Southern Fried Murder - a short story

I grew up in a small town in northwest Louisiana, about seven miles from the Arkansas and Texas state lines, the area known as the Ark-La-Tex. During the fifties, Louisiana was open to drinking, while you had to be twenty-one in Arkansas and Texas. Because of the drinking age, or lack thereof, honkytonks lined the highway on the Louisiana side near where I lived.

The honkytonks were usually one-room saloons with wooden walls and floors. The clientele was oilfield roughnecks, loggers, and cowboys. As the saying goes, "If you didn't have a weapon on you when you arrived, you'd be issued one at the door." To say the honkytonks were dangerous is an understatement.

My hometown of Vivian had a sheriff and a deputy. The Vivian sheriff was a man named Harmon Idom, a veteran of the Korean War, whom I modeled Sheriff Antley in the story Southern Fried Murder after. Like Antley, Sheriff Idom was a no-nonsense individual who had the monumental task of keeping the peace in a region soaked in alcohol and out-of-control testosterone.

The story is a fictionalized depiction of an actual murder at a pond near the Texas border. Hope you love it. And, oh yes, there really was a Mrs. Bea.

Southern Fried Murder

Morning haze, the last remnant of a two-day rain, hung over the bayou. Summer had returned with a vengeance. Eight in the morning, it was already ninety in the shade. Sheriff Harmon Antley wiped the back of his neck with a blue bandanna.

Beyond ferns and cypress trees fringing, the bayou floated an object, face down and half submerged in dark water—a body. Antley stared at it until a squawk from the radio in the nearby police car broke the morning silence.

"Velma, we got a body out here on Black Bayou, just south of Spillway Road."

Another squawk from the radio and Deputy Sam Tate responded to Velma's unheard question.

"Don't know yet. Can you get Doc Branson out here?"

Satisfied with Velma's answer, Tate signed off. and slammed the door of the black and tan ’56 Pontiac. Before joining Sheriff Antley, he wiped an invisible smudge from the roof-mounted red lights. Antley grinned when he thought about the thick horn-rims goggling the younger man's eyes. They seemed out of place with his starched khakis and matching ten-gallon hat.

"See who it is, Sheriff?"

"Hell no, but she hasn't been in there long. Body's floating too low in the water."

Sam Tate spoke in a sing-song drawl, more reminiscent of east Texas than South Louisiana. To Sheriff Antley, it sounded like a twangy country riff played on a steel guitar. Antley himself had no regional accent. Lost in Korea while serving in the Marines. Lost also was a large chunk of his right ear, taken by a North Korean sniper's bullet. He kept the narrow brim of his Humphrey Bogart hat cocked in that direction.

A distant siren heralded the approach of a black Cadillac ambulance, which slid to a halt beside their car. Doc Branson and his assistant joined them as a flock of white cattle egrets flew by on their way to Jeems Bayou near the Texas border.

"Somebody drown?" Doc Branson asked, shielding his eyes as he leaned over the water.

"You're supposed to tell me," Antley said.

The little doctor with wispy white hair shook off Sheriff Antley's brusque reply.

"Tank, wade out there and pull the corpse to shore."

Six-four and almost two-fifty, Tank Slade's name fit. After school and during summer break, he worked for Doc Branson. His blithe smirk expressed his liking for the job. Not bothering to roll up his pant legs, he waded into shallow water, not even recoiling when he grabbed the turgid body. As he pulled it to shore, a school of silver shiners danced around his feet. He dropped the lifeless body in front of the awaiting trio.

"Recognize her, Harmon?" Doc Branson asked.

"Leola Jones. Harvey Jones's wife," Antley said.

"Harvey Jones, the welder?"

"One in the same."

"Sheriff and me had to cart Leola home more than once," Sam said. "Spent most every night out at the Red Hen."

Doc Branson prodded the body with his toe. "Barfly, huh? Maybe she got drunk, stumbled into the bayou, and drowned."

Sheriff Antley squatted beside the body, probing beneath her long hair with his fingers. "It's five miles to the Red Hen from here. Don't see no car. And there's blood in her hair."

Doc Branson bent down to join him. "Maybe she bumped her head when she fell," he said, using his index finger to push his wire-rims up on the bridge of his nose.

"Don't think so," Antley said. "Unless she hit something real heavy shaped like a half dollar." Sheriff Antley pulled back the dead woman's hair, exposing a circular dent in her skull. "I'm betting you won't find water in her lungs either. Can you check it out?"

"Do the best I can, but with a Republican in the White House, our budget is pretty well cut."

Antley frowned and said, "You have enough money to do one little autopsy."

"Do the best I can," Doc Branson said. Then he added, "At least I voted for Stevenson and Kefauver."

Sheriff Antley ignored his sarcasm and glanced at the sun now high in the sky. Then he tilted his hat back and mopped his neck with the blue bandanna.

"Sam, take a good look around."

Sam patted the big .44 in his side holster, nodded a silent okay, and started in the opposite direction of the bayou.

"What do you expect he'll find, Harmon?"

"Murder weapon, maybe."

At the mention of murder, Tank's piggish eyes grew wider. Folding his big arms, he glanced over his shoulder as if the murderer might still be out there somewhere, lurking behind a tree. Antley brushed his hands and started for the cruiser. Doc Branson and Tank followed.

"Could be one of them bucks from darky town raped and killed her," Tank said.

Sheriff Antley frowned but kept walking.

"Maybe we should run up there tonight with some of the boys and find out," Tank persisted. "I wouldn't mind frying one of them bucks myself."

This time, Sheriff Antley halted. After exchanging a glance with Doc Branson, he grabbed Tank's collar and slammed him against the ambulance. With his acne-scarred face inches from Tank's nose, he riveted his coal-black eyes on the frightened lad. Grizzled forearms pinned Tank to the side of the vehicle.

"Boy, what you saw here is police business. I don't care what you think might have happened, you keep it to yourself. Understand me?"

"Yes," Tank said.

"Yes, what?" Antley said, banging the boy's head against the ambulance's roof.

"Yes, sir, Sheriff Antley."

"That's better," Antley said, releasing his grip, backing away, and brushing his hands again. “If I hear of anything happening to anyone on the other side of the tracks, you’re the first person I’ll come looking for. You got me on that?”

Tank looked at Doc Branson for support but got none. Instead, the old doctor said, "You heard the Sheriff. Now, hustle up that body and pitch it in the back of the ambulance. We got work to do."

A shout over the hill diverted everyone's attention from Tank's red face.

"Sheriff, over here. I found something."

Antley patted Tank's cheek and started toward Sam Tate's shout. "Check her lungs, Doc. At least do that."

Despite disliking his political leanings, Antley knew Doc Branson would do a complete autopsy. He hurried away as he reached the brush line, upsetting a covey of quail. They scattered in a flurry of noise and beating wings. When he crested the hill and came out of the brush, he found Sam beside a red and white ’57 Chevy. It was empty, and both doors open.

"Keys are in the ignition," Sam said.

Broken glass from the smashed windshield littered the car's hood. Something white protruded from the open glove box. Reddish-brown blood clotted the blue front seat covers. Antley grabbed the white object and held it to the light.

"What is it, Sheriff?

"Looks like Leola's girdle. And someone broke the windshield from the inside out."

Oil oozed from the holding tank of a nearby well, burnishing brown loam piled in a berm around it black. The walking beam moved up and down, screeching as it lifted metal rods in and out of the hole. There were also three sets of tire tracks in the dirt.

"Two trucks and a car," Sam said. "One of the trucks had wider tires and dug a deeper rut than the other."

"Carrying a heavy load," Sheriff Antley said.

Three turkey buzzards circled overhead in slow, lazy loops. Harmon Antley watched them as he mopped his forehead with his bandanna. Then he started back down the hill to the cruiser, and Sam Tate followed. Antley said when they reached the car, "Call Velma, Sam. Have her get this place roped off and photographed, and a diver out here to check where we found the body.

The radio squawked as Deputy Tate called Velma. He scratched his big, hooked nose after replacing the receiver in its cradle.

"Taking a break, Sam?" Antley finally said.

"No sir," Sam said. "Where to?"

"The Red Hen."

***

When they reached the blacktop, Sam cranked open the wind wing, gunning the engine to get cool air flowing through the hot car. Ten o'clock and one-oh-one. It made them both wish the Parish had opted for a swamp cooler instead of the fancy radio they provided it with.

The vegetation changed from cypress trees with waves of Spanish moss to pines nudging the road. Sheriff Antley saw a snowy crane as the sleepy bayou disappeared in the rearview mirror. Sam continued along the winding hilly road to Bixley.

Bixley lay nestled in the crook formed by northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas. Three thousand farmers, roughnecks, and businessmen. And retirees. A dozen honkytonks dominated the west side of town, just beyond the city limits. Texans and Arkansans surged across the border on Saturdays, drawn by wild times and no liquor restrictions. Most wore faded jeans, cowboy hats, and pointy-toed shit kickers, though few were real cowboys. In the tri-state region of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, many of the cattle were of the dairy variety. Miles of cotton, making the fields look like snow in July, grew instead of wheat.

Still, the area had more than a passing resemblance to the Old West. Antley and Tate usually ended up on the strip, arresting drunks, breaking up fights, or escorting someone home. The Red Hen was the most popular honkytonk of all. Finding its graveled parking lot vacant except for the owner's white Caddy, they entered the front door.

Three slow-moving overhead fans did little to stir the humid air, stagnant with the stale reek of beer. Their boots echoed like tap dancers as they crossed the faded dance floor to the wall-long bar padded with red vinyl. There, Mrs. Bea Hopkins, the Red Hen's owner, sat alone, a tall, straight scotch in one hand and a half-empty bottle of Chivas in the other. Sam and Sheriff Antley waited for the old lady to acknowledge their presence. When she finally looked up and saw them standing there, she grinned, her false teeth on the bar beside the bottle of Scotch.

"Little early, aren't you, Sheriff? No drunks in here for another eight hours."

"Didn't come for drunks, Mrs. Bea," he said.

"Well, I know you tee-total, so you didn't come for a morning toddy."

"We found Leola Jones floating face down in the bayou this morning. Answers are what we need, Mrs. Bea."

Antley's announcement of Leola Jones's demise didn't faze the old woman. "Hell, Sheriff, I got many answers, but they might not be what you want."

"You knew Leola?"

"Sure, who didn't? Quite a looker."

"How often did she frequent the Hen?"

Mrs. Bea glanced at her watch. "Bout every night. Steady as clockwork."

"Mr. Jones, come with her?"

The old lady shook her head, causing the chicken skin on her neck to wriggle like an earthworm on a hook. "Works for hisself during the day and at the glass factory at night. Only seen him in here once or twice."

"Lately?"

"Last week, maybe."

"They have two kids. Who cares for them when the parents are away?" Antley asked.

"Boy's thirteen. Looks after hisself and his little sister."

Mrs. Bea poured another shot of scotch into her glass. Before it reached her mouth, her scrawny neck began to bend, and her head drooped forward. Then her hand, still clutching the glass, sagged against the bar. For a moment, Sam and Sheriff Antley thought she had passed out. When Sam cleared his throat, the sound echoed against the sizeable open room's bare walls, and Mrs. Bea opened one eye and grinned again.

"Gonna swallow my teeth one of these days doing that."

Sheriff Antley ignored her flippancy and said, "Was Leola seeing anyone special?"

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean. Did she have a boyfriend?”

"Bobby Hartley."

"He from around here?"

"From up the road in Texas. Been sweet on Leola for a couple of months now."

"Was he in here last night?"

Mrs. Bea didn't have to think about her answer. "He's in here every night."

"Did he leave with Leola?" Antley asked.

"No, but he weren't five minutes behind her after she did."

"What does Bobby Hartley drive?"

"Pretty little red Ford pickup."

Sheriff Antley edged closer to Mrs. Bea and rested his elbows on the bar. "Mrs. Bea, where did they go when they left here? You know, don't you?"

The old lady's green eyes flashed, and her facial skin wrinkled into her patented grin. "Sure. So does everyone else that comes in here. They go parking out on one of them oil well leases. Over by Spillway Road."

Antley pulled away from the bar. "Her husband know?"

"Sure, he knew, but that didn't stop her."

"Ever notice any bruises on her arms or legs? A black eye, maybe?"

Mrs. Bea cackled. "No, but now and then, she'd get some mean dents in her car. That Chevy was her favorite possession. When Harvey got mad, he'd take it out on the car. Would make her real mad, too, and she'd give him the where-with-all. Have him crying like a baby. Forgetting why he'd done it in the first place."

Sheriff Antley pointed toward the door, and Sam nodded. Mrs. Bea's head was lying on the bar in a pool of scotch, and they didn't bother saying goodbye. The radio was squawking when they reached the squad car, and Velma was on the line.

"Sheriff, the divers found something in the bayou."

"Like what?"

"A hammer."

"Claw hammer?"

"Ball peen. No rust, but there's traces of blood on the handle."

"Good work, Velma," Sheriff Antley said, signing off.

Sam cranked down the windows and said, "Gonna look up Bobby Hartley?"

"Nope," Sheriff Antley said. "He didn't do it."

Sam pulled off his hat, combing the strands of damp hair off his forehead. Then he sat there, rubbing the tip of his nose and looking confused.

"Pardon me, Sheriff, but how do you know that?"

"You have a television, don't you, Sam?"

"Sure. Almost a year now."

"Ever watch the Lone Ranger?"

"You bet I do."

Sheriff Antley paused as he scratched his chin. "Did you see the one where the Lone Ranger and Tonto were hot on the trail of three bank robbers?"

"Sure did. They was running from the posse and only had two horses."

"That's the one. How do you think the Lone Ranger knew there were three robbers on the two horses instead of only two?"

"Easy, Sheriff. Tonto got down in the dirt and studied the hoof prints. One set was deeper than the other."

"Exactly. Now let's go see Harvey Jones."

***

Sam was still digesting Sheriff Antley's story as he spun the car's tires in loose gravel. Leola and Harvey lived in a wood-framed house where Harvey ran a welding shop out of his garage. When Sam saw Jones' truck, heavy equipment weighing down its rear end, he understood the story's meaning. On the ramshackle porch, sitting in a swing, was Harvey

Jones and his daughter Lila. Harvey Jr. peered out at them from behind the screen door. Harvey was a big man with thin blond hair bleached almost white by constant exposure to the sun. He was shirtless beneath his faded overalls. Antithetic to the rest of his body, his face was round and cherubic. It made him look about ten. As Sam and Sheriff Antley approached the porch, Harvey put his big face into his hands and began to cry. Lila tossed back her long brown hair, her mother's hair, and joined her father in his tears.

Sam and Sheriff Antley waited until Harvey Jones kissed his daughter's forehead and pulled away from her grasp. Harvey Jr. watched his father get out of the swing, holding his wrists, waiting for Sam to cuff him.

"I'm ready, Sheriff."

"You okay, Harvey?" Sheriff Antley asked.

"My head hurts, but I'm making it." Harvey Jr. had come outside, hugging the pine tree in the front yard.

"We need to see you downtown," Antley said.

"What about the kids?"

"Drive them to your sister's and drop them off. We'll wait for you at the station."

Harvey Jones hugged his daughter, who had joined him in the front yard.

"Thanks, Sheriff," he said.

Without waiting, Sheriff Antley retraced his steps to the squad car. Sam followed, still confused. The Pontiac started on the first crank, and they headed toward town. Halfway there, a knowing grin spread over Sam's face.

"Now I know why he did it—jealous rage, pure and simple. Everyone knew Leola was fooling around and where she went when she left the bar. It wasn't hard for Harvey to find out, even though he didn't believe it at first. He followed Leola and Bobby to the lease road, grabbing his hammer from the truck when he saw the car."

"You're on the right track," Sheriff Antley said. "What else?"

"Velma was drunk but wrestled off her girdle before passing out against the steering wheel. When they finished what they was doing, Bobby left her there and drove home. Harvey saw the girdle in the front seat, and Leola's skirt hiked up to her navel, and must have lost it. That's when he killed her in a jealous rage."

"You got it about half right," Antley said.

Sam took his eyes off the road, giving Sheriff Antley an appraising once-over. He returned his attention to the front of the Pontiac when a rabbit scurried in front of their path.

When he recovered his composure, he said, "If Harvey didn't kill her, who did?"

"Oh, Harvey killed her all right, but if he'd done it on purpose, he wouldn't have knocked out the windshield and busted the dash. He just lost his temper and started swinging the hammer, but it wasn't Leola he intended to take his rage out on. It was her car. My bet is the poor slob nailed her by accident."

Sheriff Antley paused for Sam to digest his hypothesis.

"When Harvey realized he'd killed Leola, he likely bawled like a baby. When he thought of the kids, he carted her body down the hill to the bayou and tossed her in, hoping we'd think she fell in and drowned. After sleeping on it, I guess he'd already decided to go ahead and confess."

After a moment, Sam said, "You think he'll come in alone, Sheriff?"

"He'll come. He may be a killer, but he's not a liar."

As always, the sheriff's words rang true. After scratching the hook of his big nose, Sam gunned the engine and finished the short drive to Bixley in silence.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.

Tell Me a Story - a short story

I've always loved the short story genre. I wanted to create short fiction like Poe, Maupassant, and McCullers. I became disillusioned when I received a rejection on a short story I'd written about the war in Vietnam. I'm paraphrasing the reply because I didn't keep the original rejection letter.

"Your story is good, though little different than the many short stories about Vietnam filling my IN basket."

Taking the editor's criticism to heart, I stopped writing war stories. I wrote one last story about Vietnam before moving on to other subjects. Tell Me a Story isn't about death and dying; it's about life and living and how humans of all sexes and nationalities manage to cope with the hands that fate deals them.

The cover for this story was created by artificial intelligence. I asked it to create an image of a Vietnam War-era Boom Boom girl in a Lambretta. The result isn't exactly what I had in mind, but it's so entertaining that I'm using it anyway.

Tell Me a Story

 “Hey, Mac. You've had enough already. Why don't you drag your ass outa here and go home?”

“Leave him alone, Clancy, why don't you?”

Clancy, the big bartender, turned to see his nephew Tim standing on one foot in the half-opened doorway, bracing himself with an elbow against the wall.

“You want to close for me?” Clancy said. Not waiting for an answer, he threw his bar towel across the counter, removed his apron, and grabbed his coat from the rack in the corner. He dropped the keys to the door into Tim's hand as he passed. “Lock up when you've had all the fun you can take. I'm going home.”

Tim watched Clancy disappear down the deserted sidewalk and then glanced at the drunk sitting alone at the bar. Grabbing a bottle of Clancy's bourbon, he sat on the stool beside him.

The man seemed oblivious to his stained shirt and day-old growth of beard. As Tim filled his empty glass, he opened one eye and glanced up from the table.

“And to what do I owe this honor?” he said, alcohol slurring his words.

“Clancy decided to let us borrow a bottle of his best-sipping whiskey,” Tim said.

Raising himself into a slumped sitting position, the unshaven drunk hiccupped, glanced at the bottle, and grinned. “Well, I'd rather have a bottle before me than a frontal lobotomy.”

Smiling at the tired old joke, Tim raised his glass, and the drunk did likewise.

“Here's to you. What's your name?”

After draining half the liquor in a single swallow, the man said, “Harris. John Harris.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harris. I'm Tim Sullivan.”

“And a fine Irish name it is,” Harris replied.

After tapping Tim's barely touched glass, he finished the remaining drops of his own whiskey.

“To what do I owe the honor, Tim Sullivan?” Harris said again, refilling his glass from the bottle.

“Curiosity.”

“And what might ye be curious about, lad?” he said in his drunken imitation of an Irish brogue.

Tim smiled. “I'm a reporter. I haven't slept in thirty-six hours and can't remember the last time I ate. I just covered a murder so grisly and sordid my editor's not gonna believe it when I give it to him.”

“If I could make the past go away, I would do it for both of us,” John Harris said.

Tim nodded, and his grin remained acerbic when he said, “I guess you can't. But there is something you can do for me.”

“Name it,” Harris said.

“A story,” Tim said, resting his head in his hands. “Tell me a story.”

Staring with drunken, rheumy eyes, Harris raked five bony fingers through his matted hair before pouring himself another shot of whiskey.

“What story?”

Shrugging noncommittally and glancing at his watch, Tim said, “You name it, John. Everyone has a story. I'm too wired to sleep and too numb to talk. I gave you whiskey; now tell me a story.”

Harris nodded and leaned back in his chair, watching Tim Sullivan light his cigarette. He stared at a point above Tim's right shoulder for a long moment, making him wonder if he’d passed out with his eyes open. He hadn't. He was trying to recall a past moment and the exact nuance and inflection to convey that memory. The cogs in his drunken brain were turning. Finally, he blew a wisp of smoke at the ceiling and began in dreamy, broken sentences.

“Pale, washed-out sky. Butt on a canvas seat and back against a metal vibrating wall. Half-dozen expressionless Vietnamese Nationals across the aisle, staring at nothing with nervous eyes, inside the droning monstrosity.”

Harris's words emanated from a different person. Before three sentences passed his lips, he had stopped talking and held his own cigarette with a palsied grip. Slowly, he sucked at it as if he might never taste another. Tim thought he was done. He wasn’t and soon began again.

“Glanced out the porthole. Endless connecting craters surround a forest of defoliated stumps, many still burning. Wisps of yellow smoke curling up from decimated earth. Pale tropical sky back-dropping freshly churned dirt—like a coffin's velvet lining around an ashen corpse.”

Harris paused again as if remembering the vision with vivid recall.

“Ruined jungle. Rice paddies. When the Caribou banked its wing, I saw the South China Sea for the first time. It looked like paradise.

“The plane began a downward spiral, and I saw a short stretch of man-made gray surrounding an eternity of tropical green. Heat devils danced on the concrete runway. Greenhouse heat and outhouse stench hit me when they opened the door.

“I was soon in a green army bus winding down a seaside road surrounded by endless vegetation. They let me out at an Army base by the sea.

“I hit the base on Friday for a three-day stand-down, and the place was jumping. Stowing my duffel in one of the tents, I followed the noise to the beach. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, standing on the whitest sand, beneath the bluest sky, beside the most transparent water I’d ever imagined.

“Half-naked Vietnamese girls with seamless copper skin and flowing black hair were everywhere, and they all had sensual lips and dark eyes that could burn a hole through your heart like a cutting torch.

“G.I.'s were also everywhere. Young, drunk, and laughing. Grunts, straight from the jungle, wearing cut-off fatigue pants. Bodies the sun hadn't touched in months—bleached by sunless, triple-canopy darkness. Martha and the Vandellas blasted from a quad-speaker radio in the background.

“I pulled off my boots and shirt and tossed them behind a concrete wall. A squeal behind me. A beautiful Vietnamese girl walked by, and I watched her tanned legs and bikinied ass. She left the beach with a lifeguard and my heart.

“Drunken, dancing Aussies. More girls. Tropical colors, loud music, and alcohol. I should have felt happiness, but the throes of melancholia entangled my neck with icy fingers. Still, after an hour in paradise, I had yet to speak. Feeling strangely invisible and ignored, I changed clothes and took a Lambretta to Vung Tau, the village beside the sea the French called the Vietnamese Riviera. Tall palms, tranquil breezes, and long stretches of white beach were everywhere. I met a grunt on a back street that swarmed with bicycles, buffalo, and little yellow people. No more than nineteen, the man had the hard edge of someone who had already experienced more life and death than most ninety-year-olds. With him, I went to a whore house in an old French villa with a red tiled roof, surrounded by creeping greenery. A mama-san, her tongue and lips black from chewing betel nuts smiled.

“Got two baby-san,” she said. “Number one. You like?”

She wasn't lying. Neither of the girls looked older than thirteen. When I shook my head and backed out of the room, the young G.I. grinned and took both girls. I never caught his name.

After returning to the base, I slept till late the following day on a cot in a muggy tent, returning to the village that afternoon. I visited a bar and met Hoa. G.I.'s and boom-boom girls crowded the bar. A smiling Vietnamese waitress approached me through the throng when I sat down.

“You buy me tea?”

Dark hair. Tight yellow sarong slit almost to her waist. Ruby lips and amethyst mascara surrounded dark eyes that glowed in the dim room like coal in a hot furnace. She was beautiful, and I was in love, at least in lust. I nodded and patted the empty chair beside me, waiting as she signaled someone across the noisy bar before putting her arms around my neck.

“G.I. alone?”

“Not now,” I said.

A little man brought her a glass decorated with a single cherry. ‘Saigon tea’ was just that—tea. Holding the cherry by the stem, she touched it suggestively to her tongue and closed her red-painted lips around it.

“What name?”

“Harris,” I said.

“Glad to meet you, Harris. My name is Hoa,” she said in broken English.

Between patron noise and jukebox blare, I drank a half-dozen gin slings while she consumed several Saigon teas.

“You spend the night with me, Harris?” she said.

“How much?” I asked, not naïve enough to believe she was offering charity.

“Ten dollars, MPC.”

I'd already paid twice that much for drinks, and ten dollars in military payment certificates were about all I had left. “Five dollars,” I countered.

Folding her arms tightly, she crossed her legs and shook her head. “No way, G.I.”

“All right,” I conceded. “Ten dollars.”

When I gave her the money, her oriental smile returned. “How many rubbers do you need?”

“Ten.”

“G.I. number one bullshit. Give me a dollar,” she said, holding out her hand.

I dug a dollar out of my shirt pocket, handed it to her, and watched her disappear through the crowded bar wearing a mile-wide grin. Checking my wallet, I found I had less than twenty dollars left. Five minutes had elapsed when I spotted Hoa standing by the door. She motioned me, and I followed her outside to the dark street.

“Give me a dollar,” she said. “Taxi man charge you five dollars. I talk.”

I fished in my pocket for another dollar.

We weaved a circuitous course through the ville to a three-story apartment complex and then walked to the second floor. Holding my hand, she led me to her one-room apartment. Inside, sweating plaster was peeling off the walls from the humidity. There wasn't a single couch or chair in the room, only a large bed.

“You hungry, Harris? Give me a dollar. I get food.”

She took the money and disappeared for ten minutes, directing me when she returned to the bathroom. “Brush teeth,” she said, handing me a well-used toothbrush and tube of toothpaste. I wondered how many G.I.s had used the same brush.

Tim Sullivan waited for Harris to continue. Instead, he slumped in his chair. Thinking him too dry to talk, Tim refilled his glass. Harris didn't seem to notice. Producing a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, he fished one out. It was only slightly bent. Smoke wafted slowly from his nostrils. Although he stared at the ceiling, his green eyes glazed as if he envisioned something far away. After a long, unbroken silence, he stubbed out the cigarette and stared at Sullivan.

“Have you ever gone five months without seeing a woman?”

Tim Sullivan shook his head.

“I had thought about having sex so long when it finally came to pass; the act paled beside the dream.”

“No problem, G.I. Happen always,” she assured me.

“Someone knocked on the door, and I almost came unglued. Hoa patted my shoulder and got out of bed, not bothering to dress. An old man, unmindful of her nudity, handed her a steaming bowl of fishy soup through the door. We shared the spicy soup and rice with a single spoon.

“You married, Harris?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Wife very pretty?”

“We were only married five months when I got here. I can barely remember what she looks like.”

“You love her?”

“Don't know,” I said. “Are you married?” I said, changing the subject.

Shaking her head sadly, she said, “I have a lover. He beaucoup love me.”

Hoa pointed to a glossy 8 by 10 on the stand beside the bed—she and a young American airman holding a tiny baby.

“Is he stationed at the air base?”

Again, she shook her head. “He went home six months ago. He send for me soon.”

“And the baby?”

“He our baby-san,” she said, smiling. “Leonard, take us to America. Baby-san grows up to become rich, very smart like a father.”

My heart skipped a beat and almost seized up. While I longed for a woman far away whose face I could barely remember, Hoa longed for a man who’d fucked her, taken her love, and gone away, never to return.

“The war will end soon, Hoa. All the G.I.'s will go home. What will you do then?”

Even as I mouthed the words, I knew they sounded cruel, though I couldn't stop saying them. She stared back at me with sad eyes darker than ten years of war.

“I check on baby-san,” she said. “You stay. We make boom-boom again when I come back. Better this time.”

After ten long minutes of waiting naked and alone in the dark, paranoid thoughts overloaded my brain. What was I doing in a Vietnamese village swarming with Viet Cong, with no weapon, alone in the middle of the night? What if Hoa returned with a little black-garbed man armed with a demon-spitting AK-47? I got dressed and peered out the door, seeing nothing but darkness.

“Fear is strange,” Harris said, smiling at Tim Sullivan.

When Tim topped up his drink, Harris continued his story. “I abandoned the apartment and hurried down the stairs to the deserted street, finally hailing a surprised Lambretta driver passing in the night. When I reached the base beside the sea, I fell into a fitful sleep in the airless tent.

Lingering guilt overcame me the following morning. After checking my wallet and finding it nearly bare, I took the army bus back to town and waited in the hotel lobby that housed the bar where I’d met Hoa. Although the place seemed deserted, she soon appeared through a door from the bar. She was wearing a lime green sarong and looked exotic and beautiful.

Glaring at me with accusing eyes, she said, “You leave the door unlocked. Why not tell me you go? I very much worry for you.”

When I reached for her, she pulled away, shaking her head.

“I'm sorry, Hoa. When you left, I got frightened. I didn't mean to leave the door unlocked.”

Hoa's features softened, and she touched my hand. “You miss wife very much?”

Cradling my face in her hands when I nodded, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me.

“You remember me always, Harris?”

“Always,” I said.

Though she turned away, attempting to hide the tears streaking her amethyst mascara, I saw her sorrowful smile.

I never saw her again.

I found it nearly deserted upon returning to the base, with all the Aussies and Line Company grunts gone. Despondent, I took a walk on the beach, alone with only an old papa-san picking up yesterday's litter using a nail protruding from a broom handle. I sat on the concrete wall, feeling like the last man on earth.

All alone, listening to a whistling ocean breeze and watching distant gulls, I sat there.  A G.I. dressed in camouflage fatigues, walking along the beach alone, smiled when he saw me, joining me on the cement wall. He was a sniper, trained to lie in wait for the enemy and kill him with a single shot from his specially modified M-14.

He asked, “How far away do you think you can kill a man?”

Shaking my head, I answered, “I don't know.”

“I killed one once from nine hundred meters. Believe me?”

I shrugged.

“I was on a hill overlooking a rice paddy when I saw a papa-san plowing behind a water buffalo. He was so far away he looked like an ant. I raised my sights and squeezed off a round.” Raising his arms to show me, he added, “A second later, papa-san dropped and never got back up. I killed him from nine hundred meters.”

When I nodded appreciation for his feat, the camouflaged man acknowledged my silent praise with a smile and walked away down the beach without speaking, relieved for the moment of more guilt than one person should ever have to bear alone.

“People do things, you know. Sometimes, terrible things. They may live long enough to regret it. They never live long enough to forget about it.

***

Tim Sullivan waited as Harris became silent. When he reached for his glass, he found no single sip missing from the last pouring. Returning to the bar, he watched John Harris drag himself sullenly off his stool.

With a wry smile, he left Tim alone with his thoughts, never speaking another word as he opened the barroom door and vanished into the dim morning light.

###

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.