Free A Place Called Wiregrass by Michael Morris

dress or flirting with a man over the new suit he was having tailored. I wanted to plug my ears and not listen. I needed that image of Wade Tyler.
    She looked down and drew circles with her index finger on the white tablecloth. “I never will forget the time I called the law on my first husband. That Luther Ranker. We’d only been married two months before I knew I’d gone from one hell on earth directly to another. Funny, I don’t even recollect what the problem was. Me just a girl, don’t you know. But anyway, he set in to pounding on me for something I should’ve done or shouldn’t have done.”
    Miss Claudia stopped drawing imaginary circles on the tablecloth. Instead, she squeezed the lace into a ball.
    “The next morning after my beating, Luther went off in his boat, and I went straight to the sheriff’s office to file a complaint. I still remember how the sheriff’s fat chin glistened with sweat. He leaned back in his chair and put his big handsbehind his round head. The sheriff said he didn’t like to get in family matters. He asked me if I had talked to my folks about this yet. I wanted to yell at him and tell him my real daddy was dead. If he counted that no good Maxwell as my papa, I did not share his opinion. I thought at the time if he knew what Old Man Maxwell had done to me, he would’ve locked him up too. I was such a silly thing back then. Sitting in that hot office with the black iron fan rotating in the open window and thinking that if the sheriff locked Luther and Old Man Maxwell up, Mama, my baby sister, and me could all live in the big store on Main Street. But instead, I was a good girl and followed the sheriff’s order.
    “Only problem was, Old Man Maxwell stood in the door to his store and told me in no uncertain terms that I made my bed and would have to sleep in it. I knew he was lying when he told me Mama didn’t want to see me. I tried to push my way inside the door. He grabbed at my breast and squeezed hard, pushing me out the door like some old drunk being tossed out of a saloon. ‘Get from here, before your mama sees you looking like some beat-up whore,’ he yelled and closed the store door. While I laid there on that nasty wooden sidewalk, I just didn’t know what was worse, getting that beating from Luther or being kept away from my own mama by the devil incarnate.
    “I even wrote Mama about how I made a mistake marrying Luther. I never did go into details about the day before I ran off and the liberties Old Man Maxwell took with me. Some things are just better left alone, I decided. I just wrote about the current hell and begged Mama to contact the sheriff and get me some help. I worked on that letter every day for a week and planned on dropping it off at the store when Luther took me to town on Saturday. When I hid it in the closet, I had no idea Luther would be smart enough to find the letter tucked inside my shoe.
    “Luther waited until we were riding in the truck on the way to town before telling me to give him my pocketbook. He claimed he had a piece of money for me and wanted to personally put it in my pocketbook. I don’t think I could’ve gripped that little black pocketbook that carried the letter I wrote Mama any tighter. After a few minutes of teasing, Luther yanked it out of my grasp and pulled over on the edge of the dirt road. It was right near Yorkshire Pond. I can still hear the locusts sounding off out in the pines.
    “When he saw that letter, I never heard so much yelling and swearing in my life. Luther went plumb crazy. Telling me how I thought I was going to pull something over on him and how he was watching my ever move. Then, he just leaned against the driver’s door and started kicking with his boots. He only caught me with one good jab to my arm before my hand found the door handle and I jumped out. He screamed that I’d be six feet under before he’d let my mama get in our business. I didn’t see what he pulled from under the truck seat