Chapter One
Between the hills in the valley overlooking the lake, fog blanketed the earth giving the hills a ghostly appearance. Bathsheba Granger waved the flashlight around in circles creating designs in the mist. She giggled out loud, and then promptly covered her mouth with her free hand. “As if someone could hear you all the way out here, Sheba,” she chided herself. For good measure, she twirled the light above her head and let out a hearty yell. “Wa-hoo!” When she was finished she forced a sober look on her face and began the walk back down the red dirt road to her home. “Morning,” she said when she hit the front door. “You find the dog,” Uncle Bob questioned when she stepped through the narrow front door. “Nope,” Sheba said. She stowed the long flashlight above the small refrigerator. “Bet he took off for that lake and some of them rich snobs took and shot him to pieces,” Uncle Bob said. He shifted his top dentures in his mouth and sipped his coffee. “Uncle Bob,” Sheba whispered. She glanced around the kitchen. She smiled at the two small boys staring at her wide-eyed over their cereal. “Did they really shoot the puppy, Auntie Shee,” Jaxon asked. He leaned against his twin. Joshua’s bottom lip trembled. “No, they didn’t shoot the puppy,” Sheba said and cast a warning look toward Uncle Bob. “Come on now. Finish up your breakfast. The bus is gonna be here before you know it.” Jaxon ducked his head and began shoveling the cereal in his mouth. His copycat twin downed his own cereal in three large bites and sat silently. “Go on and get your backpacks ready, boys,” Uncle Bob directed. He sipped his coffee and thought to call after them. “And don’t you worry none about that dog. Auntie Shee will have him good and found by the time you get home from school.” “Oh, yea,” Jaxon called and tore off down the hall to the small bedroom he shared with his twin. Joshua said nothing but raised his arms up in a silent cheer. Sheba waited until the twins were out of earshot and turned on her heel to face her uncle. “Why did you go and do that for? You know that puppy could be all the way to the Arkansas line by now for all we know. How am I supposed to get him back here by three-thirty?” Uncle Bob shrugged. “What else you got to do today but go looking for that pup?” Sheba pulled out one of the wooden barstools and slipped into it. “Uncle Bob, you know exactly what I have to do today. It’s the same thing I do each and every day to keep a roof over your heads and food in those kids’ tummies.” She immediately regretted the use of the childish word. “I can’t go traipsing all over these hills looking for a stray puppy when I have-“ “When you have a newspaper to run. Practically by yourself. With employees who depend on you and local businesses that pay for your services,” Uncle Bob grumped. “I have heard that spiel before you know, young lady.” Sheba rested her elbows on the fake granite countertop and buried her face in her hands. “Uncle Bob, you know why I do what I do, and you know that it is a real job. If it wasn’t for that job, you wouldn’t have a roof over your head,” she said quietly. As soft as she said them, she knew the words were harsh. But that didn’t make them less necessary to be said. She braced for the onslaught of insults she was sure to receive in five, four, three- “I know, I know,” Uncle Bob said instead. “But you know how much I hate seeing those little eyes get all sad and full up with tears. I think I’d let someone take my left arm right off from me if I thought it would protect those little guys.” “I know you would,” Sheba raised her head and looked straight at him. “But there are still bills to pay here. And the paper is the best way I know how to do that.” “It’s a roof over our heads, anyway,” Uncle Bob said, sounding more like his normal ungrateful self. “Even for a doublewide from nineteen eighty-nine.” Sheba swallowed hard. “Ninety-nine,” she said. She kept the words she wanted to say down deep in her throat. “Guess you decided to get yourself into that whole tiny house movement thing and you didn’t need this old dump any longer,” he grumbled. “Lucky for us.” Sheba stood at those words and ignored him. She rushed down the long hallway to the boys’ bedroom. “You guys ready? I’ll drive you down to the bus stop myself if you want,” she said. “Can we ride in the back,” Jaxon asked. “In the back? Of my Jeep?” “No! In the back of the truck like Uncle Bob lets us,” he said. “Oh, no,” she said and made a mental note to speak with him about letting the boys ride in the back of his rusted-out old pickup truck. She knew he would argue that she had ridden in plenty of pickup beds in her life, but she doubted the boys could do so safely at five and a half. “We’re going to sit in your booster seats.” That was met with a chorus of disappointed groans. “But we can play the radio up loud while we wait for Freddy and the bus.” “Okay,” Jaxon answered. “Okay,” Joshua repeated. She hustled the boys down the hall and through the living room toward the front door. “What about their lunches,” Uncle Bob asked between coughs. Sheba looked over the counters in the kitchen. None had been made. She sighed. “I’ll have them buy for today,” she called after her shoulder and hurried the boys out the front door. Five minutes later she cranked up the volume on the radio and raised her hands high above her head. She stifled her giggles as the boys sang out the wrong words to their favorite old Alabama song. “Oh, slay me some mounting music,” they crooned. “Like gramma and grampa used to slay. Then root beer floats down the river to a cage and slide away!” The yellow bus rumbled down the gravel road and into sight. “Aw, we have to go to school,” Jaxon said. “Will you pick us up tonight,” Joshua asked. Sheba flipped the radio off and turned in her seat. She was shocked to hear the quieter twin speak first for once. “I may be able to,” she said. “But we’ll have to see what the day looks like. If not you know Uncle Bob will be sitting right here with his pickup.” The boys nodded. She smiled and tried to reassure them that they would not be left on the side of the road to fend for themselves. Even after six months they still needed the reminder. “But boys,” she said as the bus pulled to a stop. “You know if you sit in the back of the truck you have got to stay down and not stand up. You can bounce right out of the back.” “And we will get hurt real bad and our heads will break open like an egg,” Jaxon said and rolled his eyes. “We know. Uncle Bob tells us that all the time.” “Yeah, all the time,” Joshua said. “And then he drives slow like this.” He moved his hand slowly along the side of his booster seat. “Well, you better get on the bus now,” Sheba smiled. She reached around and unclipped the boys from their safety harnesses. “Have a good day at school!” She watched them until they scrambled onto the bus. Freddy the driver waved and pulled the door shut after them. Sheba waited for the bus to pull off before she turned her Jeep back toward the long driveway. She passed the doublewide and pulled down the gravel drive a little further. Her own “tiny home” lay beyond the larger house she had managed to pay off just a year and a half before. “Sheba,” Uncle Bob shouted at her from the front porch. “You need to get on down the road a piece. Ol’ Hill Carter just called me and let me know he seen a reddish puppy playing around down there by McCormick’s Pond.” “Hillyard Carter lives more than a mile from here, Uncle Bob. There’s no way that little pup made it across the countryside and over the McCormick’s Pond already this morning. I heard him whining just before six.” “Well, how are you going to know what’s going on until you get yourself on over there to see for yourself, Bathsheba Margaret,” he said. “Don’t call me by my full name, Uncle Bob,” Sheba said. She forced herself to calm her voice down, but she stopped short of calling him “sir.” “And I told you that I have to get into town to the paper this morning.” “Just go check on the dog,” Uncle Bib said. He leaned forward a bit and wheezed. “You need to get inside on your oxygen, Uncle Bob,” Sheba said. “I can hear you straining to breathe from here.” “Will you go check?” “Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” Sheba said. “Good girl,” Uncle Bob said and flashed her a wicked smile. He walked back inside the doublewide and shut the door behind him. She smiled despite herself. When he called her “girl” it made her think back to her days as a teenager, although at her age she hardly qualified as a girl. “I have to grab my stuff first,” she shouted and made her way back to the light blue travel trailer situated behind the doublewide. It was her tiny house, as Uncle Bob liked to call it. In truth, it was the best alternative she had to living with the aunt and uncle who raised her when they wound up without a place to lie after a wild storm two years ago. His wife was her mother’s oldest sister. Aunt Madge died a little over a year ago. The boys were the children of a great-niece on his side of the family. Uncle Bob took the twins into his home when their mother left them alone for three days while she went on a cross-country meth run. Sheba gave up the rest of her home and moved the small trailer in behind it when Uncle Bob brought the boys home to look after. He promised her it would be him that did the raising. And he was mostly right, except when it came to chasing stray puppies down first thing in the morning. And hiring a housekeeper to come in twice a week to clean and prepare a week’s worth of meals for them. And paying the taxes on the house. And the utilities. Still, she figured it was a bargain when she moved herself into her “tiny house on wheels” and he got to raising the twins. She was their “Auntie Shee” from a comfortable distance. Sheba walked the length of the trailer to the small bedroom in the back. She picked her iPad up from her small bed and shoved it inside her leather satchel. One quick pass through and she shut out the lights, turned off the coffee maker, and remembered to grab her keys to the newspaper office off of her kitchen cabinet on her way out the door. “By Uncle Bob,” she shouted toward the doublewide and hooped back in her Jeep. She started the motor and threw it into reverse before he had the chance to open the door and shout something that would make her day that much more complicated. Tempted as she was to run right past Hill Carter’s place she pulled the Jeep Wrangler into the wide gravel drive. “Morning, Mr. Carter,” she waved when he stood from his chair on the front porch. “Uncle Bob said you called about a puppy.” “I sure did,” he smiled. “But drive on back there toward the pond and you’ll hear it, too.” “Yes, sir,” she said and smiled. “Miss Sheba,” he called at her. “Yes, sir?” “Next time you come around here you be sure and come on up here on this porch with me and sit a spell,” he said. Sheba smiled. “I will be sure to do that,” she said and revved her engine and took off for the high weeds behind Hillyard Carter’s single-wide trailer. A thin white cloud hovered over the water. She stopped a few feet from the shore and shut off her engine. She rolled the windows down and listened. For a moment Sheba was tempted to close her eyes and simply sit. No matter how old she was her soul connected with nature in the dewy early morning. The world around her was silent except for the trill of the frogs and toads around the pond and the distant call of the cicadas”. “No crying puppy,” she muttered and turned the ignition over again. Her hand gripped the gear shift and she pressed in on the clutch. She would just have to tell Uncle Bob, and most likely Jaxon and Joshua, that the call from the Carter place was a false alarm. Just as the clutch began to whine she heard the distinct cry from a small puppy. “Well, shit,” she said and pushed the gear shift back into first. She turned the key back toward her and opened the driver door. “Come on out here, Ruby Red,” she called. The name seemed to fit the red hound dog puppy that wandered into the yard just three days before. Even the twins had taken to calling her Ruby. “Ruby,” she called again and began walking in the direction of the small whine. It seemed to come from the other side of the pond. Sheba made her way around the water, careful to avoid the silky mud around the edge of the pond. “Here, puppy,” she called again. She spotted movement in the grass about ten feet front he shore. “There you are.” She moved forward. Ruby popped her head up over the grass and began to howl. Sheba scooped her up and walked her back toward the Jeep. As she walked she checked the small dog over for signs of injury. “What the heck is this,” she asked Ruby. She pulled a dirty white tube sock from her hindfoot. Once she made her way back around McCormick’s Pond to her Jeep she opened the back door and set the dog inside. She finished her quick check over the puppy and declared her no worse for the wear. When she held the tube sock up in front of her she noticed the mud looked a little darker than it should. “Good gravy, Ruby Red,” she cried out. “I do think that is blood on that sock and not just a mess of pond mud.” She shut the back door carefully and opened the driver side door. “You are gonna need to wait here for just a minute, Ruby,” she said and lowered all four windows several inches to give the dog plenty of fresh air, but not enough space for her to pull another escape act. Satisfied that the dog could not get out she began the trek back around the pond. Something about the appearance of the sock felt off to her. Whatever the substance was on the sock was quite sticky and she thought that meant it was still pretty fresh. So, she thought, if it is blood there might be somebody out there in pretty big trouble. She made up her mind to take a quick survey of the land surrounding McCormick’s Pond and then head straight for Hill Carter’s front porch.
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