Offerings Three Stories Read online

  Offerings—

  Three Stories by Mary Anna Evans

  http://www.maryannaevans.com

  Copyright 2005 by Mary Anna Evans

  Kindle Edition

  “A Singularly Unsuitable Word” – Originally published in A Kudzu Christmas

  River City Publishing, Montgomery, Alabama.

  2005

  “Mouse House” – Originally published in North Florida Noir

  Pottersville Press, Pottersville, Florida

  2006

  “Starch” – Originally published by Plots with Guns

  www.plotswithguns.com

  2004

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  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  What People are Saying About Mary Anna Evans' Fiction

  For short story "Land of the Flowers", published in A Merry Band of Murderers:

  "... Three [stories] are particularly noteworthy: Mary Anna Evans' Land of the Flowers, Jeffrey Deaver's The Fan, and Val McDermid's Long Black Veil.... A Merry Band of Murderers is an admirable anthology of short stories by a skilled company of mystery authors."

  --Mysterious Reviews

  For Florida Book Awards Bronze Medalist Effigies:

  "We mystery lovers who've enjoyed Artifacts and then decided that Relics was even better may not believe this, but Ms. Evans has done it again, and Effigies is the best one yet. Again, she makes a lesson in our past a fascinating read."--Tony Hillerman, recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award, and the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award, among many other honors.

  For Benjamin Franklin Award-winner Artifacts:

  “It’s always fun to discover a new Florida voice, especially one who can bring to life the rich texture—the sand, the sea, the moss-draped live oaks, the seedy fishing shacks, the salted boat culture—of the state’s coast…the menace and the history are resolved in a hurricane of a finale.”--Tampa Tribune

  For IMBA Bestseller Relics:

  "A fascinating look at contemporary archaeology but also a twisted story of greed and its effects." Dallas Morning News

  For IndieNext Notable Book Findings (starred review):

  “This is a series that deserves more attention than it garners.” Library Journal

  ***

  A SINGULARLY UNSUITABLE WORD

  by Mary Anna Evans

  I am so old that I remember when ladies didn’t swear or drive automobiles. I recall a time when a young lady was considered fast if she let a boy hold her hand before he slid an engagement ring onto it. I’ll be blunt. I remember Prohibition. How old do you reckon that makes me?

  I remember my childhood, too, in a blurry kind of way. There were no hard edges in those days for little girls who were lucky, like me. There was no television to bring the world into my home, so I thought everybody had chickens and cows and vegetable gardens that gave them all they needed to eat. I saw no reason why all children wouldn’t have two or three toys to play with, just like I did. I was Florida-bred so, though I could well imagine that other folks might sweat occasionally—I certainly did—I had no notion of what it might mean to be cold. I went to Sunday School weekly, so I knew that there were bad things that I shouldn’t do. Still, for the first eight years of my life, those bad things were just numbers on the commandment list. What did killing and stealing and taking the Lord’s name in vain have to do with me?

  Perhaps my eight-year-old self was aware that I was infringing on one of those commandments when I filched a cookie shaped like a candy cane and crept out into that warm December night. Even now, I’m not sure which commandment covers spying on your sister, but one of them must. I knew that I shouldn’t be creeping around in my nightgown, following Iris as she crept down the river path wearing hers. I justified my actions by telling God (and Santa Claus, whose sleigh was probably on its way to my house right that minute) that if seventeen-year-old Iris couldn’t manage to stay in the house when she was supposed to be asleep, then how could I?

  I tried to be quiet as I skulked down the damp trail, but Florida riverbank foliage is lush and overgrown, even in wintertime. Iris should have been able to hear the spider lilies and palmettos rustle like crinolines as I pushed past them, but her mind was on something else. When she reached the landing, I saw what that something else was. Except it wasn’t a “something” else. It was a “someone” else.

  He was older than Iris. I would have called him a man, and Iris was, in my eyes, just a girl. And a silly one at that. He wore a driving cap pulled low over his eyes, and a glen plaid vest that was so fashionable that it must have come from a city. Maybe Tallahassee. Pensacola, even.

  I was glad to see that he was gentleman enough to take off his cap when he saw Iris coming. Then he tossed that fancy cap into the bottom of his flat-bottomed boat, stepped onto the landing, wrapped his arms around Iris, and commenced doing some ungentlemanly things. After a time, his behavior turned quite ungentlemanly—I’ll refrain from discussing her behavior completely, if you don’t mind—and there I sat, stuck in the palmettos until they got finished with whatever it was they were doing.

  When the other boat arrived, they were in no condition to hear it coming, particularly since the two men piloting it came from upstream with their motor off, poling it silently into place beside the dock. With a careless motion, the thin, dark-haired man standing in front tied the heavily loaded boat to a handy cleat.

  “And here I thought your deliveries was slow ‘cause you was cheating me,” said the burly man standing in back with his hand on the rudder. “Shit, Owen. You was just passing the time with this young slut.”

  The young man lunged toward him with both fists balled up, but he never got to use them. Fists aren’t a whole lot of good against a revolver.

  Owen, who suddenly looked less like a man and more like a boy, went dead still when the burly man pulled his gun. I swear, he stopped moving so fast that he was left standing on one foot, with the other hanging in the air behind him. Iris, who had been busily arranging her nightgown, which was in quite some disarray, started screaming. The sound stirred the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “Come to think of it,” the gunman said, “maybe I want to spend some time with the slut, too.” His hand shot out and grabbed Iris by the waist. He showed that he’d spent a lifetime on the water by hauling her into the boat, one-handed, without flipping the blamed thing. Also, it was a mighty big boat.

  “Leave the girl alone, Gibson,” his partner whined. “This’ll get us nothing but trouble.”
r />   “Shut up,” Gibson said, and I was relieved to see the gun swing away from Owen toward this man I didn’t know. This makes no sense, since I didn’t know Owen, either, but Iris did (quite well, it appeared) and that made him almost kin.

  “I’m done with the two of you,” Gibson said, waving the revolver back and forth between Owen and the other man, who I suddenly recognized. It was Mr. Robbins, who worked at the sawmill in town. “You’re cheating me, the both of you.”

  “How can you say that?” Mr. Robbins asked. His eyes bugged out of his long sallow face every time the gun swung his way. “I go over the numbers with you every night. We count the bottles together before we deliver them. We count the money together when we get home. Then we pay Owen and we split the rest. How could we cheat you?”

  Gibson’s eyes flicked away toward the woods for a second, and I recognized two things in those eyes that scared me. First, they were unfocused, the way my grandfather’s got when he’d had too much rum. And second, they showed a peculiar mix of confusion and humiliation that I’d seen before.

  My friend Jeremy, Daddy’s fieldhand, had come home one day with that self-same look on his face. It was the day he got tricked into paying a dime for a little old candy bar because he didn’t know his numbers. After that, I made it my business to walk to the store with him and look over the clerk’s shoulder while he totted up Jeremy’s receipt. Eight-year-old girls can get away with most anything when they smile, and everybody in town knew I’d been able to add a double-column of numbers since I was six.

  I’d been real proud of my tidy solution to Jeremy’s problem, but on that night I felt as cold and rudderless as if I’d been dumped into the muddy river below me. I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried not to shiver. If my shaking set the spider lilies and palmettos to moving, then Gibson would know I was there. I didn’t intend for him to be pointing that gun at me, too.

  He was going to shoot them—Owen and Mr. Robbins, and maybe Iris, too. That shamed, angry light in his eyes said that he saw no other choice. He needed the other men to help him run his business because he couldn’t count the money, but he couldn’t trust them not to cheat him…because he couldn’t count the money.

  Owen had finally eased his airborne foot down onto the landing, but his stance was odd and stiff, just like you’d expect of a man being held at gunpoint. Still, there was something funny about his right arm. He was holding it about a foot in front of him, with the palm pointed in toward his belly. Since I was situated where I could see that belly in profile, I was well-positioned to see something that Gibson couldn’t—a bulge beneath that glen plaid vest. If Gibson was distracted, just for a moment, Owen might be able to save my sister, and himself, too.

  I needed something to throw. A shoe would be perfect, but I wasn’t wearing anything but my nightgown and underdrawers. I would have thrown them and sat there stark naked, except I couldn’t imagine that they would make much noise.

  Being as how Florida is nothing but a spit of sand, there were no handy rocks, but our swamps are full of cypress balls. I hefted one of them, a hard green knob about the size of a baseball, and heaved it into the river. It landed near Mr. Robbins’ end of the boat, which turned out to be an altogether bad thing for him. Gibson hollered out a word I’d never heard before and pulled the trigger without a moment’s thought, hitting Mr. Robbins square in the middle of his chest.

  Poor Mr. Robbins toppled overboard and sank like a rock. Even though my sister was in the worst trouble imaginable and I wasn’t in a much more secure position myself, there was a long heartbeat when all I could think about was Ginny Robbins, who was two grades ahead of me in school. She didn’t deserve the news she was going to get come morning.

  Now, let me tell you about the word Gibson said when he pulled the trigger, because it’ll be important later on. In the years since then, I’ve heard that word several times. Not a lot, because people used to have some discretion about swearing in front of ladies. Certainly not lately, because you’d have to be some kind of a buffoon to swear in front of a doddering old woman like me. But now and then, someone has let it slip, so I’ve heard it and I know what it means, but I’ve only let it cross my lips once. I don’t intend to do it again, so you’ll have to figure it out for yourself. It rhymes with “Love your truck.” And it is a major violation of the commandment about honoring your mother.

  At the instant Mr. Robbins lost his life, Owen went for his gun, but he took just a whisper too long to pull it clear of his waistband. Gibson’s revolver went off again. Owen’s shot went wild, and he pitched off the landing into the river. I don’t recollect whether Iris had been screaming all the while, but she was making plenty of noise by this time, for sure. Gibson smacked her a good one, started the boat’s motor, slipped it from its mooring, and headed upstream with my sister. By the time they passed out of sight, I reckon I was making as much noise with my blubbering as Iris was with hers. It was only when I stopped to breathe that I heard the gurgling sound in the water.

  ***

  It is a blessing that Owen was shot in the arm, because that left him two legs and one good arm to help me drag him out of the water. I was an unusually smart little girl, but I wasn’t as big as a minute.

  He probably needed to sit there for a while and remember how to breathe, but there was no time. Gibson was hauling Iris upstream, but he had to navigate around a big oxbow and I knew a path that cut straight across the bend.

  I grabbed Owen by his good arm and hustled him to the spot where he had a fighting chance to save my sister. He was cooperative, which was good, because I was hardnosed enough to twist his bad arm until he saw the light. He moved well for a man whose blood was dripping out and splashing on the ground. I knew that situation probably couldn’t go on much longer, but we didn’t have far to go. The path dead-ended at the river and, praise Jesus, we had gotten there fast enough.

  The bank we stood on rose five feet above the river. We could have leaned over and spit on Gibson, but I paused for a second to come up with a more constructive way to use this competitive advantage. Owen was ordinarily a very smart man but, as a thinker, this wasn’t his finest hour. He didn’t stop to plan; he just launched himself, feet-first, at a man holding a gun who had just proven himself capable of murder.

  As I’ve said, the boat was fully loaded with cargo. The two men crashed so hard into one box that it busted open and let out a smell like the inside of my grandfather’s flask. Even Gibson wasn’t a good enough boatman to keep his vessel upright under this onslaught. Gibson, Owen, Iris—all three of them went into the river, and the fighting and cursing began in earnest.

  I needed to help my sister, and I was going to need a distraction bigger than a cypress ball. I looked around for an idea and was rewarded. The riverbank sloped downward a few yards upstream until it was barely higher than the river itself, and the criminals in the boat below me had made good use of that fact. It was an ideal spot to unload boxes from a car directly into a boat, and the Model T Ford that they used to run their rum was still parked there, waiting for them. It was certainly bigger than a cypress ball, but I didn’t have a clear idea how I could use it to save Iris and Owen. Yet.

  As I ran for the car, I learned another curse word. It rhymes with “odd ma’am,” and it is a serious transgression against the commandment against taking the Lord God’s name in vain.

  I must confess that the rescue plan I developed was at least as ill-considered as Owen’s, but I was under duress. I was also eight years old.

  It seemed to me that Owen and Iris were only a few feet from shore, and that perhaps I could just drive the car out there and get them. The car would provide me some protection from Gibson’s gun, assuming the revolver was even still dry enough to shoot. Once Owen and Iris were in the car, we could flee at top speed—thirty miles an hour, maybe more. It did not occur to me to wonder whether an internal combustion engine would work any better underwater than a revolver would. Cars were, in those days, new and magic
al beasts.

  Like most children, I watched and remembered each move the adults around me made, even when I didn’t understand its purpose. I knew how to “advance the spark” so that the car would start. I knew that I would find the crank on the floorboard in front of the passenger seat. I knew how to fit it into the housing on the car’s front and turn it. I knew that I would need to pull it away fast when the engine started, so as not to have my arm jerked off. However, I did not—and still do not—know much about the braking system of the Model T. At some point in the process, I disengaged the brake and, when I knelt in front of the car, crank in hand, it started to roll.

  Iris, God bless her, was in the middle of the worst night of her life when she looked up and saw a car driving over her cherished baby sister. To this day, I can hear her screaming, “Lila! Lila, don’t die—please don’t die!” I have rarely felt so loved.

  She might have known that I had sense enough to lay down real flat on the ground between the wheels and let the thing roll right over me.

  A Model T splashing into a river makes a mighty fine distraction. Owen, who probably should have been more worried about me than he was, though perhaps he already knew me well enough to presume I’d be fine, took the opportunity to wrestle Gibson into a headlock.

  The sound of a baying dog and a man’s steady voice reached me, and I knew my daddy had heard the gunshot and had come to set things right. For all the years my father lived, I enjoyed the assurance that he would take care of Iris and me. That night was no different. Watched over by Daddy and also by his hunting rifle, his bird dog Sam, and Owen, Gibson was no trouble to any of us while we waited for the sheriff.