Free Dumping Grounds (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 1) by Lila Beckham

slapped him cockeyed, and even whacked him with her fist a few times.
    She fought him like she was a damn man!
    “Damn, you don’t say” James said, smiling as the image of Addie Mae beating up on some man flashed through his mind.
    “I saw some commotion happening across the street from the rink and when I drove up to see what it was, she was still madder than a wet settin' hen.
    I thought for a minute there that she was going to whack me upside the head too,” Joshua chuckled. “She said, “Ain’t nobody gone lay a hand on my younguns to whup them, but me!” Lord she was peed off bad. She reminded me a lot of Willie and Tom that night.”
    “Well, you know she has a split personality when she drinks, don’t you” James said seriously.
    “No, I didn’t. I have never seen her drink that I know of,” Joshua replied.
    “Yeah, it’s in the bloodline that’s for sure. She is just like her daddy, my Uncle Edam.
    That split personality stuff is something that shonuff runs in the family. Most of us are easygoing and humble until we drank or until we have been peed off about something,” James informed his friend.
    “Well, she was probably both, because I could smell booze on her. She is not one I would want to cross. She reminded me of Pearl, too. You know Pearl is easy going like that too, until she gets to drinking.”
    “Oh yeah, I know real well how Pearl can be when she is or when she ain’t a drinking. She’s a real mean drunk. So is Addie Mae, Uncle Edam, Clay, heck all of em get mean when they drink.
    Uncle Edam is dead and it’s not good to speak ill of the dead, but he’d stay drunk for weeks at a time. I use to think the meanness came from him, but Aunt Fay could be mean too and she did not have to drink to be that way. She is real humble too, most of the time.
    I heard that when Aunt Fay was pregnant with Addie, Uncle Edam was drunk; they were fishing off the bridge over Big Creek on Old Hattiesburg Road. He made her mad so she hauled off and knocked him off the bridge and into the creek, and she’s a little bitty woman too.
    Addie Mae, and her husband, Hal, are some of them in again out again churchgoers. Addie falls off the wagon occasionally, same as her daddy always did.
    Her brother, Amos, is a mean drunk too, and he lays up drunk for weeks at a time. Clay, you ought to remember him, is the only one that had enough sense to quit drinking and leave it alone. He has not drunk anything that I know of in years, because of inheriting that split personality gene.
    Years ago, he almost killed Hal, Addie Mae’s husband; broke a knife blade off in his head” James said, humble in his informing. Stokes nodded his head.
    Joshua remembered the event James was talking about. He was a young deputy at the time with a couple of years under his belt. He just happened to be patrolling that stretch of Lott Road, trying to keep an eye on the moonshine runners, when a very pregnant Addie Mae, flagged him down. She was very upset and hollered to him that her brother was killing her husband.
     
    The ambulance crew arrived on the scene and immediately wanted to check the sheriff’s vital signs and look him over, but Stokes told them to see to the driver of the other vehicle. He told them he was not going to the hospital, the only place he intended going, was home. They could take it or leave it.
    They tried to reason with him by telling him he could have a concussion because of his head injury, but he still refused to go. Instead, he asked James if he would mind driving him home.
    James said he would be happy to drive him anywhere he wanted to go, but that he ought to go and let the doctor check him out and make sure he was good to go.
    Joshua Stokes hurt all over, especially his head and nose, but he would be damned if he was going to the hospital. He did not want to be poked and prodded, and he did not want to be a patient there. He knew that was what would happen if he went. Old Dr. Lightfeather had wanted