Blood Wild

Deeny's head snapped up, looking first at her mother to see if there were some unspoken message... then at Lee, who seemed to be looking off into the distance, considering. Lee then tilted her head slightly to one side before shaking her head to dismiss the idea.

"Nahh... Something different I think." Lee said then took a drink from her glass of iced tea.

The look Caroline fired at Duke across the table was not missed by Deeny, even if her mother didn't realize that she'd seen it. There was fire in that look, and... hurt... and... longing.

Deeny felt she had to say something, or do something to break the mood. This was just too foreboding and heavy to let linger. She could almost feel her mother's pain even if she didn't know exactly what was causing it. Deeny had a pretty good idea though, and it darkened her own soul to think it might be true.

"Your costume should depend on how much or how easily you want people to know who you are sis." Deeny said with half a mouthful of food that she was still chewing as if she were deep in thought.

"What do you mean?" Lee asked, her own fork paused halfway to her mouth.

"Well, do you really want to make people wonder and try to guess who you are under the costume, or do you want them to recognize you easily?" Deeny asked with an impish smirk and one lone raised eyebrow. "Like a certain boy who's been giving you the googly puppy dog eyes..." Deen added with a questioning tilt of her head.

"Boy? What boy?" Caroline asked, suddenly interested again in her daughters' conversation.

Lee shot Deeny a withering look. Well, it would have been withering, if she weren't blushing bright red and her mouth hanging open as if aghast at the scandal that her older sister was trying to start with their mother. Lee's heart was beating a mile a minute as she thought quickly, trying to cover herself.

"N...No one, momma. I mean... nothing serious anyway." She said sheepishly, setting her fork down and wringing her hands in her napkin in her lap. Her head down and biting her bottom lip.

"Is it someone you're sweet on?" Caroline asked, a mischievous grin spreading on her own face as she watched her baby girl flummoxed and embarrassed.

As mortified as she was for Deeny having just thrown it out there, Lee couldn't help but to smile a little when she thought of Tom and his gentle touch and big beautiful eyes. She could have swooned right there at the dinner table, but she caught herself. Glancing up she saw Deeny's grin, then looking to her mother she saw the same grin there as well. There was no winning here. With a sigh that bordered on being dreamy, Lee shrugged dismissively before picking her fork back up and intently studying her plate.

The conversation steered away from the Wilding after that, Deeny talking about the Diner and some of the customers she dealt with through the day. She mentioned offhandedly about Cam stopping in and asking where Hank was. Seems that Hank might have been involved in some trouble last night.

Surreptitiously Deeny watched her father out of the corner of her eye, and glanced up at her mother looking for a reaction as well. Her father seemed to hesitate while he was eating. She could almost see him tense up before he resumed eating. Her mother almost gasped, looking up shooting daggers at Duke, but didn't say anything before returning to her own eating.

"It was probably nothing I'll bet." Deeny said as though it didn't really matter. "I mean, nothing interesting ever happens around here anyway, right?" Deeny added as she set fork down and pulled her napkin up to wipe her face.

Everyone seemed to be done with dinner at that point. Duke stood up and mumbled something about finishing some work in the workshop. Deeny and Lee helped their mother clear the table and started doing the dishes. In no time the kitchen was cleaned up. Caroline poured some more iced tea and stepped out onto the porch to take a seat on the old glider swing.

Deeny watched her mother, noting the sadness that seemed to radiate off of her. She told Lee to go on upstairs and get to her homework or get ready for bed. Pouring herself some more iced tea, she joined her mother out on the porch. She sat quietly beside her mother for a few minutes before reaching her hand over and taking a gentle grip on her mother's hand. No words were spoken, but the love in her mother's watery eyes melted Deeny's heart.

***___***___

Lee brushed her teeth after changing her clothes and getting dressed for bed. She studied herself in the mirror over the sink after rinsing her mouth. She tried to see herself as Tom might, or as other boys... but mostly Tom. Her curly blonde hair never seemed to do what she wanted it to do. So many times, she had tried to style it like the models in the magazines, but it never turned out the way she had hoped. Those freckles. Ugh! Lee pouted at the reflection. Then she smiled ever so slightly as she knew that her lips were maybe her best feature. Deeny said that she had a cute face, with pretty blue eyes. But Deeny was her older sister and prone to be biased anyway. Still though, Lee had to admit she felt good whenever Deeny did say something like that.

"Oh Tom... What do you think? Am I pretty enough? Would you want to kiss these lips?" Lee asked out loud and then her eyes got big with surprise and she looked about to see if anyone heard her.

Blushing and biting her bottom lip she giggled at herself, turned off the water in the sink and headed back down the hallway to her and Deeny's bedroom. She only had a little homework to do tonight, but she knew she had best get it done before Deeny came upstairs. It would be lights out and time to sleep when she did.

Lee opened up her biology textbook and turned to the chapter that the class had been assigned to read before the next day. Lee had always liked science classes and biology in particular. The human anatomy had always fascinated her. The full body diagrams in the book detailed both male and female human bodies minus the outer skin. The male form definitely held her attention, or at least her eyes as her mind wandered trying to imagine Tom's body under his clothes. Just the thought made her body tingle and her heart speed up.

***___***___

Tom lay on his back on top of his blankets. His head was cradled in his crossed arms atop his pillow and his feet crossed at the ankles. He was staring at the ceiling but he wasn't actually seeing the paint or plaster, his focus was internal. His mind's eye was seeing her. That curly blonde-haired angel. Those bright blue eyes, that sweet little nose and those... those lips. Just thinking of them made Tom wet his own lips with his tongue, completely unaware that he even did so.

He so desperately wanted to hold her, hold her hand... wrap his arms around her waist and pull her to him. To put his forehead to hers, to rub his nose along hers... to press his lips to hers. He knew he could get lost looking into her pretty blue eyes. The sound of her voice was like music to his ears.

Tom smiled to himself as he closed his eyes and imagined Lee by his side at the Wilding in two weeks. Sharing laughs and holding hands, maybe even dancing. Sitting with her by the bonfire... or even... holding her tight and... kissing... touching each other... exploring... The smile was still on his face as he drifted off to sleep.

***___***___

Trina pulled her momma's car, the old Buick station wagon into the driveway leading up to the house. Except for a couple of naps throughout the day, she'd been awake since... well... she wasn't even sure what day this was at this point. She was so tired, but more than tired, she was worried sick for her mother. She had heard what her momma had told the Sheriff in the hospital room, when they thought that she was out of the room. She had gone to get her mother a glass of ice water, but upon returning she had heard the whole story.

Her momma and daddy had been fighting a lot lately, and she knew they were unhappy for some reason. But Trina was not prepared for... for this. Trina loved them both of course, but hearing what her mother had done... well it was shocking. She really didn't know what to think about that. She was so tired, too tired to be trying to figure it all out right now. She brought the big car to a halt not far from the back porch of the house.

There was no sign of her daddy's truck, and the house was dark other than the light on over the back door. Trina got out of the car and went around to the passenger side to help her momma out of the car and into the house. It had been a long drive home with the awkward silence between the two of them. Especially when her mother cried off and on as they drove home.

Inside, the house was quiet. It was apparent that no one had been in the house since last night. The bloody shirt that Hank had put down on his car seat to drive Vivian home to her house was still in the floor beside the back door. Trina helped her momma walk through the kitchen and down the hall to her bedroom.

Once inside the master bedroom, Vivian turned to her daughter and held her. She held her with her hands on her daughter's upper arms and held her with her eyes. There was a sad, sad smile and her eyes were puffy from crying, and Vivian wanted to tell her daughter how much she appreciated her help and how much she loved her... But the words wouldn't come. So, with a quivering bottom lip she simply pulled her daughter into a motherly hug and sobbed quietly.

After a short while the two pulled apart and looked at one another again. This time Vivian found the words. In a halting, quiet voice Vivian spoke to Trina.

"Baby... I'm so sorry that you've had to go through this. No child should ever have to see such things." Vivian sobbed, and the tears began again.

"Momma, I'm not a child anymore." Trina said plaintively, her head tilting to one shoulder as she crossed her right arm over her chest to hold her left arm above the elbow.

"Oh, I know baby, you're a young woman now. But you will always be my baby, my precious girl. I'm just so sorry you had to be part of this... this ugliness." Vivian said hanging her head in shame.

"Why... Why did daddy shoot you momma?" Trina's question came out in almost a whisper, but it sounded like a blaring horn in Vivian's ears.

The tears really began to flow now, her face a mask of embarrassment and shame. Vivian backed over to the bed and carefully sat down, never taking her eyes off her daughter's face. She sighed heavily and with her left hand patted the bed beside her, and her right hand reached out for Trina's. Once she had settled next to her, Vivian began to tell Trina about the card game, the drinking and her... indiscretion. She told of her father's drunken fight and his discovery of what Vivian was doing on the porch, the struggle, the gun firing and all of it. In the end, they held one another and cried together.

***___***___

Cam slowly pulled up to the shed with his cruiser. There didn't appear to be anyone there. The bare bulb shown its jaundiced yellow light on the porch. The battered and broken screen door hung awkwardly from the frame of the door. The door itself was still open.

After coming to a stop with his headlights still playing on the porch of the shed, Cam climbed out of the cruiser. He drew his heavy-duty utility flashlight from his belt and turned it on. Approaching the porch and the open door, Cam held the flash light with his left hand and his right hand rested on the butt of his service revolver, still in its holster.

He warily closed the distance from the car to the porch, shining the light into the shadows around the porch and through the doorway into the shed. Cam was on edge, but he sensed that there wasn't anyone here, at least now anyway. Stepping onto the porch, he saw the blood stains on the floor boards in front of the glider bench.

Going through the broken door, Cam shined his light about the interior. He noted the empty bottles and cans on the floor and various side tables and chairs. There was broken glass from several bottles on the floor as well. Near the door was a green glass ashtray laying upside down. The table laying on its side with cards scattered everywhere spoke of a violent end of the previous night's card game. Cam shook his head and stepped back outside.

Remembering what his uncle, the Sheriff, had told him, Cam stepped off the porch and began searching the weeds around it. There were more empty bottles and few empty cans, but mostly just weeds. A black snake slithered away from his light after Cam nearly stepped on it. He followed it with his light and there it was. The pistol. It was a small pocket semi-auto .22 caliber. What many would call a Saturday night special.

Cam drew a pencil from his breast pocket and picked the small pistol up by sliding the pencil in the barrel so that his hands didn't touch the gun. He then stood up and walked back to his car and opened the trunk. After slipping his flashlight back into the holder on his belt, he pulled a plastic evidence bag out and opened it up. Cam carefully placed the small pistol into the bag and put it in a box in the trunk. Now... to find Walter.

***___***___

It had been a long day mending fences and patching the roof of the old barn behind the house. The work was hard, but it was honest and it was for himself. It had to be done though. Rich had just taken over the old farm this past spring. Rich was an only child growing up, so he was quite familiar with working by himself. Now, he was working for himself. The farm, once was a beautiful and productive piece of land, some of the best in the county. Of course, that had been decades ago when his uncle Pete and his aunt Minnie ran the place.

Richard's uncle and aunt had three girls, all older than himself. Richard's mother was uncle Pete's younger sister. She moved away from Helton when she got married to Rich's dad. Rich was raised on a farm half a state away from where his mother grew up. Uncle Pete never did like Rich's dad, as such they rarely visited, and so, he hardly knew his mother's family.

Family is family however, blood ties run deep even if they don't get along. A string of tragic events led to where he found himself today. First, several years of failed crops and dropping market prices led to his father over extending himself to the bank... until they called in the note. When it couldn't be paid, he lost the farm.

Oh, he managed to hang on by becoming a sharecropper, doing the work for someone else. It crushed his father's spirit. Sadly, it was short lived as a faulty space heater caused a fire that took the lives of both his father and his mother. Richard was away at college at the time. The news ended his college career. Rich had to sort through his parents' affairs and tend to funeral arrangements and all the things that survivors do for those who pass. And grieve... That might have been the hardest part.

It's said that when one door closes, another opens... it's also said that fate is fickle... lastly, that blood is thicker than water. Richard learned all of these to be true over the next year of his life. The night after Richard had his last meeting with his court assigned lawyer for settling his parents' estate, having signed the last documents, he was hit with more bad news. He'd been wondering what he was going to be doing after the last paperwork was finished. He technically was homeless and out of work. Richard had seriously considered joining the army. That didn't happen though, because of the news.

In a weird twist of fate, Richard's uncle Pete and his sweet aunt Minnie had both perished in a wreck on the interstate on the way home from Kansas City two days prior to him receiving the news. His cousins, two of them anyway, had sent word to him asking him to come to Helton. Of course, he would go. Richard's father and uncle Pete might not have gotten along well, but uncle Pete and aunt Minnie had always been kind to him and his mom.

The house on the farm looked a lot like he remembered it as a kid. Arriving late in the evening, the rest of the farm was in the dark so he didn't notice anything amiss right away. He was greeted by the youngest sister and her husband. She and the oldest sister had been going through their parents' things. The funeral had already been arranged and it would take place in two days from that point in time. They were waiting on the middle sister and her husband to fly in from Oregon where they lived.

The two sisters insisted that Rich stay at the old house rather than rent a room in town. Not that there were many places to rent in Helton anyway, still, he was family. The oldest sister and her husband worked and lived in Kansas City. The youngest and her new husband lived in Indiana, where her husband was a veterinarian working in a small town. The middle sister and her husband arrived the next day and it was a somber reunion at best. There were a few smiles and laughs remembering childhood antics, some even included Richard from some of his many visits. But mostly it was sad and there were lots of tears.

The day after the funeral, the three sisters and their husbands met with the lawyer their father had retained for his legal affairs. The lawyer read the Last Will and Testament. No surprise that the farm had been left to the three girls to do as they wished with it in the event that both he and his wife passed at the same time. There were no arguments, no bickering or demands. The three girls loved the old place but none wanted to take it over and run it. Still, they hated to think it would leave the family completely. The thought of selling the farm and splitting the money just wasn't appealing either. Instead, they thought of Richard.

The day after the reading of the will, the three sisters sat Richard down at the kitchen table in the old farmhouse. Their husbands were all outside, at the behest of their women folk. Richard felt a little awkward and uneasy, not knowing what his cousins had in mind. So, he was stunned when they told him.

They knew that Richard had recently lost his own mother and father, so they all shared the same loss and were all in mourning. They also knew that Richard's father, and mother, had run into a world of bad luck, having lost their farm and were nearly destitute when they had died. Leaving Richard with little or nothing at all really. Each of the three girls were happily married and comfortable in where and how they lived with their husbands... so they suggested, or rather, asked Richard if he would consider taking over the old farm.

At first Richard didn't understand what they were asking. He thought they might have meant to be a caretaker until it was sold. Yet, when they finally made him understand that they were giving the farm to him, free and clear...he just... he broke down and cried. They all cried. The oldest sister pulled him into a hug and explained quietly into his ear that her father, his uncle Pete, had always thought of Richard as the son he never had. He would have been proud to know that Rich had taken the reigns and ran the farm after him.

It took a couple more days working with the lawyers and lots of papers signed and waivers endorsed before finally and legally Richard's uncle Pete's farm... was his. Richard was a land owner and a farmer. As such he also inherited, not only the farm, the house, but a small fishing shanty on the shore of Arrowhead Lake. That's where he was headed this evening, after another long day of roof repairs and fencing. Rich needed to relax, he loved fishing and fishing at night for some tasty catfish was what he intended to do.

Richard had only been to the shed twice since he became the new owner of his late uncle's farm. The first time, he had discovered that uncle Pete had a nice little getaway in the fishing shanty. It was rough, no heat or running water or plumbing of any kind really, just basically a shed with some cupboards, a small gas stove, a few pots and pans and dishes to eat off of, a kitchen table and chairs. The linoleum on the floor was faded and brittle where it wasn't curling up. There was a fly strip hanging from the bare bulb over the kitchen table. While there was only a little flour and cornmeal along with salt and pepper and a few other spices in the cupboard, there was a little stash of liquor behind all that. Three bottles of assorted rotgut, nothing expensive or even good as far as Richard considered. Judging by the amounts in the bottles, his uncle Pete didn't drink much of it anyway. Still though, the little shanty was neat and clean.