Junior Ray. John Pritchard
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many things get away with me; but, man, that hurt.
It was awful insensitive of her if you ask me—but I suppose I can understand it to some degree, because, you see, women don’t fart. Well, they do when they get to be on up in years, but, now, think about it; when’s the last time you seen a young, pretty thing rip off a great big ol’ crowd-dispersing poot? You never will, neither, ’cause they simply do not fart.
Anyhow, it was that time at the MoonLite Drive-In when I could see what it would be like if Des and me was married, and I knew then it wuddn for me. Shoot, I was fairly young then, and I intended to have me a good time without put’n up with that kind of unpleasantness. I mean, screw Clarksdale. Hell, I rather go to Meffis anyhow. And, back then you could still go to the King Cotton or any number of them other hotels and order up whatever you wanted from the bellhop and then be free to do as you please the rest of the time. Plus, you didn’t have to put up with all them mosquitos.
Well, that was over forty years ago. I’ve calmed down a good bit since then. For some time now I been going over to Sledge to see this woman. Her husband died and left her a house, a nineteen eighty-six Coupe de Ville, one nem big-screen TVs, and six hundred acres of rice which she rents out for about sixty-five dollars an acre. With all that and social security, she lives pretty good. Hell, she ought to. She worked twenty years at the mattress factory the other side of Lambert. Anyway, her and me gets together about twice’t a week, and mostly we cook out on the grill and watch Matlock. Once in a while, however, usually after the first frost, she fixes chittlins, and that’s some good eat’n—slung or unslung, it don’t matter to me, fried or boiled. When it’s chittlin cookin time in Quitman County, son, I’ll be there.
But, you know, as much as I love them things, I do think it is strange that so much fuss is made over a pot full of hog guts. Yet, they’s just something about ’em, and once’t you get hooked on ’em, you can’t ever turn ’em down even when you know what they are and where they been. I just try not to think about it, but it’s hard not to do when you know what you’re putting in your mouth. I mean it is peculiar. I know people that would shy away from a raw oyster but wouldn’t think twice about bite’n into the fricaseed asshole of a five-hundred-pound pig. If you figure it out, let me know.
I’ve improved a whole helluva lot since I first came here. I even go to church a good bit because, whereas I used to think God had it in for me and was after my ass, I now know that God is a god of love—and, if you don’t b’lieve it, he’ll burn your butt in hell for e-fukin-ternity, ’cause, you see, and here’s what people don’t understand, He is also a just God. Somehow, all of a sudden, everything made sense. See, there’s a difference in the ways of God and the ways of men. As I say, I been goin’ to church pretty regular for some years now, and I know what it means to know the Lord. Let me tell you, a sumbich don’t know peace until he knows Christ. The way I figure it is, if that muthafukka came down here and died for my ass, then the only way I can thank him is by doing his will, whatever the fuk that is.
I’m a lot better about all that now than I used to be. I’m not sayin’ I’m deeply spiritual. Fuk no. I’m just sayin’ I’m a somewhat better individual than I was when I was real young and workin’ as a deputy for Sheriff Holston. Then, I wuddn nothin’ but a hunnerd-dollar gun slung on a two-bit ass. Well, that’s what old Sticks Ferry called me one day. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, yet I guess now that I got a few years on me, I have to agree with him. But I still didn’t like the sumbich—well, hell, he didn’t like me.
Back to Leland Shaw, it ain’t no secret that I wanted to shoot the crazy muthafukka, and that’s a fact. In my opinion, it woulda been a good deed. But some of them assholes didn’t see it that way, and although I didn’t know it then, I can see now that that episode was probably the beginning of the end of my career as a deputy.
I never woulda gotten to be sheriff. You have to be elected to do that, and, in these Delta counties, even though things was changin’ and changin’ fast, back then you had to be somebody that didn’t need to be sheriff if you wanted to be sheriff—hell, we had sheriffs around here that didn’t know the first thing about law enforcement; they was cotton farmers. Although I will say this, and that is, a lot of times, back then it seemed to me we had less law and a good bit more justice. But all that’s gone now. Yessir, gone with the fukkin wind.
And the same thing has happened in other parts of the state and in other states, too, so I hear. I really never traveled much—only been to Jackson five times in my whole life. Didn’t think much of it, to tell you the truth. Last time I was there was in 1965, and a friend of mine and I stayed in a whorehouse down near the railroad station. Place looked like something out of a Saturday western. The room had one nem wash stands with a pitcher! But the thing that I can’t help remembering is that there we wuz in that Saturday–western whorehouse, and right across the street, in the King Edward Hotel, was all them legislaytchers—you know, senators and such. And I thought about that, so that, now, lookin’ back on it all, it’s hard for me to say which house had the most whores.
Anyhow, the Leland Shaw thing is what I want to talk about, and I keep getting off the subject.
In a way I hated him because he was not the maniac everybody had thought he was and that I, of course, had hoped he was. You see, it was my one opportunity to really do something, and that crazy sumbich fukked it up, mainly, by not turning out to be the menace to society that, for a while, everybody believed he was and probably, like me, needed him to be. You know how people are. They want life in a small town to be something more than what it actually is. But, as you you know, what they want don’t ever stay wanted.
Neverthe-fukkin-less, when it all started, it was my intention to save people and to do something good for the county. Then, little by little, all that changed. and I had to admit I just wanted a chance to shoot somebody. There wuddn no two ways about it.
I couldn’t stand the thought of being a deputy in a sleepy little old Delta town, carrying a gun all my life and never get’n to put it to the use for which it was intended. Let’s face it, a thirty-eight was not designed for hunting rabbits or for shoot’n turtles offa logs. Nor was it intended for some silly-ass target practice. It was designed for one thing and one thing only, and I was not about to carry that side arm around all my life and not at least once’t shoot the shit out of somebody.
I didn’t figure I was no different from them old sumbiches in the Bible. They didn’t let a day go by that they didn’t run out and slay or otherwise smite somebody. In fact, the biggest smiter of ’em all was old God, hissef. Now that’s one advantage of going to church all the time, I learn a lot. Turns out I ain’t too much different from old Jehovah, personality-wise. ’Course, I’m the first to admit there’s also some major differences, too. But if you want to know about smiting, take a look at Deuteronomy and at Joshua. Those two coksukkas were experts at it.
Now, though Leland Shaw was not—as he bygod ought to have been—dangerous, he was crazy as I don’t know what. I got no sympathy with a sumbich that goes crazy in the first gotdamn place. That’s one thing I had against him. He goes to war and loses his mind. Shoot, I’d about lose my mind if I didn’t. But you probably know the story—I had a bad back . . . if it hadn’t have been for that, I’da been right over there in Korea shoot’n them little slant-eyed muthafukkas and pokin’ their women sideways and havin’ me one helluva time. And that’s just what Jehovah woulda done. I forget where he says it, but he tells the chosen people to go into a place and put all the men and boys to the sword and to take the women and the animals for themselves. If I’da knowed all that, I’da been goin’ to church a lot sooner. It just goes to show that the Lord does work in mysterious ways. I’m livin’ proof of that.
In fact, one time a sumbich said to me that I was absolute proof that there wuddn no such thing as evolution. I took that as a compliment. I guess he was some kinda preacher.
Anyhow, here’s what that crazy sumbich Leland Shaw done. He comes home from the war, that’s Dubbya Dubbya Two, and goes to live with his mama who was getting on up in years. It turns out he has been shellshocked or something because, even though the town put on a big celebration for him and called it welcome home leland shaw day, he didn’t