Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel (20 page)

Earl opened another Bud and walked it to the end of the bar.
J.O.’s empty bottle hit the bottom of the metal trashcan with a resounding bang. Earl glanced at the front door and put his elbows on the bar in front of J.O.

In a low voice, he asked, “J.O. did you see a young girl, long hair, pretty, in here Thursday night?
Now I’m not saying you did or you didn’t, I’m just curious.”

J.O. gave the bartender an evil squint with one eye and said, “Maybe.
Why you askin’?”

Earl checked the door again. “Here’s the thing.
This kid came in, must have been around eleven o’clock, and used that phone back there by the pool table.
She talked for a few minutes and then went right back out the door. She was a fine looking little thing, long tan legs and a short skirt.
Hell, every eye in here followed her, including yours J.O. if I remember right.
And for all I know, she
could have easily
been 21, legal age, didn’t matter
though
cause she didn’t order anything from the bar
.
I didn’t
think much of
it till later when I heard some female laughing out front.
I took a look and it was the same girl.
She was standing around talking to some young people, looked like she was having a good time.
Yeah, I
should’ve
asked for
her I.D.,
I give you that, but it was a busy night. Granted, I don’t check everybody that walks through the door, but I don’t make a habit of serving kids either.

“Course not,” J.O. mumbled
,
and took another swig of beer.

“What I’m trying to say J.O., is if that sheriff comes around here again, I would appreciate it if you could let that little incident slip from your memory.
The last thing I need is more trouble from the Law about serving minors.
That sheriff promised me he’d shut my door if it happened again and I believe him. This is my only livelihood J.O., without this bar, me and wife would be on welfare. Can you help me out here?”

Never one to pass up
an
opportunity, J.O. asked
,
“What’s in for me?”

Earl, knowing J.O. as he did, anticipated this and was ready.
“How about some free beer, say ‘til two o’clock?”

“How ‘bout all day?”

Earl hesitated on that one but caved. “All right, deal.”
Earl turned to walk away but J.O. called him back.

“What about the rest of them, the other guys that were in here that night? How you gonna buy them off?”

Earl shook his head. “The problem is, I didn’t know some of them and truth be told, I can’t remember exactly
who
was here.
One night around here’s about like any other, with mostly the same faces going and coming, ‘cept for that girl.”

J.O. almost smiled.
“You got a problem
,
barkeep.”

*****

As near as Melissa could tell, it was close to midday, her only indicators of time being daylight and dark and the shadows cast by the long stemmed weeds that she could see from the narrow slit beneath the cellar door.
It was the only time of day that she could get comfortably warm, the sun heating up the metal of the door and making her little cave almost balmy.
Several times, despite the dirt and grime and cobwebs, she had pushed her face and hands to the metal, absorbing the warmth of the sun she couldn’t see.
The heat felt so, so good after another night of shivering on the cot.

From the feel of it, the
swelling around her eye had gone down
.
She hated to think how it would look in a mirror, black and blue no doubt. Her shoulder and ribs were feeling a little better too and as for her other sore place, the one
down there
, she didn’t want to think about that and was
not
going to think about it.
She made a promise to herself to put those thoughts out of her head, at least for
the time being
,
until she could get out of the
fraidy hole
and get her life back.
There was nothing she could do about it anyway, locked up
like this. That horrible night
was over, done with and besides, she had other things to worry about, like
gettin’ outta here.
There was no sense getting worked up and have crying fits over something in the past even if it was only two nights ago.
No Melissa
, she told herself,
you need to concentrate all your energy, all your emotion, and all your wits on one thing, finding a way out.
That other stuff can wait;
no need to
deal with it right now.
Focus on staying alive girl, that’s priority number one.

Melissa had never been overly religious even though her mother, a hard core Baptist if there ever was one, insisted that she go to church
each and
every Sunday, come hell or high water.
It wasn’t that the girl disliked church
, a few of her friends were usually there, it was the getting up early that she hated.

Pretending to be sick on the Holy Day didn’t work very well either.
Even when her mother gave her the benefit of a doubt, Melissa was going to hear the Word one way or another, and if it had to come from one of those TV preachers, so be it.
Once, she had
seen her mother’s checkbook where she had written a check to Pat Robertson and the 700 Club for twenty dollars.
Had he known, Albert would have had a cow
, or worse
.

The concept of heaven and hell, and for that matter, God himself, was still quite vague in her young mind, never having spent a lot of time thinking about it, boys and friends and the latest teen fashions being much more interesting. The way she looked at it, she had the rest of her life to think about
evolution and creation,
Adam and Eve, and
all that
stuff.
B
esides, it was all sooo boring.
But now,
sitting
here in the
hole,
scared,
thirsty, and growing hungrier by the minute, Melissa wondered if
another
prayer might be just the thing to help her through the day and to hold back the panic that was creeping ever so surely back into her head.
It’s what her mama would do, that was for sure. Melissa didn’t get on her knees or put her palms together, but she did close her eyes.

“Jesus, I’m sorry if I haven’t always done the right thing in my life, but if you could help me out a little here, I would surely appreciate it and try to do better, okay?
Now, I don’t expect you to grant this prayer and do something totally rad, like make that heavy door disappear, but if can think of something to get me through this, well, I promise to go to church and not pretend sick on Sundays ever again. And I’ll treat my mama better too. I wish I could promise that about my dad, but if you know how he is, and I guess you do, then you’ll understand why I can’t forgive him for some of the things he’s done.”

Melissa paused and thought about it, trying to come up with something appropriate and churchy, but nothing came to mind.

“I guess that’s it, for now.
Thanks for listening.
Amen.”

Just as Melissa opened her eyes,
Lulu the mouse
made another appearance, running the base of the wall, hesitating every few inches, sniffing the air.

“Hey girlfriend, where you been? Haven’t seen you all morning.
How ‘bout it, you got any ideas for blowing this joint?
Of course, it’s no problem for you is it?
You got in here even with the door shut, didn’t ya’?
How you guys can squeeze through those tight places is a mystery to me.
Why don’t you show me that trick?”

By now, the mouse was showing less fear of the human and no longer ran and hid at the sound of Melissa’s voice.
T
hat didn’t mean it wasn’t going to keep its distance which it did.
Apparently
,
it was th
e
display of bravery by Lulu that prompted the emergence of yet another rodent.

“Oh, what have we here?
Lulu, you didn’t tell me you h
ave
a sister
,
or is it a brother?”

Melissa watched with
growing
curiosity as the two mice began to investigate the leaves piled near the stairs, probing for any sort of morsel to sustain their tiny lives. Their activity, bordering on frantic, had an effect.

“All right, I get it guys.
There you are working your little butts off to stay alive and here I sit, feeling sorry for myself and not doing a damn thing.”
Melissa found that the freedom to say things like hell and damn out loud was strangely uplifting, a new personal independence of sorts.
But the
d-
word was no sooner out of her mouth than she wondered if Jesus heard it.
She shook
that
thought out of head, stood up, and once again examined what was left of the lawn chair.
There was the another piece that matched the one she had broken, it was still intact, and then there was the back section, a similar U shaped tube.
Melissa decided she would give her earlier idea another try, bending the tube at just the right angle where she might
possibly
have a chance at dislodging whatever was holding the door shut. Now, with a better idea of just had fragile the old aluminum was and what angle was needed, she once again used her weight to make the bend: gently, gently,
one
inch at a time.

“There, that looks about right.”

Again, she
slipped the
bent
tube beneath the door, rotated it, and blindly felt for the
hasp
. She could tell where the main part of the
fastener
was
positioned as she could see a part of it through
the crack, but how far back over the door did it go, a couple inches at the most? She tried to visualize it, see it with her
mind.
Some of the shed
s
on the farm had hasps
,
just a
simple
flat piece of metal with a slot big enough for an eye of some sort to slip though. But what was in the eye to keep the flap of the hasp from opening, a hook, a bolt maybe, or worst-case scenario, a padlock?
Whenever she felt the tubing make contact,
she rotated her wri
sts,
back and forth,
slapping the tube
against the unseen keeper, urging
her
makeshift tool to
dislodge whatever damnable thing
was
keeping her in this god-awful place.
Another thought.
What if the eye was one of those rotating thingies?
The one where you twisted it ninety degrees to hold the latch shut? There’s one like that on our barn.
If that’s the case, a well-placed tap could turn it.

But n
o
matter how many times she twisted her wrists or how many times she made contact or how hard she struck it (whatever it was), the
latch didn’t budge, didn’t change, didn’t loosen
.
She couldn’t help it; despite the call to Jesus,
it was
time for another cry, a good one, a sobbing, chest heaving, heart wrenching, why-is-this-happening-to-me boo-hoo.
She let it all out, the anguish, the fear, the frustration, the pain, in a wail so loud that anyone within a quarter mile could have heard it.
But no one did.

Chapter 16

It was mid-afternoon when Lester pulled up to the rear of the courthouse and parked in the reserved spot marked S
HERIFF
.
Harley was the first one out of the truck, using Billy Ray’s lap for a springboard, catching the deputy in the groin with one trailing foot as he did so.

“Damn it dog, that hurt,” he grunted.

Harley went straight for the center of the well-kept courthouse lawn, did a couple preliminary sniffs for a proper spot, hunched his back, and squatted.

“Dog needed to go,” Lester said.
“That’s why he couldn’t wait for you to drag yourself out of the seat.”

“You are gonna clean that up, right? Billy Ray asked.

The Sheriff gave him a look.
“No harm done.
People shouldn’t be walkin’ on the grass here anyway, serves ‘em right if they step in it.
It’ll dry up soon enough.
Besides, the grass could use a little fertilizin
’
.”