TRINITY
a short story
with a free preview of the forthcoming novel
16 TONS
Jason Stuart
Copyright 2013 Jason Stuart
“Nah, them young fellers weren’t nothing to write home about. For my money the number one outlaw this side of the century is an’ always will be Wild Bill. And I don‘t mean that dern red-sash Yankee, neither. That feller got what he earned. No, I mean Old Wild Bill Scanlon. You’ve heard tales about him, I reckon. I knew him well. He was gunhand for that bad bunch of Camerons that run liquor up under that big hill and he got sent up with ’em all in ’37 or was it ’38? It was back when them big-city dudes come down here to run the TVA and the WPA, gonna set policy on us down here. Tried to set policy on Wild Bill. Well, he showed them who set policy, I reckon. Then them FBI dudes come down and run ‘em all in. Anyhow, it was before the war because Bill, he volunteered up for one of them prisoner soldier outfits and went out with them marines which is how come he got a hold of that Japanese butcher knife of his he carries around with him. Said a man had to show some concern about varmints. The old Blue Wolf and him had a longtime feud, you know. He swore but he’d seen the beast roaming the wilds, which I s’pect is true. I always figured it the one that tore up my dog, Bell, that time. That was a fine dog, too. Used to set up by me out at the pond while I jerked up catfish for my Friday dinners. Well, then, Bill, he got it in his head to run for county supervisor. I tried telling him, ‘Bill, you can’t get elected to no office if you done served time in jail.’ But, he run ever time anyway.”
--John Patterson
Liberty Resident
Trinity
1975
It wore Mary-Alice slam out that she was actually raising her son inside a barn. “It’s a loft,” her boyfriend—not husband—Hank always said. “A loft inside of a barn,” she would argue. It was bad enough to be still unmarried and with a three year-old but to live in an upstairs apartment of the Pickford’s old feed barn was absolutely for shame.
She stood on the balcony overlooking Hank’s pride and joy red Chevrolet. Sometimes it was all she could do not to beat in the windshield with a baseball bat. One of these days she would buy one. If she had any money.
Tommy, their miracle-son—some miracle; he nearly ate them broke on a regular basis. Mary-Alice could not believe how much that child could eat—was busying himself jerking the slats off the stairwell going up to the apartment. All that food went immediately as fuel for him to perform some near superhuman feat of property damage and Hank had long forbade the child from getting near the car. She was hell getting him stopped tearing up the steps when Hank came sprinting into the barn to his car and hopping inside in a panic.
“What in hell has got into you now?” she asked.
“County done got ’em a motorcycle cop. We seen him ride past the store. Ain’t got time to gab. Austin’s probly done beat me to him, the shitass.”
Hank shot his pipes and tore out of the barn leaving Mary-Alice nearly in tears from the racket and worried to death for the baby’s eardrums. But, of course, rather than being one ounce concerned, he was just sitting there giggling like it was the best thing in the whole world, which added fire to her greatest fear that he would turn out just like his daddy.
It wasn’t so much that Mary-Alice didn’t like Hank or even that she didn’t love him. She did love Hank. She loved him to death. There was just no knowing Hank’s mind for her. One moment he was the sweetest boy in the world and the next twenty minutes he was awfullest son-of-a-bitch who ever walked. No doubt at that particular minute him and that cracked Austin Grantham were trying to see who couldn’t wreck that poor man just trying to do his job. He’d probably wind up thrown off into a ditch and maybe crippled and those two having a laugh about the whole deal. One of these days they’d catch those two and likely kill them if they could.
Directly, Tommy was tugging at her dress again which meant it was time to eat some more.
Willy and Maggie Smith had given her a crate of eggs just the other day. Seeing her barn was just down the way from their store, she often had little else to do and walked over and swept up or did other jobs and took pay in the form of vegetables and milk. Sometimes Willy might slaughter a hog and have fresh sausage. Willy didn’t like to sell any food out of the store that he didn’t know exactly who and where it come from. Austin usually brought in two or three dozen eggs to trade for his day’s gasoline.
Willy wouldn’t take anything from up in Jasperville. Not one thing. Poor luck for those people, Mary-Alice always thought. But they had their own store, she reckoned.
It didn’t take too long to fill the boy up with scrambled eggs and milk and Mary-Alice pointed him up the quarter mile driveway covered nearly over with drooping pine limbs. The boy went off like a shot and she tried her damnedest to keep up with him. It irritated the fire out of her how she could not have him fed five minutes and him already running so hard he was hungry again.
And fast. By god, could that boy beat a trail. It was all the exercise she needed staying next to him at a run and this time he’d long left her behind. Mary-Alice had not been too often around other toddlers before but believed a great deal about her son was not very normal and she feared the day he got so big she flat out couldn’t handle him, a day she expected probably some time in the next year at the rate he went.
Before she could get close to catching up he was nearly to the highway and she screaming for him to stop to no purpose. He dusted straight across the road and smack into some scraggly-haired old man in a porkpie and toting a Jap army sword on his shoulder.
“I say there, now, do you know who I am?” the man shot at little Tom, who most certainly did not know who the man was, but clearly the man neither knew who Thomas Waylon Grady was. Memorizing the three parts of his own name was one of the first conscious acts of his life. He very much enjoyed repeating just those three words at every occasion he deemed suitable, which was most, this being one of them.
“I’m Tom Waylon Grady,” the spud shot at the man, with fists balled and back bowed out for a fight.
“I say, but you ain’t kneehigh to a gumstump, you little squirt, and say now, what’s the matter with yore skin?” the man asked, looking down now at the boy’s physique which appeared to be rippled with tiny muscles and little else of note.
“I apologize, mister, but he just gets away from me sometimes. I hope you weren’t scuffed terrible when he tripped you. I can mend or wash any tears to your clothes if need be,” Mary Alice spat out as best she could, being out of breath from her jog.
“Me? Scuffed terrible? Woman, do you know who I am?” he asked with even more force. “I am Wild Bill Scanlon and this here,” holding out his sheathed sword. “is Mr. Kujiko.”
“I think it’s silly, you men naming things that ain’t alive. And I don’t guess I care if you’re Wild Bill Hickock Jesse James the Kid, neither. I’ve had it to here,” she said lifting her hand above her head, “with you overgrown boys and your reputations and your toys.”
And at that, Mary-Alice tugged little Tom by the arm and began to drag him toward the store where she would now need to buy herself a pack of cigarettes.
“Well, but you’ve sass, that’s sure,” Bill said. “Now, don’t get riled at me, too hard, now. I just feel I should mention the name as I intend to be your next supervisor. Do you vote?”
“Not usually,” she said, continuing on her way.
“Well, now that just beat all. I swear, you women are the damnedest creatures that ever was. That riles me to no end y’all hollering and fightin’ them years to vote and then don’t care to do such once you’re able. That‘s just flat irritating”
“Well, if you’re my best option, I’d just as soon
not care. Now, I apologize again for my son hitting you, but I must say good day, Mr. Wild Bill.”
Bill was clearly at a loss. He could not remember the last time anyone had talked to him with as much sass, never a woman, and whatever man it must have been had quickly regretted it to be sure. Not that he had any mind to lay out a woman in any way, but some understanding ought be reached, else it would shortly get round the holler and soon the whole county that Wild Bill Scanlon had been talked tall to by a skinny, black-haired girl.
“Now, see here, again. I believe we’ve got this thing back end frontwards. How’s about I walk you out to Willy and Mrs. Maggie’s here and we’ll set down and have us a cup of coffee and some ice cream and talk it out?” he asked, then pointed his glance at the boy. “What about you, son, what’s your opinion about ice cream?”
At that, Tommy took off in a sprint toward the store. That’s where ice cream, he knew, came from and so he intended not to lose a minute in getting his share.
“Well, he’s a cooking little son of a gun, ain’t he?” Bill said and, as he thought a minute, added, “Who’s his daddy?”