The Backwoods

(II)

“Magic, huh?” Pam asked, looking over her shoulder from the coffee machine.

“That’s right,” Ricky Caudill sputtered back at her. Through the jail bars he looked like exactly what he was: a busted, washed-up, no-account rube. “It’s that Squatter voodoo they got goin’ on,” he assured her. All morning long, in fact, he’d elaborated on the details of last night, leaving out the part about killing David Eald and his daughter and then burning their shack down. “Everybody knows that Everd ’n’ that nutty wife a’ his are into it. Fucker cursed me right in my own house, and it was that magic a’ his that he used to kill my brother.”

“Ricky, it was alcoholism that killed your brother,” Pam replied. “Same thing that’ll kill you someday.”

“Shee-it.”

Pam traipsed back to her desk, perky as ever. These redneck losers are just so funny! They’d blame anybody and everything for their dysfunctional lives. She’d heard it all from similar folk sitting in that cell. At least this dolt is original. He’s not blaming the police or his wife or his boss for his problems. He’s blaming the Squatters! He’s telling me that Everd Stanherd is a warlock and he’s cursed him!

“And if y’all ain’t careful, Everd’ll curse the whole town; then you’ll all really be in the shit.”

“Ricky, you already are in the shit. You’re in jail.”

“Only safe place for me. You’ll see.”

“Sounds to me like you’re just scared,” Pam challenged him. She loved to toy with these local white-trash hooligans, play on their phony macho self-concepts. “Big, tough, strong man like you, scared of a bunch of hillbilly mumbo-jumbo. Scared like a little baby. Any minute now you’ll be curled up in there sucking your thumb and crying for your mama.” Pam fully expected the big moron to talk down her challenge, to assert his masculine bravado.

Instead, Ricky replied, “You’re right,” very quietly. “I am scared.”

Pam shook her head. How do you like that? He really is spooked. He was the last guy on earth she’d expect that from, especially admitting it so plainly. Must be serious DTs, she supposed, and got back to filing the week’s DORs and expenditure invoices. And he hasn’t looked at my boobs once today. The low-cut sleeveless summer dress she wore always had the male heads turning. But not this one.

Ricky Caudill was genuinely preoccupied with his fear.

Charlie the postman wasn’t preoccupied, though, and when the bell clanged and he walked in with his mailbag, his eyes darted immediately to her cleavage. “Howdy, Pam,” he greeted her. His baldhead and small mustache always reminded her of some of the Nazi honchos she remembered from history classes. Ernst Rohm. Heinrich Himmler. “How’s the purdiest woman in all of Agan’s Point?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. How’s the biggest bullshit artist in Agan’s Point?”

“God!” he said. “I love it when you talk dirty!”

He was such a card. “You should’ve been an airline pilot, so you could bullshit all those bimbo stewardesses.”

“You’d always fly first-class with me, baby.”

“You want some coffee before you leave?”

“Naw, you know what I want. A date with you.”

“That’ll be happening, Charlie. Hold your breath. Did you come in here to actually deliver, mail, or just stand there with your Hitler mustache and act like you’re not looking down my top?”

“Both,” he admitted. He began rifling through his mailbag. “I know you’d love for me to stay and chat all day, but I’m a little behind.”

“Actually, Charlie, you’re a big behind, but that’s what I like about you,” Pam said. She decided to let him keep on looking down her top. Why not? Gives him something to think about when he’s walking his route.

“I’m not just a big behind,” he said. “But I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.” Suddenly, though, the levity on his face faded. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

“I got a letter for Ricky Caudill, but it’s addressed to him care of the Agan’s Point police station.”

“Well, that’s good, because the redneck bum is right down the hall—in the drunk tank.”

“You don’t say. Saves me a trip out to his house.” He put the police mail down on Pam’s desk, along with the letter, which she picked up immediately. “No return address,” she noted. And it was handwritten, without a great degree of penmanship. She felt through it, feeling for any objects that might serve as weapons, but it was flat. Just a letter. “Thanks, Charlie. I’ll give it to him myself.”

Charlie just stood there as if he didn’t hear her, his eyes still playing over her outstanding bosom.

“I said thanks, Charlie! Have a good day!”

“Oh, right,” he said, and walked out.

Men were such sexist pigs, but . . . But they’re so amusing! At the very least, Pam got her share of laughs in this town.

She also had her share of boredom. Jeez . . . She could drink only so much coffee. She’d finished her filing, so all she could do now was sit and listen for anything on the police radio. Trey and the chief were out in Squatterville for that big clan cookout, though Pam was surprised they’d even be having it after all the recent commotion. Now she felt more at home with her boredom. I guess I should be grateful nothing’s going on, she reminded herself with the deaths, the burning, and all the talk lately, Agan’s Point had been anything but boring.

Then her mind strayed.

The letter.

She picked it up, looking at the crude scrawl. It was strange that it was addressed to Ricky Caudill, care of the police station. Word travels fast in a gossip town. . . . Oh, well. There was nothing else to do.

Pam got up with the letter and walked back to the jail cell. “Hey, Ricky, you got some mail,” she announced, but when she looked through the bars she saw that he was asleep on the jail cot. He lay belly-up on the mattress, snoring. The fat slob . . . Sounds like a cave full of bears.

Pam slipped the letter through the bars on the floor and walked back to her desk. He could read it when he woke up.