The Lady And Colonel 2a1v1b

The Lady and Colonel

Dr. Viktoria A. Strunk

Copyright © 2014 by Dr. Viktoria A. Strunk.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910984 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4990-3860-6 Softcover 978-1-4990-3861-3 eBook 978-1-4990-3862-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 06/19/2014

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Coosa County

Chapter 2 Sister Stephania

Chapter 3 The Gardener

Chapter 4 The Nanny

Chapter 5 Murphy: The Stable Boy

Chapter 6 Love Letters

Chapter 7 The Colonel’s Use of Christian Domestic Discipline

Chapter 8 More Love Letters

Chapter 9 The Warden

Chapter 10 The Cook

Chapter 11 Correctional Facility Notes

Chapter 12 Bedtime Stories

Chapter 13 What the Cook Said

Chapter 14 Midnight Walks

Chapter 15 The Colonel Returns

Chapter 16 Inmate #451344

Chapter 17 What the Warden Did

Chapter 18 Lies, Murder, and Nobody Cares

Chapter 19 Inmate #451344

Chapter 20 The Cook and The Lady

Chapter 21 Recovery

Chapter 22 The Old Doctor

Chapter 23 Hard Work

Chapter 24 Lost in the Details

Chapter 25 Happiness

Chapter 26 A Coward in Coosa County

Chapter 27 The Escape

Chapter 28 Captain Bootsie

Chapter 29 Illness on the Plantation

Chapter 30 Tying up Loose Ends

Chapter 31 The Lady and Colonel

End Notes

For Mary s Strunk, mother and my first teacher, and for Antonía Rain, gifted child who has far to go, and for Dr. James Willis, III, my editor and confidant in all things written, with much love.

CHAPTER 1

Coosa County

A labama is known for its genteel Southern ways. People still say sir and ma’am, drink tea so sweet that it makes a northern person’s teeth ache, and they keep family secrets… well, in the family. Generations of family hold on to land as if it were as dear as the grandmother or grandfather who willed it to them. Coosa County was no different than any other county in Alabama, and Rockbridge no different than any other town. The population of Rockbridge was 381 folks and a couple of redbone hounds that were skeleton thin and nobody’s pets, but now the ever-growing population of the National Correctional Facility, deemed as the largest medium-to-high security prison in the state, had to be added to the census figures. The state had chosen this area because of the expanse of land that had come up for sale after Rolly Parker’s bad real estate investment had left him severely in debt and desperate for quick cash. The residents of the town were not pleased to be getting new neighbors for the first time in over 200 years. And, the two individuals more perturbed than the rest were Colonel Willis and his Lady, the correctional facility’s nearest neighbors. The Colonel and his Lady owned a 250 acre sprawling plantation that had been handed down from generation to generation since the Civil War. The Colonel really wasn’t a colonel, but his great, great, great grandfather had been one, and well, the title stuck. He and his Lady had been very happy living the good life in a three story home that had, like the land, been handed down, and they would happily give it to whichever of their heathen would seem the obvious choice. The property was really the most beautiful in Rockbridge. The land’s soil was rich in abundant nutrients, and a person could literally grow anything there. The land was gently rolling with a creek that ran through the northwest corner. The trees that grew tall and strong were a gorgeous backdrop to the plantation’s setting. The Colonel was an avid hunter and kept pheasant and grouse on the property. The Lady, however, preferred a more vibrant bird, and there were semitame peacocks and peahens that meandered aimlessly through the yard. The only

reminder to the closest neighbors that the birds were there was the occasional scream made by these majestic birds that sounded, for lack of better explanation, just like a woman screaming as if she were being murdered. The Willis clan, though not wealthy by today’s standards, was able to afford such a living that required the services of a cook, nanny, gardener, and a stable boy. The Lady’s sole occupation was to make sure these eccentric individuals took care of their beautiful home while the Colonel was away on one of his many business adventures. It was, indeed, a carefree life until the correctional facility opened and the nefarious Warden Vinnie DeLuca took over. But, that is another story and must be told in due time.

CHAPTER 2

Sister Stephania

W hen the Colonel was away on one of his long journeys, his Lady would find that she longed for company and would often invite her young friend, Stephania, to stay with her and the children. Stephania was, in contrast, everything the Lady was not. Stephania lived in the city, adored her apartment, and was in constant entertainment with various gentleman callers. Her favorite male suitor was a man named Terrelle, a tall plumber who liked to joke about not being like other plumbers because he tried not to have his crack show while he was bending down fixing pipe in rich women’s kitchens. The only bad side to this relationship was that he was a raging alcoholic and would spend weeks without ing her. Once they were back in bed, they would swear their undying love for each other until his next more noticeable escapade. Then, Stephania would play hard to get with him for several weeks until he kissed and made up, so to speak. Stephania had adorned her body with various permanent artworks, and the thought of her many detailed tattoos, would send the two ladies into gales of laughter because Stephania’s dead grandmother would roll over in her grave in Little Rockbridge Cemetery at the thought of a lady being tattooed. Sister Steph, as she was known to the Willis clan, worked as a server in a sport’s bar in Mobile and was constantly being harangued by male customers. Granted, the required uniform was a white tank top and a pair of short-shorts, and this garnered much unwanted attention. Sister Steph itted to the Lady that there were times when she really didn’t mind the hands that always seemed to find their way to her private area when she was delivering strong brew to the tables of unruly patrons. Steph also freely itted that when The Lady told her of the long nights of lovemaking with the Colonel that she was living vicariously through them. Sometimes she was so excited by the retelling of their sexual experiences that she would keep one hand between her thighs during the ride back into the city, silently enjoying the feeling

of friction. Steph was a beautiful woman with long flowing black hair that draped down just above her waist. She never wore her hair pulled back, though, because she had a terrible scar on the side of her temple that otherwise marred her perfect complexion. When Sister Steph was about three years old, she had been on her parents’ back deck playing with her calico kitten. The neighbor’s dog was a huge white lab mix, and it had gotten off its chain and wandered over to her house. The smell of cat drove the big dog crazy, and he jumped up on the young girl, knocked her to the ground, and bit a semi-circular chunk of flesh from her face. Her mother, hearing the young girl’s screams, ran outside and rescued the tiny girl before the dog could do more damage. Many plastic surgeries and years later, the girl was still left with a whitish-grey scar that was deeply sunken in, so she developed ways to style her hair that would hide her constant reminder that she really hated dogs. Stephania brought joy to the plantation, and the Lady would bemoan each day when she would get into her car and drive away back to the city.

CHAPTER 3

The Gardener

W hen the Lady was quite young, her grandmother had walked her through the gardens and told her the name of each and every flower, and even now, she ed them all, the azaleas, peonies, lilacs. She had adored spending time out of doors with her grandmother tending the flowers, and the spring always brought a beautiful view to the plantation. However, when The Lady was heavy with her first child, she realized she wouldn’t be able to get down on her knees and pull weeds and mulch the beds anymore. The Colonel said, “Why are you fretting yourself, dear? We have enough money to hire a gardener. Employ one while I am gone so that when the baby is born you can take our son on long walks amongst your flowers.” The Lady smiled at the reference to son because she was one of those old-fashioned types who didn’t believe in an ultrasound telling the sex of the baby. She hoped for a healthy baby, and she really had no preference. She knew, however, that her Colonel wanted a son and hoped he wouldn’t be too disappointed if his first prodigy was a sweet little girl. She took the Colonel to heart on the matter of the gardens and hired a man named Lewis, a man of obvious Hispanic origin who spoke broken English and sniffed more than the flowers. She and the Colonel would later quietly refer to him as the Sniffer, as this person truly saw himself as a Latin lover, a real ladies man, and he had sniffed the hair of every woman who walked past him, but to the best of their knowledge had been turned down by every senorita in their small town. He truly did care about The Lady’s plants, though, and tended to them with his tired brown hands. He spent hours each day grooming the landscape so that the grass was perfectly manicured, the flower pruned of all wilted petals, and the shrubs were trimmed to look like The Lady’s favorite animals. In his Spanglish (his attempt to cross English and Spanish) he would relay to the cook that he had fathered seven children by three different women, and those were the ones he knew about. He had lived all across the United States but had found comfort in Alabama, which he said was most like his home, but he

never alluded to where his home was exactly.

CHAPTER 4

The Nanny

A fter the first baby was born, a strapping 12 pound baby boy who had made his mother labor hard for 26 hours, it was decided that a nanny was warranted. The Colonel was delighted that he got his wish for a baby boy, and as the Lady was incapacitated at the time, the Colonel took it upon himself to hire a nanny. A snippet ad in the daily Rockbridge Gazette produced 75 resumes that all promised to take care of the little lad. The Colonel interviewed one elderly hypochondriac, a teenager with authority issues, and then decided to hire a middle-aged fiery redhead who seemed to be able to articulate what the others could not. It would become quite clear a little later to the Colonel and his Lady that the nanny was, like the rest of the hired help, special. She had unusual tastes for a lower class worker-she sipped chamomile tea, used French soap and toiletries, and got into heated arguments with the cook about the daily cuisine. As the Willis clan kept steadily growing, the nanny became a permanent fixture in the household. One Christmas Eve, while helping the Lady decorate the tree, the nanny itted that her first husband, who died under mysterious circumstances, was experimental by nature and preferred that she bring home a girlfriend or two for both of their enjoyment. Her second husband, she contended, wasn’t prone to these predilections and she found herself quickly bored with this lifestyle. They divorced after a few short years of matrimony, and the woman who was used to living in a quarter of a million dollar home found herself living in a tiny flat without any prospects. She had applied to the ment in the paper and was now taking care of the Willis brood. The Lady quickly left the parlor and made a mental note to talk to the Colonel about the nanny as soon as he returned.

CHAPTER 5

Murphy: The Stable Boy

B efore his birth, the Colonel’s parents had employed a young couple to help them around the farm. These simple folks were dedicated to the Willis household and their happiness. The hired help had a child a couple years before the Colonel was born. They doted on the dark-haired youngster and were dismayed when at the age of two, one of the Willis’ prized stallions kicked the child in the head. For two weeks, it was touch and go for the wee youngster, and the parents were delighted when he was able to sit up in bed. After several months of recovery, it became clear to the parents and their employers that the child was now addle-brained and exhibited bizarre behavior from that day forward. When he was three, he alphabetized all the canned food in the pantry, and at four, he could recite the Gettysburg Address from memory. When the strange boy’s parents both died from a virus, he remained on the Willis farm, and when the Colonel married the Lady, he took Murphy, the now eccentric man who was two years his senior to live with them to tend their horses. It would make sense if Murphy had a fear for the very animal that nearly killed him, but the opposite was true. Murphy adored the horses, spent countless hours grooming them, and could, on demand, recite every known fact about the beasts from time immemorial. He was a sort of an idiot savant, and his outlandish behavior was a sense of comedy for the people who lived on the plantation. He was known to burst into song at the most inopportune moments, singing love ballads from the 1950’s. When his sexuality came into full bloom, at the ripe age of 29, the Lady told the Colonel that every time Murphy walked past a female member of the household, he had a tent in his pants. The Colonel suggested that maybe they should procure Murphy a wife through a Mormon online dating service. But, as Murphy’s Law dictates, what can go wrong will go wrong, and that is, indeed, another story entirely.

CHAPTER 6

Love Letters

M ost couples today keep in touch through texting or emails, but the Colonel and his Lady decided that only the written word was worthy of the love they wanted to express. Even though many letters did not reach their destination until the Colonel had actually returned home himself, the happy couple continued with this tradition for the duration of their relationship.

My Dearest Colonel, Do you know how often I look up at the azure sky and wonder if you are looking at it too? Do you know how often thoughts of you race through my head? My thoughts are always of you, Dear Colonel, always of you. Until I see you again, I will be sitting here demurely under the scuppernong arbor sipping diabetic tea, awaiting your return.

P.S. The gardener keeps mumbling in Spanish, and I am not entirely sure, but I think he plans on raping Sister Stephania . . .

My Dearest Lady, We share the same inclination of looking in the night sky to wonder if our beloved is seeing the same aesthetic. I find myself ensconced in your perfect love, your striking beauty, and your perfect eyes. It is there I shall remain for the rest of my days. For what I have found in you is perfect, pure, and beautiful. And, I look forward to the day, soon, when we shall share in our diabetic tea

together, for it is less than a fortnight away.

Your Colonel

P.S. Probably best to fetch the poor goat and offer her up to the Gardener, for he knows not how to treat a Lady or her poor sister.

My Beloved Colonel, You know that I dearly love the goat, Nanny, and I am not entirely sure the Stable Boy didn’t already do something vile to her. Anywho, I think that I will get the nanny to slip a little Benadryl in the gardener’s bottle, and maybe that will calm him down. A fortnight is much too long to be away from the man I love. I have compiled a list of transgressions since the last time we were together, and the list is quite long . . .

My Lady, I noticed an eerily similar twitch in the poor goat after the Stable Boy ‘took care of her’ last week; methinks he had his way with her, so we probably shouldn’t subject her to the Gardener (even though his small phallus probably would do very little damage). Benadryl should do the trick, but a little faux sweet talk would probably settle him into a long coma. A fortnight is incredibly too long, for this Colonel loves his Lady with all of his heart. His heart breaks at the thought of how long he is away from his beloved. The Colonel will address said transactions with a bit of CDD, as it were. Can the Lady feel the skin of his hand as he places it firmly and swiftly on her naked flesh?

Colonel

CHAPTER 7

The Colonel’s Use of Christian Domestic Discipline

F or those individuals not fortunate enough to have a clear understanding of Christian Domestic Discipline or CDD, a thorough explanation is warranted here. In this type of household, the husband has direct authority over his wife. This Biblical principle comes directly from Ephesians 5:22-24 that states that the wife is submissive to her husband as if the Lord were her husband. She is to obey her husband as long as his instructions are not in direct opposition to God’s commands, which is further evidenced in Titus 2:5 and Acts 5:29. The Colonel had introduced this lifestyle to his new bride after several months of her doing what she wanted to do regardless of the consequences. The first time he spanked her was when they had been married for six months and she was cooking his dinner. She had promised to cook a meal and have it ready when he returned from work. As the Colonel’s business trips took him hours from home, he had called early in the day to give her a timeframe. When he returned home, he discovered that she had been chatting on the phone with Sister Stephania for over an hour and was hurriedly just starting dinner when he entered the kitchen. When he asked her what had delayed the meal, she itted to talking to Steph and allowing time to get away from her. The Colonel reminded her that this was not the first time this had happened and he was tired of the excuses. When she walked past him as he sat at the kitchen counter, he grabbed her around the waist with one hand and firmly swatted her behind six times (symbolic of how long they had been married). The surprise of his action caught her off guard and the tears welled up in her eyes. The Colonel told her in a firm voice, “I spanked you to remind you that I am the head of the house and you need to obey me. I love you but I am disappointed that you think so little of our marriage that you put others ahead of me.” The Lady quickly went back to finishing his dinner.

Later that night, while they lay next to each other, The Lady told the Colonel that she was sorry for acting like a spoiled brat and she would try to do better next time. She itted that she was embarrassed by the spanking but also slightly aroused by it. The Colonel pulled her closer with his long arms and tucked her hips against his, whispering to her, “My Lady, I will continue to punish you for being naughty. The spanking I gave you tonight was mild compared to what you actually deserved.” The Lady went to sleep thinking about these words, still feeling a slight sting across her buttocks.

CHAPTER 8

More Love Letters

Colonel, It is truly a blessing when I get such an expeditious response regarding my daily tribulations. When you are away on one of your long business trips, the hired help can be, at times, too much for a Southern gal to deal with alone. Did I tell you that two nights ago the Stable Boy engaged me in a conversation for three quarters of an hour about the velocity of a butterfly’s wings in the Alabama air? It was physically and emotionally draining, and I dare say, I had to put a little “comfort” in my tea that night. As for my transgressions, you are fully aware that the crackling of your leather belt being removed from your pants causes my flesh to tense in expectation of whether the hand will wield it harshly . . . .

I t had been a fortnight since the Colonel’s departure, and he had called to tell her that he would return this evening. He had asked, no demanded, that his favorite meal be ready by quarter of 7. The Lady, knowing his broody temperament after long departures, would not allow the cook near the kitchen but instead had taken on the task. She wanted everything to be just right or the ruined meal would be added, rather quickly she thought, onto her already long list of transgressions. She would later put on her finest dress to appease the Colonel’s every whim; he had, after all, complete control over what she wore, how she fixed her hair, and every other detail of her life. As predicted, the brooding Colonel made his grand entrance at precisely fifteen minutes before the appointed hour of 7. As he entered the great hall, his lovely Lady met him at the foot of their sprawling staircase. She had a large smile

across her face when he briskly paced across the floor and lifted her into the hair. After lowering her to the ground after a tight embrace, he then, in his own fashion, took her face in both of his hands and placed a lengthy kiss upon her perfect lips. The two lovers made their way into the dining hall to take their meal together; the Colonel was very pleased by his Lady’s cooking, and he rewarded her thusly with a grand compliment. The two ate their meal, chatting casually about the Colonel’s travels and the Lady’s management of the sometimes unruly household staff. She thought the nanny had been drinking lately as her behavior was even more erratic. After the happy couple had dessert and coffee, the Colonel told her that he now wanted to feast upon her perfect body. She stood up and, without hesitation, took the Colonel by his hand and led him into the parlor. The children were all on the top floor being taken care of by the nanny and wouldn’t hear the inevitable punishment that she would face. As the Colonel had directed her so many times before, she turned her back to him, bent over, pulled her dress up and allowed her panties to fall to the floor, and put her hands on the low sofa. She exhaled loudly when she heard the crackle of his leather belt as he slowly, purposely, removed it. He told her to tell him, starting with the minor infractions, all of her transgressions over the last weeks. She began, “overslept and the children were late to school” and this was met with a light thwack from the belt across her alabaster backside. She continued with “ran up 200 dollars in credit card debt for items I could have paid cash for” and was met with three quick thwacks from the leather strap that turned her buttocks rosy. The rise and fall of the leather was really starting to sting as he carefully let the strokes fall on the sides of her round flesh. She knew that her last transgression would cause the infliction of the most pain, so she immediately tensed her flesh as she said, “got a 95 dollar speeding ticket driving your new car…” And, as the Lady predicted, this final blow to her soft flesh was the most painful, but the Colonel was not happy about the speeding ticket. By this point, however, he was quite turned on, and his member was fully engorged in his pants. As the Lady continued to bend over, for he did not allow her move, he removed his shirt first, followed by his tros, and finally his underwear. As he was removing his underwear, he noticed a quick glance backward from the Lady to which he replied, “My Lady, I did not give you permission to steal a look at mine own flesh.” And, with that, he delivered another quick blow to her perfect, but much

reddened skin. As she was not prepared for this, her flesh was met with the full sting of the leather; in great pleasure, the Colonel saw her flesh move and quiver; this caused his already engorged member to throb even more. As the Lady whimpered softly, the Colonel got down on his knees and spread her beautiful buttocks slightly apart and inserted his long tongue; he softly tickled her tiny aperture with the tip of his tongue. She instinctively spread her legs a little further apart; as the Colonel moved his right hand up her inner thigh and touched her wet mound, he could feel how very aroused she was. He stood up and took his thick tool in his hands and then slid it firmly into her orifice, placing one hand on her shoulder and the other across her left hip. As the Colonel continued to thrust his sex into the Lady’s wet rose, he reached around and took the Lady’s nipples in his fingers and rubbed them vigorously. As he slid his member deeper in her, he ran his right hand up and down her perfect back, then reached up and took hold of her hair. She let out a little whimper as he pulled her hair backward and continued to thrust himself in and out of her with increasing intensity. She found herself lost in the moment of intense lovemaking, so much so that she was surprised when the Colonel abruptly withdrew his love. He firmly told her to turn around and genuflect; she did as he commanded, for she was very turned on by his orders. She looked up as she opened her mouth in anticipation of taking his sex between her lips; he gently slid in her warm, moist mouth and began to thrust slightly. She moved rhythmically up and down on his shaft, sucking and moving her tongue across the deep vein. He took her head in his hands and slowly moved her head up and down on his shaft, moaning in complete pleasure. The Lady’s love juice dripped on the floor because she was so turned on by her Colonel. It was then that she decided that it was time for the Colonel to pleasure her tight sex, so she stood up and the Colonel seeing her exuberance decided to tame her once more. He walked her over to the fireplace and made her stand between the brass rings that adorned the ledge. He pulled a rope from behind the fainting couch and proceeded to bind her wrists and tie each one to a brass ring. With her arms outstretched, bound tightly, wrists burning from the rope, she knew her porcelain skin was going to take another sound thrashing. The Colonel, after all, had been gone for weeks, and he wanted to firmly solidify who the man of the house was. The Lady stood looking at the flames of the fire while her delicate flesh was exposed to the Colonel’s belt. She took one, two, three hard smacks on

her bottom and was then told by the Colonel to spread her legs. She did so with trepidation, slowly enough for the Colonel to plant one, two more sound thwacks across each buttock. He then asked her what was next, and she knowingly, shook her head. At that instant, she felt several stings across the back of her thighs and between her legs from the cat o’nine that he had illustriously produced from parts unknown. The cat o’nine delivered blows that stung even deeper than the earlier smacks of the belt. It was a sound pain, a pain that delivered the deepest, mind-numbing satori, but also an intense sex-fueled urge to pleasure her Colonel even harder. She liked it when the Colonel asserted his authority, both with the belt and with his sex. After the cat o’nine, the Lady bent slightly forward, further exposing her perfect buttocks. She could feel the Colonel’s hands across her backside, gently sliding to and fro, in and out of her tight sex and little hole. He then slid his middle finger slowly in her little hole and she let out an eager moan. She felt the rope tighten slightly around her wrists as she moved back and forth while he spread her with his finger. The Colonel then took his member and rubbed it slightly up her thigh, and she knew what would come next. He spread her cheeks and inserted his sex firmly in her little orifice and gently thrust it in and out, stretching her slightly. The Lady moaned as she approached her climax very quickly. The Colonel was very turned on by this and he nearly exploded inside of her when he could feel her little hole constrict around him as she came hard; she dare not let out a scream because she knew the Colonel would meet this with another lashing. Instead, she climaxed hard once, then twice after a half a minute more of thrusting. After their long night of lovemaking and wild abandon, the Lady and the Colonel retired upstairs to their stately bedroom. The Colonel had been on the road for some time and hadn’t slept a good night’s sleep without his Lady. Both bodies were solidly exhausted from their ravishing of one another, but now it was time for well-earned sleep. As the Colonel lay down first, his Lady followed soon, placing her head upon his square shoulder. But, as she lay there with her beloved Colonel, she couldn’t help running her hand up and down his naked body. She quickly made her way to his sex, finding it halfway engorged from her soft touch. She took it firmly in her hand and began stroking firmly as she rubbed her thigh against his body. The Colonel could feel the warmth from her womanhood, and he felt compelled to run his hand between her golden down to discover the sweet honey she was sure to produce. As his fingers found their way between her delicate folds of flesh, she continued to lazily stroke his now

fully engorged member. She so desired to taste his saltiness that she moved down between his legs and took what he offered completely. She relished that the head and surrounding skin were already wet, waiting for her. She took his swollen flesh in her mouth and licked the prominence in small circles. The Colonel moaned in complete pleasure, his sex throbbing in the Lady’s mouth. His fingers felt her sweet honey and he desired to taste her, for he loved her taste in his mouth. He gently moved on top of her and starting kissing her perfect breasts, moving his way down slowly, deliberately. As he reached her bush, he moved her labia with his fingers so he could insert his long tongue inside her. The Lady writhed in perfect pleasure as the Colonel moved his tongue in her, over and over, while simultaneously stroking her throbbing pleasure button. Spent in youthful pleasure, the lovers ed out in each other’s arms. Many married couples, or couples in general, do not ever experience the complete fulfillment that the Colonel and his Lady experienced. They were best friends and perfect lovers. They only had eyes for each other, and though many others had tried to seduce them over the years, they were devoted to each other. These indiscretions by others were recounted in joyful mirth by the happy couple on Saturday evenings when they were out on the veranda drinking their special cups of oolong tea while watching the sun set.

CHAPTER 9

The Warden

T he superintendent of the state correctional facility knew just what he wanted in a warden. He wanted someone who was arrogant, sadistic, and a little bit stupid. Studies had been done that proved that if police departments hire the best and brightest, they bore easily and will leave. So, Charlie Brinton began a nationwide search. He found just what he was looking for in Vinnie DeLuca. In fact, at first glance he looked like Napoleon Bonaparte moved into the 21 st century. The superintendent would have not been surprised to see him stroll around the facility grounds with a hand stuck in the breast of his shirt, whilst kicking his tiny heels as he tried to keep up with the tour. The two made their bargain in a cramped office littered with trash, and so began the reign of terror. The prisoners who had been moved there from other overcrowded jails began to see quickly that time spent there would be hard time. After the initial body cavity search and de-lousing, the inmates were paraded naked in front of the warden so that he could give his once over. To say that he spent a little too long looking the inmates up and down would be an understatement. After sending the first three inmates to solitary because they protested to his intrusive behavior, he got the reputation of being worse than the warden at Shawshank. Sad to say, though, that there would be no hero in this story, no Andy Dufresne to rescue them, just common criminals who were ignorant and helpless. The warden liked to tell his staff that he was originally from the North, New Jersey to be exact, and that the South was not to his liking. He bragged that he had a degree in criminal justice, but the perpetual joke was that he must have bought that degree online. He liked to espouse that he only came south for better job opportunities to his sick wife (who never looked sick the few times she ever bothered to come on the grounds), a woman who supposedly had multiple surgeries in a matter of a few short months (what internal organs she

had left, nobody knew for sure), and his brood of swarthy Cro-Magnon-looking children. More than one person noted that even the female children had unibrows and would most certainly be shaving their moustaches by the time they were teenagers. When his wife was interviewed by the Daily Gazette, she made sure to announce the square footage of their new house, located on Lakeside Drive, as well as actual cost. (The Lady made a point to read this aloud to the Colonel one fine morning, and they both snickered at the manners of these rude northerners.)

CHAPTER 10

The Cook

W hen the Lady was a young woman visiting in Langley, a small neighboring town, she met a poor family who had seven children. Two of these children were severely debilitated with all sorts of genetic issues. The young man had cerebral palsy, club feet, and was blind in one eye. At times, he would look at a person out of his one good eye and discuss in depth that he wasn’t feeling well psychologically, you know, spiritually. Then, he would proceed to discuss the ghosts he felt around him at all times. He was quite a character and generally a kind soul, though most folks in Langley were scared of him. His oldest sister, Jana, also had her own problems to deal with which included diabetes and seizures to name a few. Her most debilitating problem, however, was her split personality disorder that would, at times, send her into a child-like self, approximately aged seven, and prone to speak in baby-talk. It was during these “breaks” that she would recount her childhood, down to the games she played, liked jacks and hop-scotch. When The Lady became a woman of some means, she hired on Jana to be her cook. She developed a fondness for her, and she did whatever she could to protect her. When she wasn’t feeling well, The Lady would meander down to the kitchen and help out until Jana got on her feet again. There came a time, though, when Jana announced rather sheepishly that she took a job at the correctional facility as their cook so she could get health insurance. The Lady hated to see her go, but she made her promise to stop by and visit from time to time. And, the Lady was pretty sure that this act was the beginning of the end. Jana was a kind individual, a good worker. She couldn’t help that she got sick occasionally; she couldn’t help that Warden DeLuca was about to make her life hell.

CHAPTER 11

Correctional Facility Notes

A fter three months of being the new dictator, Warden DeLuca had managed to fire all staff but two: his personal secretary, Toni, a mousy girl of about 27 and very non-descript except for the thick blonde fuzz that made nice sideburns and a moustache, and the ant, Agnes, a robust woman who weighed close to 300 pounds, give or take, who had sticky fingers, and not because of her continuous eating of candy bars by the pound. For whatever reason, and there was great speculation about them, the warden chose to keep these two women in his employment. They would all be seen leaving the grounds each day for about two hours-supposedly for lunch or to make a bank deposit. The officers and cook surmised that the warden was definitely making a deposit with or in both of them. Suffice to say, that from the outside, the facility seemed to be business as usual. Inmates came and inmates went. But, to the curious onlooker, inmates simply disappeared. The Lady took a daily walk to the edge of her property to gaze over her prize sows. Her family had always been one of the biggest producers of pork in the county, and she felt it her duty to continue the tradition. Sometimes, she would take her children to see the pigs, and she would remind them how important it is to stay out of the pig lot. “Pigs can be deadly,” she would say to the little ones. “One time when I was a little girl, about six or seven, I fell into the lot and a huge sow tried to eat me. Uncle Ben was nearby and was able to pull me out, but unfortunately, the sow bit my ankle and I still have the scar to prove it. Don’t underestimate the damage they can do.” The frightened children would nod in agreement. On one of these outings, the Lady began to count the inmates she saw working in the yard, and she kept a mental count each day she went out. Their work varied daily. Sometimes she watched them mowing the grass and grooming the grounds. Other times she saw the prisoners going in and out of the machine shop

that supplied parts for carburetors and afforded a select few inmates a job that paid more than the traditional dollar a day. Their numbers, however, kept declining. The Colonel told her that there was probably a logical excuse: perhaps the warden had them working indoors instead; perhaps a few of them were getting paroled. She told herself that the next time she ran into Jana, her former cook, she would inquire about the poor men she noted were no longer working in the field.

CHAPTER 12

Bedtime Stories

O ne of the main joys of parenthood for the Colonel and his Lady was bedtime. The Lady looked forward to it each and every night with her brood of unruly heathen. Her parenting style was a bit off-she allowed her children to run wild like little savages, never spoke baby talk to them, and told them repeatedly to develop their own minds. Her youngest son was a bit of a ham, and on this night, he pleaded with her for just one more story . She noted that while he hugged her neck, she smelled a combination of soap, grass, and candy. She must remind the nanny not to let the children have sugary sweets just before bed. “What will it be?” she inquired. “Jack and the Beanstalk?” “Tom Thumb?” “Cinderella?” The cherub snuggled deep in the covers and said, “Tell us Hush-a-by, Momma!” “You know that one is not made up, right?” she inquired. The wide eyes of the heathen looked at her in affirmation and they all nodded their tiny heads. “All right, here goes, but I don’t know how appropriate this story is to children.” she stated. “On this very plantation, over 150 years ago, your ancestors owned slaves. The slaves were responsible for doing all the work here. They cleaned, cooked, picked cotton, and anything else you can think of. The overseer’s name was Doc Wright. He wasn’t a doctor of any sort and he was a bad man. He had pulled a pot of boiling water down on himself when he was about three years old and it left him pitifully scarred and scary looking. His own mother didn’t want him and left him in an orphanage in Selma to be raised. “The story is,” the Mother said, “that he was so evil when he slept at night there

was a red haze that appeared above his head, like the devil himself was watching over him, and he slept with a pistol under his pillow because everybody in the county, white and black, wanted to kill him. He was so hideous that no respectable woman wanted anything to do with him.” “One day,” The Lady continued, “Doc Wright was sent to Montgomery. There on Commerce Street a man could buy a multitude of slaves. He bought five slaves that day-one man and four women. One of the newly purchased was a young slave girl, about 19 or 20 years old, supposed to have been perfect in every way: perfect skin, hair, and disposition. She had been taken from her own parents when she was only 5 and had been sold 10 times before she came here. She had tried to run away when she was 7 years old but an overseer caught her and brought her back to her master. She was valuable to her master, so he vowed to make sure that she was harshly punished. He had her tied to the tree in the front yard, beat her with a leather strap in front of all the other slave children, then poured a bottle of vinegar over the wounds. Her screams could be heard all the way to town. That particular master sold her to the highest bidder on Commerce Street, who just so happened to be Doc Wright. The slave girl’s name was Lavinia, and she wanted nothing to do with the nefarious Doc Wright. However, the overseer decided he had to have her, and in nine months’ time, a baby was born. They say it was a beautiful baby with hazel eyes and curly golden hair. Its young mother would not even look at the baby or feed it, so one of the other slave women had to nurse it. Lavinia did not want a constant reminder of the man who had taken her innocence, so one day when the rest of the slaves were picking cotton, it is said that they heard a baby crying and crying in the meadow, and then eerie silence. Lavinia then started singing a song at the top of her lungs, the first she had spoken since the child’s birth. She sang it over and over again, and the words were so haunting that it made the slave women and men cry in the fields. These are the words:

Hush-a-by. Don’t you cry. Go to sleep, little baby. And when you wake, you shall have all the pretty little horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, all the pretty little horses. So hush-a-by. Don’t you cry. Go to sleep, little baby. Way down yonder, in de medder, there’s a po’ lil lambie. De bees an’ de butterflies, peckin’ out his eyes. De po’ lil lambie cried, “Mammy!” Hush-a-by, Don’t you cry. Go to sleepy little baby. When you wake, you shall have all the pretty little horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, coach and six little horses. When

you wake, you shall have all the pretty little horses.*

“Momma, did she really let the bees and butterflies peck out his eyes?” the youngest Willis lad asked. “Of course she did. She killed the baby and left it in the field.” The Lady responded. “What did they do to Lavinia, Momma?” a little curly headed girl of six asked. “You know what they did to her. They hung her from that big old oak tree at the end of the lane. To teach the other slaves a lesson, they left her hanging there for three days before they made Wright cut her down. Rumor has it that they buried her in the field where she killed her baby. And, if you are very careful, on a summer’s night, you can still hear her sing, ‘Hushabye,’ to a baby that she never wanted.” “Now if that isn’t enough to give you nightmares, I don’t know what will. Off to sleep, my sweets,” the Mother softly said as she kissed her little lambs softly on the head. She turned to look at their sleepy faces as she silently turned off the lights.

CHAPTER 13

What the Cook Said

A bout a month after the Lady noticed some curious things going on at the correctional facility, she happened to run into Jana at the supermarket. The heavyset girl looked haggard, ill actually. She told the Lady that she wasn’t sleeping well anymore. The Warden was putting her under a great deal of stress. Her seizures were becoming more frequent and she was fearful that he would catch her in the kitchen having a full grand mal. Her conversation made the Lady more wary of what dreadful deeds were taking place at the facility. “I am ordering and cooking just as much food,” Jana said, “but I am throwing out twice as much. I don’t think my cooking has gotten worse over the last several months.” “That is very strange, Jana,” the Lady said, “Have you noticed anything else peculiar?” “If you mean the midnight walks some of the men take, then yes, I think that is a bit odd.” Jana retorted. “The Warden makes them go out at midnight to walk?” the Lady inquired. “That’s what he said,” Jana replied, “but I don’t believe him. I don’t believe anything he says. He makes me so nervous when he comes in the kitchen. I am surprised I haven’t cut a finger off!” The Lady took mental note of all the things that Jana said, gave her a hug and kiss, wished her well, and walked quickly out to her car. She had a lot to tell the Colonel when he returned. She was planning on taking a midnight walk herself until she had more information, information that would seal the fate of Warden DeLuca.

CHAPTER 14

Midnight Walks

T he Lady had the nanny tuck the children in bed so she could take a walk along the property line. Her purpose was clear: find out what was going on at the prison, and if all possible, get rid of the black blight that had covered her valley. The moon was full as she set out down the worn path toward the pig lot. The beasts were better than dogs actually; they would rouse at the slightest noise and their squeals could be heard a quarter mile away. As she walked past the field where Lavinia killed her baby and the hanging tree where the birds pecked out her eyes (a detail she didn’t include in the story she told her children), she felt a chill come over her. “Ghost stories,” she thought, “should not be on my mind. Tonight I have to find out what is going on to those poor men next door.” She positioned herself at the base of a tree and waited. She kept her mind busy as the night sounds echoed around her. She heard the screech of an owl, the snorting derision of her sows, and the quiet all around her. She must have waited for three quarters of an hour before her patience was rewarded. There, she saw them. Five men were walking down from the prison carrying what appeared to be a large bag. They set the bag down and promptly started digging with shovels. She saw the shadows of the dirt flying in the moonlit sky. A hole was quickly dug and the bag placed within. Dirt returned to its resting place, and the men marched back up the hill. All the while, two sentries were watching them with rifles poised at the backs of their heads. She saw a shadow at the top of the hill, with both hands on his hips, stamping his foot, and she immediately knew that the figure was that of the warden, and he was demonstrating his impatience at the men who had carried out his deed. At the top of the hill, one of the men remained behind. She could see that there was pointing and discomfort. One of the guards hit this man with the rifle stock, and she watched the man crumple to the ground. The sentries each grabbed an arm and dragged the man toward the building.

The Lady shivered as she watched these events unfold and hurriedly made her way to the plantation house.

CHAPTER 15

The Colonel Returns

T he Lady was looking out the window. She was impatient for the Colonel to return so she could tell him of her suspicions about the warden. As she looked out the window, she noticed the stable boy, Murphy, talking to himself. He was wearing a white button-down shirt, dress slacks, tie, and tennis shoes. Every once in a while, he would slap his own forehead repetitively three times with the palm of his hand and spin around in a circle. After fifteen minutes of this redundant revelry, he went back to the task at hand, checking the horse’s shoe for whatever had lamed the poor beast. Some days his behavior was more off than others. This was a mild day comparatively. There was once when he had taken the family vehicle into town, pulled into the parking lot of the feed and supply store, and sat there for three hours banging his head on the steering wheel. Artiss Wainwright, the former town sheriff, and friend of the family, was called by Bradford Comer, the owner of the store, and told about this strange episode. Wainwright walked the quarter mile from his home to the feed store, walked over to the car window, tapped on the glass, and brought the young man back to his senses. To Wainwright, who had just about seen everything in his 88 years, this boy was completely normal. The Lady smiled at Murphy’s strange behavior as she reminisced and wished he could find a suitable wife. Maybe this would get rid of some of his strange ways. She was bounced out of her daydream when she heard a car roaring up the driveway, and five minutes later, heard the Colonel yelling orders to Murphy as he made his way up to the front door. Before the Colonel could turn the knob, his Lady swung the heavy door open widely. She is stressed, he noted, more so than usual. He hadn’t had time to plop his briefcase down across the threshold of the great hall when his Lady made her announcement.

“I think the warden has been killing inmates next door,” she stated matter-offactly.

CHAPTER 16

Inmate #451344

S tate prison systems are full of criminals, full of untold stories. It is difficult not to have a “they deserve to be in there because they did something reprehensible” state of mind. However, if more prisoners were given real treatment, real therapy, then, the general population would understand that these bad adults were once good kids, probably savable. Inmate 451344 was a career criminal, 26 years old and already had a rather thick file detailing petty crimes which had escalated into something severe that resulted in him being at the National Correctional Facility in Rockbridge, Alabama. Inmate 451344 had been a beautiful baby with a head of auburn curly hair. He was born after three hours of easy labor in Rockbridge’s only hospital. It was really a Band-Aid station; the ER doctor rarely saw anything more severe than a snake bite. Well, except for the time the Haws boys were playing chicken on farm tractors. Now, that had been a big mess. But, like so many others in Coosa County, that is another story for another time. Inmate 451344 was the only child of a hairdresser and a state police officer. He was loved by both of them until his father’s untimely death when the boy was nine years old. His father was trying to cash his paycheck on a Friday afternoon at the local bank when two armed gunmen came in to rob the place. The greyhaired teller put a blue dye in the money bag, which exploded all over the money and the gunmen. As this was their first foray into something more severe than home burglaries, the ill-fated robbers were thoroughly pissed off. They shot the teller in the head. Poor old Widow Crabtree; her sixteen cats probably really missed her. As for Inmate 451344’s father, he was shot five times before he could get his revolver out of its holster. Inmate 451344’s mother, shortly after her young husband’s death, underpaid and overworked, started frequenting bars, looking again for a special someone who

could take care of her and her son. The man she met was Jason Hoevener. He was a big man who was a job hopper and ladies’ man. He never spent more than a couple months with any job or any woman. Jason was a construction worker with a hard hat and an even harder hand. He began by shoving the boy six months after he moved in. Then, when the mother was out working, he started behaving inappropriately with the boy, coming into the bathroom when the lad was urinating. He would tell him, “You can’t tell your mom. This would just upset her.” Slowly, day by day, he began to force the boy to touch his private area, and that soon led to fellatio. Meanwhile, the mother was oblivious that anything was happening to her young son. She wanted to believe that they were becoming a real family. Months turned into years, and for his thirteenth birthday, his stepdad gave him a present. He raped the boy in the family room. The teen had his face pushed down into the pool table green by his stepdad’s icy cold hands. His bloodied nose was pressed into the table’s hard surface, while his stepdad’s pants rested around his ankles. He kept a hand over the boy’s mouth so he couldn’t cry out to his tired mother who was asleep on the couch upstairs. His birthday cake sat on the table, candles in place, untouched. From that point forward, every day was the same. He knew the rapes would occur ritualistically, much like people brush their teeth: run the water over the toothbrush, apply the minty gel to the tired bristles, front to back, back to front, rinse and repeat. The rapes became his obsession. His grades suffered. It was hard to focus in school when he knew that every day when he got off the bus his stepdad would be waiting for him. The strong man’s favorite thing to do was rape the boy while leaning him over the couch in the living room. The pedophile had a straight line of view to the street, and he needed to stop as the boy’s mother drove her car up the driveway. Often times, he wouldn’t be finished as he pulled out. He would quickly put his penis back in his pants and wait for her to come in the house. He would tease her as soon as she walked into the kitchen and lead her down the hallway to their bedroom. At these times, he would spend quickly, with the thought that he had just abused her son only moments before taking her. The boy no longer took joy in anything except the thought that one day he would be a man, and that day, he would rescue himself. Two months before his seventeenth birthday, the meek boy was chugging a coke

while standing next to the refrigerator. He heard the familiar footsteps walking down the hall toward the kitchen, and he felt the vomitus rising at the back of his throat. “Not today,” he thought. No, today would be different. He took the last two sips from the bottle and without thinking, slammed the bottle against the side of his stepfather’s head. Jason gasped in surprise and tried to say, “Why, you little shi…” but the words did not come out as he buckled to his knees, his head exploding in stars. The boy, now a man, moved quickly and grabbed a kitchen knife off the counter and slit the throat of his tormentor. Working quickly, he wound a plastic bag around the man’s head, dragged him to the trunk of the car that he had parked in the ading garage and went back into the house to clean the floor with the bottle of bleach his mother kept under the kitchen sink. Three hours later, he was enjoying dinner with his mother alone. She noticed the long forgotten smile on his face, and with motherly love, she moved her hands through the wisps of his hair on his forehead. He smiled again, this time, thinking, “I have to dump his carcass tonight when she goes to sleep.” And, he went back to methodically chewing his roast beef, noting the gristle and blood sliding down his throat. Much had changed over time, and now, nearly nine years later, the curly headed lad had been in and out of jail, petty thefts up to the last charge-armed robbery. No, he had never been caught or charged for the murder of his stepdad. The man simply vanished, and missing persons reports really aren’t taken that seriously, especially if the person in question is a nasty bully who has a history of picking up and leaving. His murder was the easiest crime he had committed really, and the only one he hadn’t regretted. Being near the warden at the National Correctional Facility was difficult, especially difficult, because except for his small stature, the man reminded him of his stepfather.

CHAPTER 17

What the Warden Did

D eLuca kept telling himself that his cruelty towards the inmates was teaching them a lesson. He relished in watching the strip searches, and he especially took delight in the body cavity searches that he requested of every inmate on level 3. He took pleasure in watching the inmates’ eyes as they looked up toward the ceiling as they had the most intimate place on their bodies probed by the uncaring fingers of the correctional officers. Warden DeLuca wouldn’t it it, but he had found his calling: the power and control he felt over these men was soul-consuming. He would lie awake at night next to his frigid wife’s body and think of new ways to exert control over the inmates. He would caress himself in these wee hours of the night and gain such satisfaction that he would go to sleep with a grin on his face. One day, while patrolling the yard, he was thinking about the handful of inmates who hadn’t personally experienced his wrath. He had himself so worked up that he had to go indoors and look at the list of transfers. One in particular looked inviting: Inmate 451344. He had been placed on level 2, but with several altercations with other inmates, he was being moved to level 3. Level 3 inmates experienced tightened security and the pseudo-sexual attention of the facility’s diminutive warden. Sergeant Fred Littleton received the call from the warden around 3 p.m. to bring the transfers to the third floor transfer room. The room was cold, kept that way intentionally to make the prisoners more uncomfortable. It had a one-way mirror on the north end; the warden used this mirror to watch the internal proceedings. Littleton brought the first prisoner in the room, had him undress, and swiftly put two gloved-fingers up the man’s anus. The inmate grunted but looked rather nonplussed by the event. The warden was growing more frustrated. The next prisoner who came in was more of a fighter; he tried to squirm away from the assault of the officer’s hand. The warden swiftly came on the intercom and made

a statement to the officer standing next to the door. “If that dirt bag moves, use your nightstick to finish the cavity search.” The inmate’s eyes looked toward the blackened window in fear as he succumbed to the attack on his manhood. The warden was thoroughly aroused and couldn’t wait for the next convict, Inmate 451344. The well-muscled young man had gone through the first body cavity search on his arrival to the institution. He had actively fought against it, and had been punished by having his face shoved down into the wooden table. Memories of his stepfather’s abuse had stayed with him for the last decade, and he relished the thought that only he knew what had happened to that sadistic asshole. He had seen the warden looking at him in the same way that his stepdad used to, and the feeling that came over him now was of futility. He made mental note of the tall guard at the door and beside the table the sergeant who would brutalize him. He felt the cool breeze coming down from the ductwork in the ceiling. He looked toward the black window and knew the pint-size Marquis de Sade was standing behind it. He made up his mind that they would have to carry him out of this room. He wouldn’t go gently into the night. The sergeant looked at him and told him to take off his jumpsuit. He nodded no, and the sergeant told him again. This time, the guard at the door hit him in the lower leg with the nightstick which brought him to his knees. His jumpsuit was torn off with one swift motion and he was forced across the desk. When the sergeant made a move to spread his buttocks, Inmate 451344 punched him squarely in the face and the large sergeant dropped to the floor with a resounding thud. The guard at the door acted quickly, leaped the two feet to the prisoner, and smashed him across the back of the head with the nightstick. DeLuca, watching from the next room, smirked, and thought to himself, “This one is gonna be fun.”

CHAPTER 18

Lies, Murder, and Nobody Cares

I n the preceding months, fifteen inmates had died at the National Correctional Facility. Death certificates were signed, and bodies were buried in the dead of the night. These men were sons, fathers, uncles, but they were also criminals. Society doesn’t care about criminals. If it did, rehabilitation would be a meaningful word. Therapy, counseling, and job training would be offered at every state institution. The Lady’s suspicions were correct all along. Men were disappearing, but she and her former cook were the only ones who really cared. When she went into town to have her nails done, she found herself getting her pedicure seated next to Coroner Hebert’s wife, Margaret. The two women had known each other for years, as is common in every small town. They idly chatted about the weather (Alabama weather is really kind of dull if you understand that it is always beautiful), their kids (the Hebert family consisted of a set of coned twins who were twelve, but that is another story), and eventually the conversation turned to the ominous correctional facility. Margaret innocently chatted that having an institution in the town’s backyard was creating more work for her husband, Ollie. Ollie had been the town coroner, and he had had his share of strange cases over the years: the Marvin brothers (who were found with matching bullet holes in their heads); Jenny Faraway (who had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles); and Belinda Nuttle, the town prostitute (who was found inside of her vehicle that was upside-down on Route 11). These cases were suspicious to Ollie, but he was just a worker bee, and the state’s coroner had overruled him by saying that all of these cases were just prime examples of the dregs of society committing suicide, and goodness gracious who cares about this rubbish! According to Margaret, Ollie had to drive out to the prison in the middle of the night. The warden would call him with the same old diatribe. The story never

changed: the inmates were fighting then murdering each other with shanks or bare hands. Since these were hardened criminals, it just made sense that they would try to kill each other. Then, Ollie Hebert had to pronounce them dead. The Lady did not say her suspicion out loud to Margaret. She believed Warden DeLuca killed those men. He was responsible for their untimely deaths, and for these crimes, he needed to pay.

CHAPTER 19

Inmate #451344

H e was groggy. It hurt to move. When he tried to lift his right arm, he could not. He realized that he had been knocked out, but he did not know for how long. When an inmate working in the infirmary walked by, he nodded at him and the man walked over. He was an older black man, about 55, with deep lines of worry around his eyes. “You had me worried, Son,” he said. “You’ve been out six days, the longest of any of them. At least, you were able to wake up.” The young man, looked at him wearily, and said through a bloodied mouth, “What did they do to me?” The older man said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t want to know!” Inmate 451344 said, “Please…” The old man said, in a whisper, “They brought you in six days ago. I overheard the warden bragging to one of the guards, that when you fought back, they beat you with the nightstick until you were unconscious. The guards left you alone for over three hours with the warden who said he would teach you a lesson that you would never forget. When they dragged you in here, you were bleeding so much out of your rectum, I thought you were going to bleed to death. Old Billy, on level 3, found a bloodied toilet plunger leaning against the door in the transfer room. I surmised that the warden took that plunger to you. You had a lot of internal bleeding, but I think my sutures will work just fine. I think you will make a full recovery—physically, at least.” The young man said, “Your sutures? You sewed me up?” The old man retorted, “What’s the matter? You never heard of a doctor being in the t? I will say the same thing every convict says, I had a crappy lawyer!” The old doctor limped away, giggling to himself. Inmate 451344 reminded himself that he would have to thank the old man soon, and with that thought, fell back into a fitful sleep, and he dreamed of the man whom he had hated so much, and the murder that made him feel so much joy, and his stepfather’s face was soon replaced by Warden DeLuca’s face, and his body felt so heavy that he could not sit up, could not

wake up.

CHAPTER 20

The Cook and The Lady

J ana showed up early one Wednesday morning, and The Lady looked at her with great worry. She noticed a few strands of grey in the cook’s vibrant red hair. The lines around her mouth and eyes were firmer, more pronounced. Jana explained that the warden had been especially cruel to her, yelling at her for the slightest infraction, which in turn caused her to have more seizures. Her doctor told her that her blood pressure was skyrocketing, and more stress would probably mean a stroke or death. The Lady listened intently as Jana talked about an inmate who supposedly took such a terrible beating from another inmate that he had been in the infirmary for the last three weeks, only capable of eating through a straw. Jana thought the young man’s name was Josh or Jeremy, and he most likely was suffering from a broken jaw, broken arm, ribs, and some kind of internal injury. The Lady inquired as to whether he was truly beaten by another inmate or the story was fabricated for the public. Jana told her that the infirmary doctor had told her in confidence that “something wasn’t right with the amount of people beating each other to death” and she took that to mean that he, too, believed that the warden was behind the rash of beatings and deaths. The Lady looked at the simple-minded cook and said, “Jana, I am going to tell you some information, and I want you to listen very, very carefully. When I was a little girl, my uncle used to walk me around this farm and tell me some rather incredible stories. Some of them were so unbelievable. Of course, my uncle was a bit of a shady character, so they might all have been true. Did you know that Uncle Ben outlived six wives? Yes, yes, he did. My momma always told me not to ask Uncle Ben what happened to the women in his life. They just all had a way of dying young. Anyway, my uncle had a great fondness for hogs. We have a long and mixed heritage raising hogs on this very property. The hogs have actually earned us a better living than the cotton ever did!”

The Lady continued with, “My uncle never let me forget how smart he thought pigs were. He said that pigs have been better trained than any dogs. Why they can find truffles, drugs, and dead bodies. Yes, it’s true. And, people have kept hogs as pets, just like dogs. But, he warned, people are stupid because they forget a very basic principle. Hogs are not dogs. Hogs are twice as smart, and they are cunning. Hogs are not and will never be your friend. Hogs are omnivorous. They will strip a human clean, eat all body parts, even the bones. No, they are evil creatures. They can undo and outdo the evil of any man.” As The Lady finished this rather incredible but horrific story, she looked over at her former cook, who shivered at the tale, and said, “Do you understand what I have just explained?” The kind and gentle cook replied, “Yes, you said that pigs will get rid of evil men.”

CHAPTER 21

Recovery

A fter three long months in the infirmary, Inmate 451344 was seated outside, enjoying a few minutes of sunshine. It was a small privilege given to the infirmary patients, most of whom were unable to walk, let alone run. The young man was getting stronger, stronger than he actually allowed the prison staff to understand. Even the kindly older doctor did not know that the young man actually sat up in his hospital bed each night while the others were asleep so that he could do leg lifts and stretches. He had to get stronger. He had a job to do. Those first few weeks while in a medicated daze, the young inmate realized that the only person who was going to save him from this hell was the same person who saved him a decade ago. One afternoon, still groggy from a morphine injection, the cook had brought up a special beef broth for him. The doctor was too busy to feed him, and the other inmates were busy, so Jana asked the doctor if it would be all right if she fed the young inmate. While taking great care to feed him and not hurt the already injured mouth, the cook told the young man her story: how she had been born with physical maladies, her brother’s ongoing physical and mental issues, the job she loved at the plantation house, and her current job with the devil himself, Warden DeLuca. She explained her seizure disorder and how the warden did anything he could to berate her in front of the other staff. She started to get up, but she looked in the lonely young man’s hazel eyes and realized she had one last story to tell-the story The Lady told her about Uncle Ben and the plantation hogs. As she spooned the last drop from the bowl into his mouth, she completed the story about pigs and evil men. The young man, in a hushed whisper, said, “My name is Jeremy. I just want to thank you. Thank you for the story. It has given me a lot to think about.”

CHAPTER 22

The Old Doctor

O nce a week since the young inmate had come in after the sexual assault, Warden DeLuca stopped by the prison infirmary to “check on his troubled child.” The first few weeks, the old doctor did not need to lie. The young man was nearly catatonic from the beating and the medication that the old man had given him with a free hand. However, there came a day when the doctor told him that in a week’s time, it would be safe to move the inmate back to general population. The doctor’s name, which was Ivan Caldwell, wasn’t really the prison doctor. He just happened to be in prison and happened to have been a doctor in his former life. Anyone who knows correctional institutions knows that good medical care is not to be had. Inmates have to make appointments to be seen by visiting physicians, and many have died waiting on something like a ruptured appendix. So, Ivan, the kindly old doctor, volunteered to help out in the infirmary. He had been a general practitioner on the outside, and he needed to keep his skills finely tuned. He was worried about his young patient. The young man’s physical wounds were barely noticeable. The ribs were still giving him some pain when he stood up, but the rest of him was doing well. The mental changes were dramatic, though. The young man would wake up screaming in the middle of the night in cold sweats screaming the name ‘Jason’ over and over yet he would have no recollection of the nightmare that set him off. He was worried about what the old doctor had to tell him. “The warden was back here asking about you again.” The doctor said to the young man. “What did you tell him?” he replied.

“I told him that you were ready to go back into general population next week.” “That soon?” the young man asked. The silence between the two lasted about thirty seconds. The old man spoke quietly and quickly. “You listen to what this old convict has to say. That warden has it in for you. You don’t need to be a psychologist to understand that sick little bastard. For whatever reason, he is turned on by the power he holds over you. He will come back to you, and one of three things will happen. One, you will have to let him rape you. Two… he will kill you because you won’t let him rape you.” And the old doctor trailed off. “You said one of three things can happen. What’s the third?” the young inmate asked while furtively looking up at the ceiling, searching for an answer. “Or, three, you must kill that sadistic little douchebag. I have been in four different prisons, and I have seen a lot of people die, more here than anywhere else. A smart man could do it, though. A smart man could kill that little bastard and not leave a trace. I spent some time in Pendleton about five years ago. I saw the most amazing thing. I watched an inmate make a shank out of a toothbrush, paper, and toothpaste. Did you know that toothpaste can harden on paper just like paper mache? Can be sharpened and everything, slick as a knife, and just as deadly. Yes, sir, seen a lot of things in prison. I think a smart young man could make a weapon, kill somebody, and dispose of the body so that it can’t be found. That’s what I think.” With the last comment, the old doctor stood up on his crippled legs, hobbled to the door slowly, and looked back at his patient. The once despondent patient sat serenely looking straight ahead with just a trace of a smile on his handsome face.

CHAPTER 23

Hard Work

O ne week. One week wasn’t a long time to plan, yet it would have to be enough. Two separate random conversations with the prison cook and kindly doctor had given him the plan. He just had to figure out how to fit all the pieces together and not get caught. The dream of freedom burned in him the fervid inspiration to work out all the details. The toothbrush was easy. He had to just claim to the requisition clerk that his toothbrush was missing. This bureaucratic process took less than six hours and he was afforded a new institutional white toothbrush. Toothpaste was given to every inmate in a tube, and his roommate in the infirmary didn’t look like he would need his anyway. The prisoner had been brought in the night before, visibly bloodied and missing four of his front teeth. All thanks to the warden and his henchmen. The toothpaste and paper hardened quickly on the end of the toothbrush into the malleable shape that his adept fingers had guided. He ran the brush over the side of his prison cot and noticed immediately that the hard surface filed the toothbrush into the needle-like shank that he would need to start his deed or end it. He just needed the opportunity. News of 451344’s recovery and transfer out of the infirmary had titillated the warden. He had never injured an inmate this severely before, and taking the young man so close to death and back were more than sexually satisfying to him. In fact, he had masturbated to the scene replaying in his mind countless times. He was afraid that his wife and children were going to walk in during his selfpleasuring. Yet, this did not stop him. He already had in mind what he was going to do to his young friend on his return to level 3. Yes, he was going to take him on a midnight walk.

CHAPTER 24

Lost in the Details

T he toothbrush would be easy to take back to his cell. He could hide it easily in the wheelchair they would use to transport him in, and if necessary, he could create a distraction. He had to work out the smallest details. The details were of utmost importance. He ed when he was about fourteen years old his mother had read to him a story from the newspaper. The story discussed an Indiana man by the last name of Humbolt who had just simply disappeared one day. The man’s best friend was the primary suspect, but no murder weapon or body was ever found. The police were ruthless in their interrogation, and the friend finally confessed to the murder. Even though there was no evidence, the jury came back with a guilty verdict in less than fifteen minutes. He ed his stepfather commenting on the killer’s ission of guilt by calling him a dumbass and then walking out of the room. No, the young convict hadn’t been a dumbass when he had gotten rid of his stepfather, and he surely wouldn’t be a dumbass now when dealing with the warden. This wasn’t going to just be a murder. This was going to be a murder and a prison break. When he was a teenager and murdered his childhood rapist, he had everything he needed in his possession-weapon, transportation, and lots of time. Now, he was going to have to use his wits. He started watching out the infirmary window every night for change of shift and when the officers were out of the tower. He couldn’t go over the wire; everything was electrified and there was a roll of barbed wire that stretched like a slinky above the yard. No, he would have to go through the gate. He would have to kill the warden, get his keys, and get out of the vicinity as quickly as possible.

CHAPTER 25

Happiness

T he warden woke early in the morning with a happy thought. Today was the day. He was going to have his bit of fun this afternoon. He thought to himself, “After the noon count and yard time, I will go and visit Inmate 451344 in his cell, scare him a little, and later on, after dark, I will take him on a nice long walk outside.” The thought brought him such immediate bliss that his morning erection needed quick attention. After he showered and dressed, he gave his obese wife and hirsute kids a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and jaunted out to his car. He listened to an oldies channel on his way to the prison, and in an off-key way sang, “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Yes, he was going to be happy today. The early afternoon was uneventful, boring even. Warden Vinnie DeLuca, however, was tense with the foreboding of his excitement. He wanted to see the convict scared, cowering with fear. He wanted to hear him beg for mercy. He was not going to allow the guards to be there to beat the young man into submission this time. No, he wanted to have his bit of fun, and that required that the young man be conscious and alive. He took an early walk at 2 p.m. down the hall on level 3. He slowed down in front of Inmate 451344’s cell. He noticed the young man was on top of his single bunk reading a book. It looked like the title was The Most Dangerous Game by Hemingway. Not being a literary critic, the warden happily said, “Didn’t know you could read!” Then, he turned, almost an about-face on his tiny feet, and walked in the other direction. He would have Inmate 451344 in his clutches soon enough, and the next few hours, he was going to spend in his office, thinking about just how much fun he was going to have.

CHAPTER 26

A Coward in Coosa County

T he young man had only known real fear once in his life, and those were his younger years when he was brutalized by his stepdad. His stepdad’s subsequent murder and disposal had not frightened him at all. No, he had remained increasingly cool and collected during the whole process. The only behavior that was different was when he returned home, he drank about a quart of water in one gulp, was still thirsty, and finished off a pint of orange juice. He didn’t even break a sweat while driving back home. He thought about a story he read about Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee cannibal, once. Dahmer was pulled over by a police officer with his dead victim in the back seat. He had remained calm, told the cop he was cleaning up the yard for his parents, and that the bags contained lawn trash. His demeanor and story were so convincing that the unknowing police officer let him go. He knew, with perfect certainty, that he was as calm as Dahmer. He would have to maintain that same sense of tranquility later on tonight. No, there was only one coward in Coosa County, and he wore size 6 in men’s shoes. The warden had asked Sergeant Mumford to bring Inmate 451344 to him at exactly 5 p.m. However, as luck would have it, the Superintendent, Charlie Brinton, announced an emergency conference call with all of the state’s wardens about the numerous complaints families had been making about the increase in inmate deaths in the higher security facilities. This call seemed to go on endlessly, and if Charlie Brinton could see the inside of the warden’s office, he would have noticed that the small man paced frantically, almost like an individual who was tweaking on methamphetamine. Sergeant Mumford wanted to leave on time tonight, but the conference call had lasted longer than expected. The warden told him to bring Inmate 451344 out to the garden shed at 7:30 p.m. He thought he was going to be asked to stick around and bust some heads, but the warden told him to wait at the main gate for him.

There was a television to watch in the guard shack, and he thought he could stay occupied for the next couple of hours. Inmate 451344 was sitting quietly on his bunk reading when Mumford went for him. Without question, the young man got up and went with the guard, noting the large nightstick on his hip. Guns were not allowed past the first floor intake room, and officers had to check them in and out with each shift change. The young man felt the toothbrush shank rubbing against the inside liner of his jumpsuit. He depended on this crudely made tool to help him escape from this hell. During the walk downhill, he took a few moments to notice his surroundings. The country was truly beautiful. The birds were singing beautifully, and he heard the grunting of pigs in the distance. The sun shone on his face, and he thought of a book he once read as a young man. The lead character, Johnny, asked his doctor, if he could go back in time and kill Hitler, would he kill him. The doctor took several minutes and described the atrocities that were done to six million Jews, and said, very matter-of-factly, “Yes, I’d kill the son of a bitch.” Inmate 451344 thought about the doctor’s answer. He truly understood now. “Yes, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.” He said under his breath. “What did you say, boy?” Mumford asked. “Nothing.” The young man replied. “Nothing at all.” The warden was waiting in the garden shed. He had a slight erection as he watched Mumford marching the convict down the hill. He was going to have fun tonight. Mumford stood at the door, and said, “Here he is, Boss. I’m going back to the shack. See you in a few.” The tiny boss nodded in the affirmative and watched Mumford lumber back up the hill. He turned around and looked at the muscular young man before him. He smiled in reminiscence of what he had done with the toilet plunger. In fact, in the following weeks after the brutal rape, he couldn’t go near a restroom without becoming aroused. He had waited several weeks for this moment, and now that the object of his affection was back, he was exuberant. He told the young man to remove his clothes and lean over the table. With a slight movement of his hand, he indicated that he was impatient. The inmate looked the garden shed room over quickly. He had to figure out the quickest way to put the tiny warden on the ground. He noticed that the table had several clay pots on it; many were empty. The warden was tapping his shoe in impatience. Fortunately, the warden had only a small taser as a weapon. It was

firmly attached to his belt on the left side. The young inmate took quick note of that fact. The warden said, “I said to get your ass across that table, boy! You don’t want to end up back in the infirmary, do you?” With a slow deliberate motion, the young man moved to the edge of the garden table. He placed both palms face down on the hard surface. The warden moved behind him and said, “I told you to take off your clothes!” “Sorry, Warden, but if you want my clothes off, you will have to take them off yourself!” He knew that being oppositional would probably raise the warden’s ire, but he was hoping that this would buy him some time to act. As the warden looked at the muscular, well-formed figure bending over in front of him, he became so aroused that he began unzipping his pants fervently. At the sound of the scraping of the metal zipper, the young inmate took this as his chance to act. He grabbed the clay pot that rested on the table, and with one deft motion, much like the one he used on his stepdad with the Coke bottle, he spun around and made with the clay pot to the side of the warden’s head. The movement was so swift and so unpredictable, that the warden was halfway to his knees before he realized that he had made a mistake. The blow to his skull had created a deep laceration that was already beginning to bleed, and the weight of the pot had made his vision blurry. The muscular young man hit the warden one more time, to just make sure he was out cold. He did not want him waking up while he had so many things to do. He looked for tape, found some, and quickly put a thick strip across the warden’s mouth. He found a coil of rope and securely tied up the warden’s tiny hands and feet. He glanced out the window toward the guard shack and noted that he could see the soft glow of the television set that Mumford was watching. He noted that it was quickly getting dark outside, and as soon as he felt comfortable, he would need to leave. He grabbed the taser out of the warden’s belt and put it inside his jumpsuit. He felt around in the warden’s pants pocket and found a set of car keys that were linked to a General Motors fob. There was a money clip with a couple hundred bucks and he took that too. “This little piss ant won’t need any money where he’s going,” he thought. As the last sliver of light faded from the sky, he started dragging the warden’s

body up the slope toward the guard shack. As he neared the small brick building, he left the warden’s body tucked under a tree for safe keeping. The warden was starting to wake up and make noise, so he would have to work quickly. He walked the last few steps to the guard shack as quickly and quietly as possible. Mumford had his back to the door while he watched television. His favorite show, Law & Order, was on, but he would have preferred to have watched it from the comfort of his own home in his well-worn dingy recliner with a Miller Lite in his hand. As he chuckled over the latest scene, he did not hear the inmate creep up behind him, nor did he know why he suddenly experienced a sharp pain in the back of his neck. As he slipped into the blackness of sleep, he had a novel thought, “I really need a new job.”

CHAPTER 27

The Escape

J eremy van Jackson, formerly Inmate 451344, was dressing hurriedly into clothes he found in a tiny locker in the guard shack. Mumford was still out cold on the floor in a fetal position, and Warden DeLuca was still unconscious outside. After dressing in loose jeans and a t-shirt, he went outside to see if anyone had gotten suspicious. He took the key ring and hit the unlock button and noticed the lights flash of a late model HHR. It was purple. “The little sadistic bitch even drives a pussy car,” he thought. He started dragging Warden DeLuca by his feet toward his own car. He grinned as the warden’s head bounced off the loose gravel, and this latest discomfort made the warden groan. He quickly picked up the warden’s diminutive body and shoved him in the back of the car. Another punch in the head put the tiny man back in a deeper sleep. Jeremy went back into the guard shack and stepped gingerly over Mumford’s body. He sat down in front of the computer screen and quickly typed in his name and inmate number. He looked at the long history of his life of crime that had now come across the screen. His multitude of crimes was even astonishing to him now that he could see them all in chronological order. One of the options to the right of the screen was parole. He quickly clicked on this option and filled in all necessary information and then dated the release three weeks prior. “Nobody is going to come looking for me,” he thought, as he closed out of the screen. Mumford started moaning, and he knew it was time to leave. Sitting inside the HHR, he put the key into the ignition and listened to the car spring to life. Looking over the seat, he noticed that the warden was starting to come to again. “This won’t take long,” he thought as he drove over the hill toward the pig lot.

CHAPTER 28

Captain Bootsie

T he plantation house could be seen from the hog lot. A few lights were on in the upper windows, and Jeremy thought he saw a pretty young woman tucking her children in one of the rooms. The slumbering pigs, alerted by the sound of the car that had rolled into their space, started rooting and grunting nervously. Jeremy jerked DeLuca out of the back seat and held the handmade toothbrush shiv against the warden’s throat as he dragged him to the muddy hog lot. The warden was now awake and very aware of what was happening. The warden’s bleary eyes were wide with terror as the moonlight shone down upon him. He tried to struggle away from the convict, but the burly man outweighed him and had a sharp instrument against his neck. He tried to scream but the duct tape prevented that, and his low murmur below the tape made the convict laugh. “Oh, go ahead and try to scream, you dickless wonder!” Jeremy shouted. “Nobody is going to hear you.” Jeremy continued to laugh maniacally as he ripped off the warden’s clothes. The warden, fearing that he was going to be violated in the same way as he had violated others, struggled more. “Don’t flatter yourself, Warden.” Jeremy retorted cheerfully. “You are definitely not my type.” With the tiny warden now naked and more vulnerable, Jeremy took the toothbrush shank and cut a six inch long slice out of the bottom of each of the warden’s feet. The warden tried to scream in pain for the instrument felt like fire digging into both of his extremities. The cuts were so deep that the blood flow was almost instantaneous. Jeremy grabbed the warden by his narrow shoulders and dragged him over to one side of the pig lot that was isolated from all the others. The unfamiliar noise awoke the lot’s only tenant, a 1,200 pound boar by the name of Captain Bootsie. Captain Bootsie was raised by hand by The Lady when he was just a tiny piglet. His mother, an 8 year old brood sow, had a litter out of

season and subsequently ate all of his littermates, which is what old or sick sows will do. The Lady happened to find the tiny pig hidden in some straw in one of the pig burrows. She saw his tiny pink nose, and immediately said, “Oh, Little Man, you are now the captain of my heart.” When she lifted him from the crinkly straw, he squealed loudly and she noticed that each of his feet had darker markings than the rest of his body. “Oh, and you are wearing little boots too!” she exclaimed. And from that moment on, he became Captain Bootsie and was brought to the plantation house until he was old enough to venture out with the other hogs. Captain Bootsie had been given special treatment the first year of his life. He ate scraps from the dining room table (his favorite being day old coffee cake and watermelon), not just the recommended slop afforded to all other pigs, and was allowed to forage the land for leftovers out of the vast gardens. By the time he was a year old, Captain Bootsie was already a big pig. The Colonel kept teasing his Lady that Captain Bootsie would make lots of bacon, and the Colonel loved bacon. She made light of the situation and replied that if he kept growing, he could be the regular breeding boar, and that over a short time, they could populate the farm with lots of bacon! And, that is exactly what happened. Captain Bootsie, through a very special diet, became the biggest hog in the state. He was entered into and won two state fair competitions. He broke the scales at the last competition, so the judges determined that his true weight was probably over 1,200 pounds. At this size, Captain Bootsie did not stand up much of the day. The only two times he would rise to the occasion, as it were, were to eat and to reproduce. His tusks were over two inches long and sharp as razors. At most breeding farms, these tusks are filed down by the local veterinarian, but The Lady thought this was abusive and forbade any alterations to Captain Bootsie’s physique. Though he was going on five years old, and a couple years past the prime of most breeders, Captain Bootsie continued to service all the sows and produce high-quality piglets. The warden’s feet, sliced open nearly to the bone, were bleeding into the hog trough, as he was held above it by the former inmate. The warden’s muffled cries were upsetting the other pigs, and they started squealing in concern. He tried to break free from the young convict but realized he couldn’t. The young man had tied his arms to the sides of the low-rail fence with a rope, and the stunted man was dangling naked above the trough with his feet about six inches above the

rim of the metal feeder. The smell of blood had reached Captain Bootsie, and though the old boar couldn’t a time being fed at night, he also couldn’t a time he ever missed a meal. He noticed the puny human dangling above his feeding station, pale white, nearly hairless legs squirming. The gigantic hog garnered his huge body up on his thickly muscled legs and meandered over to the feeding trough. “That’s a nice big boy!” Jeremy exclaimed as the boar came closer. With a quick reach down, he cut off one of the warden’s toes with his toothbrush shank and threw it in the hog’s direction. It landed with a quiet splat in the empty metal feeder, and the big boar rooted around in the feeder, picked the toe up with his cavernous mouth and without so much as a single chew, swallowed the flesh with a satisfying grunt. The warden’s face was now pale and ashy in the moonlight. Having just watched his toe being devoured by a hog, the warden was having a hard time staying conscious. The former convict slapped the tiny man across the face to keep him awake. “No, you have to watch this, you sick twisted fuck!” Jeremy exclaimed. As he made this statement, he quickly cut off a second toe, threw it down to his barnyard friend, and grabbed the warden’s head with his hand and forced him to watch the massive boar eat his next appendage. Captain Bootsie, with the grace of a circus elephant, retrieved the second toe from the trough, and with great aplomb and the balance of a huge snout, tossed the toe a few inches into the air, and caught it on its way down, tearing into the bone with a nice crunch as he devoured his second appetizer. He was thoroughly enjoying his late night snack and grunted in approval. The warden was reeling from pain and his psyche was actually trying to tell him, “This can’t possibly be happening.” But, happening it was! The boar, teased by these small morsels, began grunting and rooting in earnest. He walked over to the fence and began sniffing the man’s wounded feet. His meal was hanging right in front of him. It was moving and making noise, very different than his daily pails of slop and grain, but the taste of blood motivated him. “Warden,” Jeremy said, “I’d really like to stay and see this pig take your fucking head off, but I really need to go. I have other things I need to tend to. You have any final words?” With this question, Jeremy ripped the duct tape off the warden’s mouth, loosened the rope that tied his arms to the fence, and dropped the warden’s body into the trough. The warden’s head made with the side

of the metal trough, and he instantly knew his head was bleeding again. Before he could scream out, he smelled an earthy foul odor, and immediately felt bristly hairs brushing against his body. With that thought, he knew the hog was upon him.

CHAPTER 29

Illness on the Plantation

I t had been a sad three days. Everyone on the plantation was grieving. The Colonel had actually delayed his business trip until he and his Lady could figure out what the next course of action would be. The children were moody, and the nanny was having a difficult time explaining to them why their parents were too busy to take them horseback riding. The Lady had been yelling at the hired help all day long. She was not usually a nervous person, but the last three days had taken a toll on her. Captain Bootsie had mysteriously taken ill, and The Lady was determined to save his life. The Lady put on a sweatshirt, an old pair of jeans, and a pair of waders that she reserved for fly fishing. She pulled her long hair to the nape of her neck in a bun and headed toward the pig lot, with her bag of supplies in tow. When she arrived, she found Murphy, her stable boy, and Lewis, the gardener. The Colonel appeared about five minutes later with a large white pail. The Lady walked to the far lot, and there was Captain Bootsie lying on his side, obviously suffering. The Lady plodded through the pig muck and knelt down beside her prize boar. She heard her knees make a squishing sound as she sank into the foul mud. Captain Bootsie lifted his head briefly and nuzzled her hand. He was familiar with this human and had always known her to be kind. The Lady noticed that Captain Bootsie’s eyes were glazed. Murphy and Lewis told her that they weren’t able to get the hog to eat for the last three days and that he had barely moved from this same spot. “Bring me that pail, Colonel. I need to get him to try and drink this mixture.” The Lady produced a turkey baster from her bag and dipped it into the pail that the Colonel provided. She then put the turkey baster next to the boar’s mouth and squirted the milky liquid down his throat, all the while crooning to him and petting his massive head. “There, there, this will make you feel better, Captain Bootsie,” she said.

“What is in the remedy, perchance?” inquired Murphy, the currently lucid stable boy. “It’s my Uncle Ben’s secret formula. So, I can’t tell you everything he put in it, but I can tell you that it does have raw eggs and cod liver oil in it.” The Lady interjected. “Of course, this could have just been Uncle’s own remedy for a hangover.” The four individuals kept vigil close to Captain Bootsie for the next seven hours. The Lady syringed the healing liquid into his mouth several more times over those hours, and little by little, the fog lifted from his eyes. When he made an attempt to get to his feet and couldn’t, The Lady ordered Murphy and Lewis to help her hoist him up. Once they were able to get the gentle giant on his feet, he seemed to steady himself and attempted to walk to the far end of the lot. His gait was labored and unsteady as he lumbered the last few feet to his destination. There, under the watchful eyes of his healers, the large boar’s bowel turned loose, and all that was ill inside of him came out. Lewis walked merrily over, reached down with a gloved hand, and picked up an object and held it for all to see, and said, “I’ll be damned! It’s a toothbrush!”

CHAPTER 30

Tying up Loose Ends

J eremy van Jackson hadn’t felt this alive in years. Thanks to his computer skills he learned during an ‘educate to release’ program he completed at another institution, he had granted himself an early parole, that if caught would be chalked up to clerical error. He had read about a man in Missouri who was released 30 years early because of a similar error. Well, not exactly. The clerk actually had made that error, but even a simple man gets the idea. After leaving the nefarious warden in the jowls of the biggest hog he’d ever seen in his life, he made a quick drive to the Coosahatchie River. The river ran all the way through Coosa County, and as a small boy, he and his father had fished it many times for yellow belly catfish. There was an area right off County Line Road that his father told him was the deepest point of the river. At that spot, he had put the purple HHR into neutral and rolled it off into the river. He stood there in the moonlight watching the car submerge into the inky depths of the river. The warden’s clothes and personal effects he would dispose of in a separate location. As he walked down a dirt road that he knew well, he was thinking about his car he had left at his mother’s house. It was the only piece of property he owned outright and he hoped it still ran. He had left his mother with specific instructions to start the car periodically, but she was getting older and a little more forgetful. Now that he was paroled, he vowed to leave behind that life of crime that got him sent to jail. No more thefts. No, he had a real job to do now. While in the infirmary, he had overheard another inmate talk about his cousin, Warren Tucker, who had just gotten out of some very serious charges dealing with the rape of a six year old girl. No, his next job was to pay Warren Tucker a visit.

CHAPTER 31

The Lady and Colonel

T he past week had been a turbulent one for all those on the plantation. Captain Bootsie’s illness had cast a curtain of heavy darkness upon the countenances of the otherwise carefree individuals who lived there. However, on this Sunday afternoon, the entire family was celebrating. The stable boy, Murphy, the gardener, Lewis, the nanny, and the former cook, Jana, and Sister Steph were all were being treated to a home-cooked meal prepared by the mistress of the house and served on the front lawn under a big old oak tree. The slight breeze that was blowing sent out peaceful signals to the family that all wrongs had been righted. There, by The Lady’s side, were her brood of unruly children and the family pet, Captain Bootsie. The littlest children were taking turns sitting on his back and pulling on his ears. Captain Bootsie loved the attention. After his midnight meal in the moonlight and the subsequent three days of severe discomfort and tummy ache, he felt much better now. The large boar grunted in blissful happiness. The Colonel, back from a quick jaunt to town, returned to his lovely home and ed his Lady outside. “I had an interesting talk with Artiss Wainwright and Maynard Wilby a little while ago.” He said. “What are those two old geezers up to?” The Lady asked, knowing that the town’s two historians could gossip worse, and far longer, than any women she knew. “They said that a week ago that Warden DeLuca tasered one of the corrections officers from behind and just disappeared. No trace of him. No car. Nothing.” The Colonel replied. “Why would he do that?” The Lady questioned.

“They think that he had a bunch of illegal money transfers going out of that place. They have an ant from Birmingham going through the funds now. I hope they put that little bastard away when they catch him. Maynard said that the state might shut the whole place down.” The Colonel stated rather emphatically. “Oh, I think he was doing something illegal up there, all right, but I don’t think they are going to find him where they are looking.” The Lady answered with a wry grin.

END NOTES

* “Hush-a-by” is thought to be an old Negro spiritual. Author is unknown.