Free A Wrong Turn Towards Love by Pepper Pace

Chapter 1
     
    Bodie’s night was going just fine until he heard JD say; “Hey what’s that black bitch doing in here?!”
    Bodie didn’t bother to look up. He lit a cigarette and sipped his beer silently. It had been a long day and the only thing he wanted to do was to drink his beer and mind his own business.  Somehow he was beginning to suspect that this wouldn’t happen.
    “Damn! Look at that ass…”
    “I ain’t never went for dark meat but…”
    “…going to end up turning this place into a jungle music club…”
    Bodie tuned out the sound of their low jabbering.  He told Merle to bring him another bottle and then he took one last draw off his cigarette and squelched it out.
    His eyes were red and fatigued. He had been working all day on an old junker until his arms and shoulders had begun to feel like two boulders in an old lady’s brassier. He had come to Stubby’s to unwind to the relaxing drone of the familiar recycled conversation that went on night after night. Someone would ask about which car he was currently working on and then they would commence to making small talk to the back drop of a Merle Haggard tune playing over the juke box—or if someone got nostalgic then it was George Jones amidst tearful exclamations of ‘how much it hurt to lose him to the pearly gates’. 
    After a brief respite from the speculations over the newcomer, Bodie thought he might get his wish for some uncomplicated conversation. And then he heard the one word that he hadn’t wanted to hear; “Fuckin’ Niggers.”
    “Man, she’s alone; in OUR joint.  She must want some of this white meat!”
    “Yeah,” JD agreed. “I’d give her a ride on the ol’ kielbasa sausage.”
    “More like cocktail weenie-” Merle laughed.
    Bodie got up to take a piss and then he was out of here.  He wasn’t testifying on anybody’s behalf.  Besides what was a black woman doing in a bootleg joint at one am alone ? Though he did have to amend that question since Stubby’s was a general store up front and only a bootleg joint in back. But he never met one single person that thought a general store would be open for operations after midnight…so again, what was a black woman doing back here?
    After relieving himself of the two home brews that he’d just ingested Bodie returned to the back room, only this time the sight before him finally captured his attention enough to actually stop and watch.
    JD’s dumbass had approached the woman and she was indeed black; a chocolate with no milk, a coffee with no cream-type-of-black. Bodie gazed at her with interest. She was a little thing, no taller than 5’5” but she was fierce. She had one hand on her shapely hip and the other pointing at JD, and she was giving him HELL!
    He smirked and then went back to the bar to pay his tab. The rest of the fellas were howling at JD’s expense.
    “Hey Bodie, man? You leaving? This is the best show of the night,” Merle chuckled.
    “Wasn’t looking for a show, just a few beers,” he commented, leaving a good tip.  He then walked past the angry woman and a red faced JD who was still trying to salvage some dignity.
    In his truck Bodie quickly forgot about the ruckus as he searched for a CD to play.  Nothing suited his taste so he turned on the radio to the oldies channel. He hadn’t lived in the era of the oldies music that he so loved, but at the age of 32 Bodie had never developed an interest in the progressive, or alternative music that most people in his age group listened to. A nice Chicago tune was playing and he began humming while he pulled out of the lot.
    He suddenly hit the brakes with a screech. Through the rearview window he caught a glimpse of the woman stalking out of the door…though he didn’t care about that, but he also saw Sully Pranger skulking along in the dark trailing her in the woods.
    Sully was an odd fella, kept to himself mostly, but he had been known to raise seven kinds of hell when the mood struck