Turkey Ranch Road Rage (6 page)

I had wasted most of my time sitting out on the front porch or staring over the back fence. I had several vivid memories rooted in that mesquite field, mostly ones where I found myself lying in a patch of red hot dirt and thorny goatheads after my pony “Dino-mite” flung me off and left me for dead. My dad loved me, really he did, but buying a horse named after an explosive material for a girl with the riding skills of a rock is a recipe for disaster. The next horse was no better, but he was bigger—a lot bigger. He was about sixteen hands tall and named Echo, probably because once he took off all you heard was the echo of his hoof beats across the prairie. I covered a lot of ground on or because of ol’ Echo. And it wasn’t all mesquite patches or perfectly flat either. There were a few real trees amongst the scrub. Echo loved those. He could scrape me off on a low hanging branch without ever breaking stride. He was good at finding ravines too. Well, maybe it had only been a drainage ditch, but he’d jumped it multiple times, leaping through the air like a Lipizzaner. I have no idea how I stayed in the saddle for that or for the race through the pump jacks and storage tanks that followed. I just remember being grateful that he hadn’t bucked me off in the salt flats. My mother had convinced me that the crusty white stuff would eat the skin off my hands and I’d be left with only bones if I touched it. Ah, those were the days.

I had just stepped back up on the porch to go inside when my mother rushed out the door.

“Jolene! You’ll never guess what happened! Get in here. Right now!” She spun and hurried back inside. “It’s on the news. Hurry!”

I followed, but got there in time to only hear a teaser on the weather, about three minutes of local news, four commercials and a brief interview with some idiotic author promoting a mystery novel as if anyone cared. After another commercial, however, we were visually whisked back to the breaking news.

“See there,” Lucille said, pointing at the TV with a long nail. “That’s why Jerry Don couldn’t come. Leroy either. It looks like a bomb went off.”

It is a fine art, listening to my mother and the news at the same time, but I have honed this skill to razor sharp precision. Thusly, I was able to figure out—all at the same time—that somebody had tried to blow up what used to be known as Vetterman Brothers Feed and Seed. Vetterman’s Feed, Tack and Computer Store didn’t have the same ring to it, but the times they were a changing, even in Bowman County. It was also noted that Mr. Sheriff was on the scene and handling the crisis personally. As the onsite reporter relayed more of the facts and less of the excitement, it became clear that the only things actually “blown to bits” were some bags of rabbit chow and horse feed. Eyewitness accounts described how the bags just exploded, spraying livestock pellets like buckshot. No one was injured but some poultry was still unaccounted for.

I glanced at my mother, who was suspiciously quiet during this big event. No gasping, no “see there,” nothing. In fact, she was slumped down in her velvet wingback chair with a frown on her face, a meaningful frown, and I didn’t like it one little bit. As I pondered exactly what it all might mean, the reporter on the scene gave me a nice big hint. It seems that the feed store bomber had left a note: Animals are people too! Free the chickens!

I looked back at my mother. “Free the chickens?”

“Chicks. Baby chicks.” She stared at the TV, scowling. “Vetterman always has a pen full of them this time of year.”

“Well, now, just when did you get interested in what’s in stock at the feed and seed?”

“They sell computers and fancy boots now too, catering to the hobby ranchers and such.”

I indulged myself in a brief but multi-purposed eye-rolling. “Unless Vetterman stocks Mary Kay Cosmetics between the chickens and the hard drives I can’t imagine how you’d know about any of this.”

Lucille hopped up from her chair and made a dash for the kitchen. “I had nothing to do with it, Jolene, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Of course that’s what I was thinking. “Not so fast there, spacey lady,” I said, following on her heels. “Just how hooked up is your little group with the chicken bombers?”

“They didn’t bomb the chickens, Jolene.” Lucille fiddled with some dishes in the sink then moved on to the refrigerator. “The AAC people are a little quirky, but they mean well.”

“Quirky?” I leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms. “They tried to blow up a feed store to free chickens. That’s more than quirky. Somebody could have been seriously injured.”

“They meant well.”

“You knew they were going to do this.” It was not a question.

Lucille shook her head firmly. “No, ma’am, I did not. I know their group likes to send messages to people and companies who exploit those who can’t help themselves.”

“That’d be the chickens.”

Lucille huffed and propped a hand on her hip. “And the horny toads. That’s why they’re here, Jolene. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Ah, yes, the horny toads. I’d love to hear your explanation for that one right after you tell me how you’re not an accomplice in a bombing—a pathetic excuse for a bombing, but a bombing nonetheless. Blowing up feed stores is against the law, Mother. A real no-no. Somebody’s going to jail.”

“Don’t you get smart with me, Missy.” She snapped her nose upward again. “Nobody knows exactly what happened or how so don’t you start thinking you do. I certainly had nothing to do with it. I was here with you all morning. Never stepped foot off the place.”

That was true in terms of a physical alibi, of course, but that’s all it was. “Oh, you’re involved, and we both know it. How deep you’re in is what I don’t know.”

“I didn’t invite those AAC people here,” Mother Accomplice snapped back. “They just showed up.” She grabbed a dishtowel from the drawer and wiped the counter out of habit. “They’re not from around here, and I made allowances for that, but quite frankly, some of them are just plain peculiar.”

Look who’s talking. I uncrossed my arms, sighed, heavily and grabbed my keys and billfold from the kitchen table. “I assume if I head down the main street of Bowman City I’ll find the Feed, Tack and Computer Store.”

Lucille nodded begrudgingly. “Won’t be much of a story left by the time you get there. It’s twenty minutes at least. Everybody will probably be gone by then. Be better to just write a story about me from here. That’s really the bigger issue anyway.”

“I’m going to the feed store.” And there will be no story writing. “Because you know, and I know, that exploding paint cans in front of the courthouse and rabbit chow raining down Main Street are connected to you because these things always are. And this time, Mother, I am going to find out what’s going on and put a stop to it before the actual shooting begins. Although that’s technically not possible since bullets have already been flying. They were your bullets, of course, and we all know—”

“You made your point, Jolene.” Lucille flung the towel down and mashed her lips into thin little painted lines. She managed to mutter something I was better off not hearing then ended with a quite audible “I’ll get my purse.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. You’re not going anywhere. You are not to leave the house. Do not even think of leaving the house. Leaving the house is not an option. You are to stay inside the house.”

One must be explicit when giving Lucille directives as she is taking meticulous mental notes as well as drawing loopholes in them at the same time. “Do not open the doors and do not answer the phone. Phones. Don’t make any calls from any phone. Or hand signals from the window.” I did not add this last directive facetiously. She’s done it. As more flashes of the things my mother has done—and her perfectly illogical rationalizations for doing them—flashed through my head with big red warning lights, I revised her orders. “On second thought, why don’t you just go to your room and stay there until I get back. Pull the shades, turn off the lights. Take a nap.”

Lucille took these directives fairly well, or either she wasn’t listening. Yes, my vote too. A closer look told me her face was now in thinking mode rather than teeth-gnashing mode. It was not necessarily an improvement. “The leader goes by the name of Tiger,” she volunteered, clicking her inch long nails together. “That bunch he has around him acts like he’s the Second Coming or something, swarming him like a bunch of gnats, ready to cater to his every whim, and all he does is stand there and stare.”

“Ah, the Great Horned Toad Messiah.”

Lucille scowled. “That’s not funny.”

“You know, it really kind of is, and I’d like to see it firsthand.”

“Well, you won’t be laughing when you’ve got Ol’ Bony Butt after you.”

“Surely with all the other heathens in town, I’m far enough down her ‘come to Jesus’ list to avoid too much grief.”

“I don’t know why you say ugly things like that; you most certainly did not learn blasphemy in my home.” Lucille stared at me, grinding her teeth, chewing around for the very best words. “I’ll tell you one thing, Ethel may have herself convinced that Bobcat’s got the hots for her, but I know better, carrying on like teenagers in front of the whole town. It’s just sickening, that’s what it is.”

Say what? I tossed my purse and keys back on the table. “You want to explain that? Start with Bobcat.”

Lucille propped herself against the cabinets, her fingers clickety-clacking on the counter. “He’s Tiger’s second in command and Ethel Fossy has latched on to him like a tick,” she said, her voice escalating in both volume and speed. “She seems to think he’s interested in her, but he most certainly is not… interested in her in that way. Not really. Any idiot can see what’s going on. He’s just using her and she’s acting like a fool. Why, he’s twelve years younger than she is. Just because she started dying her hair and painting herself up like a rodeo clown, which I’m just sure is mortal sin, especially at that narrow-minded church she goes to, does not change the fact that she looks old enough to be his mother. She keeps it up and I’m going to tell her that he came after me first but I had more sense than to just fall for some fool who’s only looking for a piece of tail, and why on earth he’d want that piece is just beyond me.”

Oh, there were apparently so many, many things that were beyond me, and the list grew every time my mother opened her mouth. Realizing my jaw had fallen open, I shut mine.

“And that’s another thing,” Lucille said, oblivious to the fact that I was not enjoying her senior sex story time. “That hussy hypocrite’s been talking dirty about me behind my back all this time, preaching at me, calling me names—you remember all that slut business—and now look at her. Look who’s acting dirty now! Why, I ought to give her some of her own medicine, that’s what I ought to do.”

“Alright, enough,” I said, stopping her before she worked herself—or me—into a stroke. “Let’s take this one trauma at a time.”

Lucille grabbed the dishtowel again and slapped it against the counter. “There is no trauma here, Jolene, and I have nothing further to say about that holier-than-thou lying, hypocritical, cheap, painted-face slut. She can hop into bed with every one of them for all I care, and she probably already has. Just a little bit of attention and all of a sudden she’s one of those sex groupies.”

Sex groupies? Religious fanatic Ethel Fossy, a sex groupie? Now that pushed the bounds of plausibility, even for Kickapoo. But, speaking of groupies, “What happened to Velma Brotherton? I thought she and Ethel were joined at the hip. How does she fit into this?”

“She doesn’t.” Lucille snorted in a highly undignified manner. “When Bony Butt started following around after these newcomers like a slobbering blind sheep, Velma high-tailed it back to California. Everybody had just figured they were like Jerry Don’s ex-wife, but now that Ethel’s run off with a man hippie, it makes you wonder. I’ve read that some people like both, they call it bisexual.” She waved her hand to dismiss the topic. “Whatever the case, she’s sure whoring it up and preaching hellfire all at the same time.”

If even a fraction of my mother’s tale could be believed, the potential that Ethel had been sucked into some weird cult was very real. “Messiahs, brainwashing and Grandma Gone Wild. Please tell me religion is not involved here.”

Lucille puffed out her chest. “Not real religion. Not like the Methodists, of course, or the Baptists for that matter, even though they’re always squabbling about who’s the best kind of Baptist or even Ethel’s Church of Christ with their weird thinking. Do you know that her very own pastor held a special prayer meeting for her, and there’s talk around town of trying to buy her an exorcism? Nobody’s sure if there’s a Christian way to do that sort of thing or if it’s just for Catholics and witches, but they’re checking into it.”

I didn’t say anything because frankly I was still processing the exorcism criteria. And then Lucille opened the refrigerator and nabbed a bottle of water, something I had never in my entire life seen her do before. She twisted off the top, took a long swig and kept talking. “I was glad for the help from the AAC people at first, thinking they were good Christians and all, but now I think it’s just some kind of cult. They’re all real secretive and peculiar acting. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they’re all on mind control drugs. They’re a weird bunch. And that’s another thing, Ethel Fossy has to be blind as a bat and dumb as a doorknob, because if she’d been paying any attention at all she would have realized that those men darned sure brought their own women with them in that van. Girls, really, about your age, following those old men around like sheep, why I’ve never seen such a thing. I suppose they’re hopped up on drugs or maybe hypnosis. They brought in a van full of kids too, but they were just a bunch of dopers that would holler and protest about anything. I sure couldn’t make any sense out of them, but the reporters seemed real impressed so I didn’t fuss.”