't know won't hurt him!"

"Thanks Cindy," Bert said thoughtfully, "But I'm kind'a attached to my balls. I think I'll keep 'em a little longer. Your Pa can find something else to feed to his chickens!"

Her father, the sheriff, also owned the local chicken hatchery and the hatchery happened to be one of the two largest employers in the county, the other being the local cabinet shop. Just about everyone who wasn't farming, either worked at the hatchery or the cabinet shop. And a few that did farm, also worked at one of the two places just to supplement their meager incomes.

Disappointment in her voice, she glanced over her shoulder and then said, "James is coming. Don't forget what I said Bert." And then she hastily stepped back out of the doorway. When she was out of the way, her current fuck-buddy, James Wilkins, stepped into the doorway. As he did, Bert and Sammy saw Cindy walking down the hall to the back of the trailer. A few minutes later, they heard the sound of a TV blaring away.

James was a chubby man and stood there barefoot dressed only in a dirty sleeveless tee-shirt and blue jeans. There was a brown mustache on his face that and the 'peach fuzz' of a beard that he had been trying to grow ever since he was in the fifth grade. His tee-shirt didn't quite cover his hairy belly and there were several small holes of various sizes in it. The blue jeans he was wearing had rolled up pants legs that having never been hymned were frayed at the bottom and there was a large grease stain on each knee.