Page 99 of Moonshine Lullabies

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.

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