At ten minutes after midnight on a muggy Saturday morning in late July, my kid sister Sistine, shot her rat bastard boyfriend, Rockerfeller Hughes, with a twenty-two caliber pistol.
They’d been drinking, which I’m sorry to say was not an unusual occurrence. Particularly in Rocky’s case. His favorite beverage of choice being a shot of Jack Daniel’s dropped into a mug of A&W root beer.
Sistine didn’t hurt him. Well, not much. There was blood, sure, and he was howling loud enough to rouse corpses, but in truth she shot him in the foot. And he was wearing steel-toed Doc Marten boots so it wasn’t quite as awful as it sounds.
Still, it was a mess and some neighbor ended up calling the sheriff.
That’s one bad thing about living in a rural river community like Clover Leaf, Texas. Everyone’s got their nose in your business, 24/7.
Like any sensible person with a day job, I was in bed. Sleeping. Or rather trying to sleep. Between Rocky and his rag-tag band of wannabe musician’s playing a miserable riff of Sharp Dressed Man in our garage and Sissy screaming at a decibel far above top-of-the-lungs, I found it difficult to achieve theta state.
I’d been struggling to restrain myself from intervening, having learned from experience meddling in Sissy and Rocky’s battles was a fool’s mission. But Aunt Tessa, dressed in a gauzy white flowing robe, a la Amiee McPherson, came running into my room. Her healing crystal charm bracelet jangled as she moved.
“Ally,” she cried. “Get up. We need you. Rocky’s been shot.”
“Huh?” Pushing hair from my face, I sat up. The room was dark save for a shaft of moonlight spilling through the Wal-mart special mini-blinds.
“Sissy shot Rocky. With your granddaddy’s pistol. You better come quick. Someone must have called the cops. Probably that sanctimonious televangelist next door, because I can feel the sirens.”
Reverend Ray Don Swiggly, the latest Sunday morning television religious huckster to make millions off spreading the gospel, had recently built a palatial summer home on the edge of the Brazos river right next door to us. Aunt Tessa had vast theological differences of opinion with the good reverend and expounded on her convictions whenever anyone would listen.
I cocked my head, not wanting to get into a long winded discussion about the Reverend Swiggly when there were more urgent matters at hand. “I don’t hear any sirens.”
“You will.”
I let it go. With Aunt Tessa sometimes you just have to trust. It was easier than trying to figure her out. I threw back the covers, hopped out of bed and grabbed my practical terry cloth robe with the frayed hem. Okay, so I looked like a neglected housewife. Not everyone could pull off new age chic like Aunt Tessa.
“Where’s Mama?” I asked. “And Denny?”
“Your mother’s in the pottery shack, I don’t think she knows what’s going on.”
“Good. Keep her there. You know how she gets in a crisis.” I gave Aunt Tessa the assignment not only to keep Mama from freaking out but to give my aunt something to do. She had as much of a tendency to slip into theatrics as Mama. “What about Denny?”
“He’s still sleeping.”
“Are you sure?” Sissy’s eight-year-old son had witnessed far too many of his mother’s escapades.
“I’m certain. Come on,” Aunt Tessa hustled me down the hallway.
We took the stairs two at a time then flew through the back door and out onto the stone walkway leading to the free-standing garage built years after the house was constructed. A million lights blazed and a knot of Rocky’s drunken friends, scraggly haired young men and scantily clad women clotted around the garage door.
I recognized Tim Kehaul. He was one of Sissy’s many ex-boyfriends and the only guy to ever dump her. He had discovered rather late in life he preferred strong, hard masculine muscles wrapped around him in the night to soft, feminine limbs.
Tim possessed a cherubic face, sensational cheek bones and thick bronze hair that curled tightly against his head like a cap.
“Ally.” Tim shyly smiled. “Strange doings.”
“Hey, Tim,” I said, too distracted to really notice him or wonder what he was doing here.
Tim rarely came around since he didn’t like Rocky, and Sissy hadn’t forgiven him for taking up with his own sex. The fact that Tim and Rocky lived right next door to each other in the same trailer park two miles upriver must have caused friction between the three of them. But I gave up asking questions about Sissy’s tangled sexual history. Sometimes it’s best not to know.
I elbowed my way through the crowd and hollered at Aunt Tessa over my shoulder to take care of Mama before I plunged inside the garage.
Rocky lay on the floor, baying like a hound caught in a bear trap. His too-tight, blood-flecked Grateful Dead T-shirt had the neck slashed out in a deep V exposing more of his chest and an old scar criss-crossing his throat than I cared to see. For reasons that escaped me, Rocky cut the neck out of his shirts.
Sissy sat with his head cradled in her lap, tears pouring down her face. “I’m sorry, Rocky. I didn’t mean to shoot you,” she wailed.
“Yes, you did. I’m having you arrested,” he said through gritted teeth.
Thank God, maybe she’ll break up with him.
I flicked my gaze over his body, searching for the wound and stopped at his feet. Blood oozed from the toe of his boot and pooled on the cement. Or rather, what was left of his boot. Bits of leather had gone flying and were stuck to guitars and drums. What a mess.
“Ally! Thank heavens!” Sissy exclaimed when she realized I was in the room.
“Your crazy sister shot me,” Rocky whined. “Can you believe that?”
“Shut up. Both of you.” I sank to my knees beside Rocky.
“Don’t touch it.” He howled even though my fingers were nowhere near his blasted foot.
“You know I’m a nurse,” I soothed. “Hold still so I can examine you.”
“You might be a nurse but you’re her sister and you hate my guts.” He jabbed a finger at Sissy. “For all I know you’ll make it worse on purpose.”
“I admit it’s a tempting thought,” I said dryly. “If you’d rather bleed to death.” I shrugged and started to get up.
His face paled. “No. Wait. Don’t go. Is it really bleeding that bad?”
“I can’t tell until I take your boot off.”
“It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Like a son-of-a-bitch,” I said cheerfully and loosened his boot laces.
“The cops are comin’!” Tim yelled from the yard and the next thing I knew engines were revving and the police sirens Aunt Tessa had predicted several minutes earlier screamed in the distance.
“Oh Jeez, Sissy.” Rocky gazed balefully at my sister. “Run your hand in my back pocket and get out those joints. I can’t get busted for possession again. They’ll revoke my parole.”
“You brought marijuana into my house after I distinctly told you not to?” I shouted.
“It’s not your house, it’s your garage,” Rocky quibbled.
I jostled his foot. On purpose.
“Yow!”
“Sorry. My hand slipped.”
Rocky glared then turned his attention back to Sissy. “Come on babe, get the joints.”
“Not if you’re going to have me arrested. You know I had every right to shoot you,” my sister told him.
“Sissy.” I frowned at her. “No one has the right to shoot anyone, no matter what that person might have done.”
“He’s got a wife,” Sissy muttered.
“What?” I glared at Rocky.
He looked sheepish. “It’s no big deal. I haven’t seen her in a year.”
“He’s lucky,” Sissy said. “I was aiming somewhere a bit higher but I missed and the bullet ricocheted off the clothes dryer and got him in the boot.”
Rocky rested a protective hand over his genitals. “Okay, sweetie, baby. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I shoulda told you I was married when we started dating.”
“Damn straight.”
She’s gonna dump him, once and for all. Praise the Lord and pass the ammo.
The sirens were getting louder. The crowd once assembled in my yard had vaporized.
“So get the joints out of my pocket, please.” Rocky rolled calf eyes at Sistine and I knew she was falling for it. “I’ll tell the cops it was an accident. I promise.”
“Do you want me to flush ’em?” Sissy asked, rooting around behind him, frisking his bony butt. She came up with a crumpled baggy containing six fat hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes.
“Hell no, hide them in here somewhere.”
My gaze caught Sissy’s. “Don’t you dare.”
“Sheriff’s Department.” A commanding voice spoke from the open doorway. “Nobody move.”
Law enforcement officials poured into my garage, guns drawn. They surrounded the three of us, locking us into some surreal, red-neck militia melodrama.
We were screwed.
I caught my breath and glanced toward the door.
A tall, muscular, mustachioed man trod across the garage toward us. He looked like a Rambo/Terminator cross---hard gray eyes, jar-head haircut, service revolver strapped to him more snugly than a spare body part. The twinkling star on his chest revealed his identity.
Sheriff.
The famed former Marine MP, Sheriff Samuel J. Conahegg so highly lauded in the Clover Leaf Gazette.
He’d been elected on the strength of his promise to scour the local government of corruption. His predecessor had run off with the county clerk, buck-toothed, knock-kneed Mavis Higgins---who was reportedly a real hottie in bed despite her uncanny resemble to Olive Oyl---and two hundred thousand dollars of tax payer funds.
Conahegg was known not only for his tendency to go for ride alongs with his deputies at any time without notice, but for his utter lack of mercy. Zero Tolerance was his middle name and from his ramrod straight stance, I could believe it.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice a strange mixture of barbed wire and honey.
My heart did a crazy, swoony dance.
Why? I had no explanation. I’m not given to instant attraction to strangers. And most certainly not to domineering, uncompromising types.
His gaze took in Rocky with the shot toe and Sissy holding the bag of illicit weed. Then he looked at me. I shrugged and lifted my eyebrows.
Nobody said a word.
The sheriff turned to one of his men. “Call for an ambulance, please, Jefferson.”
“Will do, sir.” Jefferson sprinted from the garage.
“The rest of you can put away your weapons.” Conahegg waved at the four remaining deputies. They obeyed his command, sliding their guns into their holsters while sending us malevolent stares.
“You.” The Sheriff flicked a finger at me. “What’s your name?”
“Al . . . er . . . ” My throat was dry as a crusty gym sock. I tried to swallow. Twice. And finally got out, “Allegheny Allison Green.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t pick it.” I might be attracted to him but damn if I’d let him know it.
“What happened here?” He jerked his dimpled chin in the direction of Rocky’s toe.
How to explain?
Rocky and Sissy were no help. Rocky had closed his eyes, feigning unconsciousness. Sissy peered assiduously at the floor, as if she stared long enough it would open up and suck her right down.
“He got shot,” I finally answered.
“So it appears.” Conahegg squatted beside Rocky. “Hurts pretty badly, does it?”
Rocky didn’t move.
“Hmmm,” Conahegg mused, stroking his chin with two fingers and a thumb.
None of the stalwart deputies had spoken, nor even moved. They stayed positioned at the ready, their faces expressionless.
“What I don’t know,” the sheriff continued in his oddly engaging tone, “is how he came to find himself toeless.”
“A gun went off?” I ventured.
The sheriff jerked his head around and drilled me with eyes gone deadly sharp. “You’re not that stupid.”
Ulp!
He both complimented me and scared me in one breath. I had to give him high marks for perceptiveness but low scores on charm. Still, something about him magnetized me in a way no man had in a very long time. Just my luck. I finally get the hots for someone and it’s the kind of guy I could never get along with.
The Sheriff shifted his body away from Rocky and toward me. Instant sweat popped out on my skin. I could feel it trickling down my neck.
“Let’s start again, shall we?” he asked.
I nodded.
“All right.” He paused to glance at his watch. “At exactly ten minutes after zero hundred hours we received a report that someone was shooting off a gun at your residence.”
He’d brought his military precision with him to his job as sheriff. You could see it in his posture, read it in his face. He was probably not an easy man to work for. He would demand perfection from his employees, and mete out just punishment if his orders weren’t followed to the letter. He possessed an enigmatic power gleaned from years of hard self-discipline.
I shivered.
“We’re outside the city limits,” I pointed out, forcing myself to stop thinking about the strange pull I felt toward him. “It’s not illegal to shoot a gun here.”
“To discharge a weapon, no. But to shoot a person, yes.”
“It was an accident,” Rocky said.
Conahegg and I stared at each other again, our eyes striking like two flint rocks sparking off each other, before we glanced over at Rocky.
“Sh . . . sh . . . she didn’t mean to do it,” Rocky stammered.
“You shot him?” the Sheriff asked me, a bemused smile flitting over his lips. It almost looked as if he admired me and for one short second I wished I had shot Rocky.
“No.” Rocky shook his head. “Her.” He pointed at Sissy. “She was showing me her granddaddy’s gun when she dropped it and the thing went off.”
The sheriff reached over and gently pried the baggy of marijuana from Sistine’s fingers. His gentleness with her surprised me. He touched her chin, lifted her face. “Is that true?”
Tears glistened in my sister’s eyes. She shook like a kitten abandoned on the roadside.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “You can tell me anything.”
Oh, he was good. Too good. Sissy loved male attention and she’d go to the ends of the earth to get it. Although how he had sensed that about her I had no idea.
“Uh-huh,” Sissy whispered. “It was an accident.”
“What about this?” Sheriff Conahegg crushed the baggy of joints in his fist. “How did a nice girl like you get possession of a nasty weed like this?”
Sissy’s gaze flicked from the Sheriff to Rocky.
Come on. Tell him the truth. Rocky’s the biggest pot hound in three counties.
Sissy took a deep breath.
We waited.
“I found it,” she said.
“You found it?” Conahegg shook his head, disappointed in her answer.
“Yes.”
“Where did you find it?”
In Rockerfeller Hughes’ back pocket!
“I don’t remember.” Sissy was studying a guitar lying to one side of the garage as if her life depended on memorizing every fret.
“Are you aware of the penalty for marijuana possession?”
“No.” Her voice was barely audible. Sissy might talk tough and act tougher but when she’s in trouble she reverts to kid mode.
Silence ensued. You could even hear the frogs croaking down by the water. Conahegg rose to his feet and swept his gaze around the room.
The garage was unbearably hot. From where I sat crouched over Rocky’s foot, the smell of fresh blood kept assaulting my nostrils and my knees ached from the cement floor.
“May I stand up?” I asked. “My leg is going to sleep.”
He nodded.
I stood.
Or rather I tried to stand. My legs wobbled like rubber bands and I stumbled sideways into that hunk of granite passing for a human being.
Conahegg’s hand went out to catch me.
The contact was electric.
No kidding. You read that cliched comparison in romance novels and you assume it’s an exaggeration. I mean, I’m a nurse for crying out loud. I touch people all the time. Save for static electricity you don’t ever feel a jolt, a shock, a current.
Except I did.
And I had no clue why. It scared me. Big time.
I jerked away. Fast.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Oh, sure, other than the fact you fried all my internal organs, I’m peachy.
“Need to get the circulation back in my legs,” I said, jogging in place, more to shake the sensation of Sheriff Conahegg’s touch than to bring blood to my lower extremities.
“Ally?”
The sound of my name drew my attention to the garage door occupied by my mother, Aunt Tessa fluttering at her side.
“I tried to keep her in the pottery shed,” Aunt Tessa explained, “but she heard the sirens.”
Mama floated over, hardly noticing the sheriff’s deputies with guns strapped to their sides. “Honey?” As always, she looked to me for explanation and reassurance. “What are these people doing here?” Her voice still held the sugary sweetness of her Carolina girlhood.
“Ma’am.” Super Sheriff turned on his heel and held his hand out to Mama. “I’m Sheriff Conahegg and we received several complaints of disturbing the peace.”
“Oh, dear.” Mama pushed a wisp of graying brown hair back into the loose bun atop her head. “Why, I know you.” She smiled. “You’re Lew Conahegg’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I remember when you wore short pants. Your father and my husband used to have offices side by side on the courthouse square. Green’s Green House and James Conahegg, Attorney at Law.”
Really? I didn’t remember that.
“That’s been awhile,” Conahegg said.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your father’s passing.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Well,” Mama continued. “You’ll have to excuse the noise. My daughter’s boyfriend and his band like to practice here in our garage.”
She waved a hand at the abandoned instruments. I was beginning to wonder if she’d even noticed Rocky lying on the floor, suffering from a gunshot wound inflicted by her youngest daughter. Mama had the amazing ability to focus upon only what she wanted to see and ignore the rest.
“So I’ve gathered.” Conahegg nodded. He still held Rocky’s bag of weed in his hand. As if he’d just become aware of that, he shoved pot into his pocket.
“Goodness, Rocky,” Mama said, finally catching on. She lifted up her long skirt and stepped over his injured foot. “What happened to you?”
“Accident, Mrs. Green.”
“You’ve got to be more careful, dear. You weren’t imitating those musicians on television who smash their guitars, were you? That’s not a nice way to treat your instruments.”
Everyone looked at me.
I shook my head. No point in explaining reality to my mother. I’d learned that a long time ago.
“Mama,” I said. “Why don’t you let Aunt Tessa take you inside and make you a cup of tea.”
Mama brightened. “That sounds nice. Tessa?”
But as Mama spoke to her sister, a strange expression crossed Aunt Tessa’s features.
“Ung!” Aunt Tessa cried out and all gazes swung her direction. Her right hand went to her throat and her eyes stared vacantly ahead.
My heart sink into my shoes. No not now. Not a visit from Ung. Uh-uh. Please God.
Not in front of Conahegg.
But I was not to be the beneficiary of divine intervention. The gathered deputies watched in fascination. I’d seen it before. Many times. I admit, the first time you see it can be quite a show.
The expression on Aunt Tessa’s face changed from empty indifference to lively animation. Her lips curled back, a combination smile and grimace. Her eyes widened until they seemed to encompass her entire face. Her nostrils flared. Her cheeks flushed with color.
“I am Ung!” Aunt Tessa growled in a deep voice.
Conahegg shot me a ‘what-in-the-hell’ expression. I couldn’t blame him. Aunt Tessa’s transformation into her twenty-five-thousand-year-old spirit guide, a cavewoman named Ung, is quite a spectacle.
Aunt Tessa spread her arms wide. “I speak from spirit world. Heed warning.” Her eyebrows dipped. She crooked a finger and lurched toward Rocky.
Reflexively, he raised his hands, shielding his face. “Get her away from me. She’s creepy.”
“The warning is for you!” Tessa-turned-Ung cried. “Much evil. Beware!”
Chills chased up my arm.
Granted, I don’t often believe in Aunt Tessa’s new age, Shirley McLaine crapola but occasionally Ung will make a prediction that comes true. Of course, it’s not much of a stretch to figure out that a dope smoking, unemployed musician who cheats on his girlfriend with his wife and vice versa is going to end up in trouble.
The sheriff, who by the way had magnificent forearms, tugged me to one side. “What’s this all about?” he whispered.
“You got me.”
“Who is that woman?”
“My aunt.”
The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Are you disparaging my family?”
“Looks like they’re doing the job all by themselves,” he commented dryly.
I planted my hands on my hips. Who did he think he was? I mean besides sheriff. He had the power to put us behind bars on one trumped up charge or the other but he certainly didn’t have the right to bad mouth my kin folks. We took enough guff off the locals. You expected more understanding from your elected officials.
“Hey, come on. Do something, man, get her off me,” Rocky cried.
Aunt Tessa was hovering over Rocky’s prostrate body, trembling from head to toe. “The evil forces are strong,” she croaked. “Run. Run. Run for your life.”
“That’s enough!” Conahegg said and motioned for a deputy to intercept Aunt Tessa. “Where is that ambulance?”
As if on his command, the ambulance pulled down the graveled river road and into our yard, siren wailing and lights flashing.
Aunt Tessa crumpled in the deputy’s arms, her face slack. On the floor, Rocky was sweating buckets and my idiotic sister sat rocking him in her arms and cooing into his ear. Some people never learn.
“What do I do with her, Sheriff?” The deputy asked. Aunt Tessa was dishrag limp, and she often stays that way for an hour or more after channeling Ung.
“I’ll take her to bed,” Mama said, surprising me with her helpfulness. “Come on, Tessa.” She took her sister’s hand and guided her out the side door.
“We’ll need statements from everyone involved,” Conahegg said at the same time two paramedics trotted into the garage.
“Everybody else took off,” Rocky said. “‘Cept for my darling, Sistine.”
Oh, brother.
“I’d never leave you, Tiger,” Sissy whispered.
No, but you’d shoot him in the foot, I thought rather unkindly.
There’s have been many times in my life I could have sworn I was a changeling. When I was a kid, growing up with a head-in-the-clouds, fairy-tale believing, troll-doll-making mother, a florist father who collected butterflies and a cavewoman channeling aunt, I harbored sweet fantasies that gypsies had stolen me from my rightful parents---usually a practical-minded accountant and a devoted stay-at-home mom---and left me on the Greens’ doorstep.
Although I never came up with a proper motivation for such rash actions on the part of these anonymous gypsies, I quickly determined my place in the scheme of things. I was in the Green family to take care of everything. To attend to the routine chores no one else seemed inclined to do like paying bills, holding down a steady job, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, washing the car, changing the light bulbs. That sort of thing. If it hadn’t been for me, the family would have unraveled long ago. Especially after Daddy died.
“I’d like you to come to the station with us,” Sheriff Conahegg said to me.
“But I didn’t witness the shooting.”
He took me by the shoulder---that red hot grip again!---turned me around, ducked his head and whispered in my ear. “Maybe not,” he said, “but you seem to be the only one in the place with a lick of sense.”
I smiled. Swear to God I did. And flushed with pride. I was the only one with a lick of sense but nobody in my family saw me that way.
In my bizarre-and-proud-of-it clan, I was known as the dull one. Ally would rather clean the dishes than strip naked and dance in the rain. Or Ally is such a snore, she has always got her nose stuck in a book instead of actually living. Or Ally doesn’t have an artistic mind, she only cares about is making money. My family never seemed to appreciate that because I did the boring, mundane things, they got to be eccentric.
The paramedics loaded Rocky onto the stretcher and trundled him into the back of the ambulance. Sissy begged to ride along but they wouldn’t let her. She stood beside me, sobbing into her hands.
The deputies scattered, searching for witnesses to interrogate, leaving me and Sissy and Conahegg in the garage.
“Well, ladies,” Conahegg said. “May I have the honor of escorting you to my squad car?”
