Dead or alive, it didn’t matter. Not really. She would always have to live with the trauma and the scars.
“Hey, get down! What’s that?” Renaud whisper-shouted.
Ol’ Ham Bone fell right into it. He got down behind a fallen log and Renaud fired off a shot at the imaginary deer. When Ham Bone shot up asking, “Did yeh git it?” Renaud took his second shot and bam – it was lights out. Hammy’s head blew apart like a melon.
We all three stood over his body sprawled out in front of us and Renaud sniffed.
“Yeah. I got him. You piece of fuckin’ shit.”
Cypress went over to his dad and hugged him, and it did something to me to watch Renaud cry.
“Who’s callin’ it in?” I asked.
We hadn’t discussed that.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
Jessie-Lou…
It was late morning my mother called me in hysterics. I couldn’t get it out of her what’d happened, and I piled Tate into the truck with me and made what was normally a ten-minute drive from our place to my folks’ in less than three.
When I got there, my mother spilled out of the house, her usual careful makeup a ruin down her face and she lunged right for Tate clinging to him and carrying on. There was a police SUV in their driveway but no sign of the cops until one stepped out the front door.
I was shaking my mother and screaming at her, “What’s happening” but she was as useless as a pair of tits on a fuckin’ bull.
“There’s been a hunting accident, miss. I’m sorry to tell you, but your family’s friend Hamblin Wright has died.”
“Oh-ho, God!” my mother wailed and Tate was looking at me with sheer panic and white as a fuckin’ sheet as she clung to my fifteen-year-old child for comfort.
“Mamma, get in the house,” I ordered, and dragged her to the front door that the officer held open for me. “I said, get in the house!” She tried to collapse on the driveway.
Jesus, God, almighty – you’d like to think it was Daddy’d died the way she was carrying on.
I swallowed hard and dumped my mother off on the couch.
“Tate, do what you can please while I talked to the officer?” He nodded and sat down with my mother.
“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded again looking up at me wide-eyed.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Your family is on their way now. They took their statements at the scene. I’m just here to follow up.”
I nodded and wiped a hand over my sweating upper lip as a wave of nausea crashed through me.
“Can, uh, can I make you some coffee?” I asked weakly.
The officer looked sympathetic and said, “That’d be mighty nice of you. Thank you.”
I nodded and mechanically went to work fixing a fresh pot of coffee.
My mother was still wailing while the cop and I sat awkwardly with our coffee mugs nearby when my daddy come through the door.
My mamma looked up from Tate who grimaced and she practically lunged at my dad.
I looked to Collier who came through the door next and stood up. He looked solemn, but other than that? His expression was unreadable.
John-Paul came in after Col and his expression was just plain neutral the only way my brother could do. His poker face unbeatable.
